r
THE WEEKLY
REVIEW^
DEVOTED TO THE CONSIDERATION OF
t-frv
'^0,.
Politics, of Social and Economic Tendencies.
OF History. Literature,
and the Arts
VOLUME II
January — June, 1920
In Two Parts : Part II
l''-}^\l.o
^T
THE NATIONAL WEEKLY CORPORATION
140 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK, N. Y
INDEX TO VOLUME II
JANUARY— JUNE, 1920
(Numbers 34-59)
BRIEF COMMENT— AT HOME
Page
ALASKA'S Salmon Fisliinif Industry, L^islation
^ X«,kd 347
America, What Ihe Name SigniAcs 501
American AraJemy at Rome. Funds Needed 475
American Legion: "llonuses" 166,239,317,
445. 503, 586
Imposition u>f Its Standards (Franklin D'Olier) 2
Proposals lor Aid from the Government.... 317
Armenia. American Mandate For 557
Aviation: Congressional Appropriation 120,219
D.\SEBALL and tht Needs ot the World 143
Better Times, Smalla^ Newspaper in the
Wo«»d 269
Bird Act, Migratory, Sustained by Supreme Court 419
B'tds. Extermination in -\merica (Hornaday) .... 663
Birds. Refuge for (Rockefeller Foundation's Gift) 447
Bolshevism. Cause of 418, 587
Chicherin and Raymond Robbins 96
n-portations. Government's Policy Toward.. 95
Favored in Sibrria (Major-General Graves).. 531
Hapgood's (Norman) Reply to Harvey's
Weekly's Charges 95
May-day Plot 474
Refutation by the New Republic and Nation. . 120
Books 71
Bryan's Speeches 41
(>rN'CIXNATUS Legend and Gov. Frazier of the
Xon-Partisan League 269
Child-Welfare Laws 447
Church and War (Freeman) 587
"Civic Responsibility," Compulsory Training for
(F. E. Spauldmg) 375
Clothes, Style of Men's (Custom Cutter's' Deci-
sion) 297
Coal Miners and Operators Indicted by Federal
Grand Jury 318
Congress: American Recognition of "Irish Re-
public" (Cdby Interrogated) 557
Arminian Mandate, Immediate Action Upon
Necessary 557
Aviation Appropriation 120, 219
Bonus Bill, House Passing of 586
Bonus Raised by Proposed Retroactive War-
profits Tax Bill 445
Bonus Two Billion Dollar Bill, Progress of
503. 586
Glass's Recommendation for Starving Europe
41, 119, 166
Paper Consumption, Bill for Restraint of
Nerdcd 473
Protest Against Their Irish Resolutions (Yale
Faculty) 614
Resolution Proposed to R cognize Irish de
facto Government (SherwooJ) 21
Seed Distribution, Abandonm nt of Policy of. 268
Conkling's Hatred of Blaine, Cause of 663
Cost of Living: Cooperative Soci.ties, Statistics
on 503
Lowering of the Price of Food (Rcs.aurant
Men's Assn.) 297
Potatoes, Increase in Production of 530
Potatoes, Means of Obtaining Pric; Reduction 473
Reduction of. Overalls and Oli Clothes 418
r\EBS and Free Speech 475
"Disclosures" ar.d Radical Papers 531
Dreiser (Theodore), Importan.e of 375
ECONOMICS: Budget System Needed 70
Deflation (Federal Reserve Board's Report) 192
Glass's Recommendation to Congress for Re-
lief in Europe 41, 119, 166
High Prices, Cause of (Kansas City Star).. 374
Taxation of Non-residents (Supreme Court
Decision) 218
Truths and Advertising 97
Education: Child-welfare l^ws 447
Colleges, Amherst .Memorial Fellowship 2
Colleges, Degree Requirement — Specific Knowl-
edge of Our Form of Government 167
Colleges, Final Examination for Degrees
(Harvard) 97
Colleges, Harvard, Teachers and Production
(Lowell's Report) 240
Colleges, Pranks and Newspaper Reporting.. 318
Colleges, Professors' Salaries (University of
Wash.) 167
Colleges, Women's Funds Needed 219
Educational .Section of the Review 269
New York Post-Graduate Medical School 447
Unionization of College and University
Teachers (Prof. Lovcjoy) 97
pARMERS and the "Questionnaire" 120
Fifth Avenue Noises 346
Page
Fifth Avenue's Beauty 347
Fifth Avenue's New Traffic Rules 297
Finance [See Economics]
Fraud: Election (Senator Newberry's Convic-
tion) 295
Free Speech: Radicals' .\ttitude Towards. . .374, 475
Republican Platform On 641
Rev. P. S. Grant's Opinions 69, 120
Socialist Rez'iew's Idea of 587
Suppression of. Deb's Attitude Toward 475
Freeman, The 295
Freeman, The, and the Nation 446
Freeman's, The View of the Church 587
French and English Good Feeling, Ruhr Situa-
tion a Menace to — Our Attitude "Toward.. 373
IJOOVER as the Head of European Relief Work 642
Housing: Apartment House Leases (New
York) 42
Tenement Problems, Prizes for 42
I DEALISM and Disillusion 374
Indian (American) Rights Association — ■
Pima Indians' Case 614
Interchurch World Movement, Fund Campaign . .
319, 587
Ireland and European Squabbles 95
Irish Propaganda Encouraged by New York City
and State 70
Italy Accuses America of Spreading False News. . 445
l^EYNES and Miller (David Hunter) Controversy
Over German Indemnity 141, 142
J ABOR: Attitude in Australia Against Sabotage 587
Farmers' Compl.-iints 1 20
Gompers, Overthrow of {Manchester Guardian) 558
Gompers's View of, Toilers' Rights 614
Hiring Capital (Sir George Paish) 42
Injunctions, Attitude Toward (John A. Mc-
Mahon) 97
Party Dissensions 642
Shorter Hours and Undiminished Production
Exemplified by American Multigraph Co.
(Cleveland) 530
Soviet-Labor Code, Insurgent Press's Attitude 446
Task of (Sir Auckland Geddes at Atlantic
City) 474
The Right to Strike (Gompers vs. Allen) . . . 586
Unionization of College and University Teach-
ers (Prof. Lovejoy) 97
Wages and Number of Employees, Statistics
(Labor Market Bulletin) 218
Lansing's Influence on Notes Sent to England and
Germany, The Nation's View 217
Laski's (Harold J.) Prediction of Revolution.... 615
Law: Reform Urged in Anachronistic Features
by Bar Association 167
Reforms (New York State Bar Association). 167
Liberator and Mexico 475
Library (American) Association, Work of 71
JVjAETERLINCK in America 2
Marshall's (Vice-President) Democratic
Letter 165
Mexico Under Carranza, the Liberator's View .if 475
Minority and Majority Rights (Hobson in the
London Nation) 503
Morton, Levi P., Career of 530
MATION (The): Attack on.. 142, 217, 239,446, 642
Nation's (The) Plea for Newspaper Modera-
tion 142
National Thrift Week 22
Negroes: Lynching and the Law (Lexington,
Ky.) 142
New Republic and the "Red and White Terror". 120
New Republic Misquotes Wood 529
New Republic's Attitude Toward the War 69
New Republic's Fondness for "Disclosures" 531
Newspapers and News Suppression 501, 585
QSLER'S (Dr. William) Death 2
DAPER, Newsprint, Consumption of 473
Peary's (Admiral) Death 193
Periodicals, American and English Contrasted 347
Personal Liberty and Legislation 347
Politics: And Investigations (New York) 346
Bryan's Re-entrance Into 1
Commissioner of Accounts' Attack on Horna-
day of the N. Y. "Zoo" 297
Conventions, Interest of ',] 613
Democratic Convention, Character of..!!.... 661
Democratic Platform, Issues of 661
Election Campaign Expenditures (Senator
Newberry's) 295
Page
Reasons for Voting for Johnson (Detroit
Weekly) 446
Republican Convention 613
Republican Convention, "Task of 473
Republican Platform 473
Republican Platform On Free Speech, Free
Press and Free Assembly 641
Republican Platform, Prize Contest For. ... 70
Scheme for Electing the President (Judge
Willis Brown) 218
Vice-President Marshall's Letter 165
Pope's Mitigation of Protest Against the King's
Seizure of his Temporal Power 614
Presidential Candidates: Betting Odds Against.. 613
Harding and Coolidge, Careers of 641
Harding, Comment by French and English
Press 641
Hoover vs. Johnson on the Treaty 529
Hoover's Ability to Reduce Government Ex-
penses 417
Hoover's Chances of Nomination 141
Hoover's Statement of his Opinions 141
Johnson and the Chicago Convention 585
Johnson and the Primaries, Result of 445
Johnson's Convictions 613
Johnson's Definition of Radical 558
Republican Candidate (Penrose) 192
Vice-Presidency, Importance of (Johnson's
Comment) 417
Wilson and the Treaty 445
Wilson's Renomination, Chances of 661
Wood and Hoover 95
Wood Misquoted by New Republic 529
Wood's Fitness for Presidency 417
Wood's Primary Campaign 585
Wood's Resignation from the Army 21
Primaries and Senator Johnson ». . 239
Primaries, Value of 641
Primary and Funds 585
Profiteers: Department Store Head, Arrest of
[New York] 662
"Progressives" and Grover Cleveland (The
Nation) 642
Prohibition: Enforcement of 71
Entering Wedge for Further Restraints of
Personal Liberty 347
Michigan and Enforcement 193
DADICAL: Meaning of [Senator Johnson]... 558
Press and the People 615
Radical's Position and the Liberal's 418
Radicals vs. Liberals 663
Railing on "General Principles" 615
Railways: Esch Cummins Railroad Bill 191
Esch-Cunimins Railroad Bill, Labor Provisions 191
Freight Rates' Increase and the Nation 239
Revolutionists and Violence 531
Rhymes: [Clinton Scollard and F. P. Adams].. 559
Roosevelt Memorial Association. Woman's 240
Russian Bolsheviki Methods Exposed 345
gALVATION Army's Campaign for Funds 418
Science Offers Prize for Inter-planetary
Communication 121
Sir Oliver [Lodge] Exchanged for "Pussyfoot''
Johnson 167
.Social Force vs. Law [London Nation!....'.'.'.'. 502
Socialism; Albany Bills against. Constitutionality
of 417
Berger and the War 2I
Debs Compared to Liebknecht ISurvey] ....'. 447
Gov. Smith Vetoes Heresy-hunting Bills 557
Republican Platform Stand on Discrimination
Against 641
Speaker Sweet's Charges Against the Five
Socialist Assemblymen 69
State [Non Partisan League] Cincinnatus aiid
I h eir Governor 269
Voting For '..'.'.'. 219
Socialist Parties, Dissensions of !!!!!!!!! 642
State, the Passing of the 295
Straw Hats [Mens] Convention Governing Wear-
ing of 559
Strikes; Heating Plant Operators [New York].! 121
Railroad, Justification as Regards Wages...! 373
Kailroadj "Outlaw" Character of 373
The Right of [Gompers vs. Allen] 586
Sugar, Hoover's Plans for Its Supply 501
yENANTS of New York Apartment Houses 42
Treaty and Covenant: America's Responsi-
bility and Wilson [Fortnightly Review! . . 585
Bryan's Speech 41
George Washington Invoked Against! ! 95
Hoover's Position on Treaty Attacked
by Johnson 529
Issue in Presidental (Campaign '217,
239, 445, 501
Keynes vs. Miller [David] Hunter 141, 142
Numbers 34-59
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
Vol. II
Pace
LeaRlie's Financial Resources and
Wood's Campaign 446
Lenroot Reservation and Canada 166
Lord Grey's Letter 119
Lord Grey, and the Senate 119
New Republic's Attitude ^ 69
Non-Ratification of, Responsibility for. 267
Ratification Outlook Dark 217, 267
RatificatioTi Without Reservation, Oppo-
sition of Taft and Bryan to Wilson's
Plan 501
Root Represents Us at the League.... 192
Wilson and Italy's Claims 166
Wilson L'rgcd by Prominent Citizens to
Accept Treaty on Best Terms Obtain-
able 317
Wilson's New Proposals and the Trcnty 445
Wilson's Opportunity to Return the
Treaty to the Senate 295
Wilson's Responsibility for Non-Rati-
fication of 661
UNITED States Army: "Bonuses" .. 166, 239,
317, 445, 503, 586
General Wood's Resignation 21
Unit d States Navy; Admiral Sims's Charges.. 69
Result of Inquiry Into Charges Against 374
Sims's Controversy with Daniels, Report
Necessary 662
WICK Investigations in New York 345, 346
W^.-\R Memorial, Hudson River Bridge 642
" Wilson Administration: Colby's [Bain-
bridge] Appointment as Secretary of
State 217
Crane's [Charles R.] Appointment as
Minister to China 218
Wilson's Dismissal of Secretary Lansing 165
Wilson's Re-election and the Treaty 239, 445
Wilson's Renomination, Chances of.... 661
Wilson's Responsibility Towards the
Treaty 585
Wilson's Sickness and Republican Sym-
pathy [Senator Williams] .. 318
WilS(Hi's Uncompromising Idealism,
Results of 374
VUKON Salmon Fishing Industry, Legislation
needed [Archdeacon Stuck] 347
VIONISM: F'unds For 70
BRIEF COMMENT— ABROAD
ARMENIA, American Mandate For 557
Australia, Unions and Sabotage 587
Austria-Hungary: "Lasko's" Death and the New
Republic 120
Union With Czechoslovakia 70
DELGIUM: Industrial Conditions [Guaranty
*-* Trust Co.] 22, 559
r^ANADA: Financial Prosperity, Aid to [Sir
^ Vincint Meredith] 143
Treaty, Voting Rights [N. W. Rowell] 166
Tribute to Prince of Wales's Visit [Sir Vin-
cent Meredith] 143
pvENMARK: Elections for the Folketing — Re-
'-' suits 474
Plebiscite in Slesvig, Results of 296, 346
Reinstatement of Mr. Hansen as Commis-
sioner for Slesvig Affairs, Signiiicance of.. 375
ECONOMICS: Glass's Recommendation to
Congress for Relief in Europe 41, 119, 166
piNANCE: [See Economics]
France: Agreement with Kernel Pasha... 643
Aviation, War Statistics 42
German Diplomacy vs. French 346
German Indemnity and the Hythe Con-
ference 558
Lille, Funds for 121
Merchant Fleet, Needs 29S
Millerand Tries to Dissolve the General
Federation of Labor 530
Millerand's Cabinet Victory 96
Politics, Briand vs. Millerand 96
I'rize for Inter-Planetary Communica-
tion [Academy of Sciences] 121
Ruhr Situation a Menace to Its Good
Relations With England 373
Russian Policy [Millerand] 586
Socialist Programme for Reconstruction 502
France's Part in the Controversy Over the German
Territory on the Left Bank of the Rhine . . 296
^ERMANS in Czechoslovakia at Prague, Be-
havior of 586
Germany: Condition of [Dr. Paul Rohrbach] . . . . 96
Effect of the Reconciliation of France and
England at San Remo 446
Elections for Reichstag — Results 614
Ex-Kaiser's Trial 41
German Diplomacy vs. French 346
Hermann Muller's Cabinet 318
Indemnity, Arrangement at Hythe 558
Indemnity [Keynes vs. Miller, David Hunter].
141, 142
Our Attitude Towards 41
Pace
Plebiscite in Slesvig 296
Prince Joachim Alhrecht's Trial 643
Prussian Militarists' Counter-Revolution, Pur-
poses 267, 268
Prussian Militarists' Revolution Against the
Kberl Government 267
ReL-itiins with Eastern Europe [Dr. Rohr-
bach] 240
Spa Conference, Demands of German Dele-
gates at 5.i;g
War Criminals, Demand For 165
QREAT Britain: Anglo-Persian Treaty 419
Asquith vs. Lloyd George's Policies 318
Birds, Extermination of — Fight for Preventive
Measures 419
General Strike to Force Nationalization of the
Mines, Vote on 268
Krasin's Visit, Real Purpose of 662
Lloyd George's Russian Policy [Krasin's
visit] 586
London Ucrcvry's Articles. Informality of.. 347
Lord Grey's Letter on the Treaty 119
Polish Policy fBonar Law] 558
Ruhr Situation a Menace to Its Good Rela-
tions With France 373
Saturday Review, Snobbishness of 347
Sir Auckland Geddes on Reconstruction, Op-
timism of 474
UARDING'S Nomination, English and French
Comment on 641
Holland: Ex-Kaiser's Trial 41
Hoover and European Relief Work 642
Hungary: White Terror and Allied Commission-
ers' Representations to the Horthy Govern-
ment 643
IRELAND: American Recognition of Republic
'■ [Colby] 557
Government of Ireland Bill Amendment
Group [.Stephin Gwynn] 474
Home Rule Bill [Lloyd George's], Stephen
Gwynii's Amendments 474
Resolution Proposed in Congress to Recognize
de facto Government [Sherwood] 21
Sinn Fein Propaganda Encouraged in New
York City and State 70
Sinn Feinism and the League 70
Sinn FYinism Denounced by Colonel Lynch. . 22
Italy: America Accused of Spreading False News
of Italy 445
American Academy at Rome, Funds Needed. 475
Attitude Towards the World [Premier Nitti] 142
Coalitions, Value of [Nitti's Resignations]... 643
Fiunie and Jugoslavia's Need of a Seaport.. 192
Fiume and the Fourteen Points 191
Fiume, Policy of Moderation Advocated
IPremicr Nitti] 142
Nitti's Resignation and Return 530
Pope's Mitigation of Protest Against the
King's Seizure of His Temporal Power.... 614
Socialism — Leader of, Enrico Malatesta 475
Wilson's Uncompromising Attitude on Dal-
matia 166
JAPAN: Occupation of Vladivostock, Responsi-
bility for 503
Shantung Settlement, China's Distrust of
J apan 662
Japanese Portraiture of Etiropeans INeopkiloh'
gusl 531
lyiEXICO: Revolution Depicted by Ibancz.... 530
The Liberator's View of [Irwin GranichJ . . 475
Minority and Majority Rights [Hobson in the
London Nations 502, 503
pERSIA: Anglo-Persian Treaty 419
^ i'oland: Success of Offensive Against Rus-
sia 502, 558
Ukranian Debt to 502
RUSSIA: Aggressive Campaign Against — Re-
sults of 502
Bolsheviki and Outside Interference 193
Bolsheviki Kill Madame Ponatidine 615
Bolsheviki Regime and Free Speech [N. Buk-
harin] 375
Chicherin's Note to President Wilson 96
Co-operatives and the Soviet 142
Exposure of Bolsheviki Methods 345
France's Policy Toward [Millerand] 586
Japai.ese Occupation of Vladivostok 503
Kalinin's Death and Soviet Changes ;••.•• 1*7
Keeliiig's [Mr.] Change of View of Soviet
Russia 345
Kolchak, Result of Allied Aid to 193
Kolchak, Testimonial to [Hans Vorst] 96
Krasin's Visit to England, Real Purpose of . . . 662
Lloyd George's Policy Towards [Krasins
Visit to England] 586
Semenov and Japan J
Semenov Succeeds Kulchak 1
Semcnov's Value INew Republic] 21
Siberia's Pro-Bolshevik Tendencies [Major-
Gcneral Graves] ,•'■,■,-"■ ^
Soviet Governm.nt. Social Democrat s View
[British Labor Delegation] 643
Soviet Government's Issue of Platinum Notes 219
Soviet Labor Code 446, 559
Tolstoy and Bolshevism .•••,•; Jt„
Unity of Russia [Dr. Rohrbach] 240
Pmb
CAN Remo Conference, Lloyd Georte «. Mil-
lerand 4I7
San Remo Peace Conference, Reconciliation of
France and England 44<
•'i'law [Bernard] and Prize Fichlint 42
.Spa Conference 558
Sweden: .Socialist Cabinet 419
Switzerland: Votes Condilionalljr to Jota tlw
Lt-ague 1
Syria: Independence of.... 268,296
TREATY and Covenant I, 41, 70, 119, 141,
o. . - >«, 166
Signing of 41
Turkey: Allied Policy Toward 240,268
And Conditions in the Near Ea«t 268
France's Agreement with Krmal Pasha 64J
Rea.<ons for Turkey Retaining Constantinople 218
EDITORIAL ARTICLES
AGRICULTURE, the Basic Industry 196
^ Albany, The Issues in the Fight at [Socia-
lism] 121
Am:'rica and the Plight of Europe [Economic]... 123
American Isolation (Trealyl 589
America's Duty 532
Article X 143
Asquith's Return, Mr 222
"DLOOD and Iron," What Hat Come o{ [Ger-
'-' many] 244
Bolsheviki, Poles and 477
Bi nus. Justice and the 351
Branting, Prime Minister 451
(CAMPAIGN Arguments 299
^^ Cenlralia Murder Trial, The 321
Chicago. The Chances at [Presidential Can-
didates) 376
Chicago, The Problem at [Presidential Candidates] 588
Chicago, The Result at [Presidential Candidates] 644
Church and the World's Need, The 172
Classics, President Butler on the 76
College Efficiency, The "Student-Hour" and 198
Colleges For? What Are 125
Colleges, The Women's 223
Cost of Living Exhibit, A 477
Cow to Consumer, From 591
pCONOMIC Restoration, The World's 71
^ Eighteenth Amendment, The Protest
Against the [ Prohibition] 242
English Tradition, America and the 147
Europe, The Outlook in 26
Exchange Question, A B C of the 145
CAILURE, A Lamentable [Soldiers] 197
^ Faith That Is in Us, The [Socialism] 506
Farmers' Questionnaire, The 299
Father of Victory The [Clemenceau] 75
Fighting the Symptoms [Cost of Living] 243
France and England 322
pERMAN Elections, The 590
^^ Germany, By-Governments in 507
Gompers [Mr.] vs. the Bolshevists 124
Governor Smith's Opportunity [Socialist Billa].. 421
Greek at Oxford 424
"Greek for the Greek-minded" 645
Greeks and Poles 665
UOLLAND and the ex-Kaiser 100
^^ Hoover 98
Hoover's Candidacy, Two AspecU of Mr 560
Housing, Population and 666
Housing Problem— Ethics or Economics? The 349
Hungary, Peace for 563
"IDEALISM" at its Worst [Treaty and Wilson] 241
* IdeaUsm in Vacuo [Treaty and Wilson]... 505
Industrial Conference, Labor and the 320
Irish Surprises 272
lACKSON-Day Bombshell, The [Treaty] 44
J Johns Hopkins, The Case of 24
Johnson and the Chicago Convention 504
I^APP'S Ballon d'Essai [Germany] 301
I ABOR in Politics 146
^ Labor and the Industrial Conference 320
Labor Move. A Hopeful •• 6
Labor, What Kansas is Doing About 269
Law or the Cadi. The [Lever Law] 617
Lawmakers Found Wanting 448
Liberal? What is a 219
Longevity, A Question of 3'9
MERCHANT Marine, Our 533
Mock-Hysteria (Socialism] 43
"lUATION" Will Say—, The [Reds] 23
'' Navy Awards. Those 6
.N'ewberry Verdict, The 450
OLD Familiar Charge, The ["Little Americans"] 664
Overallers .\re in Earnest, If the [Profit-
eering] *^'
Vol. II
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
Jan.-June, 1920
Pace
pOEM? What Constitntn m 246
* Pol«5 »nd Bolsheyiki 477
Population and Hotisinr 666
Preacnration of Our Wild Life, The J78
President, The 168
Prices and the Gold Standard 169
PriosSIashing. The Ware of 560
Profiteer— Hunting and Political Economy 195
Prohibition a Fact. Federal 616
Property, The Defence of 3
Prophet, A Rock-Bottom 619
Public? Is there a 646
DEDS. The Raid on the 22
**^ Revirw," One Year of "The 476
Russia, Information from 376
Russia, Still Fumblini With 101
Russia, The New Policy Toward 72
Russia. The Problem of 25
Russia's Substitute for "Wage Slavery". ,.>.. .. 273
CHEPHERDS and Song in the Day's News 667
*^ Siberia in Despair 5
Sim's Memorandum. Admiral 74
'*Scctal Unit." Mrs. Tiffany on the 7
Socialism Convention, The 534
Socialist Programme, Hillquit on the 193
Socialists at Albany. The Expulsion of the 348
Soothsayers, The World and the [Sir Auckland
Geddes's Address] 664
Soviet Drive for Peace, The 220
Sqturing Grandfather 479
Steel Strike. End of the 46
Stock Dividend Case, The 271
Stock Dividends Again 561
Strike, Limiution of the Right to 170
Sultan, Ousting the 351
"TPOWN Meeting Hall," New York's 99
Treaty Manoeuvers 532
Treaty, "The Review" and the 420
Treaty, the Wreck of the 297
Turkey and the Powers 45
Turkish Treaty, The 535
Turks and Germans 423
"Two-thirds of Both Houses" [Prohibition] 47
WATICAN, The 422
^ Voice of America, The 616
^WAR, Forgotten Derelicts of [Siberian Prison-
" ers] 24
Welfare or "Hell-fare"? 245
White House, The Anomaly at the [Wilson] 319
Winter, Outwitting 196
SPECIAL ARTICLES
ADVERTISEES, The 264
Air, Empire Building by — Cairo ta the
Cape. C. Hicks 494
Aliens and the Political Party System. J. Spargo 175
Anatole France as Preacher. H. L. Stewart.... 595
Auvus, The. W. Holbrook 606
DARRIE, Galworthy, and Others. W. Archer.. 633
*-' "Batter Upl" 624
Bolsheviks' Horn of Plenty, The. J. Landfield. . 428
Bolshevism, Asia. Europe, and, P. Rohrbach 455
Bolshevism in Holland. A. J. Barnouw 247
Books, Packing the. E. J. Pearson 675
Books That Appear in the Spring. E. L. Pear-
»on 402
British Civil Service, The Whitley System in the
E. S. Roscoc 611
Budget, Two Plans for a National. R. Hayden. . 513
/CANADIAN Ambassador at Washington, A.
r* .J- K. F 568
Certificate Borrowing and the Floating Debt. J.
H. HoIUnder 552
Chiradame on Lloyd George. A. Ch^radame 647
China, Behind the Financing of [Parts I. II, III
and IV). C. Hodges 302, 324, 353, 452
Church Unity. Theologian 287
Colophons of American Publishers 66
Composing Room Colloquy, A. W. Holbrook 568
ConsUntinople and the Straits. P. M. Brown.. 224
Constantinople and the Turks. D. B. MacDonald 325
Co-operatives, Co-operating with the [Russia]. J.
Landfield 107
rjIPLOMACY, Pre-War American. L. Rogers 199
'-' Drama, The Revival of the Qassic. J. M.
„ Beck 386
Dreiser, Theodore, Philosopher. P. E. M 380
PINSTEIN and the Man in the Street. A. G.
'- Webster 115
Ersberger-Helfferich Trial and the Afterma'th,
The. C. Gauss 277
Experimental Allegiances [ParU I and II] (The
State). W. J. Ghent 275, 303
Europe? How Can America Help. G. Emerson. 498
European Rehabiliution, Export Credits and. G.
Emerson 659
Exporter in "Wonderland", The American.'..!.'.'.' 688
CED? What Must the World Do To Be. T.
H. Dickinson 200
Fmme, The Problem of. A Geographer '..'. 173
Pag(
France, The Social Revolution in. R. Buell.... 566
France Through Agriculture, The Reconstruction
of. A. Rostand 637
France, The Transportation Problem in. A. Ros-
tand 305
French Plays — Carlo Litcn and "Les Blues de
rAmour" 90
French Premier, M. Millerand, The. O Guerlac. 456
French President, The New. O. Guerlac 113
rjERMAN University Days, Gone. G. R. El-
^-* liott 384
Germany, The Military Coup in. P. Rohrbach.. 540
Germany, The Outlook in. Examiner 356
Germany, The Political Parties in. Dr. P. Rohr-
bach 592
Germany Recover? Can. Dr. P. Rohrbach.... 104
Germany's Future Relations with Eastern Europe
P. Rohrbach 250
Goncourt Prize, The. A. G. H. Spiers 599
Great Lakes, Unlocking the 235
LJEINE'S Buried Memoirs. M. Monahan 438
* Holland, Bolshevism in. A. J. Barnouw.. 247
Holland. Dramatic Art in. J. L. Walch 577
Human Cost of Living, The. D. H. Colcord 127
Hungary A Chance, Give. Examiner 508
INDIA Act, The Government of. A. J. Bar-
nouw 80
Ireland, A Glimmer of Hope for. H. L. Stewart 102
Iris in Kansas City. May time 624
JAPAN'S After- War Boom, The Collapse of. C.
J Hodges 584
Japan, President Wilson's. C. Hodges 149
Jazz a Song at Twilight. C. Wood 468
Jobs for New Brooms [New President's Job]. E.
G. Lowry 672
Jthnson in Fact and Fancy, Hiram W. J. Land-
field 537
Journals, The Jazz. W. J. Ghent 30
June, Early. E. G. H 683
J^ING'S, Old. A. MacMechan 185
I ABOR and Capital, Problems of: Employers'
Aesociations. M. L. Ernst 361
II, Honest Ballots for Unions .-ind Employers'
Associations. M. L. Ernst 408
III, Compulsory Filing of Collective Bargain-
ing Agreements. M. L. Ernst 442
IV, Chartering vs. Incorporating Employers*
Associations and Trade Unions. M. L.
Ernst 610
Lady of the Violets, The [Suffrage]. M. C.
Francis 129
Lawrence, The Company Stores at. Staff Cor-
pondent 286
r^ans, America's Foreign. "T. F. Woodlock 344
League of Nations, Switzerland and the. O.
Nippold 541
Lodge, The Case of Sir Oliver. J. Jastrow 225
London Stage, On the. W. Archer 38
MAETERLINCK, The Case of Maurice. J.
Jastrow 381
Metropolitan Museum, The Jubilee of the. F. J.
M.ither, Jr 510
Mexico, The Plot AR,iinst. W. J. Ghent 536
Monroe Doctrine as an Adventure in Foreign
Policy, The. E. J. B -nton 670
More [Mr. P. E.] and The Wits. S. P. Sherman 54
Moscow's Campaign of Poison. Examiner 77
MATURE Lover, The. W. Beebe 406
Naval Inquiry, The. S. P 426
"New Republic's" Exhilaration, The [Russia] J.
Landfield 150
North Dakota, A "Gold Brick" From. Eye-Wit-
ness 621
QUT of Their Own Mouths [Bolshevism]. J.
Landfield 48
pAINTING in Washington, Contemporary. V.
Barker 62
Paish [Sir GecrEe] A Talk With. C. H. Meltzer. 53
Palestine, The Problem of. E. B. Reed 564
Palestine. The Problem of — A Rejoinder. E. M.
Friedman 650
Piotr Ivanovitch, The House of [Russia]. J. E.
Conner 593
Poland, Aggressiv". L. Pasvolsky 480
Political State. Aboli.shing the. W. J. Ghent 126
"Politicians' Union," The Troubles of the. E.
G. Lowry 248
Presidential Tnability. L. Rogers 481
President's Secretary, The. Spectator 177
Print-seller, My Friend the. L. Williams 550
Professor, The Unreconstructed. P. M. Buck,
„ , Jr 154
Profiteer Hunting. On. H. Hazlitt 466
Propaganda and the News. W. J. Ghent 453
Pygmalion, The Tragedy of. R. Demos 368
DADICAL in Fiction, The. F. Tupper 483
Railroads? Life or Death for the. T. F.
Woodlock 28
Reactionaries, Helping the. W. J. Ghent 354
Religious Revivals— Old and New. S. West 332
Republican National Convention, The. J. Land-
field 649
Russian Peasants, Tlje Plight of. J. Landfield... 276
Pack
Russian Village, How the Soviet Came to a 153
CCHOOLS? Can We Improve Our Public. C.
•^ F. Goodrich 50
Scientific Research, Organization in. J. R. Angell 251
Ship's Library, The. R. P. Utter 404
Shoe Men, Our American 89
Sinners and Little Ones, Big. A. Replier 668
Slaves of the Machine [Labor]. D. H. Colcord 8
Social Unit at Cincinnati — Is it a Soviet? The.
K. E. Tiffany 11
Soures, George, an Athenian Satirist. A. E.
Phoutrides 211
Stock Exchange and the "Comer in Stutz," The.
T. F. W 524
Switzerland and the League of Nations. O. Nip-
pold 541
"THIRD Internationale, The. A. J. Barnouw
^ [Holland] 328
Transportation I'roblem in France, The. A. Ros-
tand 305
Trembling Year, The. R. P. Utter 491
Turkey and Armenia, Lorn Bryce on. James
Bryce 425
Turks, Constantinople and the. D. B. MacDon-
ald 325
IJNCULT, The. W. Holbrook 201
VOYAGE, Impressions de [I, II and III]. C.
'' F. Goodrich 440, 522, 606
WASHINGTON Gossip 29
Whitley System in the British Civil Serv-
ice, The. E. S. Roscoe 611
Winter Mist. R. P. Utter 210
Woodpiles, Of. R. P. Utter 260
■V/OUNG Nations, Worries of the. T. H. Dickin-
' son 620
CORRESPONDENCE
A DRIATIC Problem, The. Square Deal 329
Amendment be Unconstitutional? Can a
Constitutional. G. S. Brown 359
Amendments, Amending the. Optimist 179
"America's Duty." Altruist 597
Anglo-Persian Treaty, The. Y. B. Mirza 432
Anti-Saloon League, The High-Handedness of the,
E. J. Shriver 228
DECK'S Letter, Reactions to: A. F. Beard; C.
'-' D. Higby; J. S. Moore; G. H. Putnam..
430, 431
Bonus, A Woman's View of the. B. D. C 458
Bonus, The. E. L. C. Morse 458
Book Reviewing, The Hazards of. L. G. McPher-
son 331
Budget," "Two Plans For a National. J. P.
Chamberlain 569
Business, Salvaging the Facts of, D. W. Hyde,
Jr 570
"pAHlERS de la Quinzaine," The. M. Peguy. 131
^-' Church, Loose Talk Within the. T. M.
Hanks 279
Church of England, Mr. Roscoe and the. L. J. B. 52
Clemenceau and the Left Bank. A. O. Lovejoy.. 359
Col. Lynch's Catholicism. Ci. L. Fox 106
Concert Stage, Atmosphere on the. G. Vernon.. 13
Confiscation by Amendment. E. J. Shriver 130
Congress's Right to Declare Peace. E. S. Corwin 388
Conservation of Wild Life. E. W. Nelson 544
Constitution, What Might Happen to the. E. J.
Shriver 202
pvANTE Centennial, The Sixth. H. Cochin 570
'-' Dead in France, Our. Abbe F. Klein 674
Deflation Through Taxation. M. C. Burke. 32
Dreiser and the Broadway Magazine, Mr. T.
Dreiser and. A. N. Meyer 597
Dreiser's Battle for Truth, Mr. A. N. Meyer. . 486
pOUCATION, The Work of the South in Wom-
'^ en's. L. P. Posey 307
"CAITH that Is in Us. The." J. F. Morton, Jr. 542
France to Pay Her Debts, The Ability of.
Jules Meline 543
Freedom of Opinion. M. F. Clarke 152
French Opinion of the A. E. F., A. A. Chevrillon 32
French Students, The War and. E. Lavisse. . . . 517
QERMAN Despair. G. M. Priest 32
Germans in Disguise. E. Corman 152
Germany, Fuel in. W. J. Lowenstein 280
Germany the Logical Claiment. B. W. K(;lly.... 598
Cold as Commodity and as Money. H. A. Briggs 598
Government by Subterfuge. H. T. Newcomb.... 151
Greenbacks, The Trouble with the. L. A. Hol-
lenbeck 13
UOME Rule Proposals, The New. A. B. John-
* son 390
Hoover, Zachary Taylor and Herbert. X 457
Housing Problem. The. F. L. Olmsted 652
Human Cost of Living, Reducing the. L. F.
Loree : 330
Human Cost of Living," "The. B 227
Numbers 34-59
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
Vou II
Page
INTANGIBLE Advantages ["Defence of Prop-
erty"]. J. de L. Vcrplanck 152
"Intrllecluals," The. W. K. liissing 625
Investors, Protection for. H. R. Andrews 331
"JEST, The". A. E. T 626
J Jew and Arab. F. J. Bliss 485
I/AISER'S Case, The. O. Nippold 625
*^ Keyn;s and Dillon. A. O. Lovejoy 279
Kingsley, List to Charles. VV. B 673
I ANSING'S Statutory Rights, Mr. J. M. Beck. 253
'-' Liberty, The Decline of. G. W. Martin 202
Lodge and Sinn Fein, Senator. H. B. Warren.. 517
Lodge and Wilson, Senator Weeks on. J. W.
Weeks 516
Lodge, High Praise for Senator. J. M. Beck 358
Lodge Reservation.s, The. M. Storey 569
Lodge's "Fight Against Wilson." L. B. Swift. . 485
VjEDICINE, Compul.sory. J. Hutchinson, M. D. 389
Mexico Intervention in. E. L. C. Morse.. 83
Mexico, Misstatements About, G. W. Knoblauch.. 543
MEWBERRY Trial, The. W. E. V 431
*^ Newberry Verdict, The. H. H. Smith 459
pAISLEY," "Keep Your Eye on. J. M. Dixon. 330
Party Membership and the Vote. F. B.
Simkins 569
Pedagogy, Pelf and. O. Heller 203
Pilot at the Wh.el, No [Wilson]. F. Rogers 83
Professor, Keeping Tab on the. C. H. Benjamin. 486
Public Schools and the Colleges. W. H. Buck.. 131
Purchasing Power, The Theory of. J. L . Laughlin 306
QUANTITY Theory, The. J. L. Laughlin.... 674
Queen Anne's Time, The Wits of. S. B.
G 517
DADICAL or Conservative — a Perverse Dilemma.
A. A. Goldenweiser 130
Railroads?" "Life or Death for the. S. H.
Bingham 130
Reading, More and Better. C. H. Milam 152
Referendum, The Power of the. Optimist 228
Relaxed Vigilance, A Case of. T. R. Boggs 459
Religion, The Outlook for. C. H. Eshleman 202
Religious Liberty. W. H. van Allen 331
Retroactive Income Taxes. C. R. Smith 652
Revoliition, Inviting. H. W. Lawrence, Jr 52
Revolutionist, How to Meet the. H. Barry 254
Russian Problem, The. J. de Lancey Verplanck.. 179
"COCIAL Unit," Queries Concerning the. W.
^ H. Sheldon 83
Socialism, The Pope on. L. F. L 516
Spirit, Intermolecular Space and the. E. Ber-
liner 360
Strike, The Right to. W. Haynes 673
Survival After Death as Related to Physics. T. F.
W 598
TAX Burden, Business and the. G. Calhoun.... 626
Tax, The ExCLSs Profits. P. Dexter 388
"Two-thirds of Both Houses." B. Tuska 105
I JNIVERSITIES and the Danger Point. A. M.
Brooks 203
University for New Jersey, An English. T.
Stanton 106
WELFARE Work at Akron, Industrial. G. Orb 228
** What Shall We do to Be Saved? [Hoover].
M. L 82
Wild Life Preservation. W. T. Hornaday 431
Winchester, C. T. H. T. Baker 459
Worms, The Noise of. A Noisy Worm 179
2IONISM, Prince Feisal on. F. Frankfurter.. 625
POETRY
^T the Front in Poetry. O. W Firkins 33
I AODICEANS, The. M. C. Smith 651
"Louvain Is a Dull, Uninteresting Town".
R. Withington 177
QN Record. R. Burton 249
pOEM? What Constitutes a 246
Poetry, Prize Contest 576
gTORMBOUND. W. N. Bates 623
THESE Dead Have Not Died. H. T. Baker. ... 336
* Tides. S. N 356
MUSIC AND ART
A PHRODITE 261
Atmosphere on the Concert Stage. G. Ver-
non 13
DEDOUINS. J. Huneker 370
'~' Birthday of the Infanta, The 261
Blue Bird, The 186
r;HICAGO Opera Season, The .^*92
Cleopatra's Night "' J37
Concert Stage, Atmo.iphcre OD the. G. Vernon! ! 13
£)RA.\IATIC Art in Holland. J. L. Walch.... 577
PrCHERS and Etching. J. Pennell s/
Eugene Onegin 34Q
l-JUDSON River Bridge aa War Memorial.... 642
PROVEN, Reginald de 93
Krehbiel (Henry) and Emeat Newman
Discuss Music 62
I 'AMORE dei Tre Re 134
Lexington, At the— The Blue Bird— Ca-
ruso s Indisposition igg
L Heure Espagnole \xk
L""'se ;:::;; ,62
MADAME Chrysantheme 135
Mary Garden and "Louise"— The Concert
Season \ , , . 162
Massenet's Memories and Music..!!!!!.!!!!!!.'! ig
MEW York Opera War, The— Hints to Libret-
^ '«" 116
pAINTING in Washington, Contemporary. V.
Barker 53
Parsifal !!!!!! 212
Print Seller, My Friend the. L. 'williatns !!."!.' ! 550
QUAKER Singer's Recollections, A. D. Bis-
Phara 289
PJIP Van Winkle 136
yENUS of Milo, Exhibiting of 577
Z^ZA 92
DRAMA
AMERICAINS Chez Nous, Les. M. Brieux.... 577
At the Lexington— "The Blue Bird"-
Caruso's Indisposition 186
OEAUTIFUL Sabine Women 441
Beyond the Horizon 185
QRAFT of the Tortoise and Other Plays, The.. 368
Cruche, La ig
J^RAMAS for the Reader 607
PAIR 658
French Labor Unions and the Stage 548
French Plays — Carlo Liten and "Les Bleui de
I'Amour" 90
rjEORGE WASHINGTON 288
^^ Glittering Gate, The 442
Grain of Mustard-Seed, The 633
I-IAMLET 555
^ * He and She 262
Holland, Dramatic Art in. J. L. Walch 577
Husbands for all 634
IBSEN in England. M. A. Franc 213
JACINTO BENAVENTE: Theatre and Liberty. 161
J Jane Clegg 288
"Jest, The." A. E. T 626
John Gabriel Borkman 494
I ETTER of the Law, The 264
London Stag?, On the. W. Archer 38
lyiAKER of Dreams 497
Mary Broome 18
Mary Rose 633
Masks. G. Middleton 632
Master Builder, The 65
Medea 338
Merchant of Venice, The 684
Musique Adoncit les Coeurs, La 18
MIGHT Shade 658
^^ Night's Lodging, A 65
PASSION Flower 161
*^ Piper 338
Po tic Play. Prize Contest 576
Power of Darkness 137
Pnletarian Theatre (Die Neue Schaubuhne) . . . 550
Pygnalion and Galatea 497
DEVIVAL of the Classic Drama, The. J, M.
^ Beck 386
Richard III 312
CACHED and Profane Love 312
Shakespeare at Stratford, Produced by Mr.
Bridees Adams 634
Skin Game, The 633
Social Plays of Arthur Wing Pinero, The. Vol.
II. Letty— His House in- Order 213
Sothcrn and Marlowe at the Shubert Theatre.... 554
JAMING of the Shrew, The ^^cj!
•II ■{'■""e I'ariiien, The '* ig*
Ihree ^^^J^^^^'" the Argeniine, Edited by E, 'h1
Twelfth 'Night !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!;!!;!;■' jsJ
(JNCLE .Sam. V. Sardou j;^
Unreviving London Stage and Its JU^'inU.
It"-- W. Archer 7. 46S
FINANCE AND ECONOMICS
A.VIERICA and the Plight of Europe... 121
America'. Duly ' ViV itt
Am-rita. J-orcign Loana. T. F. WJ<Idliii'. . . , i*4
OUDGET System Needed ,«
Uiidget ', "The Plans For a Naiioiij.' " jV K
Chamberlain jao
Budget, Two Plan, for a National.' K.'iiaVdra!! Mi
QANADIAN Financial Prosperity, Aid to ISir
y" Vincent MerediihJ 1«
Certificate Borrowing and the Floatini"Debi.' ' 'l'.
H. Hollander ccj
China, Behind the Financing of I'p'art "r'i"l'l'i
C. Hodges 3yV 32-
Congre« Propo.es Bonus Kai«d by RetroaOive
War-Frchi. Tax Bill 44J
Current Investment PaUicatioaa ','/, Jjj
£)EFLATION [Federal Reaerve Board'a Report] 192
Deflation Through Taxation. M. C Burka SI
gCONOMlC Restoration, The World's 71
Economic Truths and Advcnisinc " 97
Europe? How Can America Help. G. Emeraon 49S
Exchange Question, A B C of the 145
Export CreUits and European Rcbabiliutio'n'.'G
£.merson ^cq
PRANCE to Pay Her Debt*. The Ability of.
Jules Melinc J43
QERMAN Indemnity, Arransement at Hytbc.. S5S
,-, . <J?,™au Indemnity [Keynes vs. Miller J. 141, 142
Olass s Recommendation to Congress for Relief
r ,A '",,'^"™Pf , 41, 119,164
Gold as Commodity and as Money. U. A. Briius 598
Greenbacks, The Trouble with the. L. A. Hol-
lenbeck ^ 13
UIGH Prices, Cause of [Kansas Oty Slsrl 374
Housing, Population and 666
Housing Problem — Ethics or Economics?
T"": 349
INVESTORS, Protection for. B. R. Andrews... 331
JAPAN'S After- War Boom, The Collapse of
J C. Hodges 5g^
J^ABOR Hiring Capital [Sir George FaishJ 42
pAISH (Sir George), A Talk With. C H.
Meltzcr 53
Prices and the CJold Standard * 169
Price-Slashing, The Wave of S«o
Profiteer-Hunting and Pohtical Economy 19$
Profiteer Hunting, On. H. Hazlitt 466
Purcliasing Power, The Theory of. J. L. Laugh-
liu 306
QUANTITY Theory, The. J. L. Laughlin.... 674
J^ETROACTIVE Income Taxes. C. R. Smith 652
COVIET Government's Issue of Platinum Note* 219
'^ Slock Dividend Case, The 271
Stock Dividends Again 561
Stock Exchange and the "Corner in Stutz", The
T. F. W .' 524
TAX Burden, Business and the. G. Calhoun.. 626
* Tax, The Excess Profits. P. Dexter 388
Taxation of Non-Residents [Supreme C^un
Decision] 21g
OBITUARIES
J^E KOVEN, Reginald 92
jyjORTON, Levi P 530
QSLER, Dr. William 2
pEARY (Admiral) 193
COURES, George ^ 211
WINCHESTER, C. T. H. T. Baker 459
EDUCATIONAL
DACK to the Republic. By H. F. Atwood 471
'-' Beginning of Education, The. W. Haller. . 579
pHILD Welfare I-aws 447
^ Classics, President Butler on the 76
College Efficiency, "The Student Hoar" and 198
Vol. II
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
Jan.-June, 1920
Fagi
Crilcce Entrance Requirements 294
Con«es, Amherst Memorial Fellowship 2
Deirree Requirements — Specific Knowledge
of Our Form of Government 167
Final Examinations for Degrees [Harvard].. 97
Collettes For? What are 125
Har\ard. Teachers and Production [Lowell's
Report) 240
Professors' Salaries [University of Washing-
ton) 167
Colleges. The Women's 223
Women's. Funds Needed 219
Conservation of Birds and Trees (University of
the State of New York's Cooperation with
Public Schools) 416
Corporation Schools 471
DEAD Culture and Live Business. W. S. Hich-
man 290
Democratic Education 579
PDUCATION for the Cotton Industry. G. Orb.. 415
^ Education. The Work of the South in
Women's. L. P. Posey 307
Essay Competition Between England and America 343
CLOWER Garden Guide. Mrs. Massey Holmes 688
GREEK at Oxford 424
"Greek for the Greek-Minded" 645
lOHNS Hopkins, The Case of 24
[U.^NCHESTER Grammer School. The. A. A.
^" Mumford 523
Moral Basis of Democracy, The. A. T. Hadley.. 636
NATURAL History of the Child, The. Dr. C.
Dunn ...688
Need of Education in Fundamental Economic
Truths 97
New York Post Graduate Medical School 447
PEDAGOGY. Pelf and. O. Heller 203
' Physical Educaticn and Scholastic Efficiency.
(L. W. Hill] 416
Police and Education 344
Propaganda and Education. P. M. Brown 342
Professor. Keeping Tab on th •. C. H. Benjamin. 486
Professor. The Unreconstructed. P. "M. Buck. Jr. 154
Public Schools and the Colleg:s. W. H. Buck.. 131
RESEARCH and Organization. A. G. Webster 686
Re-.-Ult's Educational Section 269. 290
SCHOOLS? Can We Improve Our Public. C. F.
Goodrich -'^0
Scientific Research. Organization in. J. R. An-
g.-ll 251
TEACHERS' Salaries, Statistics of (Dr. Even-
dcn] 580
Thesaurus Lirgux I.atinx 636
UNIONIZATION of Colleg; and Universty
Teachers (Prof. Lovcjoy] 97
Universal Training. W. S. Hinchman 412
I'nivrrsily President. Th-. Prof;ssor 410
University Training for Business 634
WAR and the Rhodes Scholarshps, Th-. F.
Aydelotle 470
Women's Education, The Work of the South in.
L. P. Posey 307
BOOKS— AUTHORS
ADAMS, H. The D.-gradation of the Democratic
Dogma 255
Adc. G. Hand Made FabI -s 461
Agate, J. E. Resp<)nsibility: A Novel 573
Aldington. R. Images 33
Aldington. R. Latin Poems cf the Renaissance.. 33
Ammers-Kiillcr, D. J. van. Maskerade 398
Asian, K. Armenia and the Armenians from the
Earliest Times Until the Great War 605
Atwood, H, F. Back to the Republic 471
Austin, M. Outland 158
DABSON. R. W. W. B. Wilson and the De-
^ parlment of Labor 333
Bain. F. W. The Substance of a Dream 682
Bacheller, I. A Man for the Ages 231
Barney. D. Chords from Albireo 519
Barron. C. W. A World Remaking or Peace....
Finance 464
Bartlett, H. Within My Horizon 548
Barton, W. E. The Soul of Abraham Lincoln.. 366
Bates, K. L. Sigurd, our Golden Collie 135
Baxter, A. B. The Blower of Bubbles 363
Bazalgette, L. Walt Whitman: Th; Man and bis
Work 310
Bcfbie, H. The Life of General William Booth.. 680
BeUairf, C: The Battle of Jutland 677
Benson, E. F. Up and Down 257
Bercovici, K. Dust of New York Ill
Beresford, J. D. An Imperfect Mother 654
Berliner, E. Muddy Jim 88
Bertrand, A. The Call of the Soil 257
Beve'idge, A. J. The Life of John Marshall 204
Btrnbaum, M. Intro^lucticns 184
Bi^ham, D. A Quaker Singer's Recollections... 289
Bojer, J. Treacherous Ground 520
Borgnis, M. A. Ijt Livre Pratique des Spirites. . 437
Bnwen, M. The Burning Glass 463
Page
Boynton, P. H. American Literature 550
Bradford. Gamaliel. Portraits of American Women 60
Bradlev, H. Sir lames Murray 311
Braithwaite, W. S. The Story of the Great War. 210
Branch, S. The Burning Secret 310
Ber.sol. B. Socialism vs. Civilization 491
Breduis, A. Kiinsiler-Inventare 574
Brooks, C. S. Luca Sarto : A Novel 463
Bronson, W. C. .\m~rican Literature 550
Brown, Alice. The Black Drop 36
Brown. G. E. Book of R. L. S 436
Browne, R. T. The Mvstery of Space 133
Rullard, A. The Russian Pendulum 207
Burgess. T. W. The Burgess Bird Book for
Children 112
Burr, A. J. Hearts Awake 362
Buxton. N., and C. L. Lecse. Balkan Problems
and European Peace 395
pABELL, J. B. The Cream of the Jest 602
^ Cadmus and Harmonia. The Island of
Sheep 487
Campbell. O. J. The Position of the Roode en
Whitte Roos in the Saga of King Richard
III 437
Cannan, G. Pink Roses 58
Cannan, G. Time and Et?rnity 489
Caron. C. M. L'Admiral dc Grasse 88
Chancellor. W. E. The Health of the Teacher.. 464
Cheng. Sih-Gung. Modern China 281
Chesterton. G. K. Irish Impressions 284
Chevrillon. M. A. Pres des Combattants 184
Clark. C. My Quarter Century of American
Politics 460
Cl"mencesu. G. Au Pied ilu Sinai 631
Clutton-Brock. A. Essays on Art 576
Cobb, I. S. From Place to Place 363
Cone. H. G. The Coat Without a Seam 519
Connor. H. G. John Archibald Campbell, Asso-
ciate Justice of the United States: Supreme
Court. IS53-1861 601
Conrad, J. The Rescue 604, 629
Cory, H. E. The Intellectuals and the Wage-
Earners 229
Cotterill, H. B. Italy from Dante to Tasso 544
Couperus, L. Ecstasy: A Study cf Happiness.. 85
Cournos. J. The Mask 231
Cross, T. P. Bibliography and Methods of English
Literary History 17
rvANE. C. Legend 334
*-^ D'Annunzio, G. Tales of My Native Town 435
Davies, M. C. Youth Riding 362
Davies, T. H. Spiritual Voices in Modern
Literature 1 60
Daviess, M. T. Th» Matrix 463
Davis, W. S. A History cf France from the
Earliest Times to the Peace of Versailles.. 285
Dawson, R. Red Terror and Green 600
Dawson. W. H. The Evolution of Modern
Germany 572
D • Bekker, L. J. The Plot Against Mexico 206
Desmond. S. Passion; A Human Story 573
Dickey, M. Youth cf James Whitcomb Riley.... 159
Dodd, A. B. Up the Seine to the Battlefields.. 681
Don Marquis Prefaces 37
Doyle, A. C. Vital Message 134
Dressir, H. W. Open Vision 631
Dunn, Dr. C. The Natural History of the Child 688
Dunsany, Lord. Tales of Three Hemispheres.... Ill
Dybowski, J. Notre Force Future 131
ELIOT, S. A., Jr. Little Theatre Classics, Vol.
II 608
Escouflaire, R. C. Ireland an Enemy of the
Allies? 676
pABRE, J. H. Field, Forest and Farm 113
Ferguson, J. L. Outlines of Chinese Art. . 16
Fisher, J. A. Memories and Records 654
Fitzgerald, F. S. This Side of Paradise 392
Fontainas, M. A. La Vie d'Edgar A. Poe 259
Ford, H. J. Alexander Hamilton 678
Fort, C. Book of the Damned 184
Franc, M. A. Ibsen in England 213
Frank, W. Our America 434
Frankau, G. Peter Jameson: A Modern Romance 573
Frederick, J. G. Modern Salesmanship 184
Frederickson, J. D. The Story of Milk 184
Frost, S. Germany's New War Against America. 14
Fuller, H. B. Bertram Cope's Year 394
rjALE, Z. Miss Lulu Brett 394
^-^ Ganz, M. Rebels: Into Anarchy and Out
Again 231
Gardner, C. William Blake, The Man 181
Gass, S. B. A Lovjr of the Chair 157
Gibbs, P. How it Can be Told 394
Gilmore, G. W. . Animism, or Thought Currents
of Primitive Peoples 337
Glasgow, E. The Builders 36
Goldberg, I. Studies in Spanish-American Litera-
ture 335
Gompers, S. Labor and the Common Welfare. . . 333
Gosse, E. Some Aversions of a Man of Letters. . 487
Gosset, Abbe. Une Glorieuse Mutilee 522
Graeve, O. Youth Goes .Seeking 132
Graham, S. A Private in the Guards 232
Grcnfell, A. and K. Sjialding. Le Petit Nord, or
Annals of a Labrador Harbour 679
Grey, E. Recreation 518
Guild, T. H. The I'ower of a God and Other
OncAct Plays 370
Gwynn, S. John Retfmond's Last Years 390
Page
HADLEY, A. T. The Moral Basis of Democ-
racy 636
Hamilton, E. Elizabethan Ulster 284
Haiikey. D. Cross 112
Harland. M. The Carrington's of High Hill 183
Harrison, A. Before and Now 600
Harrison, M. The Stolen Lands _. . . . 364
Heinrich, Professor. Dinant, Eine Denkschriff . . 548
Hendrick, E. Percolator Papers 37
Henry, S. Villa Elsa 436
Henslow. G. Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism 337
Herbert. A. P. The Secret Battle 257
Herford, M. A. B. A Handbook of Greek Vase
Painting 159
Herford, O. This Giddy World 112
Hindenburg, von. Aus Meinem Leben 337
Holding, E. S. Invincible Minnie 602
Holdsworth, E. The Taming of Nan 207
Holland, F. Seneca 521
Holliday, R. C. Broome Street Straws 88
Hopkins, N. M. The Outlook for Research and
Invention 488
Hoppin, I. C. A Handbook of Attic Red-Figured
Vases 59
Howe, M. A. de. W. G-orge von Lengerke Meyer,
His Life and Public Services 308
Hudson, W. H. The Book of a Naturalist 112
Huizinga, D. J. Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen. . . . 435
Huneker, J. Bedouins 370
Hyndman. H. M. Clemenceau: The Man and
His Times 34
I BA5SEZ, B. V. Woman Triumphant 520
' Inge, W. R. Outspoken Essays 396
Inman, S. G. Intervention in Mexico 206
Irwin, I. H. The Happy Years 363
JAMES, G. W. Wonders of the Colorado Desert 61
J Tean-Aubry, G. French Music of To-day.. 630
Johnson. S. The Enemy Within 283
Johnston, M. Michael Forth 158
Jones, E. H. The Road to Endor 547
I^ARSNER, D. Debs: His Authorized Life and
'*■ Letters 333
Kaye-Smith, S. Tamarisk Town 654
Keith, E. A. My Escape from Germany 632
Keller, G. Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular Tales 111
Kennedy, C. R. Army with Banners 400
Kernahan, C. Swinburne As I Knew Him 576
Keynes, J. M. The Economic Consequences of the
Peace 155
Kite, E. S. Beaumarchais and the War of Ameri-
can Independence 436
Klein, F. En Amerique a la Fin de la Guerre... 337
Kliekmann, F. Lore of the Pen 400
Kobrin, L. A Lithuanian Village 363
Krehbiel, H. More Chapters of Opera 62
I ACROIX, L. Le Clerge et La Guerre de 1914. 572
'^ La Motte, E. H. The Opium Monthly 400
Latzko, A. The Judgment of Peace 257
Lauvriere, E. Edgar Poe: Contes et Poesies.... 657
La Varre, W. J. Up the Mazaruni for Diamonds. 547
Leacock, S. The Unsolved Riddle of Social Jus-
tice 234
Leary, J. L., Jr. Talks with T. R 656
I>emercier, E. Lettres d'un Soldat 259
Leslie, N. Three Plays 464
Lindsay, V. The Golden Whales of California., 518
Lippmann, W. Liberty and the News 571
Loekington, W. J. The Sold of Ireland 284
Loisy, A. Guerre et Religion 572
Loisy, A. La Paix des Nations et La Religion de
I'Avenir 572
Loisy, A. Mors et Vita 572
Loti, P. Madame Prune 366
Low, B. R. C. Tlie Pursuit of Happiness 362
Lowell, A. Pictures of the Floating World 33
Lynd, R. Ireland a Nation 461
A/IcDONALD, W. Some Questions of Peace and
^'* War 230
McKenzie, F. A. Korea's Fight for Freedom.... 545
McLennan, J. S. Louisbourg from Its Founda-
tion to Its Fall 1713-1758 37
McPherson, L. G. Th? Flow of Value 282
McPherson, W. L. The Strategy of the Great
War 17
MacFarlan, A. The Inscrutable Lovers 334
MacGill, P. Maureen 679
Mackay, H. Chill Hours 605
Mackenzie, J. S. Arrows of Desire 546
Mackie, R. A. Education During Adolescence... 433
MacManus, S. Lo and Behold Ye! Ill
MacMasters, W. H. Revolt, An American Novel. 394
MacNamara, B. The Clanking of Chains 462
MacPhail, J. M. The' Heritage of India 61
MacVeagh, E. C, and L. D. Brown. The Yankee
in the British Zone 436
Maeterlinck, M. Mountain Paths 15
Magnus, L. European Literature in the Centuries
of Romance 209
Malins, Lieut. How I Filmed the War... 364
Marcosson, I. M, Adventures in Interviewing. . 135
Marsh, A. Z. Home Nursing 464
Marvin, F. S. The Century of Hope 628
Masefield, J. Reynard the Fox 33
Massenet, J. My Recollections 18
Masters, E. L. Starved Rock 519
Maurice, F>, General. The Last Four Months of
the War 627
Mayorga, M. G. Representative One-Act Plays by
American Authors 607
Merrick, L. The Worldlings 183
Middlcton, G. Masks 632
Numbers 34-59
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
-^
Vol. II
Page
Middleton, P. H. Industrial Mexico 206
Mills, J. S. and M. G. Crussachi. The Question
of Thrace 550
Morris, E. B. The Cresting Wave 393
Moses, B. Spain's Declining Power in South
America 285
Mumford, A. A. The Manchester Grammar School 523
NATHAN, R. Peter Kindred 392
Ncvill, R. The Life and Letters of Lady
Dorothy Nevill 132
Newman, E. A Musical Motley 62
North, A. The Forging of the Pikes 463
/"J'BRIEN, F. While Shadows in the South Seas 37.
^ Ogilvie, P. M. International Waterways. . 603
Oldmcadow, E. Coggin 310
Ollivant, A. Two Men: A Romance of Sussex.. 207
Olrik, Axel. The Heroic Legends of Denmark. . 366
O'Neil, G. The Cobbler of Willow Street 362
Oppenheim, E. P. The Great Impersonation.... 210
Orczy, Baroness. His Majesty's Well-Beloved.... 463
PAINE, R. D. Ships Across the Sea 577
Palmer, F. Our Greatest Battle 627
Paton, L. A. Life of Elizabeth Gary Agassiz.... 337
Patt.rson, J. E. The Passage of the Barque
Sappho 15
Patterson, M. A Woman's Man 132
Peixotto, E. At the Ami-rican Front 113
I'ennell, J. Etchers and Etching 87
Phillpotts, E. Storm in a Teacup 207
Porter, A. K. The Seven Who Slept 609
Prescctt, F. C. Poetry and Dreams 365
RAINSFORD, W. K. From Upton to the
Meuse, With the 307th Infantry 464
Rcade, W. The Martyrdom of Man 629
Reid, F. Pirates of the Spring 310
Rice, C. Y. Shadowy Thresholds 362
Rihani, Ameen. Descent of Bolshevism 682
Rihani, Ameen. The Luzumiyat of Abu-'l-Ala. . . 17
Ritchie, Lady. From Friend to Friend 522
Roget, P. M. Thesaurus of English Words and
Phrases 61
Rose, R. S., and L. Bacon. Lay of the Cid trans-
lated into English Verse 400
Rouvier, F. Un Ligne 572
Russell, C. F. After the Whirlwind 108
CT, JOHN, C. M. Bibliography of Wordsworth 209
•^ Sadler. M. The Anchor 489
Salecby, C. W. The Whole Armour of Man 258
Sassoon, S. Picture Show 520
Sayler, O. M. Russia, White or Red 135
Sayler, O. M. Russian Theatre Under the Revolu-
tion 259
Scarborough, D. From a Southern Porch 87
Schlichter, S. II. The Turnover of Factory Labor 36
Scott, T. Silver Age 60
Serao, M. Souls Divided 434
Sherrill, C. H. Have We a Far Eastern Policy? 655
Smith, C. A. New Words Self-Defined 38
Smith, L. W. The Lamp of Heaven 370
Smyth, E. Impressions that Remained 182
Spargo, J. The Psychology of Bolshevism 206
Stearns, H. Liberalism in America ,. . 229
Swinnerton, F. September 85
Symcnds, J. A. In the Key of Blue 575
Symonds, J. A. Last and First 575
"TASSIN, A. The Craft of the Tortoise 368
* Teall, G. A Little Garden the Year Round 392
Thomson, J. E. II. The Samaritans, Their Testi-
mony to the Religion of Israel 311
Thurston, E. T. The World of Wonderful Reality 132
Tirpitz, Admiral von. My Memoirs 84
Tweedale, V. Ghosts I Have Seen 183
yAN VORST, M. Fairfax and His Pride 393
Von der Essen, L. A Short History of-
Belgium 335
Von Heidenstam, V. The Birth of God 609
Von Heidenstam, V. The Soothsayer 608
Von Hertling, Chancellor. Ein Jahr in der
Reichskanzlei 548
WADDINGTON, A. Histoire de Prusse 522
*" Walpole, H. Jeremy 310
Walston (Waldstein), Sir C. English-Speaking
Brotherhood and the League of Nations. . 682
Ward, A. W. Shakespeare and the Makers of
Virginia 311
Ward. Mrs. H. Harvest 679
Warren, H. L. The Foundations of Classic
Architecture 208
Washburn, C. C. Order 393
Webster, N. H. The French Revolution: A Study
in Democracy 653
Wells, H. G. Love and Mr. Lewisham 489
Wheelock, J. H. Dust and Light 33
Whitehouse, V. B. A Year as a Government
Agent 208
Whitlock, B. Belgium: A Personal Narrative.. 285
Widdemer, M. The Board Walk 363
Williams, B. A. The Sea Bride 15
Wood, V. J. Turnpikes of New England 311
2AMAC0IS, E. Their Son: The Necklace 111
BOOKS— SUBJECTS
ADVENTURES in Interviewing. I. M. Mar-
"^ cosson 135
After the Whirlwind. C. F. Russell 108
Alexander Hamilton, H-J. Ford 678
American Literature. P. H. Boynton 550
Page
American Literature. W. C. Bronson 550
Anchor, The. M. Sadler 489
Animism, or Thought Currents of Primitive Peo-
ples. G. W. Gilmore 337
Armenia and the Armenians from the Earliest
Times Until the Great War. K. Asian 605
Army With Banners. C. R. Kennedy 400
Arrows of Desire. J. S. Mackenzie 546
At the American Front. Captain E. Peixotto.... 113
Au Pied du Sinai. G. Clemenceau 631
Aus Meinem I.x-ben. Von Hindenberg 337
Averroes' Metaphysics. Translated by C. Quiris
Rodriguez 337
DACK to the Republic. H. T. Atwood 471
^ Balkan Problems and European Peace. N.
Buxton and C. L. Leesc 395
Battle of Jutland, The. C. Bellairs 677
Beaumarchais and the War of American In-
dependence. E. S. Kite 436
Bedouins. J. Huneker 370
Before and Now. A. Harrison 600
Belgium: A Personal Narrative. B. Whitlock.. 285
Bertram Cope's Year. H. B. Fuller 394
Best Short Stories of 1919 compiled by E. O'Brien 463
Bibliography and Methods oi English Literary
Histtry. T. P. Cross 17
Sibliography of Wordsworth. C. M. St. John.. 209
Uirth of God, The. V. von Heidenstam 609
Black Drops, The. A.Brown 36
Blower of Bubbles, The. A. B. Baxter 363
Soard Walk, The. M. Widdemer 363
Book of a Naturalist, The. W. H. Hudson 112
Book of R. L. S. G. E. Brown 436
Book of the Damned. C. Fort 184
Broome Street Straws. R. C. HalHday 88
Builders, The. E. Glasgow 36
Bulletin de L'Institut Intcrmediaire International.
Publication Trimestrielle. Haarlem 57
. Burgess Bird Book for Children, The. T. W.
Burgess 112
Burning Glass, The. M. Bowen 463
Burning Secret, The. S. Branch 310
(^AHIERS Britanniques et Americains. Edited
^^ by M. Georges-Bazile 61
Call of the Soil, The. A. Bertrand 257
Carrington's ol High Hill, The. M. Harland 183
Century of Hope, The. F. S. Marvin 628
Chill Hours. H. Mackay 605
Chords from Albireo. D. Barney 519
Choruses From Iphigeneia in Aulis and the Hip-
polytus of Euripides. Translated by H.
D. London 33
Clanking of Chains, The. B. MacNamara 462
Clemenceau: The Man and His Times. H. M.
Hyndman 34
Clerge et La Guerre de 1914, Le. L. Lacroix. . 572
Coat Without a Seam, The. H. G. Cone 519
Cobbler of Willow Street, The. G. O'Neil 362
Coggin. E. Oldmeadow 310
Collection of Mediaeval and Renaissance Paint-
ings. Edited by Harvard Art Dept 160
Contributions to Medical and Biological Research
Dedicated to Sir William Olser 391
Craft of the Tortoise, The. A. Tassin 368
Cream of the Jest, The. J. B. Catell 602
Cresting Wave, The. E. B. Morris 393
Cross. D. Hankey 112
rvEBS: His Authorized Life and Letters. D.
'-' Karsner 333
Degradation of the Democratic Dogma, The. H.
Adams 255
Descent of Bolshevism. A. Rihani 682
Dinant, Eine Denkschrift. Professor Heinrich... 548
Documents on the League of Nations. Compiled
by Mrs. C. A. Kluyver 577
Dust and Light. J. H. Wheelock 33
Dust of New York. K. Bercovici HI
PCONOMIC Consequences of the Peace The
'-' J. M. Keynes 155
Ecstasy: A Study of Happiness. L. Couperus.. 85
Edgar Poe: Contes et Poesies. E, Lauvritre. . 657
Education During Adolescence. R. A. Mackie. . 433
Elizabethan Ulster. E. Hamilton 284
En Amerique a la Fin de la Guerre. F. Klein.. 337
Enemy Within, The. S. Johnson 283
English Dictionary on Historical Principles.
Edited by W. A. Craigie 522
English-Speaking Brotherhood and the League of
Nations. Sir C. Walston (Waldstein) 682
Essays on Art. A. CIutton-Brock 576
Etchers and Etching. J. Pennell 87
European Literature in the Centuries of Romance.
L. Magnus 209
Evolution of Modem Germany, The. W. H.
Dawson 572
PAIRFAX and His Pride. M. Van Vorst 393
*^ Father Duffy's Story 160
Field, Forest and Farm. J. H. Fabre 113
Flow of Value, The. L. G. MePherson 282
Forging of the Pikes, The. A. North 463
foundations of Classic Architecture, The. H. L.
Warren 208
French Music of Today. G. Jean-Aubry 630
French Revolution, The: A Study in Democracy.
N. H. Webster 653
From a Southern Porch. D. Scarborough 87
From Friend to Friend. Lady Ritchie 522
From Place to Place. I. S. Cobb 363
"'rom Uptin to the Meuse, With the 307th In-
fantry. W. K. Rainsford 464
GEORGE von Lengerke Meyer, His Life and
Public Services. M. A. De W. Howe 308
lieorgian Poetry, 1918-1919 320
Pacb
Cernuny's New W»r Acainst America. S. Frost.. 14
Ghosts I Have Seen. V. Tweedale 183
GlorieuK .Mulilie Use. Abbi Cosset 522
•iolden Whales of California, The. V. Lindsaj., SIS
Great Arti»i« and Their Works by Great Auth-
ors. Complied by A. M. Brooks 259
Great Iniperaonaiion, The. E. P. Uppenbeim . . . . 210
Guerre et Religion. A. Loisr 572
LJANUBUOK of Attic Red-Figured Vasea, A.
** J. C. Hoppin 59
Handbook of Greek Vase Painting, A. M. A.
B. llerford IS9
Hand-Made Fables. G. Ade Wi
Happy Years, The. I. H. Irwin MJ
Harvest. Mrs, H. Ward 679
Have We a Far Eastern Policy? C. H. Sherrill 6SS
riealth o( the Teacher, The. W. E. Chancellor. . 464
Hearts Awake. A. J. Burr 362
Hcrfsttij <ler .Middcleeuwen. U. j. Huizinga 435
Heritage of India, The. J. M. MacPhail 61
Heroic Legends of Denmark, The. Axel Olrik... 366
His Majesty's Well-Beloved. Baroness Orciy.... 463
Histoire de Prusse. A. Waddington 522
Histiry of France from the Earliest Times to
ihe Peace o( Versailles, A. W. S. Dayi*. . 2t5
Home Nursing. A. Z. .Marsn 464
Home, Th.n What?— The Mind of the Uoughbor,
A. E. F Jil
How I Filmed the War. LieuL Malins 364
How it Can be Told. V. Gibbs 394
lUSEN in England. M. A. Franc 213
Ideals of America. Prepared for the Citjr
Club of Chicago, 1916-1919 56
Images. R. Aldington 33
imperfect Mother, An. J. U. Ueresford 654
impr.ss.ons that Remained. Uemoirs by £.
Smyth 182
In the Key of Blue. J. A. Symonds 575
Industrial Mexico. P. H. .Middleton 206
Inscrutable Lovers, The. A. .MacFarlan 334
Intellectuals and the Wage Earners, The. H. E.
Cory 229
International Waterways. P. M. Ogilvie 6U3
Intervention in Mexico. S. G. Inman 206
Iiuroductions. M, Birnbaum 184
Inv.ncible Minnie. E. S. Holding 602
Ireland a Nation. R. Lynd 461
Ireland an Enemy ui <ne Allies? K. C. Kacou-
Haire 676
Irish impressions. U. K. Chesterton 284
Island ol Sheep, The. Cadmus and Uarmonia. . 487
Italy Irom Dame to Tasso. U. B. Cutieriil 544
JAHR in der Reichskanzlei, Ein. Chancellor Von
Hertling 548
Jeremy. H. Waldpole 310
John Archibald Campbell, Associate Justice of the
United States Supreme Court, 1853-1861.
H. G. Connor 601
John Redmond's Last Years. S. Gwynn 390
Judgment of Peace, The. A. Latzko 257
Judicial Settlement of Controversies Between
States of the American Union. Edited and
Collected by J. B. Scott 58
J^ORE.\S Fight for Freedom. F. A. McKenzie. 545
*^ Kostcs Palamas: Life Immovable. Trans-
lated by A. E. Phoutrides 309
Kiinstler-Inventare. A. Bredius 574
I 'AD.MIRAL de Grasse. Canon M. Caron 88
Labor and the Common Welfare. S. Gom-
p?rs 333
Labor Sttuaticn in Great Britain and France,
The. The Commission on Foreign Inquiry
of the National Civic Federation 180
Lamp of Heaven, The. L. W. Smith 370
Last and First. J. A. Symonds 575
Last Four Months of the War, The. General F.
Maurice 627
Latin Poems of the Renaissance. R. Aldington.. 33
Lay of the Cid, translated into English Verse.
R. S. R. se and L. Bacon 400
Leg.-nd. C. Dane 334
Lettres d'un Soldat. E. Lemercier 259
Liberalism in America. H. Steams 229
Liberty and the News. W. Lippmann 571
Life and Letters of Lady Dorothy Nevill. The.
R. Nevill 132
Life of Elizabeth Gary Agassiz. L. A. Paton 337
Life cf General William Booth The. H. Begbie. . 680
Life of John Marshall, The. A. J. Beveridge 204
Ligne, Un. F. Rouvier 572
Lithuanian Village, .\. L. Kobrin 363
Little Garden the Year Round, A. G. Teall 392
Little Theatre Classics, Vol. U. S. A. Eliot. Jr. 608
Livrc Pratique des Spirites, Le. M. A. Borgnis.. 437
Lo, and Behold Ye! S. MacManus Ill
Lore of the Pen. F. Klicknumn 400
Leuisbourg from Its Foundation to Its FaJU 1713-
1758. J. S. McLennan 37
Love and Mr. Lewisham. H. G. Wells 489
Lover of the Chair, A. S. B. Gass 157
Luca Sarto: \ Novel. C. S. Brooks 463
Luzumiyat of Abicl-Ala, The. Ameen Rihani.... 17
M.-\DAME Prune. P. Loti 366
.Man for the Ages, A. I. Bacheller 231
Manchester Grammer School, The. A. A- Mum-
ford 52J
Marcus Cornelius Fronto. Translated by C. R-
Haines 605
Martyrdom of Man, The. W. Reade 629
Mask, The. J. Coumos 231
Mask. G. Middleton 632
^ 1 >'
Vol. II
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
Jan.-June, 1920
Pao
Hukende. O. J. nn Ammen-KOner 398
Matrix. Th«. N. T. Davies 463
Maarccn P. MacGiU 679
Memoirs of the American Academy at Rome, Vol.
1. & a 134, 209
Memorial* of WiUard Fiake: The Editor. Com-
piled bj U. S. White 657
Memona and Records. J. A. Fisher 654
Michael Forth. M. Johnston 158
Mim Lulu Brett. Z. Gale 394
Modern China. Sih-Guns Cheng^ 281
Modem Salesmanship. J. G. rrederick 184
Moral Basis of Democracy, The. A. T. Uadley. . 636
More Chapters of Opera. U. Krehbiel 62
Mors et Vila. A. Uoisy 572
Mounuin Paths. M. Maeterlinck IS
Muddy Jim. Ifl. Berliner 88
Musi^ Motley, A. £. Newman 62
My £«cape from Germany. £. A. Keith 632
My Memoirs. Admiral von Tirpitx 84
My Qtiarter Century of American Politics. C.
CUrke 460
My Recollections. J. Massenet 18
Mystery of Space, The. R. T. Browne 133
NATURAL History of the ChUd, The. Dr. C.
Dunn 688
New Words Self De6ned. C. A. Smith 38
Notre Force Future. J. Dybowski 131
rvPEN VUion. H. W. Dresser 631
^-' Opium Monopoly. The. E. H. LaMotte 400
Order. C. C. Washburn 393
Our Am.rica. Waldo Frank 434
Our Greatest Battle. F. Palmer 627
Outland. M. Austin 1 58
Outlines of Chinese Art. J. L. Ferguson 16
Outlook for Research and Invention, The. N.
M. Hopkins 488
Out^ioken Essays. W. R. Inge 396
PAIX des Nations el La Religion de 1' Avenir,
La. A. Loisy 572
Passage of the Barque Sappho, The. J. E. Pat-
terson 15
Passion: A Human Story. S. Desmond 573
Percolator Papers. E. Hendrick 37
Peter Jameson: A Modem Romance. G. Frank-
au 573
Peter Kindred. R. Nathan 392
Petit Nord, Le or Annals of a Labrador Harbour.
A. Grenfell and K. Spalding 679
Picture Show. S. Sassoon 520
Pictures of the Floating World. A. Lowell 33
Pink Roses. G. Caunan 58
Pirates of the Spring. F. Reid 310
Plot Against Mexico, The. L. J. de Bckker 206
Poetry and Dreams. F. C. Prescott 365
Portraits of American Women. G. Bradford.. 60
Position of the Roode en Witte Rods in the Saga
of King Richard 111., The. O. J. Campbell 437
Power of a God and Other One-Act Plays, The.
T. H. Guild 370
Prefaces. Don Marquis 37
Pres des Comballants. M. Andri Chevrillon. . . . 184
Private in the Guards, A. S. Graham 232
Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism. G. Henslow 337
Psychology of Bolshevism, The. J. Spargo 2U6
Pursuit ot Happiness, The. B. K. C. Low 362
QUAKER Singer's Recollections, A. D. Bis-
pham 289
Question of Thrace, The. J. S. Mills and M. G.
Crussachi 550
REBELS: Into Anarchy and Out Again. M.
Gam r 231
Recreation. £. Grey 518
Red Terror and Green. R. Dawson 600
Representative One-Act Plays by American Auth-
ors. M. G. Mayorga 607
Rescue, The. J. Conrad 604, 629
Responsibility: A Novel. J. E. Agate 573
Revolt: An American Novel. W. H. MacMasters 394
Reynard, The Fox. J. Masefield 33
Road to En-dor, The. E. H. Jones 547
Rudyard Kipling's Verse, Inclusive Ed. 1885-1919 109
Russia, White or Red. O. M. Saylor 135
Russian I'cndulum, The. A. Bullard 207
Russian Theatre Under the Revolution. O. M.
Sayler 259
S.\MAR1TANS, Their Testimony to the Religion
of Israel, The. J. E. H. Thomson 311
Sea Bride, The. B. A. Williams IS
Secret Battle, The. A. P. Herbert 257
Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular Tale*. G.
Keller Ill
Seneca. F. Holland 521
September. F. Swinnerton 85
Seven Who Slept, The. A. K. PorUr 609
Shadowy Thresholds. C. Y. Rice 362
Shakespeare and the Makers of Virginia. A
W. Ward 311
Ships Across the Sea. R. D. Paine 577
Short History of Belgium, A. L. von der Essen 335
Short Stories from the Balkans. Translated by
E. W. Underwood 363
Side of Paradise, This. F. S. Fitzgerald 392
Sigurd. Our Golden Collie. K. S. Bates 135
Silver Age. T. Scott 60
Sir James Murray. H. Bradley }11
Pagb
Social Plays of Arthur Wing Pinero, The. Edited
by C. Hamilton 213
Socialism vs. Civilization. B. Brasol 491
Soldat de France, Un 113
Sinie Aversions of a Man of Letters. E. Gosse. . 487
Some Questions of Peace and War. W. McDonald 230
Soothsayer. The. V. von Hcidenstam 608
Soul of Abraham Lincoln, The. W. E. Barton 366
Soul of Ireland, The. W. J. Lockington 284
Souls Divided. M. Serao 434
Spain's Declining Power in South America. B.
Moses 285
Spiritual \'oiccs in Modern Literature. T. H.
Davits 160
Starved Rock. E. L. Masters 519
Stolen Lands, The. M. Harrison 364
Storm in a Teacup. E. Pnillpotts 207
Story of Milk, The. J. D. Frederickson 184
Story of the Great War, The. W. S. Braith-
waite 210
Strategy of the Great War, The. W. L. McPher-
son 17
Studies in Spanish-American Literature. I.
Goldberg 335
Substance of a Dream, The. F. W. Bain 682
Supplementary Diplomatic Documents Published
by the Am jrican-Hellenic Society 17
Swinburne As I Knew Him. C. Kernaban 576
"TALES of My Native Town. G. D'Annunzio. . 435
* Tales of Three Hemispheres. Lord Dun-
sany Ill
Talks with T. R. J. L. Leary, Jr 656
Tamarisk Town. S. Kaye-Smith 654
Taming of Nan, The. E. Holdsworth 207
Tauchnitz Edition of British and American Auth-
ors 209
Their Son: The Necklace. E. Zamacios HI
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography 255
Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. P.
M. Roget 61
This Giddy World. O. Herford 112
Three Plays. N. Leslie 464
'1 hrce Plays from the Argentine. Edited by E.
H. Bierstadt 60S
Time and Eternity. G. Cannan 489
Treacherous Ground. J. Bojer 520
Turnover of Factory Labor, The. S. H. Schlich-
ter 36
TurnpikfS of New England. F. J. Wood 311
Two Men : A Romance of Sussex. A. Ollivant. 207
I INSOLVED Riddle of Social Justice, The. S.
*-' Leacock 234
Up and Down. E. F. Benson 257
Up the Mazaruni for Diamonds. W. J. La Varre 547
Up the Seine to the Battlefields. A. B. Dodd 681
\/IE d' Edgar A. Poe, La. M. A. Fontainas 259
' Villa Elsa. S. Henry 436
Vital Message. A. C. Doyle 134
\Y/ B. WILSON and the Department of Labor.
™ • R. W. Babson 333
Walt Whitman: The Man and his Work. L.
Bazalgette 310
White Shadows in the South Seas. F. O'Brien.. 37
Whole Armour of Man, The. C. W. Saleeby 258
William Blake, The Man. C. Gardner 181
Within My Horizon. H. Bartlett 548
Woman Triumphant. V. Blasco-Ibaiiez 520
Woman's Man, A. M. Patterson 132
Wonders of the Colorado Desert. G. W. James.. 61
World of Wonderful Reality, The. E. T. Thurston 132
World Remaking or Peace Finance, A. C. W.
Barron 464
Worldlings, The. L. Merrick 183
YANKEE in the British Zone, The. E. C. Mac-
' Veagh and L, D. Brown 436
Yanks. A. E. F. Verse 85
Year as a Government Agent, A. V. B. White-
house 208
Youth Goes Seeking. O. Graeve 132
Youth of James Whitcomb Riley. M. Dickey 159
Youth Riding. M. C. Davies 362
BOOKS AND THE NEWS
AMERICA and England 528
gOYS' Books 138
CANDIDATES, The 340
EDUCATION 188
CRANCE 492
IJEALTH 164
I IBRARIES 372
Living Expenses 556
VICTOR Trips 578
NIEGRO. The 20
^^ New American Books 443
PRIMARIES 409
* Profit-Sharing 40
Page
DECENT Books 214
CEA STORIES 314
Socialism 65
Spiritism 118
Sport 472
■THEATRE, The 94
'■ Turkey 266
■W/ILSON, Mr 237
*" Woman Suffrage 294
BOOKS OF THE WEEK
[Selected by Edmund Lester Pearson, Editor of
Publications, New York Public Library]
ALL and Sundry. E. T. Raymond 631
■** Follow the Little Pictures. A. Graham 680
IRISH Case, Before the Court of Public Opinion,
* The. P. W. Wilson 656
I ABOR'S Challenge to the Social Order. J. G.
^ Brooks 604
Letters of Travel. R. Kipling 631
Life of Lord Kitchener. Sir G. Arthur 680
JUAINTENANCE of Peace, The. S. C. Vestal. 631
Mrs. Warren's Daughter. Sir H. Johnston 604
DEACE Conference Day by Day, The. C. T.
Thompson 680
Port of New York, The. S. C. VesUl 631
CIMSADUS: London; The American Navy in
"^ Europe. J. L. Leighlon 656
Stranger, The. A. Bullard 656
Swinburne as I Knew Him. C. Kernahan 656
•TALKS with T. R., from the DUries of John J.
* Leary, Jr 604
MISCELLANEOUS
AMERICAN Insight Into French Literature. . .548
^ American Library Association in France. , 402
A nglo-French Review. 490
DIBLIOGRAPHY of Whaling Books [New Bed-
" ford Library] 656
Bibliotheque Plon 657
QLEMENCEAU'S Memoirs 631
r\UMAS'S Collaborator's (Auguste Maquet)
'-' Title to Fame 577
pCKHOUD, Georges, Dismissal of from Brussels
^' Academy 491
Etudes Italiennes. 285, 490
pRENCH Criticism [Lecomte in Revue des Deux
\ Mondesi 657
French Labor Unions and the Stage 548
French Literature (J. G. Fletcher) 17
French Notes 401, 490,491
UEINE'S "Buch der Lieder" 491
Hungary's Intellectual Loss, Due to Being
Deprived of Many Cities 682
J^EATS Memorial 575
lOEB Library 366,605
^ERCVRB de France 234
MEW Formations of Words [English] from
~ Children's Speech Desired by Prof. Jes-
persen of Denmark 38
piLGRIM Fathers, History Being Prepared by
* Dr. A. Eekof 491
"Psycho-Analystic Confession". By Floyd Dell
in the Liberator 60S
DAMSAY (Sir William), Memorial to 490
^*- Romain Rolland's Visit to Switzerland,
Reason for 438
CHAKESPEARE Identified as Edward de Vere
■^ (J. T. Looney) 464
Shaw Desmond, Personality of 681
Siknce, Plea for (Temps) 491
Simplified Spelling Abandoned 365
Society for Pure English Founded by Dr. Robert
Bridges 60, 113
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Biography of by T.
Stanton and Mrs. Stanton-Blatch 632
"TEXT Criticism". By Professor J. A. Scott
in the March Classical Journal 632
^-
THE REVIEW
Vol. 2, No. 34
New York, Saturday, January 3, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment i
Edttoriat Articles:
The Defense of Property 3
Siberia in Despair 5
A Hopeful Labor Move 6
Those Navy Awards 6
Mrs. Tiffany on the "Social Unit" 7
Slaves of the Machine. By David Harold
Colcord 8
The Social Unit at Cincinnati— Is It a
Soviet? By Katrina Ely Tiffany 11
Correspondence 13
Book Reviews:
Germany — Misjudged or Found Out? 14
Sea Tales 15
Maeterlinck's "Presences" 15
Chinese Art 16
The Run of the Shelves 17
Drama:
"Mary Broome" at the Neighborhood
Playhouse — The Theatre Parisien.
By O. W. Firkins 18
Massenet's Memories and Music. By
Charles Henry Meltzer 18
Books and the News: The Negro. By
Edmund Lester Pearson 20
'T'HEY reckon ill who leave me out
■*- — that is Mr. William Jennings
Bryan's motto, or ought to be. His
sudden emergence into conspicuous
notice at Washington is no laughing
matter. He probably does not desire
to be the Democratic candidate for
President, but he certainly has no
objection to playing the part of king-
maker— or at least king-breaker — as
he did in 1912. Never was the time
more propitious for him, in one re-
spect. His specialty is the setting-up
of "paramount issues," and the woods
are full of paramount issues. The
cheap dollar is as ready to his hand
as the dear dollar was in 1896 ; there
must be some cure-all formula for the
labor problem which Mr. Bryan
would find no difficulty in framing;
the League of Nations is in a sad way
— whatever the Senate may be on the
point of doing about it — and all for
lack of the right prescription from
the right doctor; and the good old
slogan "let the people rule" might be
raised in a dozen new and striking
ways. Mr. Bryan is an adept at mak-
ing choice of slogans, and it will go
hard but he will find one that will
make him a big power in the Demo-
cratic National Convention. But we
do not expect to see the cry "He tried
to keep us out of war" raised in his
behalf; perhaps, however, other peo-
ple will have something to say about
the way he served his country as Sec-
retary of State, and played into the
hands of Bernstorff and Dumba.
'T'HE meaning of the latest events
-'■ in Siberia is not yet plain. A fort-
night ago, Kolchak formed a cabinet
of the Left, and a policy was an-
nounced that proposed to subordi-
nate the military to the civil author-
ity. The object evidently was to fall
back upon the Socialist Revolution-
aries, but it was grasping at a straw,
and indicated weakness. Now, ac-
cording to the latest reports, what
was earlier predicted in the Review
has taken place, and Semenov has
been appointed Commander-in-Chief.
The first implication of this is ob-
vious. The predominant military
force in eastern Siberia is Cossack,
and Semenov is the chosen Cossack
leader. Upon the Cossacks must de-
pend the country's defense.
T>UT another conclusion may be
■■-' drawn. Hitherto Kolchak has
been bound by his devotion to the Al-
lies, and they have failed him shame-
fully in his hour of need. In conse-
quence Russians everywhere have
come to view the Allies with suspi-
cion and dislike. Semenov is bound
by no promises and has been sup-
ported by Japan. He will now be
free to make with the Japanese
whatever agreements he sees fit.
Whether Japan will come to his as-
sistance with troops is problemati-
cal, but he undoubtedly counts on
their aid. Seemingly it is now too
late for this. When they could march
in and achieve success by a parade of
force, the case was different. Now
it means a long and expensive war,
and Japan will think twice about en-
tangling herself in such a contest
without American participation. She
reasons that America would like
nothing better than to see her thus
entangled, wasting her energies. Still,
the threat of approaching Bolshevism
may force her to this course. In any
case, with money and arms from
Japan, Semenov will put up a good
fight and probably hold back the Red
horde.
'pHE National Council and the
■'■ States Council at Berne have
both, by a large majority, voted
for Switzerland's accession to the
League of Nations, a decision which
will have to be ratified by a referen-
dum of the electorate. This is not,
however, an unconditional approval
of the Covenant as drafted in Paris.
Although Article I of that document
provides for the accession of the once
neutral states as original members
on condition that they join the
League "without reservation," Swit-
zerland has made its entrance de-
pendent on the acceptance of one af-
fecting the tenor of Article XVI. The
country does not wish to bind itself
to any participation in a military ac-
tion which the Council might deem
necessary to protect the covenants of
the League. This restriction, how-
ever, is contrary only to the letter of
the Covenant, not to its spirit as ex-
plained by its makers. When in a
conference of these with representa-
tives of neutral countries objections
were raised by the latter to the coer-
cive measures contained in Article
XVI, Lord Robert Cecil made the re-
assuring statement that "the eco-
nomic coercion comes first and is al-
ways obligatory for all members, but
the military measures, which come in
2]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No.
the second place, are not absolutely
obligatory. There will be no com-
pulsion to take part in them, although
there always remains a moral duty of
participation." Besides, Switzerland's
right to abstain from any military
cooperation is already implied in Ar-
ticle 435 of the Peace Treaty with
Germany, which recognizes the valid-
ity of the declaration of November
20, 1815, concerning the country's
neutral status. The reservation,
therefore, is a mere formality, in-
tended to placate that part of the na-
tion which, proud of its independence
and devoted to its neutrality, views
the League with no little suspicion.
One other restriction bears the name
reservation with more justice: The
country makes its accession condi-
tional on that of the five Great Pow-
ers, in other words, it will not join
the League unless the United States
does so first.
TVrOW cracks a noble heart — these
■'■^ are the words that best befit the
news of Dr. Osier's death. Great
physician, wonderful teacher, inspir-
ing comrade and associate, unweary-
ing worker for the general good,
promoter to the last of medical prog-
ress— all these attributes fail to con-
vey an idea of the man. A gallant
and poetic spirit, as full of grace as
of strength, he was a centre of light
and life in every circle in which he
moved. America and England will
join in mourning one who adorned
and benefited both countries, and
whose last years were spent in de-
voted service for the cause to which
both countries gave their best and
dearest.
TN this human beehive of New York
the poet of "La Vie des Abeilles"
seems strangely out of place. The only
spot where we could imagine him in
his element is the top of the Wool-
worth building from which, in silent
contemplation, he could watch the
feverish wooing of Queen Dollar by
the giant swarm below. But he has
come to woo her himself. The papers
give estimates of "the profits accru-
ing to him as a result of his first
American tour, in addition to which
he will certainly receive augmented
royalties on his many books." If he
does, he will owe them to those real
lovers of the poet who, turning away
from this fashionable lecturer in
evening dress suit, look for the real
Maeterlinck in the works that he
wrote. The mystic who gave to the
world "Le tresor des humbles" is a
different being from this idolized
treasure of the proud, this "social
lion and lecturer on the immortality
of the soul," as the headlines pro-
claim him. Once he wrote some beau-
tiful pages on the eloquence of silence,
a language which will grow dearer to
him day after day on his "12,000-mile
Coast-to-Coast tour to confront lec-
ture audiences and social welcomers
in more than forty cities." There
you have the poet's programme
in arithmetic. Imagine Thomas a
Kempis leaving his cell to read his
"Imitatio" before the upper ten of
fifteenth-century Paris and London.
"The shy Belgian poet" the papers
call him, and shy he well may be.
The mystic's proper sphere is not
the crowd but the solitude, "in an-
gello cum libello," approving the
wisdom of the earlier mystic's "ama
nesciri."
TT has been obvious from the begin-
•■- ning that no organization of re-
turned soldiers which presumed to
set itself up as an "Invisible Empire"
and impose its own "100 per cent.
Americanism" upon those little
groups who were quite intoxicated
on something like 2.75 per cent, of
the same could hope long to survive.
Responsible leaders of the American
Legion have reckoned with this dan-
ger from the outset. They have not
always been able to prevent sporadic
outbursts of it. The ex-soldiers have,
it is only too true, taken upon them-
selves here and there to decide that
concerts of German music must not
be held and that certain sorts of
opinion shall not have the privilege
of a hall in which to air themselves.
This sort of thing must stop. To un-
derstand is not to pardon. The
American Legion exists, so far as it
is not merely a pleasant association
of old comrades, to prevent just those
things which mob violence — "direct
action" in the canting phrase — aims
to bring in. A sound strategy d
not suggest mob violence on its c
part as the most effective step.
Franklin D'Olier, the National C(
mander, has now put the Legion (
cially on record — "let us be sure t
no overzealous or thoughtless or
fair act of our own occur to weal
our influence for national bettermi
or alienate the support of true An
icans." Maintenance of a gove
ment under law is not an easy t£
It may be confidently hoped that
more difficulties will be cast in
way of it by those from whom
much that is genuinely construci
is expected. "Legion," in any of
manifestations, must not be alloi
to get the upper hand of "Americs
rpHROUGH the generosity of
■*■ anonymous donor there has b
established the Amherst Memo
Fellowship for the study of soc
economic, and political institutic
According to its terms a fellow, v
a stipend of two thousand dollar
year, will be appointed every sec
year for a period of not more t'
four years. Although established
perpetuate the memory of those I
herst men who gave their lives foi
ideal," the fellowship is open to gi
uates — and not of necessity rec
graduates — of any college or uni^
sity, and it is expressly provided 1
at least one member of the commi
which awards the Fellowship s'
have no connection with Amh(
College. This committee has i
been formed and is receiving ap
cations. A foundation so bro£
conceived and so generously endo'
should before very long becom-
national institution. The fellows
should be held by only the very ab
of the country's young men, i
whose native capacity for leaders
fortified by the extensive study wl
the fellowship places within tl
reach, will put them high am
those to whom the world must 1
for guidance in dealing with
problems which press so heavily u
it. Amherst is to be congratuU
on receiving into its hands an ins'
ment so well calculated to give
best opportunities to the best mi
in this vital department of study.
January 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[8
The Defense of
Property
THE Presidential election of 1920,
says the New York Tribune in a
leading editorial, promises to turn on
the issue of private property versus
communism. In order to meet this
issue, the Tribune declares that what
is needed is a campaign of "thorough
popular education" :
Private property must face the issue — must
prove it is a good thing for all, or else perish
. . . Personal ownership is not an end but a
means to an end — the supreme end of increas-
ing the sum of human happiness.
"The challenge can be confidently
met," says the Tribune, and it plunges
boldly into the task. The human
family lives not on what has been ac-
cumulated, but on what is currently
produced. Capital is essential to ef-
fective production ; "with capital and
capitalism gone, and little to divide,
what would concurrently happen to
the production which is the real meal
ticket," and "whence would come the
fund for improvements" ? The "great
works reared under the capitalist re-
gime" would before long be worn out,
and then "a further decline in pro-
duction would occur, with a conse-
quent tightening of all belts." Such
is the Tribune's statement of the case
for the institution of private prop-
erty ; and the article closes with this
fervid exhortation :
First, production; second, production; third,
production — these are the three great argu-
ments capitalism can present. Hammer them,
hammer them, hammer them ! Americans are
intelligent enough, and their perceptions of
self-interest keen enough, to see and act on the
truth.
There is just enough truth in the
idea that the institution of property
is in imminent danger to make it well
worth while to consider upon what
grounds its defense must rest. The
requirements of a campaign of "thor-
ough popular education" are far
more exacting than our contemporary
appears to realize. It is something
to point out the indispensable part
which capital plays in production,
for there are millions among the
masses who have no conception even
of this elementary truth. But it is
far from enough ; the teachers of so-
cialism have educated thousands upon
this subject far beyond the kinder-
garten stage, and these will have no
difficulty, when the campaign is on,
in making the masses understand
that the abolition of private owner-
ship of capital does not necessarily
mean the extinction of capital itself.
A well-organized socialistic or com-
munistic government could systemat-
ically provide for the maintenance of
capital by a levy upon current pro-
duction ; the great function which has
hitherto been performed by the vol-
untary abstinence and thrift of indi-
viduals could quite conceivably be
performed by saving exacted and di-
rected by the state. Under this re-
gime production would not suffer that
utter collapse which would attend the
extinction of capital ; the loss it would
suffer would come from the substitu-
tion of governmental routine for that
varied and boundless energy, that
alertness of initiative, that constant
exercise of quick and accurate judg-
ment, which are the life-blood of pro-
duction and enterprise under the in-
dividualist regime.
To convince a man of all this is not
as easy as a sum in arithmetic. But
the difficulty can not be evaded by
shutting one's eyes to it. Fortu-
nately, however, the plain man is not
a fool. He may not clearly realize
how great a part is played in produc-
tion by the energy and ability of those
who conduct it under the stimulus of
competitive profit — and under the
risk of competitive loss — but the
idea is by no means foreign to his
mind. Probably the greatest obstacle
to his full appreciation of it arises
from false notions of the share
which capital and management get
for their service. He will readily
enough admit that government would
not do the work anything like so well
as private initiative does it; but he
imagines that the gain to the com-
munity is more than swallowed up
by the reward that capital and man-
agement grasp as their share of the
product. He reads the big figures
that represent the fortunes of a few
multi-millionaires, and he is struck
with the luxury and display which
are the result of business success.
But he makes no calculation of the
extremely small percentage of the
total annual product which suffices to
account for all this. It would not be
difficult to make him understand that
if the efficiency of production were
diminished by ten per cent., this
would probably cut deeper into his
share than do all the profits of the
great capitalists and "captains of in-
dustry ;" and he would not find it hard
to believe that under a communist
regime productive eflficiency would be
impaired by very much more than
ten per cent.
But assuming that this fact was
driven home into the minds of the
masses — itself no mean task — no
mistake could be greater than that of
supposing that the trouble was there-
by disposed of. The feeling that has
been stirred up against the existing
order of society rests on something
more than a calculation of the
amount of bread and meat, of clothes
and luxuries, that the "plain man"
might expect to obtain under a dif-
ferent order. The cold-blooded con-
clusions of economic arithmetic will
not suflSce to overcome the passion-
ate longing of those who would shat-
ter the world and "remould it nearer
to the heart's desire." If the insti-
tution of property is to stand un-
shaken in the coming decades, it will
be not merely because it does more
than communism can to fill people's
bellies, but because with all its
faults, it does more to satisfy their
souls.
Socialist dreamers charge the de-
fenders of the existing order with
lack of imagination. But it is they
themselves who lack imagination. It
requires very little imagination to
picture a new world in which nobody
has to worry about food or clothing,
or in which everybody has his flivver
and his victrola; even a world in
which nobody is trying to get the bet-
ter of his neighbor, and everybody is
doing what is demanded of him for
the good of the community. What
does require some degree of genuine
imagination is to realize what such
a world would be in the essentials
of human feeling and interest, and
what our own world is like in those
essentials.
The freeman's life is superior to
the slave's, not because he does less
work or because he gets more pay;
4]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 34
the difference lies in the freedom it-
self, and in the responsibility that is
the correlative of the freedom. It
is true that many millions of people,
under existing conditions, have little
choice as to how they shall earn their
living; but each of them has never-
theless the feeling of a freeman. No
man, and no government, has ordered
him to do what he is doing; and it
rests with him to decide whether he
shall continue to do it. If there are
thousands who fare better, there are
also thousands who fare worse; and
whether he fares well or ill is his
own business and nobody else's. If
he has succeeded in keeping his head
above water, if he has maintained his
family without outside aid, he may
justly feel that, in the face of diffi-
culty and temptation, he has done a
man's part in the struggle of life.
And he has always the spur of hope
that his children, like the children
of so many of his fellows in like sta-
tion, will attain a higher place in the
struggle. What would the commu-
nist regime offer to take the place of
all this? The joys of notable achieve-
ment— even such standardized joys
as there might be of this kind —
would, from the nature of things, be
for the one man in a hundred; the
other ninety-nine would have at most
the pale satisfaction of not having
forfeited their meal tickets by fail-
ure to do the amount of work re-
quired of them. Of the chances of
better and worse, of the shaping of
one's own destiny by the exercise of
one's own will, of that kind of per-
sonal responsibility which gives
strength to character and zest to ef-
fort, there would be little left.
So much for those who are near the
foot of the ladder, those to whom the
existing order shows its worst face.
That a large proportion of all the
people are in the direct enjoyment
of its advantages, the communists
constantly forget. To him who has
something, though little, the value of
what he has is vitally bound up with
the idea of property and property
rights. The lace curtains and the
white marble steps, the piano or the
"parlor suite," even the account in
the savings bank or the building as-
sociation, mean to him very much
more than the concrete enjoyment of
these specific possessions. It is the
fact of possession when possession is
not a matter of course, and the vague
possibilities which such possession
implies, that really count. Running
water in the house is a wonderful
comfort, and a bathroom is a most
excellent thing; but when everybody
has them — above all when everybody
is by law bound to have them — no-
body finds in them occasion for so
much as a moment's joy. As a de-
stroyer of values, communism would
cast fire and flood into the shade.
Without resorting to it, we have
raised the standard of living so won-
derfully that the luxuries — not to
speak of the impossibilities — of yes-
terday are everybody's unthought-of
possessions to-day ; but while the gen-
eral level has been so raised, the op-
portunities for possessions above
that level are greater than ever, and
the people who rise to them are more
numerous than ever.
To the radical intelligentsia, as well
as to the ordinary commun^'st agi-
tator, the world appears to consist
entirely of millionaires and prole-
tariat ; but when things begin to look
really serious, the great body that
lies between these extremes will make
itself known plainly enough. They
are not willing to give up all that has
meant life to them — property as we
know it, the family as we know it,
personal independence, personal re-
sponsibility, and personal achieve-
ment as we know them — on the chance
that a world made out of a few the-
orists' heads will prove a better one.
We hear little now about the middle,
and a great deal about the two ex-
tremes ; but it is the middle that makes
the world solid now, and that will keep
it solid when the test comes. What
else accounts for the way in which
France has stood shock after shock,
revolution after revolution, agitation
after agitation, and remained firmly
"bourgeois"? The extremest Social-
ism was familiar to the average
Frenchman before our American So-
cialists were born; Clemenceau him-
self was an extreme Socialist in his
time. But when the pinch comes, it
turns out that the peasants with their
little farms, and the shopkeepers
with their little hoards, and the clerks
and doctors and lawyers and engi-
neers and artisans with the places
they have won for themselves and
their families — in a word, the people
with something to lose — are the
backbone of the country and say the
decisive word.
We are far from wishing to belittle
the importance of the issue of pro-
ductivity, and you can't have high
productivity without abundant capi-
tal, superior management, and faith-
ful labor. But the point may be over-
worked. There is danger in identi-
fying "the sum of human happiness"
with the aggregate of the material
things which are produced by human
effort. It is true that if the masses
were persuaded that that aggregate
could be enormously increased by the
abolition of private property, they
would probably be impervious to all
other considerations; and it is there-
fore of very great importance that
the error of such a view be exposed.
But even in the exposing of this error
as we have pointed out, it is essential
that the "plain man" be treated as an
intelligent human being; if you at-
tempt to satisfy his mind by an ar-
gument that is fit only for a child,
he will soon take your measure, and
your last state will be worse than the
first. And you will likewise under-
estimate his intelligence if you think
that he is inaccessible to the deeper
considerations that belong to the sub-
ject. You may convince him that he
gets more to eat and to wear than he
is likely to get under communism,
and yet leave him strongly inclined
to see what communism might do for
him. "The full market-basket" is a
good enough cry in a tariff campaign,
but when it comes to the great issues
of life, the "plain man," or at all
events the plain American, does not
like to think of himself as concerned
only with his market-basket. Treat
him as a man, not a proletarian; as
a man to whom "the sum of human
happiness" means something more
than food to eat and clothes to wear.
What we have in mind, however, is
not those spiritual or religious or in-
tellectual sources of happiness which
are but slightly related to economic
institutions ; to intrude these into the
January 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[5
discussion would be, to the plain
man's mind, to draw a herring across
the trail. But he will grant readily-
enough that the sum of the happiness
that men enjoy through the acqui-
sition of material things depends not
merely on their gross quantity but
quite as much on the conditions upon
which they are acquired; and he is
fully capable of understanding that
the chance of success and the danger
of failure, the necessity of self-reli-
ance, the splendid returns which
stimulate enterprise and reward sa-
gacity or talent — that these things
justify the institution of property not
only because they make for an in-
crease in the total of our material
, possessions, but even more because
I the enjoyment of those possessions is
i infinitely greater than it could be
under a system in which they were
rationed out to us by a governmental
machine.
Siberia in Despair
A YEAR of heartrending struggle
/I
against overwhelming odds to
deliver one's native land from the
most bloody and cruel alien tyranny
known in history, and then failure
through default of promised aid —
such is the tragic story of Kolchak's
defeat. When, on November 18,
1918, Admiral Kolchak took up his
unsought task, it was in the face of
difficulties before which a less reso-
lute and devoted man would have
quailed. An army had to be raised
instantly from the sparse and scat-
tered population of a vast continent,
and supplied from a country without
industry. This army had at once to
be pitted against three times its
number of Red troops, equipped from
the great reserves of arms and mu-
nitions left from the great war, and
led in many cases by German officers.
Thanks to the enthusiasm and self-
sacrifice of the Siberian peasants,
this undertaking was successfully ac-
complished.
But these were not Kolchak's only
difficulties. Some sort of civil ad-
ministration had to be restored
throughout regions where seven
months of Soviet misrule and license
had destroyed all civil institutions
and left disorder and chaos. Crim-
inal bands of Commissars and their
henchmen, driven out of the towns,
roamed the forests, made brigand at-
tacks upon villages, and threatened
at numerous points the tenuous line
of railroad that was his one means
of communication with the outside
world. American forces in Vladivos-
tok, through an incomprehensible
misunderstanding of the situation,
encouraged disunion and disaffection,
instead of giving aid to the building
up of a unified Russian state. The
Japanese likewise seemed to think
that their interests were subserved
by keeping Siberia weak and encour-
aging independent Cossack bands to
flout the authority of the central
Government. The financial situation
was desperate, and a dozen varieties
of hopelessly depreciated currency
flooded the country. Speculation was
rife, grafters abounded, and force
was lacking to bring them to account.
Reactionaries on the one hand sought
to make of Kolchak's Government a
means of restoring Tsarism, while on
the other. Socialist Revolutionaries
thought the time opportune to realize
their impracticable theories.
Cunning and unscrupulous Bolshe-
vist propagandists undertook to un-
dermine Kolchak in Europe and
America, representing him as a ty-
rant and usurper, and attributing to
him Tsarist aims. But he gave them
no heed and pursued his task with
unfailing courage. A patriot and a
liberal, he steered a middle course
between reaction and radicalism,
faithful to his pledge to restore his
country and leave its future govern-
ment to the decision of a freely-
elected Constituent Assembly. How
effective the Bolshevist propagandists
were in misleading and alienating the
Allies, and particularly America, can
not now be told; but after inexcus-
able delay, the Council at Paris
satisfied themselves of Kolchak's
good faith and of the necessity of
supporting the loyal Russians against
the common enemy. On June 12,
Lloyd George, Wilson, Clemenceau,
Orlando and Makino joined in send-
ing him the following telegram :
The Allied and Associated Powers wish to
acknowledge the receipt of Admiral Kolchak's
reply to their note of May 26th. They welcome
the terms of that reply. It seems to them to be
in substantial agreement with the proposition*
which they had made and to contain satisfac-
tory assurances for the freedom, self-govern-
ment, and peace of the Russian people and
their neighbors. They are therefore willing
to extend to Admiral Kolchak and his asso-
ciates the support set forth in their original
letter.
This support was "to assist the
Government of Admiral Kolchak and
his associates with munitions, sup-
plies, and food, to establish themselves
as the Government of all Russia."
But the pledge was not kept. Instead,
Ambassador Morris at Tokio was
sent to Omsk to investigate further
and report. More delay, while the
lives of millions hung in the balance
and our own good faith before the
Russia of the future was at stake.
Finally Morris reported in favor of
keeping our word, but we delayed
further, and it was too late.
Many reasons have been alleged as
the causes of Kolchak's collapse. Un-
doubtedly many factors were work-
ing against him — popular discontent
from hope deferred, dissension
among officers and civil authorities,
high-handed conduct on the part of
the military, speculation and graft,
insurrection in the rear. But all
these were trivial compared with the
one great cause — lack of supplies.
The men were there, and the will to
fight was there, but flesh and blood
could not stand against shot and
shell. Well-nigh bare-handed, his
soldiers had to stand the onslaughts
of the fully armed and equipped
hordes that poured in upon them.
When Kolchak's brave troops took
Perm, over four thousand had their
feet frozen. The spring thaw found
them without boots. Step by step
they had to retire because they had
nothing with which to fight on.
And now another chapter in the
tragic drama has closed. It curdles
one's blood to think of hapless West
Siberia, subjected to the exactions
and blood-lust of the Soviet armies.
But Russia has ever been greatest
in misfortune and defeat, and has
gloried in the gospel of suffering
and sacrifice. In the years to come,
the heroic if unavailing struggle in
Siberia will be a cherished tradition
of Russia, and Kolchak a symbol of
patriotism and devotion.
6]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 34
A Hopeful Labor
Move
HUMAN fellowship in industry may be
either an empty phrase or a living fact.
There is no magic formula.
Pending the growth of better relationships
between employers and employees, the prac-
tical approach to the problem is to devise a
method of preventing or retarding conflicts by
providing machinery.
In these two passages from the in-
troduction to the plan drawn up by
the new Industrial Conference at
Washington is to be found the key-
note of the proposal it has laid be-
fore the country. The Conference
recognizes that a vital improvement
is necessarj' in the relations between
employers and employed; but it rec-
ognizes just as clearly that that im-
provement can not be brought about
either by governmental edict or by
the formal adoption of any abstract
principle. It must be the matured
fruit of prolonged and varied effort,
and can not be purchased at the easy
price of a conference resolution,
however ingeniously worded. What
this very conference may yet do to
encourage and promote this process
by throwing light directly upon its
problems and difficulties remains to
be seen. What it has done is to offer
a comprehensive, and to our mind,
an extremely hopeful, plan for les-
sening those evils which cry out for
immediate remedy.
The outstanding feature of the
Conference plan for the settlement of
industrial disputes is that, while it
wholly avoids compulsion, it creates
a situation in which resort to its ma-
chinery will in almost every instance
be inevitable. We must be prepared
to find that objection will be made,
both from the employers' side and
from the employees' side, to the pre-
cise character of that machinery.
But at every point there is the clear-
est evidence that care has been taken
to reduce the grounds of objection to
a minimum.
Thus the method by v/hich the
two sides to a dispute shall select
their representatives upon a Re-
gional Board of Adjustment is not
prescribed, but is to be determined
by "the rules and regulations to be
laid down by the National Industrial
Tribunal for the purpose of insuring
free and prompt choice of the rep-
resentatives." The thorny questions
of labor representation are thus left
for full consideration, not by a hap-
hazard or emergency body, but by
nine men appointed for a term of
years by the President, subject to
confirmation by the Senate. Unless
we throw up the job in despair, un-
less we are content to suffer the pres-
ent anarchic conditions to continue
unabated, we must begin with author-
ity somewhere, and it does not seem
possible to get a better source of au-
thority than that proposed. The Tri-
bunal is to consist of three members
representing the employers of the
country, who shall be appointed upon
nomination of the Secretary of
Commerce, three representing em-
ployees, who shall be appointed upon
nomination of the Secretary of
Labor, and three representing the
general interests of the public.
How completely the element of
compulsion is absent may best be
seen in the fact that not only does
the final decision of a dispute — in de-
fault, of course, of a unanimous ver-
dict by the Regional Board, upon
which both sides are represented —
rest with the National Tribunal, but
that Tribunal itself can render no
decision except by unanimous vote.
When unanimity is not attained, ma-
jority and minority reports are re-
quired to be made by the Tribunal.
The obvious objection that under
these conditions the most difficult
cases will be likely to be left unde-
cided, has without doubt been fully
taken into account by the framers of
the plan. The answer to it is, first,
that in a plan which seeks to per-
suade, and not to compel, it is es-
sential that both parties shall feel
that they are in no danger of suffer-
ing injustice; and secondly, that
even though a decision be not arrived
at, the light thrown upon the dispute
by the searching process of inquiry
and judgment to which it had been
subjected will be a most powerful
agent in bringing about its settle-
ment.
To appreciate the merit of the plan,
we must keep steadily in mind the
fact that in any great labor dispute
the dominating force lies neither in
the resources of the employers nor in
the organization of the employees,
but in the power of public opinion,
provided only that that power is
brought effectively to bear. The
great trouble is that during the long
period in which public opinion is
blindly groping its way, and in the
further long period that is required
to focus it upon the controversy,
there is suffered an appalling eco-
nomic waste and there is bred a vast
amount of misunderstanding and bit-
terness. The most important func-
tion of the elaborate and yet not com-
plicated machinery of the Confer-
ence plan is to give to public opinion
both the guidance and the leverage
which it now lacks. The plan may
need modification; but in its essen-
tials it seems admirably calculated to
reduce to a small fraction of its pres-
ent dimensions the evil of those in-
dustrial conflicts which so profoundly
threaten the general welfare, and
with which thus far the nation has
vainly endeavored to grapple.
Those Navy Awards
TTAVING characteristically blun-
■'-■'- dered into a bad mess on the
Navy honors. Secretary Daniels, with
equally characteristic candor, seeks
to make amends by reconsidering the
whole matter. It is the proper solu-
tion. Admiral Sims's sailor-like let-
ter and action have done their work.
And the iSTavy has also spoken em-
phatically in the persons of Admirals
Mayo, Jones, and Wilson, and Captain
Hasbrouck, who honorably declines to
receive a high award for the ill-luck
of losing his ship. The controversy is
in a way to be adjusted, and before
it finally passes we have only to note
the paradox that the statesman who
for seven years has ruled the Amer-
ican Navy still reasons like a lands-
man and a sentimentalist.
Secretary Daniels was grieved be-
cause only twenty-two per cent, of
recommendations were made by the
special board from the personnel of
fighting ships in the war zone. Con-
sidering the very few fighting ships
that were in action at all, considering
also the impossibility of getting a
standup fight with a "sub," any Navy
January 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[7
man knows that the fighting ships
were generously treated with one
recommendation out of five. The
Navy's task was mostly preventive
guard duty, mine-laying and sweep-
ing, and transportation — routine
work of a highly technical order.
Twenty men were in such routine
services for one even remotely and
contingently concerned with fighting.
For the Navy it was emphatically a
staff and not a line war. The men
whose organizing capacity made the
anti-submarine patrol and the mine
barrage effective, the men whose
brains conceived our successful con-
\ oy system and whose vigilance car-
ried it out — those men, whether they
worked afloat or ashore — at Wash-
ington, Pelham Bay, St. Nazaire, or
Scapa — deserve the high awards.
For the very reason that, even
under peace conditions, Navy men
incur constant risk, they are espe-
cially scrupulous on the point of rec-
ognition for gallantry. Every year
sees thousands of acts of per-
sonal heroism promptly and finally
rewarded with a "Good work!"
from the officer or petty officer
in charge. Then well-meaning Sec-
retary Daniels comes along and
rules that the officers and crews
who have been torpedoed have
all "rendered distinguished service"
and are entitled to medals. At best
they are entitled to sympathy for a
bad luck that may have been unpre-
ventable. Such awards were simply
an affront to the hundreds of vessels
of the destroy er-and-patrol flotillas
which, without the luck of getting
into action, maintained such vigilance
in submarine-infested waters that the
"tin fish" dared molest neither the
guard boats nor the convoy.
However, Navy people are gener-
ous, and little inclined to judge over-
harshly the unwitting offenses of
blundering benevolence. They will
appreciate the promptness with
which Secretary Daniels has re-
opened his versatile mind, and they
will hope for awards based on
achievement and not on sentiment —
honors in which commanding officers
may find their authority sustained
and their superior facilities for judg-
ment duly considered.
Mrs. Tiffany on the
"Social Unit'
5 >
WE print on another page a de-
fense of the "Social Unit" ex-
periment against the charge of Soviet
tendencies brought by the Mayor of
Cincinnati and others. The writer,
Mrs. Charles L. Tiffany, regards the
system as wholly opposed to that of
the Soviet, since "its philosophy is
based upon the conception that the
collective intelligence of the whole
community — not any section or part
— so organized that it can continu-
ously express itself, is to be relied
upon as against the will or in-
telligence of any individual, group, or
class." There is of course no valid
objection to the working together for
common ends of the entire population
of any territory small enough to
make such unified action feasible and
effective. At various times and places
definite and temporary problems
have stirred communities to action of
this nature, but such simple organi-
zation as has resulted from immedi-
ate need has passed out of existence
when the need has been adequately
met. The difference between this
wholly spontaneous action and the
"Social Unit" system now under dis-
cussion is that the latter does not
originate by spontaneous evolution
within the individual community, but
comes through propaganda from
without, and aims to become a per-
manent institution. These consider-
ations call for a careful study of pos-
sible tendencies and purposes before
thoughtful men and women are war-
ranted in giving unqualified support
to the movement.
In Mrs. Tiffany's view, any resem-
blance of the Social Unit to the So-
viet is superficial and unimportant,
and will apply equally to various
other forms of collective action which
pass without challenge. In an ar-
ticle in the Survey, however, a few
weeks ago, Dr. Edward T. Devine,
writing as a friend of the system,
says:
In view of the profound faith which the
touiiders of the Social Unit plan have in the
principle of democracy as embodied in the
plan, it is evident that, in the opinion of those
who are most competent to predict, the success-
ful spread of the Social Unit plan and the
general acceptance of its philosophy would pro-
vide a substitute, not only for existing munici-
pal departments and government, but also for
voluntary social agencies.
Dr. Devine hastens to add that we
are not to infer from this that those
interested in the Social Unit would
expect such a culmination in the near
future. But its founders have not
denied, he admits, that they regard
it as a potential substitute for exist-
ing political government. All this
being admitted, there is no escape
from the conclusion that Social Units
brought into being through the
agency of the National Social Unit
Organization will be channels of prop-
aganda, more or less active accord-
ing to circumstances and official per-
sonnel, for a radical change from our
system of government. Of course
such propaganda would be indirect
and without official sanction, but it
would be hardly less effective on this
account, and certainly no easier to
combat. We do not mean by this
that propaganda for radical changes
in our government is necessarily
wrong in itself. But when people
who are thoroughly opposed to
changes in a certain direction are
asked to support, on considerations
of another nature, a movement whose
leaders are evidently favorable to
such changes, their answer must take
into consideration not merely the
good which the movement offers, but
the evil which it may possibly pro-
mote. Before giving the "Social
Unit" our approval we should prefer
to see it tried by a community acting
spontaneously and wholly uncon-
nected with the National Social Unit
Organization.
THE REVIEW
A ^'cekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weikly Co«PO«ATlo^^
HO Nassau Street, New York
Fabiak Fhanklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuixe», Treasurer
Kodmam Gilder, Butintss Manager
Subscription price, five dollar* a year in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign TOSt-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign sub>crii.tion5 may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St.. Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright, 1919, in the Umted Stales of
America
Editors
F.^BIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
8]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 34
Slaves of the Machine
PITTSBURGH has been called
■*- the industrial barometer of the
world. It is the first manufacturing
centre to feel the change in status
of any temporary equilibrium that
may obtain in the financial market
albeit the disturbance is scarcely no-
ticeable at the source. Hiram Smith
in North Dakota decides to restrict
his acreage of wheat to 85 per cent.
of last year's crop, deciding at the
same time to get along with his old
tractors and harvesters for another
year, which would have been impos-
sible with a full acreage. Which
means that Chicago and Detroit will
need less steel billets, cast iron, tool,
and sheet steel — that is, if all the
Hiram Smiths feel the same way
about the wheat. Hiram Smith, as
unconscious of the fact as a spring
breeze, is in his way counting out
the number of bituminous cinders and
graphite flakes that will glitter each
morning on our spare bedroom carpet
here under the shadow of the Bes-
semer converters.
By the same token Hiram, and his
like, decide whether the employment
manager at the Edgar Thompson
Works of the Carnegie Steel Com-
pany can hire Emanuel Swakoski
when he applies this morning for
a job. The employment manager
hires because a particular fore-
man has sent a "call slip" to the
employment office conveying informa-
tion that he needs four laborers. The
foreman has had instructions from
the open hearth superintendent to
build another fire. The superintend-
ent has a typewritten letter from
the general superintendent of the
mill to increase his tonnage to a set
figure. The general superintendent
has an order from the city office for
a specific assignment of cold rolled
steel. The general office is bound by
contract to deliver to a manufacturer
of electric motors and generators a
certain amount of steel according to
certain specifications on a certain
date. The electric manufacturer is
also bound by contract to deliver to
the sugar refineries of Cuba ten tur-
bo-generator units on a certain date,
because Borelle Sancho, Hiram
Smith's southern brother, has de-
cided to do thus and so in the matter
of sugar-cane production. Further-
more, Borelle understands that my
thrifty wife will take advantage of
the abundant peach crop and fill all
available jars with peaches — and
sugar. So that when Emanuel Swa-
koski applies for a job at the em-
ployment gate tha^J see in the smoky
valley below me-^s chances are
hardly dependent cm the whim of
some imaginary St<^l Baron.
That is the norirml barometric con-
dition of the Pittsburgh district — the
way the winds blew and the yellow
smoke hung like a fog or vanished
into thin air — before 1914. Soon
after 1914, our barometer burst and
the industrial humidity here has been
immeasurable ; when the sun shines —
or better, when it is hidden by smoke
— it wasn't necessary to hunt up the
weather man to learn the fact. Hiram
Smith has quit dictating to us.
Emanuel Swakoski took Hiram's
place and the old order changed.
Emanuel decided that he would work,
and this is the man that has been
milking the cow with crumpled horn
ever since. Now, since September 22,
1919, Emanuel Swakoski, hardly un-
conscious of his power, is playing
poker in the back lot, and our spare
bedroom carpet is unusually free
from sparkling graphite. The "Kos-
kis" are on a strike and Hiram in
South Dakota, Borelle in Cuba, and
my wife await their pleasure. We
are eating our peaches — cheaper
than canning them at the present
price of sugar!
Pittsburgh is still the industrial
barometer of the world — but we have
a brand new weather man — Mr. Com-
mon Labor.
My family household furnishes a
clear analogy of what is going on
outside. The industrial world keeps
house on the same fundamental basis.
In normal times my thrifty wife puts
as many loaves of bread in the oven
as there will be mouths to fill at the
table on the days following. If we
anticipate visitors, she gets a little
more flour, prepares extra pans, and
utilizes the entire oven — baking six
loaves instead of four. Thus there is
an ensuing period of domestic felicity
and everybody is happy. Supposing
the situation were reversed and that
the number of loaves placed in the
oven were measured in terms of her
personal attitude toward the eaters
at our table. Suppose she should
cultivate a philosophy of "Why
should I bake and the others eat?"
and conduct herself accordingly, what
a mess my home would be in! That
is just where we are to-day in our
industrial households in Pittsburgh
— Emanuel Swakoski questions the
Providence that has placed him at the
furnaces instead of in the front office
with the typewriters and brass cus-
pidors.
I hardly meant to draw my analogy
between Emanuel and the housewife
too close — both are a little sensitive,
but what I mean is that the man that
pours the heat in the giant steel mills
of the Pittsburgh district is as close
to our national economic well-being
as the woman in the home is respon-
sible for our domestic happiness. We
can no more endure to depend on
the whims of the steel worker for
our steel rails and boiler plate than
we can on the notions of our wives
for our suppers. The world must be
fed three times a day and our na-
tional life-blood needs iron. Regard-
less of the competing claims of the
Steel Corporation and the American
Federation of Labor as to the rights
of property and capital and the prin-
ciple of "self-determination" — the
fact stands unmodified by circum-
stances that the future of our eco-
nomic life rests on unlimited produc-
tion of steel. For months the ice that
has been supporting our giant indus-
trial organizations has been getting
perilously thin and, unless labor
ceases to rap at the weak spots on
the pond, the whole structure will go
down with a crash.
What does labor want? The steel
situation furnishes perhaps the most
typical case from which to draw an
inference. If the demands were alike
in the thousand and one strikes that
are incipient from Seattle to Boston
it would be far easier to answer that
January 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[9
question and consequently easier to
find a remedy that would make it
possible to put our houses in order;
but every organized body of strikers
has its own pet grievance. Only the
most radical insist that the underly-
ing trouble is low wages and long
hours. The forty-eight-hour week is
practically universal and even in the
steel mills, where men are working
the twelve-hour shift, they themselves
desire the opportunity to earn the
extra wages for overtime. They do
not want a straight eight-hour day;
they want to work twelve hours on an
eight-hour rate, with time and a half
for overtime and double time for
Sundays and holidays. Granting that
the men object seriously to the 12-
hour shift in the steel mill, labor is
so scarce in Pittsburgh's allied indus-
tries working the 48-hour week that
they can procure 48-hour jobs for the
asking.
Is it more wages? Yes, we all are
unsatisfied with our ircome, even the
executive at $10,000 a year. That is
natural. But it is my firm conviction
that 10 per cent increases each month
from now on until the millennium
would only provoke continued dis-
content and unrest. Contrary to the
wild statements of agitators imported
from without, who have little concern
for or understanding of our peculiar
needs, the steel workers and especial-
ly the common laborers are well paid
— better than ever before in their
lives, and their standard of living is
far higher than their fathers or
grandfathers ever knew. And that is
as it should be!
They are well fed, a dinner con-
sisting of the best boiling piece of
beef in the market, baked beans, hot
biscuit, green corn, and peach pie —
and in abundance. The largest for-
eign boarding house in my neighbor-
hood served that menu last evening.
Some of them drive medium-priced
cars. The banks in the Pittsburgh
district state that the average sav-
ings account of the foreigner laboring
in the steel mills is $300. Jewelers
claim this is an exceptional year be-
cause of foreign-born customers. At
Braddock, the home of a large steel
plant, I counted fifty-two foreigners
last Sunday evening at the station
platform waiting to take the Balti-
more and Ohio to New York, and they
were going to spend their vacations
in Southern Europe. Yet as I write,
with the glare of huge converters in-
termittently giving our hill daylight
and then darkness, I can see thou-
sands of restless, discontented dark
forms crowding the narrow streets in
the valley below. They are steel
workers of foreign extraction out on
a strike. Their objective, according
to the statement of their representa-
tive, is to force Judge Gary to recog-
nize the principle of collective bar-
gaining that industrial oppression
may cease. The spectacle is no longer
novel; almost every industrial com-
munity has been or is infected with
the same malady, but the present
steel strike, because of the diversity
of industries aflfected, is typical of our
whole industrial discontent.
If it isn't fundamentally wages and
hours, what is it they want? Specifi-
cally, they demand of Judge Gary the
right of collective bargaining; he de-
nies it — there is the irresistible force
meeting the immovable body. But
collective bargaining for what?
Shorter hours? More wages? I
think not. Representation in the man-
agement ? Yes, but they already hold
25,000 shares of the company's stock
and have the privilege of buying the
balance at any time they have the
price. I am neither defending nor ac-
cusing either party, the laboring men
or the Steel Corporation; if they
could settle their quarrel in their own
home without affecting the innocent
bystander, well and good — leave them
alone, but they never can — you and I
and every other man must suffer,
and somebody must come along with
a solution, or we perish. I am posi-
tive, however, that the written griev-
ances of labor, not only in Pittsburgh
but over the entire country, are
merely symptoms of a deeper spirit-
ual unrest that is energizing the
strike.
Two years ago I happened to be
working in a munition factory where
the men employed were making un-
heard-of wages. Five hundred dollars
a month was not an uncommon wage
for a machinist who had in the pre-
war days been averaging something
like a hundred and twenty-five dol-
lars a month for the same class of
work. Of course, living was high,
but not accordingly. The work was
hard, but the hours were reasonably
short. Yet with this unheard-of
compensation for semi-skilled labor,
these men were as restless as weath-
ervanes in a March wind. The labor
turnover in that factory was as high
as 65 per cent. The men were de-
cidedly discontented.
Ten years before this, I worked
with a crew of five men on a large
farm in the Middle West. We re-
ceived $1.50 a day, and worked at the
hardest kind of labor from 6 a. m.
until 7 p. m. But these farm hands
"stuck" the entire season, and four
of them were back the next year.
They were the best-feeling crowd of
men that I have ever known, and were
as happy and contented as men can
hope to be.
What is there in the nature of the
presetit-day industrial employment
that has bred such universal restless-
ness and discontent? The demand
for higher wages, for shorter hours,
for improved working conditions, a
share in the management and all of
the other exciting causes of strikes
and labor disturbances are only
symptoms of a deeper industrial mal-
ady which the highest wages and the
shortest hours may relieve but fail to
cure. The munition workers bought
bungalows, touring cars, and dia-
monds. But they, like a million
workers of to-day, were sick at heart.
They were dissatisfied — but why?
There is but one answer. Our social
unrest is a disease of the soul and not
of the pocketbook. Our workingmen
are sick of the monotony of machine
labor.
The hopeless monotony in doing
the same thing hour after hour and
day after day corrodes and smoth-
ers "that little spark of celestial fire"
in every man, until the pressure be-
comes too great, and it bursts into
flame. No one is to blame — the man
at the loom and the lathe to-day is
not the slave to any man or group of
men. He is well paid, and he enjoys
the benefit in the saving effected by
machine production in the price he
pays for his living. The fact that
10]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 34
industry has become so specialized
that his entire day is confined to one
task can not be laid at the door of
any one class of men. The twentieth
century is the responsible party, if
there is one. World necessity has
produced the machine and speciali-
zation, and the ennui and spiritual
sickness, discontent, and revolt are
the natural consequence of our at-
tempt to realize nineteenth century
ideals in a twentieth century world.
A man who works with his hands to-
day is dominated by the God of the
Machine, and whether ownership and
control are vested in the man that
works at the machine or in the man
that distributes its product and
finances its operation is of little
consequence. Millions to-day are
watching the clock — waiting for the
whistle to relieve them from a task
of hopeless drudgery — doing a work
that must be done that men may be
fed, clothed, and housed — someone
else would have to do it if they didn't
— nevertheless such labor takes its
toll in the spirits and souls of men.
Millions find their day's work such.
We live in an age of specialization
and machine production and the he-
roes of to-day and to-morrow are not
men, but dynamos, motors, steam
turbines, automatic machines, giant
cranes, looms, lathes, tractors, gang
saws, and other countless devices that
wear out men and save time and
money.
A chosen few are selected by Des-
tiny to sit in the seats of the mighty
to plan, to conceive, to fashion ideas,
and to create; and this small group
have by virtue of their brains been
blessed with the secret of happiness
— they have the opportunity to in-
dulge their instinct in creative activ-
ity. Theirs is the fascinating end of
the world's work. It is their ideas
that the remainder of mankind must
carry out — must serve masters of
iron and steel that other minds have
fashioned, and serve with little inter-
est. The realization of this fact
drives men mad.
War brought freedom of thought
and action; new faces, lands, work,
duties, interests, values; and now
that it is over, men return to the
order of the day with a keener dis-
taste for the monotony of machine
labor.
But what are you going to do about
it? Shall we destroy our men with
great intellects, burn our factories,
tear down line-shafting and ma-
chines, and revert to the hand labor
of two centuries ago? The world
would starve in a month.
Your great-grandfather was a
shoemaker, made shoes by hand and
worked from 6 a. m. until 9 p. m.
He was his own boss — a glorious es-
tate? Had he the leisure, conven-
ience, comforts, luxuries, and priv-
ileges that we enjoy? The aspira-
tions you have for your children —
those aspirations that are within
your reach — that shoemaker never
dreamed of. The good old days like
distant sails seem whitest.
My grandfather owned a forest of
pine timber, and he and his two sons
cut the entire lot by hand in three
years, hauled the logs to the river,
drove them in the spring floods to the
saw mill one hundred miles distant,
walked home, and after the whcle job
was done and nothing remained but a
barren waste of stumpage, they re-
ceived for their timber delivered an
equivalent of one dollar apiece for
their labor. They furnished the land
and the capital, the market was wide
open and they were not compelled
to sell. Here was none of the evils
of modern industrialism — but they
lived on mush and milk for two long
winters.
It is possible to multiply instances
indefinitely. Machine work is no
worse than cradling wheat, than rais-
ing a barn of crude timbers, than
husking corn, hoeing potatoes, stitch-
ing broadcloth, hammering brass or
grinding knives. We can not step
backward and claim the past as an
improvement over the present.
For the man whose work is neces-
sarily uninteresting, there is but one
solution, provided he has taken care-
ful stock of his capabilities and pos-
sibilities and finds that he must re-
main where he is, and that is to cre-
ate a permanent interest outside of
the shop doing the thing that he likes
to do best. There are but a few who
find their work so absorbing that it
satisfies. In fact, history is filled
with men who have become famous
not because of their vocation, but be-
cause of their "outside" interest. The
discontented man is not discontented
because of what he does, but because
he doesn't know what to do with his
surplus time, so that after several
rounds of the movies, a plate of ice
cream, and a jazz selection on the
phonograph, his store of amusements
is exhausted. It isn't the eight hours
at the machine that makes the anar-
chist ; it's the eight hours of idleness.
The men that succeed in finding the
blue bird of happiness capitalize
these hours of rest — not at work, per-
haps, but at something essentially
satisfying. The Prince of Peace was
a carpenter by trade — and more.
Washington was a surveyor ; Andrew i
Carnegie, a captain of industry — and
a writer, and Theodore Roosevelt, a
statesman and a naturalist.
Man's first duty is to provide food,
clothing, and shelter for his family.
The twentieth century man sacrifices
but eight hours of the twenty-four
for these. Let him call the first eight
hours a sacrifice of time and interest,
and find satisfaction for the desire
of his soul in the other eight. He
should be honest, play square with
his employer, give a full eight hours
of labor; but get enough fun out of
the other eight that when he reports
for work each day he is ready to give
his part to the world's work, and give
it gladly. He should get a hobby and
ride it until it gets stale, and then get
another one. Two-thirds of the day,
three-fifths of the week, two hundred
and nineteen days of the year are his
to spend as he pleases. The machine
has given him this ; no other genera-
tion since time began has the leisure
he has.
In my daily observation of thou-
sands and thousands of men who
work in the mills, I have been im-
pressed with one fundamental fact —
that the spiritual hopelessness writ-
ten on the countenances of so many;
the lines on their drawn faces and
the lack-lustre eyes do not indicate
the physical fatigue that one is apt
on brief acquaintance to pronounce
the cause. The men to-day are not
driven — far from it ; they are salved,
and petted, and coaxed to an unheard-
January 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[U
of degree. A foreman's first in-
struction is to keep his men on the
job, and every means is taken to
make the conditions surrounding him
at his work as wholesome and pleas-
ant as possible. But the new era has
put personality in a steel niche, and
it must stay put, else large-scale pro-
duction is impossible. The strikers
on our streets to-day are men enter-
ing a blind protest against a system
that has taken the fun and romance
out of their work, even though it has
brought them a standard of living su-
perior to the days of individualism.
The same spirit drove our fore-
fathers out upon an unknown sea in
search of a new home in a new land.
The same spirit that forced our im-
mediate ancestors across the Western
plains into the Great West; that
founded Cripple Creek, and Dawson
City, a spirit of romance inherent in
the human race, common to Slav and
Teuton, Greek and English, that pro-
tests against the Machine.
Practically, the industrial salva-
tion of the United States rests on the
reestablishment of the normal order
of supply and demand as a determi-
nant for production and employment.
It is the only safe method in com-
merce, and our continued prosperity
as a democratic country depends upon
an unhampered functioning of nat-
ural economic forces. Government
regulation is necessary, but deliber-
ative interference either by capital
or labor is dangerous. Labor to-day
holds the trumps, and unless it plays
them for the common weal we are
lost. Some plan must be found
whereby men may become interested
in their day's work — this is funda-
mental. It is a twentieth-century
problem, and history gives us no
clue to the solution.
David Harold Colcord
The Social Unit at Cincinnati
Is It a Soviet?
rpHE advertising manager of a
•■• great public utilities corporation,
an enthusiast about the Social Unit
plan, was discussing it the other day
with the city editor of a New York
daily. The latter repeated the charge
made against the Social Unit last
spring by Cincinnati's mayor. "It
is a soviet," he said. The advertising
man retorted quickly, "On the con-
trary, it is quite different. A soviet
is formed in a neighborhood to sepa-
rate the classes, the Social Unit is
formed in a neighborhood to get the
classes to work together."
This charge by Cincinnati's mayor,
occasionally repeated since, is a very
superficial one. There is a slight re-
semblance between the form of or-
ganization of the Social Unit and that
of the Russian soviet. There is an
equal similarity between it and the
plans of the National Guilds in Eng-
land. On the other hand, it has quite
as noticeable a resemblance to the
New England Town Meetings. More-
over, if all organizations are to be
condemned which bear this outward
and superficial resemblance to the
soviet, or some other form of organi-
zation distrusted in America, we
should have completely to reorganize
our social life. The village govern-
ments of many of our small towns
are similar in organization to the
rural Soviets. The Chambers of Com-
merce of our cities might be lightly
referred to as Soviets of business
men, and the shop committee being
introduced into many forward-look-
ing business concerns in America
with equal accuracy as "working-
men's councils." That the application
of such a title to these movements
would of itself affect their character
is absurd. They must be judged, not
by some superficial similarity to this
movement or that, but by their spirit,
their purpose, and the function which
they are performing in relation to
American life. This is the way in
which the Social Unit must be judged.
The questions which thoughtful peo-
ple will ask are: "What is the
philosophy underlying this plan?
How is it being applied? Does it meet
a need in American democracy?
What have been its results thus far?"
The Social Unit philosophy is dis-
tinctly not the Bolshevist philosophy,
which I understand to be based upon
the Marxian conception of the class
struggle leading to the establishment
of a dictatorship of the proletariat.
The Social Unit has no a priori social,
political, or economic programme.
Its philosophy is based upon the con-
ception that the collective intelli-
gence of the whole community — not
any one section or part — so organized
that it can continuously express it-
self, is to be relied upon as against
the will or intelligence of any indi-
vidual, group, or class. This platform
of principles has been published
again and again in official statements
issued by the National Social Unit
Organization, and a study of the
Social Unit plan of Community Or-
ganization, and of the experimental
application of that plan in a section
of Cincinnati, shows how consistent-
ly that philosophy has been put into
action.
In the Mohawk-Brighton district
— ^the first Social Unit — the whole
population has been divided into
"blocks" or units of about 100 fami-
lies. Each of these blocks has an
elected "Council" of seven members
who in turn select a representative
to sit on the central Citizens' Council,
which is a sort of neighborhood legis-
lature.
All men and women over eighteen
years of age are eligible to vote in
the election of the block councils.
Residence in the block is the only
requirement, and proportional repre-
sentation is used in order to give a
voice to the minority. Surely this is
all in the spirit of the Declaration of
Independence, the Bill of Rights, and
the Old Fashioned Town Meeting —
direct democracy.
In addition to this "Citizens' Coun-
cil," which, inasmuch as it represents
the entire population, is always the
more powerful body, there is an "Oc-
cupational Council," made up of the
elected representatives of those groups
which serve the community in some
special capacity. Theoretically there
is no limit to what groups may or-
ganize as part of this council. Any
group may join the body through its
elected representatives. Actually the
12]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 34
groups which have been formed in
the Mohawk-Brighton district are
those for whose services the people
have felt a special and immediate
need — physicians and nurses to help
them plan a community health pro-
gramme; social workers to help
remedy flagrant community evils;
teachers, recreational workers, and
ministers. The district hopes to or-
ganize this year a trades-union group
and a businessmen's group. This has
not yet been done, although a busi-
nessman and a trade-unionist are
regularly called into the deliberations
of the Councils.
It should be noticed that these oc-
cupational groups are organized not
on the basis of representation, pri-
marily, but upon the basis of render-
ing efficient community service.
Whatever programmes they devise
must, before they are foisted upon
the community, bear the analysis of
the Citizens' Council, that intimate
organization of all the people in all
the blocks. The object of the occu-
pational group organization is to
bring skill to democracy by making
it possible for the whole body of
specialized intelligence to serve all
of the people.
If there were not a need for some
such plan it would be difficult to ex-
plain the way in which the Social
Unit conception has laid hold upon
the imagination of the American peo-
ple, and upon the interest of some
of the most thoughtful men and
women in the country. People from
many States and representatives of
many different organizations recent-
ly spent three days in Cincinnati dis-
cussing in the minutest way the bear-
ing of this plan upon business, labor,
the social programmes of many pro-
fessional groups, and the whole
future of American democracy. I
know of no other movement so
limited in the scope of its actual
operations — for so far the only exist-
ing Social Unit has been buried in a
section embracing only about a
thirtieth of Cincinnati — which could
have attracted such attention or
brought together so eminent a group
of people for purposes of discussion.
I take the reason for this interest
to be that the Social Unit plan aims
in a very simple and common-sense
way to meet some of the very obvious
needs in our democracy. We need,
for instance, to develop a public mind
— an intelligent public opinion. The
Social Unit points out that such a
public mind does not develop from
mobs — it comes as the result of
studied consideration of public prob-
lems by small groups. The Social
Unit plan aims so to organize neigh-
borhoods that public questions can
be brought into their little councils
and discussed in the light of the
acknowledged needs of the people.
We need also to create a mecha-
nism through which the public can
have a power equal at least to that of
organized capital and organized la-
bor. At present capital and labor,
both more strongly organized than
ever before, are reaching a deadlock,
and between them the public, the
democracy, unorganized, is helpless.
Community organization, if it is
thorough and embraces the whole
population in small units, would
bring the public to the point where
it could control capital and labor in-
stead of these controlling it.
We need community organization
in order to develop leaders — real
statesmen and women who get their
earliest training close to the people
whom they must serve and lead. It
is not insignificant that the most suc-
cessful men in all walks of life to-day
come from small towns, where they
were not in youth lost in the crowd,
but important members of the life
of the community. In a village every
person is important. It is in the vast,
complex, city life of modern times
that the individual begins to feel that
he is nothing, and with that feeling
comes that loss of responsibility and
public interest which is the menace
of democracy. The Social Unit aims
to restore some of the attributes of
village life to city dwellers.
Finally, we need community or-
ganization under some such plan as
the Social Unit, to find a fundamental
remedy for curable social ills. The
day of charity and paternalism is
past. What we need is a more effec-
tive mechanism through which all the
latent good-will, knowledge and skill
of the community can be brought to
study the problems of the community
and devise programmes to meet those
problems. In the Mohawk-Brighton
district the community has been
studying its own health needs, and
people and experts, working together,
have planned and carried out a re-
markable public health programme.
The important thing about that pro-
gramme has not been the statistical
results — the number of babies cared
for, tuberculosis cases discovered,
etc., although these outward results
are very brilliant and have attracted
the attention of public health authori-
ties in many places. The important
thing is that the people have done it
themselves, that the doing' of it has
been a constant process of education,
and that the conscience of the whole
community is behind the programme.
The Social Unit is not the only
movement which is aiming to meet
these needs. In New York the Com-
munity Councils are headed toward
the same objective, using a more
extensive organization. The Social
Unit, however, is attempting to find
by research and experimentation the
best possible community programme,
and offers its findings to any com-
munity which chooses to use them.
The president of the National Com-
munity Center Association recently
said, "The Social Unit is the most
sustained, carefully measured, deeply
imagined plan and effort of com-
munity organization in the country
to-day."
Of course it is still experimental,
and will continue to be. It must be
applied to a wider variety of popula-
tion and tested in a greater number
of fields of social effort before any
final and comprehensive conclusions
can be drawn. Meanwhile, however,
it is without question contributing
largely to social thinking and
influencing community organization
everywhere in the direction of more
careful and constructive effort. The
results thus far prove to be a very
hopeful experiment. This, I think,
no one will deny, unless it be those
groups who fear not Bolshevism or
socialism, but democracy.
Katrina Ely Tiffany
Chairman, National Citizens' Council of the
National Social Unit Organization
January 3, 1920]
thp: review
Correspondence
The Trouble with the
Greenbacks
To the Editors of The Review:
I have read the article of Mr. Roberts
in the Review of November 22, and be-
lieve that the approval by Frederick
Strauss is too extreme. Mr. Roberts says
much that is first rate, and I approve of
most of what he says; but I disapprove
of what he says about the greenbacks
issued during the Civil War. In my
humble judgment, the depreciation of the
greenback was because of the exceptions
placed thereon, that it should be received
for all debts both public and private, "ex-
cept for duties on imports and interest
on the public debt." That gave the
money centres in Wall Street a chance to
corner gold and to set their own price on
it, whenever anyone had to pay duties in
imports or interest on the public debt.
Had it not been for the exceptions, the
greenback would have remained at par
with gold. We are told that during the
forepart of that war there was about
$60,000,000 of paper issued, called "black-
caps." It was like the greenback,
but it had no exceptions as to any
kind of payments, and when gold was at
a premium of $2.85, the blackcap stood
even with gold. The two stood together,
because they were full legal tenders.
The difference between the gold value
and the greenback value was largely, if
not entirely, a forced difference because
the gold speculators had the power and
actually ran a corner on gold. If our
present currency had an exception on it
like the greenback, who can doubt that
gold would now be at a premium ; and as
it has not an exception on it, the gold
and paper rises and falls with the rise
and fall of commodities on the market.
I agree with Mr. Roberts that inflation
is the principal thing that causes the rise
in prices, although there are other mat-
ters to be considered, but the matter of
contraction should be carefully consid-
ered, for the people throughout the coun-
try who buy property at the inflated
prices will suffer a ruinous loss of prop-
erty, and in many, many cases absolute
financial ruin, and a tremendous panic
will ensue, if there be any great contrac-
tion of the currency.
L. A. HOLLENBECK
Duchesne, Utah, December 20
[The early notes issued in the Civil
War, to which our correspondent refers,
differed from the greenbacks in a more
important respect than that of being re-
ceivable for duties on imports; they were
redeemable in gold on demand, and all
but $33,000,000 were retired before the
[18
suspension of specie payments. As they
were not reissued when received by the
Treasury in payment of dues, they soon
ceased to be a factor of any importance.
To what extent, if at all, the greenbacks
were depreciated by the fact that they
were not receivable for customs is a mat-
ter of conjecture. They were accepted
for all other taxes, besides being a legal
tender in payment of ordinary debts.
The idea that the depreciation of green-
backs— as a standing phenomenon, what-
ever may have been true of exceptional
moments of panic or the like— was caused
by "a comer in gold" has no foundation
whatever in fact. Irredeemable paper
money, not being tied to gold by any
fixed arrangement, is naturally subject to
such depreciation; whether it actually
takes place or not, and if so to what ex-
tent, is all a matter of the circumstances
of the time and the quantity of the issue.
The Continental p^per money of the
American Revolution period went so low
as to give rise to the phrase "not worth
a Continental," which still survives as an
expression for utter worthlessness ; and
at this day all the chief nations of Europe
are experiencing, each in its degree, the
depreciation which is invited by the cir-
culation of paper representatives of
money that can not be exchanged on de-
mand for real money — that is, coin.
— Eds. The Review]
Atmosphere on the Concert
Stage
To the Editors of The Review:
There is nothing more stately or at-
mospheric than a piano or a violin reci-
tal in any of our concert halls. Usually
the stage, save for a huge leviathan of
a piano, is bare of everything, a desert
of hardwood boards, surrounded by a
more or less dingy back wall. The lights
are of course turned on full power. It
is mid-noon on the Sahara, without the
mystery of the sand. The performer
emerges through a door in the back wall
and moves towards his instrument. He
moves stiffly, he bows stifHy. He seats
himself at the leviathan and begins to
play. Probably he plays very beauti-
fully, for the spirit of the artist is all-
conquering. He conquers himself and
he conquers a part of the audience, but
the larger portion only half hears him.
The atmosphere is as hard as the bare
boards of the stage. If it is Liszt that
he plays it is not so bad. Liszt wrote
for the virtuoso who must be seen as
well as heard, in short, he wrote for
himself. But if it is Beethoven or
Chopin?
There are a few happy souls who have
heard Paderewski or Hofmann play
Chopin by candle-light in an Italian
drawing-room. They have heard Chopin
as Chopin was meant to be played. All
they hear henceforth will be as tinkling
brass and sounding cymbals. They have
tasted Paradise, and never in the concert
hall will they again be happy. They
have realized the truth of the aristoc-
racy of art, and because of that realiza-
tion they will forever more be discon-
tented. They have paid the price for
their selfishness in enjoying what others
can not enjoy. But these are not to be
considered. Henceforth the kingdom of
art must be to the masses, and the
masses know nothing of Italian drawing-
rooms by candle-light. But the masses
do know the concert hall, and the stage
bare of all save the black leviathan.
And the masses, despite their inarticu-
lateness, realize that all is not right, that
Chopin and Beethoven are not in sur-
roundings where their spirit is at home.
And it is just here that the new art
of the stage, the art of Gordon Craig,
Max Reinhardt, and Robert Edmund
Jones, of soft draperies and changing
lights, might very well prove of extraor-
dinary benefit.
The movies have already discovered
it, and let us not mock at the movies.
The Rialto and Rivoli theatres and now
the Capitol Theatre have done and are
doing an immense service in educating
the people in the love of good music.
At these theatres admirable orchestras
play under capable leaders, but to the
service of the music has also been
brought a very high ideal of scenic art.
The settings devised at the Rivoli and
Capitol theatres for the musical num-
bers have been executed by John Wen-
ger, one of the ablest of the younger
scenic artists, an artist who is also an
excellent musician. Mr. Wenger's idea
has been to place his audience in the
mood of the particular composition with-
out distracting its attention from the
music itself. He has done this with
simple draperies of a neutral color,
lighted within by a series of lights.
There is nothing precieux in his scheme,
and those who have attended any of
these theatres realize that it is eminently
practical.
Now what has been proved practical
at the Rivoli and the Capitol is equally
practical in the concert hall, and the fact
that Mr. Hofmann and Mr. Heifetz do
not play in the movies is no argument
against a reform which may come from
there. Mr. Hofmann or Mr. Heifetz on
the stage of Carnegie Hall with that
stage transformed by soft draperies,
with the auditorium lights lowered, and
the music coming out to us as from some
mysterious grotto, perhaps that would
not possess all the atmosphere of an Ital-
ian drawing-room by candle-light, but it
would be none the less a far more appro-
priate home for the spirit of Chopin and
Beethoven than the present setting.
Grenville Vernon
New York, December 10
14]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 34
Book Reviews
Germany — Misjudged or
Found Out?
Germany's New War Against America. By
Stanley Frost, of the New York Tribune.
With an Introduction by Hon. A. Mitchell
Palmer, Attorney-General of the United
States, formerly .Alien Property Cus-
todian. New York: E. P. Dutton and
Company.
MOST readers of economics, having by
nature and training large faith in
the essential goodness of man, will take
this book with a grain of salt, even as
most students of international politics
before the war were slow to believe that
Germany was planning the conquest of
the world. And yet, in view of all that
has happened during the past five years,
it may be well to consider whether Mr.
Frost is regaling the public with mere
cock-and-bull stories, or whether there
really is danger that Germany, defeated
in the war, may begin a new offensive in
the industrial field.
Mr. Palmer, who has had exceptional
opportunity of observing German com-
mercial methods, says that industrial
Germany was responsible for the war,
that her destinies are still in the hands
of the old leaders, that her aims and am-
bitions are still the same, and that the
industrial invasion of America, which
was begun many years ago with hostile
intent, is about to be resumed along the
old lines. At Mr. Palmer's suggestion,
and for the purpose of forestalling the
coming offensive, the Chemical Founda-
tion, Inc., was organized, which pur-
chased the 4,500 German-owned patents
in the United States, and he appeals to
the business men of America for help in
the work of making this country com-
mercially free. Evidently, then, Mr.
Frost's book is a plea for the protection
of certain infant industries temporarily
fostered by the war, especially the manu-
facture of dyes, potash, drugs, and other
chemicals, against the efforts of Germany
to regain her former preeminence. For
all that, the indictment which the author
brings against Germany on the score of
unethical trade practices is formidable,
and should not be lightly dismissed.
One of Germany's most characteristic
methods of pushing her foreign trade
was the insidious propaganda in favor
of everything German disseminated by
countless agents placed in strategic posi-
tions throughout the world. Besides the
regular consular service and traveling
agents there were employees in banks,
insurance companies, railway shipping
companies, engineering firms, mines, fac-
tories, mercantile houses — all promoting
the sale of German goods, collecting and
reporting useful information, and, in
general, working for the prestige of
Deutschtum im Ausland: The informa-
tion sent in by these industrious agents
was carefully sifted and communicated
to the manufacturers and merchants of
Germany by a special bureau, the Schim-
melpfeng Institut, controlled and financed
by the great banks, especially the four
"Big D" banks, the Deutsche, Dresdner,
Disconto, and Darmstadter. Mr. Palmer
declares that almost every German dye
and chemical expert in America was a
spy. Dr. S. Herzog, whose book, "The
Future of German Industrial Export,"
reminds one of Bernhardi's naive and
cynical candor, freely admits the neces-
sity of securing reports on every kind of
commercial secret. Professor Henri
Hansen, in his book on "Germany's Com-
mercial Grip on the World," states that
by means of universal espionage, coupled
with bribery and intimidation, Germany
had built up an industrial power nearly
as formidable as the military machine.
Only a stroke of madness, he says, could
have made her prefer the hazard of battle
to this progressive and sure infiltration,
which, in another ten or twenty years
of apparent quite material peace, would
have created, economically speaking, a
German world.
In showing how Germany intrenched
her industrial position in America and
elsewhere, Mr. Frost has much to say
about full-line forcing, boycotting, and
scientific dumping in certain selected in-
dustries. For example, H. A. Metz & Co.,
an American firm, was obliged to agree
not to buy or sell products competing
with those of the Hoechst Color Co. with-
out obtaining their consent. The Ger-
mans have time and again cut the prices
on bicarbonate of potash, aniline oil,
salicylic acid, oxalic acid, and other
chemicals, only to restore them after
competition was destroyed. The great
Kalisyndikat is said to have $100,000,000
worth of potash ready to dump on the
American market. The manufacture of
dyes, as is well known, is intimately con-
nected with the manufacture of explo-
sives, and was part of Germany's prepa-
ration for war. Before the war, storing
explosives, she kept down the price of
dyes; during the war, on the contrary,
making explosives, she was storing dyes.
It is estimated that $100,000,000 worth
of dyes — four times the normal annual
consumption of America — is ready for
export through Copenhagen, and already
"neutral" agents are selling dyes in Italy
at half price.
The author gives a long list of Ger-
many's questionable trade practices in
order to indicate the lines along which
the new war is likely to be carried on.
The Metalgesellschaft and allied firms,
through their vast interests in America,
?.s in all other mining countries, exer-
cised a strong control over prices and
fu'-nished Germany with the sinews of
war. The great cartels in the bar-iron
trade, tools and implements, silk products
and other textiles, were and still are
powerful instruments for the promotion
of foreign trade. German and Austro-
Hungarian companies made a specialty of
reinsurance throughout the world, and
used the information thus obtained to
the injury of their customers. Discrim-
inations in freights by land and sea were
used to overcome tariff barriers and thus
to gain an unfair advantage over com-
petitors. More than 200,000 German
agents are said to be in Russia, where
they are buying up industries ruined by
their Bolshevik friends; while other
agents are doing similar work in Mexico.
The agitation in favor of wooden ships
was kept alive by German influence for
obvious reasons. German trade will be
resumed through neutral channels and
her commodities denationalized or camou-
flaged under neutral colors. Even now
Germans are buying up bankrupt con-
cerns in Switzerland and other neutral
countries and running them under the
original names. Only a small part of
German-owned property in America has
been found by the Alien Property Cus-
todian. The former German agents are
all here and ready to resume operations
— in fact, the propaganda machine is al-
ready at work, preparing the American
mind for the imminent industrial inva-
sion.
All this is very plausible and almost
convincing, yet withal quite upsetting to
one's mental balance as one wonders at the
astute perversity of the Germans on the
one hand, and the stupid incompetence of
the rest of the world on the other. If
all that the author says is true, how was
it that Great Britain and the United
States, for example, had any foreign
trade at all? And is it possible that Ger-
many, after the late disastrous war, is
still gay and fresh and ready for a morn-
ing's promenade to the industrial mas-
tery of the world ? And how can she af-
ford to dump on so large a scale? And
has the United States no means of meet-
ing German competition other than high
tariffs and stringent import licenses?
And must the farmers and textile manu-
facturers be penalized in order that a
small group of people interested in dyes
and potash may be nourished by these
infant industries? And is Germany to
have no export trade at all? And if so,
how will she pay the indemnities and
at the same time escape the threatened
social revolution?
Yet, when all is said, the fact remains
that Germany has lost her good name
among the nations, and it is safe to proph-
esy that for many years her every move
will be watched with suspicion, and few
will be found to give her the benefit of a
doubt. Possibly the world is misjudging
Germany; perhaps it is only finding her
out.
J. E. Le Rossignol
January 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[15
Sea Tales
The Sea Bride. By Ben Ames Williams.
New York : The Macmillan Company.
The Passage of the Barque Sappho. By
J. E. Patterson. New York: E. P. But-
ton and Company.
THERE have been many sea-stories of
recent invention, tales of naval life,
yarns of mutiny, shipwreck, and buried
treasure, farcical "exploitations" of the
nautical atmosphere, and here and there
a narrative conveying something of its
true glamour. What we are always look-
ing for in sea-fiction as in other fiction
is not something new in kind, but some-
thing fresh in quality. Novelty is still
a good thing in a novel; but who really
cares much for a new shaking of the old
bag of tricks, even by the most expert
hands? A new voice, a new intonation
barely — how clear (for those who have
ears) they ring above or beyond the
brisk, clever, and monotonous chorus of
whatever latest "school" of story-tellers,
as also, let us confess, above the de-
lightful but already familiar notes of in-
dependent performers. Conrad's sea-
spell is still potent; but our submission
to it is now tolerably deliberate and
placid. After all, there is no last word
in magic, men will be searching new sea
charms, and land charms, while land
and sea remain. Mr. Hergesheimer
found one for us in "Java Head," a sea
story which happens to take place ashore.
More recently, in "All the Brothers Were
Valiant," a new writer, Ben Ames Wil-
liams, seemed to have found one, slight
but authentic. A yarn, if you like, wild
and romantic and improbable, but true
enough with the smell of the sea and the
vibration of youth trembling towards its
destiny. . . . Perhaps the novelette is
this writer's natural medium, as I think
it is Mr. Hergesheimer's. "The Sea
Bride" labors towards bulk at the expense
of quality. In gist it weighs about even
with the earlier story. On the larger
scale the artifice of its love story is pat-
ent; and unfortunately the writer's Jack-
Londonish tendency towards unmeaning
or slightly sadistic goriness takes on un-
pleasant emphasis.
In "The Passage of the Barque Sap-
pho" most American readers may taste
a quite new savor. Often of late some
American publisher has produced with a
flourish from his English-made hat a
brand-new and fullgrown rabbit, some
British novelist with a string of books
behind him and a marvelous reputation
at home. We have never heard of him.
He has been hidden from us till he and
we should be ripe for meeting. Usually
he turns out to be another of the same —
another clever, flouting, excitable player
of the Wellsian game, whether with Ox-
ford or Cockney accent. Patterson is a
writer, and a man, of a totally different
order. We get an interesting glimpse of
him in "Who's Who," which found him
worth mention as far back, at least, as
1914. Born in 1866 (within a month of
H. G. Wells), a Yorkshireman ; ran
away to sea at thirteen, and knocked
about the world till thirty : deep sea fish-
ery, merchant service, naval reserve;
crippled by rheumatism, came to London,
became an obscure actor and an approved
journalist; wrote some fifteen books of
verse and prose, mainly ballads, sketches,
and tales of the sea or its shores. And
now, with this posthumous publication
(he died a year or two ago), a Dent book
imported by Dutton rather than pub-
lished here, we get our first chance at
him. The obvious comparison would be
with Conrad, and it has been drawn. He
shares with Conrad an early and long
experience of the sea, a power of vivid
description, and a serene indifference to
the mechanism of "plot." A more direct
relation might conceivably be traced, if it
were worth tracing. But no one would
justly accuse the slightly younger man of
imitating the elder. He moves on a more
humdrum plane, his own plane of feeling
and observation. It is a male plane:
there is no woman aboard the Barque
Sappho to becloud the simple issues be-
tween man and man or between man and
his other friend and opponent, the sea.
And this is a story of men at sea dealing
with each other rather than, as w.e often
feel in Conrad's tales, a story of the sea
dealing with men. Patterson's men are
more closely bound to each other for good
and ill, by love and hatred, a floating com-
munity of interdependent and inter-con-
scious souls, instead of (as in Conrad)
a bundle of lonely and reticent individ-
uals, united in the main for duty, for
offensive warfare against the common
enemy. Nature, but otherwise isolate
and even desolate, peering over their
shoulders at each other now and then,
but for the most part fated to stand,
back to back, gazing each over his own
reach of misty sea-scape and life-scape,
into — what ?
Conrad would have made a more haunt-
ing and tragic figure of the Sappho's poor
old skipper, and with the two who take
turns at the narrative he might have
dealt more subtly; but the rest of her
crew would have remained figures dim
if carefully blocked out, the necessary
and natural background for his concen-
trated spiritual action. Patterson gives
us the run of the ship. A mixed lot of
shipmates we set sail with from 'Frisco,
but in the course of our long voyage with
them round the Horn they become, every
one of them, companions and familiars;
created each after his kind and not to
be escaped from, however much they may
bore or offend us at times, till the voy-
age ends. Unluckily for the writer's
realistic method, his knowledge of dialect
is not accurate. We can not challenge
his Scotch negro, and his Yorkshire
Smiley is evidently beyond cavil; but a
stranger lingo than that attributed to the
American, "Booster," would be hard to
imagine, even in the novel of a Briton.
There is crudity here, and elsewhere, in
the book; but elsewhere chiefly of the
kind that enhances verisimilitude, the
sort of artlessness Defoe studied as a
trick. Nobody would do or say quite
that (we feel) in a work of art: ergo,
it must be true. So our fine theory of
the higher transmuted fact receives an
apparent setback. . . . But it is a
momentary illusion that does not belie the
shaping hand. Literally and laboriously
as we seem to be following the uncertain
fortunes of the Sappho, sparing as the
voyage is of high dramatic moments, it
involves and concerns us beyond wish or
thought of escape till we have seen it
through. Its effect is slow and cumula-
tive, like Conrad's; and though it lacks
his unearthly poise, his effortless hand
at the wheel, it gains, for compensation,
an ingenuous warmth we need only re-
spond, not rise to.
H. W. BOYNTON
Maeterlinck's "Presences"
Mountain Paths. By Maurice Maeterlinck.
Translated by Alexander Teixeira de
Mattos. New York : Dodd, Mead & Co.
MAETERLINCK'S "Mountain Path.s,"
a volume of essays, is brief, but it
possesses an abundance and diversity
which almost debar it, or exempt it,
from review. The criticism of its vari-
ous topics seriatim is prevented by their
abundance; the selection of repre.sent-
ative topics for criticism is precluded by
their diversity. What can one say of an
essay on Karma that can be pertinently
said of an essay on insects? What gen-
eralization is spacious enough to em-
brace an essay on gambling and a story
of three unknown Belgian heroes in the
outreach of its hospitable curve? It
would be easy but ignominious to escape
from the confusion by calling the book
a miscellany. The book is not a miscel-
lany; it is a book that brings largeness
and delicacy, penetration and reverence,
to the successive examination of many
primary and a few secondary problems.
How is criticism to find a centre?
The perplexity is serious, but a partial
and imperfect clew may be found in
Maeterlinck's fondness for indwellings,
for what may be called by a word whose
vagueness is part of its justness, pres-
ences. One mind in another, one life in
another— that is a quite peculiai- interest
of Maeterlinck's. Sometimes the indweller
is more like a being, sometimes more like
a thought; but as being it seems alwayu
ready to dissolve into thought, as
thought always ready to condense into
being. In the first essay, the "Power of
the Dead," it is the dead in us, the dead
16]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 34
being halfway between memories and
ghosts. In the "Soul of Nations" it is
"floating forces," mystic reservoirs, de-
posits extrinsic to the nation's mind and
character, celestial armories from which
weapons are drawn in hours of crisis.
"In "Macrocosm and Microcosm" the
human body is pictured as a sort of ark
in which all the animal life of all periods
is lodged for indefinite preservation. In
"Heredity and Preexistence" it is the
occupancy of our souls by ancestors and
descendants that furnishes the theme.
In "Karma" it is the past self that in-
habits and controls the present.
Maeterlinck in all these beliefs is a
poet, a rare and intimate poet. This is
the explanation of his remarkable incre-
dulities and his still more remarkable
credulities. On the question of com-
munications from spirits he discloses a
hesitancy, a skepticism, which is very
surprising at the first view and very nat-
ural at the second. Maeterlinck craves
the poetry, and when the celestial vis-
itant becomes an interlocutor and vis-a-
vis, when he, in effect, presents his card
and unpacks his verbal merchandise, he
assumes to Maeterlinck's protesting gaze
the prosaicism of a commercial traveler.
It is taste perhaps rather than sense that
steadies Maeterlinck in these special
bogs and quicksands; he is prompt
enough in his surrender to unreason
where his imagination is caught by its
mystery and beauty. For instance, in
"Heredity and Preexistence" he ven-
tures to propound the theory that we are
as much influenced by our posterity as
by our ancestors, to put it tersely, that
we are the children of our descendants.
There is no abstract objection to the
notion that causes should work backward
as well as forward in the same fashion
in which they act with equal facility
from right to left and from left to right ;
but there is the very strong, indeed the
quite decisive, practical objection that
the inductive evidence is all the other
way.
The truth is that in Maeterlinck as in
Plato there are two men, a dialectician
and a mystic, though in the Belgian, as
in the Greek, it is a visionary dialectician
who shares his habitat with a rationaliz-
ing mystic. Everywhere in this book one
feels the fascination which negations
possess for Maeterlinck's critical subtlety
and the empire which affirmations retain
or regain over his impulse to honor and
revere. There are passages of critical
insight in the volume which the noblest
thinkers of our race might have rejoiced
to father. Take, for instance, the fifth
section in the "Great Revelation," in
which Maeterlinck defends the appalling
thesis that any ultimate doctrine which
was great enough to be commensurate
with the truth would be too great to have
any congruence with our faculties. Sense
and profundity combine to overwhelm us.
Yet Maeterlinck always reserves a hope,
suggests an extrication. One might crit-
icise his optimism perhaps as a little too
versatile ; he feels moved every five years
or so to revise his pact with the uni-
verse. At present his hope turns towards
Karma.
Karma, which Maeterlinck, in one of
his serene ecstasies, describes as the
most beautiful and reassuring doctrine
that the mind of man has imagined, is a
form of justice which makes man's con-
dition nothing more nor less than the
result, or, if one pleases, the footing or
aggregate, of all his actions, the sins
counting as minuses, the good acts as
pluses, in the calculation of his present
welfare. Reincarnation, its vivid and
poetic accompaniment, is apparently un-
related to the essence of the system. Re-
incarnation, it would almost seem, is an
adjunct, an amendment, a postscript, a
convenience for getting around the un-
mistakable disparity between Karma and
the superficial facts. Justice is a rela-
tion between two terms. Put the two
terms, conduct and welfare, for example,
side by side in the same life, and the
facts are clearly unmanageable. But it
is still possible to believe in the univer-
sality of justice if you will separate the
terms 4"d conceal their relation by put-
ting them in distinct lives. The locks on
hand do not fit the keys on hand, but
optimism vindicates the locksmith by the
charitable supposition of absent keys and
locks to which the visible fittings are
duly complemental. Maeterlinck himself,
whose views are rather criticised than
reproduced in the foregoing sentences,
admits that Karma is only an hypothesis ;
but is content to accept an hypothesis,
which, as he truly says, is irrefutable,
and which is food and comfort to his
aspirations.
It is doubtful if in the general ca-
pacity or in the depth and subtlety of
particular insights, any philosopher has
surpassed Maeterlinck. System, of course,
he lacks, but what system as a system
has ever imposed its cumbrousness upon
mankind? Truth in philosophy is per-
ceived, is consumed, in particulars. The
analogy with bread is instructive. Hu-
manity takes small grains of wheat or
smaller flakes of flour, makes them into
a large loaf, which can not be digested
until it has been crumbed by the fingers
and ground by the teeth. A system is
just such a loaf. Maeterlinck's true im-
perfection lies elsewhere. Philosophy,
being, when all is said and done, a human
product looking toward a human end, is
finally conditioned by the largeness and
robustness of the philosopher's human-
ity. It may be abstract and passionless,
as an eye is cool and pellucid, but the
eye no less than the abdomen is nour-
ished by the blood. Maeterlinck lacks
neither humanity nor experience; the
only question is whether he possesses
them in a degree correspondent with the
splendor of his own gift for abstraction
or the requirements of philosophies that
endure.
Chinese Art
Outlines of Chinese Art. By John L. Fer-
guson. The Scammon Lectures for 191&
Published for the Art Institute of Chi-
cago by the University of Chicago Press.
THE collector of Chinese art soon comes
to the dilemma that he must trust
either his daemon or the Chinese. On
this issue Dr. Ferguson takes a firm
stand. His approach to the subject is
literary, traditional, exclusively Chinese.
His loyalty knows no shrinking. He
treats calligraphy as of equal dignity with
sculpture or painting; he excludes with
an almost contemptuous brevity the
stately statues of Gandhara type because
they are exotic and the Chinese think
little of them. He is as enthusiastic
about the feeling of jade as he is about
the quality of a primitive landscape. In
Chinese fashion he exalts bronzes and
slurs ceramics, while old inscribed stones
seem more important than the master-
pieces of the imported Buddhistic school.
Compared with our author, such Far-
Eastern critics as Seichi-taki and the late
Okakura Kakuzo are fairly cosmopolitan
in their sympathies, while the lamented
Ernest Fenollosa, Laurence Binyon, and
Alfred Morrison appear as mere eclectics.
We have emphasized the unbending
character of Dr. Ferguson's Sinophily
because it constitutes at once the limita-
tion and the positive strength of his
work. There is no book which tells so
briefly and accurately, on the basis of
first-hand knowledge, precisely how the
best-trained Chinese regard their own
art. Their interest ceases with the Yuan
dynasty, so does Dr. Ferguson's. They
care as much for famous seals or eulogies
of noted critics or collectors on a scroll
as they do for the painting itself. Their
systematic criticism and archaeology ex-
tends over fifteen hundred years, begin-
ning at a moment when our Teutonic
forebears, without an alphabet or an art
to remember, were just beginning to be
uneasy in their Baltic fens.
One can not but respect so long a tradi-
tion of culture, yet many of its results
look just about as trustworthy and im-
portant as the Alexandrine dabblings in
rhetoric and criticism. For a thousand
years China has been in an Alexandrine
condition, and any real study of her art
must transcend the Chinese tradition. In
particular, the collector who trusts over-
much to signatures, seals, and eulogies,
neglecting that subjective appreciation
January 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[17
which our author wholly distrusts, will
have more literary evidences of Chinese
art in his godowns than Chinese art it-
self. Dr. Ferguson's collections have
been exhibited, and many pieces have
passed into museums. The average qual-
ity of these paintings is calculated to en-
courage the amateur who in the first in-
stance trusts his daemon, while cautious-
ly enlisting in his quest all available Chi-
nese lore.
As a guide to the collector we can not
unreservedly recommend this book. As
a solid and entertaining means of infor-
mation it deserves all praise. Numerous
unhackneyed illustrations add to its value
and constitute its chief appeal to the spe-
cialist.
The Run of the Shelves
EASY-CHAIR strategists will find
abundant food for thought and argu-
ment in William L. McPherson's "The
Strategy of the Great War" (Putnam).
The book grows out of the remarkable
comment which Mr. McPherson wrote
week by week for the New York Trib-
une. He is a convinced Easterner.
The great failure of the Allies was to
strike soft at Gallipoli. Equally the
great error of Germany was to seek the
impossible on the Western front, while
neglecting to consolidate and exploit the
Middle-Europe she had conquered. Her
ultimate and fatal folly was to incur
war with the United States. The French
were blameworthy in maintaining an
initial aggressive in Alsace and in fall-
ing to defend the Northern frontier in
force. The policy of attrition was falla-
cious from the point of view of the En-
tente, and the correct western policy for
Germany from the first. Throughout,
the larger strategy of Germany was
stupid, she threw away out of vanity a
good chance of securing all her political
aims. Such is the general tenor of a
vigorously written book, the upshot of
which is perhaps that a model strategy
is always retrospective, and more easily
compassed in the easy chair than on the
stricken field.
The American poet, John Gould Fletch-
er, who has been residing in England for
the past three years, writes as follows in
a recent letter from London concerning
his relations wih France:
I may say that they are wholly confined to
a great admiration for French literature,
poetry and art. In regard to French literature
my knowledge of it begins with Frangois Vil-
lon, Rabelais, and Montaigne, all three of
whom I greatly admire. With the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries I have never been
able to find myself in sympathy, although I ad-
mit the supreme artistry and polish of Moliere
and La Fontaine; the sombre concision and
mysticism of Pascal attract me more than
either Corneille or Racine. In the eighteenth
centurv I liave admired and studied the works
of Voltaire and Rousseau, especially the lat-
ter, having read the whole of his "Confes-
sions," as well as the "Reveries d'un Prome-
neur Solitaire," several times in the original.
In the nineteenth century, or rather the period
after the publication of "Emaux et Camces"
and "Les Fleurs du Mai," I am most at home.
Hugo I do not like, despite his enormous fe-
cundity and energy ; but both Gautier and Bau-
delaire— the latter especially, because he con-
tinued a line of thought which started with
Foe — made an early and deep impression on
me. After 1910, I became interested in the
Symbolists and have read most of Verlaine,
all of Mallarme, Corbiere, Lafargue, Lau-
treamont (Maldoror), Rimbaud, as well as
others of the succeeding generation, such as
Remy de Gourmont (whom I regard as a very
great critic), Henri de Regnier, Francis
Jammes, Viele-Griffin, Stuart Merrill, and
others almost too numerous to mention.
Among the "fata" of "libelli" those of
the commonplace quatrains of the math-
ematician Omar Khayyam are of the
strangest. Through accident and the sin-
gle genius of Fitzgerald they have been
lifted from being quite undistinguished
minor poetry in Persia to a unique place
in the English-speaking world, and were
made the voice, for a time, of the later
Victorian period. But besides the magic
given by the great English stylist, there
was in the clay with which he worked a
certain broad humanity, a kinship to all
our yearnings, questionings, and consola-
tions. It is more than doubtful whether
that was present in Abu'1-Ala, some of
whose poems have just been rendered
into the forms of Omar Khayyam and
Fitzgerald by Mr. Ameen Rihani (The
Luzumiyat of Abu'1-Ala (James T.
White). The blind Syrian intellectual
and moralist is both more sombre and
less friendly than the Persian and bon
vivant. He was not only an agnostic, a
pessimist, and a rebel; he was an ascetic
to the uttermost and rejected all human
ties save those of the intellect. We may
be puzzled as to how the creator of
Omar's universe could have created
Omar, just as the God of Ecclesiastes
leaves Ecclesiastes himself inexplicable;
but Abu'1-Ala is of a piece with the uni-
verse he saw around him, and it is no
kindly or attractive piece. Nor is it
likely that Mr. Rihani's art will over-
come the handicap. His renderings are
often very clever; but, as the Arabic
proverb says, the merit belongs to the
precedent — Fitzgerald.
"Supplementary Diplomatic Docu-
ments" follows the publication by the
American - Hellenic Society, a few
months ago, of "The Greek White Book"
(Oxford University Press). This sup-
plement presents additional evidence
from authentic texts of documents is-
sued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
of the Greek Government, dealing with
the Greco-Serbian Treaty and the Ger-
mano-Bulgarian invasion of Macedonia,
and telegrams exchanged between the
Royal Courts of Athens and Berlin be-
fore the fall of Constantine. Although
there is neither an explanatory preface
nor interpretative comments to influ-
ence the reader, much of the material
contained is little short of dramatic.
The struggle of the Greek people to as-
sert its will against a popular King,
backed by a tremendous propaganda, is
one of the most absorbing episodes of
the Great War, in which the figures of
Constantine and Venizelos, the forceful
and blind soldier king and the honest
and far-sighted Cretan statesman, are
the protagonists. Probably the tele-
gram of Mr. Coromilas to King Con-
stantine in consequence of the events of
December 1-2, 1916, forms the most
striking document of the collection, in-
asmuch as it comes from a man who felt
very deeply the struggle between loyalty
to his king and loyalty to his country.
"... To crown the horror, Greece in
the midst of the misfortunes which have
thus overwhelmed her, is divided into two
camps which have a deadly grudge against
each other; hate is in their hcerts and
civil war is in their souls and in their ac-
tions; we kill and assassinate each other;
while the Bulgarians are settled on our
soil and oppress our brothers. The coun-
try is in the greatest distress, it is in a
state of anarchy; criminal and atrocious
acts have been committed at Athens
against the civil population, and the agents
of public order have done nothing to stop
them. . . .
. . . Whatever the issue of this great
conflict may be — and even your majesty
feels that it will be indecisive — Greece
must remain the frank and sincere friend
of the Powers of the Entente, and must be
the enemy of Bulgaria. Mr. Venizelos and
his colleagues at Saloniki have seen this
truth. Do not refuse, sire, to see it your-
self. And since you are king, not of the
majority of the people, but of all the
Greeks, forget the past; forget any griev-
ances that you may have, and ask for the
assistance of Mr. Venizelos and his friends;
I have the firm hope that they will give it
to you freely. . . .
... I beg your majesty to excuse the
frankness of my language. The affection
that I bear for you compels me to speak to
you thus, for my heart bleeds when I think
what you were and of what is going to
come. It is my duty to speak to you plainly
and with no reticence; it is my duty to tell
your majesty that the policy which has so
fatefully brought us to the position in
which, alas, we find ourselves, is a deadly
policy, and one of which I fundamentally
disapprove. The advice that I venture to
give you, and your royal act, bringing to
pass the union of all, are all that can now
save what remains."
A useful list of books has been com-
piled by Prof. Tom Peete Cross, under
the title "Bibliography and Methods of
English Literary History" (University
of Chicago Press). Attention is chiefly
directed to the works of fundamental
bibliographical importance — just the
books the graduate student is most likely
to be ignorant of — but the blank inter-
leavings give room for the amplification
of particular subjects.
18]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 34
Drama
"Mary Broome at the Neigh-
borliood Playhouse — The
Theatre Parisien
MR. ALLAN MONKHOUSE'S "Mary
Broome," visible for a season on
Saturday and Sunday evenings at the
Neighborhood Playhouse, is an enmesh-
ing play. It is not a serious, not an ar-
tistic, hardly a moral, play; and I chafe
and rebel at the facility of my entangle-
ment. The entanglement remains, how-
ever; "Mary Broome" is a play that dogs
you — not to say, hounds you — an idle,
impish, saucy play, a play that attracts,
worries, and teases, and refuses to be
sent about its business for the simple
reason that its business is to pester you.
It is a study in character, and its own
character is mirrored in that of its pro-
tagonist.
Was "Mary Broome" originally a
novel? It seems, in essence, a novel,
with two vigorous included playlets, the
first act and the fourth. In Act I, the
poetical featherhead and rattlebrain,
Leonard Timbrell, is persuaded to marry
the housemaid (significantly named
Broome) whom he has unconcernedly
seduced. In Act IV, this wife, estranged
by Leonard's indifference to their child,
runs away to Canada with the milkman.
The intervening matter is as mere matter
dramatically pointless, but for all that,
interest is penetrating. The marriage
itself, the union of quicksilver and lead,
with its comic retribution for the man
and its indistinct beatitude for the girl,
is evocative and provocative in a quite
singular degree. The means by which
the rupture between father and son is
brought about in the second act is forced,
almost to the point of violence ;. but there
is the happiest combination of truth and
novelty in the occasion for this means,
the half-hour adjournment of dinner, just
long enough to put a razor-edge on every-
body's nerves and everybody's tongue.
Leonard Timbrell is the centre of the
play; at times he seems both centre and
circumference. He is comic, but in a
play that means something a comic char-
acter should be a serious enterprise for
his creator. In this sense Mercutio is
serious for Shakespeare; Harold Skim-
pole (the nearest parallel to Leonard
Timbrell) is serious for Dickens. The
diflSculty with Mr. Monkhouse's play, for
anybody who is trying to respect it, is
that Leonard, who abounds in gay an-
tics, is himself nothing but a gay antic
for Mr. Monkhou.se. He is not humanly
real; he is a thread on which wilfulness
and sauciness are mischievously strung,
and that the question between modernity
and what may be called suburbanity can
be seriously raised in the person of a
man who is at bottom mere performer
and coxcomb is of course unthinkable.
Mr. Rudolph Besier's "Don" is the se-
rious antithesis to Mr. Monkhouse's pir-
ouetting Leonard. Self in youth is a
powerful intoxicant, and Leonard Tim-
brell has drunk deeply of that vintage.
One particular may be noted. Leonard
has been born and bred in his father's
house, but the mutual astonishment be-
tween himself and his people would sug-
gest that he had been born and bred in
Bagdad and had arrived in London
day before yesterday. Mr. Knoblock's
"Faun," Sir James Barrie's Lob, could
scarcely be less acclimated.
The play affects a seriousness which
it does not possess, and its teaching is in-
determinate and fluctuant. The author
makes points for or against Leonard ac-
cording to convenience; he likes Leonard
on the whole, but he likes points better.
All of which proves that there is a great
deal of Leonard in Mr. Monkhouse. At
the close the father confesses that he
has been a fool. Nothing could be more
inopportune than this confession as a
sequel to the rap on the knuckles which
Mr. Monkhouse himself has just admin-
istered to Leonard in mild reproof of his
paternal callousness. Yet the author of
this stupidity is capable of a stroke so
excellent and so touching as poor Mary's
simple-minded outcry in the first act:
"I want to marry somebody."
The performance was remarkably good.
Miss Helen Curry as Mary Broome was
perfect. This may or not mean a voca-
tion for Miss Curry. The technical, the
vocal, requirements of the part were in-
considerable, and the exquisite Tightness
of key which constituted its beauty might
have been, so to speak, inscribed upon the
part by a discerning instructor. Mr. S.
Bennet Tobias as Leonard Timbrell was
hardly less perfect and was much more
demonstrably able. He acted Leonard
with what might be called an exasperat-
ing charm, and the dregs of the charac-
ter, while visible enough at the bottom,
did not trouble the pellucid surface. He
could not actualize the character (the
character itself being a sort of forgery),
but he justified — he authenticated — the
temperament. The praise for that vic-
tory should be ample.
The double bill at the Theatre Parisien
opens with a two-act play by Pierre Wolff
and Georges Courteline, entitled "La
Cruche," here used in the sense of dunce
or dullard. A girl finds refuge from a
brutal lover in the protection of a second
man, whose chivalry is unpresuming.
The first man wins her back by an offer
of marriage. The narrative is mild al-
most to placidity, and even the fourth
character, a jealous woman, does not
greatly disturb the equanimity of its
temper. I might not have minded the
dearth of plot in a more serious play,
but "La Cruche" is very light, and I own
to some hesitancy about plays that are
plotless and thoughtless at the same time.
Still, I followed the drama with pleasure,
and allowed duly for the difference be-
tween French and English taste in the
matter in question. The French are
noted for address. It follows that they
can interest themselves keenly in the
"How" of things, even in the "How" of
a not markedly exciting or unusual trans-
action. The Anglo-Saxon does not dally
with the "How"; he darts unceremo-
niously to the "What." If there is no
"What," but only a "How," as in "La
Cruche," he feels unfed, and an unfed
Anglo-Saxon is a person to be reckoned
with.
Not the least interesting point in the
play for an American was the entire ab-
sence on everybody's part of any sense
of peculiarity or disadvantage in the
original position of the girl, Margot.
True, she is married in the end, but this
is not rehabilitation, it is promotion. A
major accepts a colonelcy without preju-
dice to the respectability of majors. The
situations and conversation are seemly,
and Margot is refined. The French can
not make impurity pure, but they can
make it as limpid as purity.
M. Felix Barre was excellent in his
finely shaded portrayal of the painter,
Lavernie; Mile. Grattery made an agree-
able Margot; M. Lucien Weber retrieved
by skill in the second act part of the
credit which he had buzzed and sputtered
away in Act I. The operetta, "La Mu-
sique Adoucit les Coeurs," supplied pre-
cisely the form of lightness which might
have been expected in a programme in
which the element of weight was repre-
sented by "La Cruche."
0. W. Firkins
Massenet's Memories
and Music
My Recollections. By Jules Massenet. Bos-
ton : Small, Maynard & Company.
TO those who have not read them in
the original, the reminiscences of
Massenet now published in near-English
form, under the title of "My Recollec-
tions," will have something — a great deal,
maybe — of the unquestioned charm which
marked so much of the composer's gra-
cious music. But no one should approach
these careless jottings over-seriously or
hoping to find in them lofty theories or
daring thoughts.
Jules Massenet. He hated his own fore-
name. He was a man of moods, caprices,
fads, and whims — a "fantastick," if there
was one in the world. He signed just
"Massenet," or sometimes "Mr. Mas-
senet," like an Englishman. At the end
of his career he seemed too erratic to
be wholly sane. The last chapter of his
(Continued on page 20)
January 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[19
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20]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 34,
(.Continued from page 18)
memoirs bears the heading of "Thoughts
after Death." It was penned (unless the
writer is a dishonest ghost) from a dis-
tant planet, where "there are no news-
papers, no dinners, no sleepless nights."
Like Swedenborg (if we may trust that
chapter) Massenet sat in at his own
funeral. Incidentally he declares he
heard the loud sobbing of his wife and
daughter; the lamentations of an artist
(perhaps Lucy Arbell) exclaiming, "Ah,
believe me, I loved him well. I have al-
ways had such great success in his
works !" And, as they bore him farther
and farther from the Boulevards, towards
Egreville, his last earthly halting place,
he knew quite well that, by his friends,
he would be forgotten.
Throughout his life he had had many
enemies. Some of them rivals who were
jealous of his vogue. Some of them
critics who affected to despise his work.
He had been jeered at and lampooned
time and again, as "Mademoiselle Wag-
ner," and even, I have heard, as "Marie
Madeleine." It was long the fashion
among those who worshipped Wagner to
make light of the voluptuous and tender-
ness of Massenet's style. The more he
protested that he also was a Wagnerite
— and a devotee besides of Berlioz — the
more they mocked at him. It mattered
little to the fortunate composer who,
from his entrance at the Conservatoire
of Paris to his death, only a few years
ago, was the spoiled child of men — and
women, the inventor of more operas and
cantatas and song cycles and tone poems,
than any who envied him.
In point of fact, though he owed much
to Wagner, Jules Massenet was not of
the great line of that creator of music-
drama. He would have resented being
reminded of the truth. But he was closer
far to Schumann and to Gounod. He
had the sweetness of the composer of
"Faust" and "Romeo" and "Mireille,"
with the romantic grace of the great
German. When he strained his talent
(as he sometimes did) he was as "grand"
at best as Meyerbeer. But he delighted
most when he was natural — devising deli-
cate and often exquisite "Poemes," pic-
turesque tone-poems, and graceful operas.
Not all the sneering of the Wagner-
ites can spoil the tenderness of Mas-
senet's "Werther," the frail beauty of
his "Manon," the charm of his "Jongleur
de Notre-Dame," and his cantata,
"Marie-Madeleine." He wrote rubbish
now and then — he wrote too quickly.
But he was always a sincere and fine
technician. He had the gift of melody
and great mastery of harmony.
He was as it were a link, and a beguil-
ing link, between Gounod and d'Indy,
without the strength of the last-named
composer. It might be going a good deal
too far to speak of him as a genius. Yet
Gounod, after listening to his cantata.
"Eve," said of him that he was one of
the "Elect" of heaven.
It was to Massenet that the late Oscar
Hammerstein turned most frequently
when he was looking for some popular
attraction at the Manhattan Opera
House. He produced "Herodiade,"
"Thais," "Griselidis," "Le Jongleur" and
other works, which proved successful
here as they had been in Paris. But the
composer never crossed the Atlantic seas,
and more than once refused the offers
made him to direct some of his operas
and concert works.
Concerning his successes and his fail-
ures he has set down many anecdotes in
"My Recollections" and about the com-
posers, singers, and managers of his
time — from Auber to Ambroise Thomas,
Liszt, Delibes, Gounod, Bizet, Berlioz,
Duvernoy, Carre, Reyer, Saint-Saens,
Halanzier, and the rest of his contempo-
raries.
As a writer, Massenet has but little
style, and what little he can boast of has
been shattered by his translator, H. Vil-
liers Barnett, who is said to have been
chosen by the master himself. But, as
a chronicle and record of the musicians
of his time, these recollections have their
proper place and value — despite omis-
sions, and singular inaccuracies which
distress the reader in Mr. Barnett's Eng-
lish version.
Charles Henry Meltzer
Books and the News
The Negro
THERE have been certain recent indi-
cations that this perennial problem
may at any time again become acute.
There are a score and over of useful
books, by white people, South and North,
and by Negroes, which illuminate the
problem, even when they do not try to
solve it.
Benjamin G. Brawley's "Short History
of the American Negro" (Macmillan,
1913), Booker Washington's "Story of
the Negro" (Doubleday, 1909), and
George S. Merriam's "The Negro and the
Nation" (Holt, 1906) should serve for
historical information, while "The Negro
Year Book" (Negro Year Book Pub. Co.)
is a reference book on negro activities.
Two admirable books by Southern
writers are Thomas Nelson Page's "The
Negro: the Southerner's Problem"
(Scribner, 1904), and Mrs. L. H. Ham-
mond's "In Black and White" (Revell,
1914). From a South African point of
view is Maurice S. Evans's "Black and
White in the Southern States" (Long-
mans, 1915). One should not fail to see
W. E. B. Du Bois's "The Souls of Black
Folk" (McClurg), his "The Negro"
(Holt, 1915), Booker Washington's "The
Future of the American Negro" (Small,
Maynard, 1900), and Kelly Miller's "An
Appeal to Conscience" (Macmillan, 1918).
Similar in their nature are Benjamin
Brawley's "Your Negro Neighbor" (Mac-
millan, 1918), and his "The Negro in
Literature and Art in the United States"
(Duffleld, 1918).
Professor A. B. Hart's valuable study
is called "The Southern South" (Apple-
ton, 1910). The problem is directly
tackled in William P. Pickett's "The Ne-
gro Problem" (Putnam, 1909), Edward
Eggleston's "The Ultimate Solution of
the American Negro Problem" (Badger,
1913), William H. Thomas's "The Ameri-
can Negro" (Macmillan, 1901), and John
M. Mecklin's "Democracy and Race Fric-
tion; a Study in Social Ethics" (Mac-
millan, 1914). A legal work, perhaps
more useful for reference than for con-
tinued reading, is Gilbert T. Stephenson's
"Race Distinctions in American Law"
(Appleton, 1910). William J. Edwards,
in "Twenty-Five Years in the Black
Belt" (Comhill Co., 1919), describes the
Southern Negro, and Mary W. Ovington's
"Half a Man" (Longmans, 1911) treats
the status of the Negro in New York.
W. H. Collins is the author of "The
Truth About Lynching and the Negro
in the South" (Neale, 1918), which he
describes as a plea "that the South be
made safe for the white race." The au-
thoritative work on lynching is James E.
Cutler's "Lynch Law" (Longmans, 1905).
Edmund Lester Pearson
Books Received
FICTION
Johnston, Mary. Michael Forth. Har-
per. $1.75 net.
Ostrander, Isabel. Ashes to Ashes. Mc-
Bride. $1.65 net.
BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
Barton, George. Celebrated Spies and
Famous Mysteries of the Great War. Bos-
ton: Page. $2 net.
Glenconner, Pamela. Edward Wyndham
Tennant: A Memoir. Lane. $5 net.
Palmer, Frederick. Our Greatest Battle.
Dodd, Mead. $2.50.
Von Tirpitz, Admiral. My Memoirs. 2
volumes. Dodd, Mead. $7.50.
ESSAYS AND CRITICISM
Holliday, R. C. Broome Street Straws.
Doran.
Holliday, R. C. Peeps at People. Doran.
GIFT BOOKS
Gibbons, H. D. Paris Vistas. Century.
GOVERNMENT AND ECONOMICS
Clark, N. M. Common Sense in Labor
Management. Harper. $4 net.
Hollander, J. H. American Citizenship
and Economic Welfare. Johns Hopkins
Press. $1.25.
MISCELLANEOUS
Bairnsfather, Bruce. From Mud to
Mufti. Putnam.
Bates, K. L. Sigurd Our Golden Collie,
and Other Comiades of the Road. Dutton.
$2 net.
Derby, Richard. "Wade in Sanitary!"
The Story of a Division Surgeon in France.
Putnam,
THE REVIEW
•xt
Vol. 2, No. 35
New York, Saturday, January 10, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment
Editorial Ariicles:
The Raid on the Reds
The "Nation" Will Say
Forgotten Derelicts of the War
The Case of Johns Hopkins
The Problem of Russia
The Outlook in Europe
22
23
24
24
25
26
Life or Death For the Railroads? By
Thomas F. Woodlock 28
Washington Gossip 29
The Jazz Journals. By W. J. Ghent 30
Correspondence 32
Book Reviews:
At the Front in Poetry 33
An Old Republican 34
Two "Latest Efforts" 36
Business — and Aristotle 36
The Run of the Shelves 37
Drama:
On the London Stage. By William
Archer 38
Books and the News: Profit-Sharing.
By Edmund Lester Pearson 40
TT may be invidious to single out Mr.
Sherwood, Democrat, of Ohio, as
conspicuously silly, in a Congress
which abounds in silliness ; but that i^
the natural consequence of his remark
on the resolution to recognize a de
facto government in Ireland happen-
ing to be printed conspicuously in the
news dispatches. "This resolution, if
adopted, need not necessarily disturb
our friendly relations with Great
Britain," such is Mr. Sherwood's sage
opinion. And indeed he may be
right; but if so, it is for the reason
that Congressional "resoluting" on
foreign affairs — so long as the resolu-
tion does not get to the point of
Presidential approval — has come to
be set down, not only at home but
abroad, as pure buncombe. But it is
cold comfort for an American to
think that, in a time so fraught with
momentous issues, he must feel that
these fantastic tricks indulged in by
the national legislature are rendered
harmless only by being ridiculous.
TfTHILE the nomination campaign
on the Democratic side has not
yet even begun to take shape, there
is at least one candidacy on the Re-
publican side which is rapidly ap-
proaching the stage of thorough or-
ganization. Every turn, therefore, in
the movement in behalf of General
Wood is of keen public interest. Col.
Edward B. Clark, a close personal and
political friend who expects to take a
prominent part in the management
of his campaign in the Middle West,
throws doubt on the recent report
that General Wood intends soon to
resign his commission. Colonel Clark
says:
I suppose he will be governed by circum-
stances. There is nothing in law, tradition,
precedent, or public sentiment to require that
he should hand in his resignation. The cases
of Zachary Taylor, Winfield Scott, George B.
McClellan, U. S. Grant, and Winfield S.
Hancock furnish five distinct precedents where
the candidates were army officers and remained
in the army all through the campaign.
But it can not be too strongly insisted
that the demands of the present time
are wholly different from those of the
bygone days here referred to. Even
as to those times, it is worth while to
remark, for example, that the figure
which General Hancock cut in rela-
tion to the comparatively simple issue
of the tariff is a memory to be con-
jured up for warning rather than for
example. But to-day we are con-
fronted not only with a ma§s of prob-
lems novel in character and stupen-
dous in importance, but also with the
outstanding fact of profound doubt
and division concerning them within
each of the two great parties. In this
situation personal qualities, however
desirable, are far from constituting a
sufficient basis for the acceptance of
any man as the leader of his party
in the approaching campaign. All
signs point to its being, with the ex-
ception of the campaign of 1860, the
most important and critical Presiden-
tial contest since the formation of
the Union. There is not much time
to spare, between now and the meet-
ing of the Republican National Con-
vention, for a fair exhibit of the
temper and position of a man whose
career, like that of General Wood, has
lain outside the main currents of
politics. Let us hope that he will come
out in the open in ample time for the
formation of a sound judgment upon
his title to the nomination.
pONGRESSMAN-ELECT Berger,
^ who is bearing the red banner to
Congress or to jail — he does not seem
to regard the distinction as impor-
tant,— has paused in New York long
enough to say:
I opposed the war, because I said it was a
commercial war. What did we get out of it?
A Constitution on the way to becoming a
"scrap of paper," the "flu," prohibition, the
high cost of living, and government by in-
junction.
One could conclude that, as a com-
mercial venture, the war was suffi-
ciently a failure to reconcile even Mr.
Berger to it.
fyHE following gem of misinforma-
tion is from the New Republic:
Semenov is a flashy brigand, vastly inferior
in ability and infinitely more brutal and un-
principled than Pancho Villa. With a cos-
mopolitan band of a few hundreds of cut-
throats, Semenov has managed to pick a living
out of the ill-defended settlements around
Lake Baikal. That is all he amounts to.
Without attempting a brief for Seme-
nov or a defense of all of his acts, it
is only fair to say that for many
months he carried on, almost alone,
a patriotic struggle against the Bol-
sheviks of Siberia, with a little army
of which more than one-half were
Russian officers serving as privates.
That he did not "pick a living out of
the ill-defended settlements around
Lake Baikal" is evident from the fact
that he has not been in that neighbor-
hood and his headquarters is several
hundred miles from it. In spite of
his friction with the Siberian Gov-
ernment and with the American Ex-
peditionary Forces, it is just to record
22]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 35
that Semenov was chosen Ataman by
the Baikal Cossacks and is a military
leader of undoubted ability.
COUNT Tolstoy has been called the
spiritual father of Bolshevism.
But for his teachings the Russian peo-
ple would not so readily have accepted
Lenin and Trotsky as its saviors. If
this is true, the child is an ungrateful
monster. What it owes to the father
it repays to his daughter, the Count-
ess Alexandra Lvovna Tolstoy, with
persecution and imprisonment. She
is charged with plotting against the
Soviet Government. If she is guilty
of that crime, it only proves that
there can be little left of her father's
teachings in. the practice of the Mos-
cow dictatorship.
IRISH leaders are seldom conspicu-
ous for moderation. Their emo-
tional temperament unfits them for
the quiet consideration of their op-
ponents' views. Colonel Lynch is an
exception to the rule. It is a pleasure
to draw attention to his strong dis-
avowal of the Sinn Fein movement,
which, he declared, was doomed to
failure because of its exclusive reli-
ance on violence, and because of its
religious intolerance. If Irish free-
dom is what Sinn Fein is striving for,
it should not be made a Roman Cath-
olic issue. Colonel Lynch has the
fullest right to speak as he did.
Though himself a Roman Catholic, he
fought with the Calvinist Boers
against Great Britain, realizing that
a people's claim to autonomy is not
qualified by its religious creed. "We
disparage our cause by bigotry and
religious fanaticism. Take out the
religious element, and we have gone
far to solve the problem." The Sinn
Fein leaders might well take the les-
son to heart. They will never gain
political freedom for their following
at the cost of religious freedom for
their Protestant compatriots.
A SUMMARY of industrial condi-
-^ tions in Belgium, recently given
out by the Guaranty Trust Company,
is highly encouraging. Belgian coal
production has now reached nearly
ninety per cent, of the rate of output
for 1913, and the coal export has
served appreciably to strengthen Bel-
gian exchange. Receipts from both
freight and passenger traffic on Bel-
gian railroads for thie first nine
months of 1919 exceed the fig-
ures for 1913, but this does not indi-
cate an actual increase in business
done, as both passenger and freight
tariffs are about double the 1913 level.
Labor conditions have been rather
better in Belgium than elsewhere, as
only 42,000 workers were involved
in strikes during the first six months
of the year, for which alone figures
are available. Of 194 strikes, 108
were compromised by arbitration.
Twenty-nine ended in straight victory
for the workmen, thirty-seven for the
employers. A fifty-million-poundloan
to the Belgian Government by London
capitalists proves that British finance
holds a high opinion of Belgian stabil-
ity. From January to September in-
clusive, the purchase of American
goods amounted to an average of $37
for every Belgian.
'T'HE • week beginning January 17
•■- (Poor Richard's birthday) is to
be National Thrift Week. Not a few
of us, perhaps, are inclined to think
that we may as well make up our
minds this year to about fifty-two
such weeks. But we have only to
open our eyes in the street to see that
there are multitudes who have more,
"more than they ever dreamed of,"
and spend it as fast as they get it.
If things are high now, they say,
never mind; get them while the get-
ting is good ; they'll be higher by and
by. Most assuredly they will, unless
some considerable number of people
who have the money in hand to buy
them with are willing to forego furs
and jewels and silk shirts, or what-
ever according to their scale of living
may be conveniently symbolized by
these things. What the cheap dollar
buys now of this sort of merchandise
will not be worth much by and by.
Louis XV spoke of a deluge. This
side of a deluge, which very likely
won't come, there may be a highly un-
comfortable succession of rainy days.
When they come, the cheap dollar
that has been prudently laid aside
will bring returns that are worth
waiting for.
The Raid on the Reds
T^HE sudden descent of the Depart- J
■*■ ment of Justice on thousands of
members of the Communist and Com-
munist Labor parties has been re-
ceived with enthusiastic applause in
some quarters, and with gloomy mis-
giving in other quarters equally en-
titled to respect. For ourselves, we
are frank to say that we find it im-
possible to estimate the merits of the
case. Until the Government places
before the public a coherent and com-
prehensive statement of the nature
of its own proceedings, it is impos-
sible to form a trustworthy judgment.
Up to the present time, rumors which
it is difficult to trace to any authorita-
tive source, and scraps of information
or stray expressions of feeling coming
from one official or another, are all
that we have to go upon.
This in itself is a defect whose seri-
ousness it would be difficult to over-
state. Right or wrong, judicious or
ill-advised, the result of careful
thought or of spectacular zeal —
whichever of these designations fits
the case, certain it is that what we
are witnessing is a novel and extraor-
dinary proceeding. It is not right
that the country should look on agape,
making all sorts of wild guesses as to
what it actually is and wbat it means.
Under what provisions of what
statutes is the Government acting?
To what extent, if at all, are the ar-
rests being made on the ground that
we are still formally in a state of
war? Are the persons arrested en-
gaged in actual conspiracies, and, if
so, what is the nature of these con-
spiracies? Is the Government seek-
ing to catch in its net all aliens who
entertain revolutionary opinions, or
only those who are connected with
agitations directed toward immediate
action? Without disclosing any ad-
ministrative secrets necessary for the
successful prosecution of its work, the
Department of Justice could give the
American people adequate informa-
tion on these points. And not only
have the people a right to demand
this information, but in the absence
of it the harm that will be done by
unsettlement of the public mind, and
misinterpretation of the Govern-
January 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[23
merit's policy, will far outweigh the
good that may be accomplished by
any deportations or punishments
which may result from the raid.
The misgiving which, in the ab-
sence of a clear understanding, the
situation naturally arouses is accentu-
ated by a statement which Attorney-
General Palmer has taken occasion to
issue in relation to his proposed law
against "sedition." Such a law is
necessary, he says, "in order that the
Department of Justice may deal
forcibly, effectively, and quickly with
seditionists who are American citi-
zens, but who are seeking to injure
or destroy the Government." He as-
serts that "the country's response to
the introduction of this measure
leaves no excuse for a single moment's
unnecessary delay in the passage of
it." This would be absurd, even if
"the country's response" had been ten
times as widespread and ten times as
emphatic as there is any evidence of
its actually having been. If there is
any measure upon which the mature
and conscientious judgment of re-
sponsible legislators is absolutely
essential it is a measure directed
against "sedition." The popular im-
pulse to get rid of what is offensive
to popular feeling can not be accepted
as a guide in such a matter. It must
be threshed out in full and free de-
bate; and upon those members of
Congress whose intelligence, knowl-
edge of history, and grasp on funda-
mental maxims of legislation enable
them to judge of the actual, and not
the desired, effect of such a measure
rests the solemn responsibility of
opposing it to the utmost of their
power if they regard it as mischie-
vous. The burden of proof — first,
that any measure of the kind is
necessary, and, secondly that the par-
ticular measure is a good one — rests
heavily upon its advocates.
We trust that, when the facts are
fully known, it will turn out that the
Government has acted well in making
the arrests. If it has not taken ad-
vantage of the technicality of a state
of war, if it contemplates only the
deportation of aliens who upon a rea-
sonable interpretation of our laws
come clearly within their inhibitions,
if it is not aiming to produce a state
of vague terror among all persons
who hold radical opinions, then what
it is doing is not only justifiable, but
necessary and salutary. The notion
that a country is in duty bound to
admit or retain aliens who seek to
subvert its institutions is a grotesque
perversion of the idea of the right
of asylum. Of the merits of an in-
surrection, or even a conspiracy,
directed against a foreign govern-
ment, we are not required to judge;
but when a foreigner comes over to
plot against our own government or
institutions, it is our business to look
into the matter, and it is our right
and our duty to keep him out or put
him out, if we think his presence
sufficiently detrimental to make it
worth while.
The idea that nothing short
of imminent peril to the nation can
justify such exclusion or expulsion
has no basis either in principle or in
the practice of liberal governments.
Moreover, in our own country the
question is of dimensions never ap-
proached in any of the older civilized
nations. With a large proportion of
our population consisting of recent
immigrants or their children, the
character of this immigration, and
the way in which that character may
be affected by the infusion of even a
few thousand active and determined
agitators, is a matter of vital impor-
tance to our national well-being. A
great deal is said in radical quarters,
and in some quarters that are not
radical, of the wave of hysteria that
is alleged to be sweeping over the
country. A certain amount of hys-
teria there undoubtedly is, but the
amount of it is grossly exaggerated
in the imagination of the radicals.
Very few people aire afraid that the
country may go to pieces to-morrow ;
but a great many people think that
alien plotters should be got rid of,
even if their capacity for mischief
falls infinitely short of fatal danger
to the country. In fact, the radicals'
outcry over hysteria is itself about
the clearest case of hysteria in sight.
There are two things which the
situation urgently demands — first, a
clear statement of the Government's
position and policy, and secondly,
such a shaping of that policy as will
yield a maximum of direct good with
a minimum of accompanying evil.
What is wanted is swift and effective
treatment of cases which everybody
will recognize as serious, together
with a prompt and generous freeing
of all others from distress or terror.
Above all, it should, as far as possible,
be made plain that it is not the dis-
semination of objectionable opinions
in lawful ways that the Government
seeks to suppress ; that the traditional
rights of free speech, as understood
in our country and in England, are
to be respected; that such repression
as does take place is entered upon
from a sober sense of duty and in no
spirit of sensationalism, and is car-
ried out in strict accordance with a
reasonable view of the law. Unless
this spirit is made manifest, the bene-
fits of the move will be more than
counterbalanced by the resentment
aroused in millions of breasts over
methods which a free people can rot
but regard as fraught with danger to
their liberties.
The "Nation" Will
Say—
rpHROUGH the kind offices of . i
•'■ Oliver Lodge we have been r
in possession of what the Nation .
a forthcoming issue, will say :
"The naturally timid, and for the
moment thoroughly frightened, offi-
cials who are busily weaving the last
poor shreds of democracy into- a
gravecloth for themselves and the
system they so pitifully represent,
have been stampeded by the clamors
of the capitalistic and jingoistic press
into the very sort of 'direct action'
which they profess so much ta
deplore. Could anything be better cal-
culated to hasten the coming revolu-
tion than this last bit of melodra-
matic emulation of the methods
employed by the police of the late la-
mented Czar? Since there is no plot
against democratic government in
America ; since, in short, there is no
democratic government left to plot
against, it is necessary to invent a
plot. A Saint Bartholomew's Eve,
spectacularly staged throughout the
country, is the lamentable result.
24]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 35
"We hold no brief for the Commu-
nist party or the Communist Labor
party. If their members engage in
violence they may be curbed by due
process of law. But the mere advo-
cacy of violence, or the violent ad-
vocacy of anything (they amount to
the same thing), does not warrant
equally violent and far less excusable
suppression. It is only in an atmos-
phere of revolution that those gen-
erous impulses, that passionate dedi-
cation to justice, that clear-eyed
scrutiny of ideas, as a result of
which the world of to-morrow is
born, can generate themselves. But
fortunately you can not kill an aspira-
tion by deporting helpless foreigners.
The celestial radiance of which these
have caught a glimpse will shine more
brightly than ever in the faces of the
spiritual brethren whom they leave
behind.
"Most of all, we find ourselves op-
posed to this disastrous attempt to
distinguish between aliens and Amer-
icans. In undertaking to deport
wholesale those who have not sub-
mitted to a hollow ceremony of de-
claring allegiance to a form of gov-
ernment which has in any true sense
ceased to exist, we are drawing off
the very life blood of the country.
The ideals of Washington and of Lin-
coln, are they not more alive to-day
in the warm heart of the recent im-
migrant than in the Prussianized
'American' who in their name com-
mits a deed to which history congrat-
ulates herself on being unable to fur-
nish a parallel ? Germania capta thus
leads her captors captive.
"The utter folly of it makes the
blood boil! If Mr. Palmer and his
minions wish to make violent revolu-
tionists of us all, they have found the
way. The blood and tears which they
cause to be shed, instead of destroying,
will most miraculously quicken the
seeds of revolution. What might have
come in a hundred years will now
come in ten. What might have come
peacefully will now come as it may.
Prophetic voices that should have
been given careful heed are stopped
with violence. But others will take
up the cry. For one that is silenced
to-day a thousand will be heard to-
morrow. It is all -very regrettable."
Forgotten Derelicts
of War
"pESPONSES continue to be made
•'-'- to appeals in behalf of stricken
populations in the Old World. One
case, however, has either escaped our
attention or been shunted into the
background, which in normal times
would have caused a shudder of hor-
ror throughout the whole civilized
world. This is the case of the Ger-
man and Austrian prisoners of
war in Siberia, numbering perhaps
140,000 at the beginning of winter,
and now apparently doomed as a
whole to death in its most horrible
and repulsive forms. Most of these
men-that-were have been herded in
prison camps for four and five years,
not only cut off from their families
and all that made life worth while,
but short of food, without medical
aid, and deprived of diversion. In
mental and moral state they have
been reduced to the level of animals.
With the best v;ill in the world the
Siberian government could do little
for them ; it could not even take care
of its own millions of hapless refu-
gees pouring in from European Rus-
sia. Time after time Admiral Kol-
chak begged that steps be taken to
repatriate them, but no help came.
To picture what must happen to them
now, after the collapse of Kolchak's
Government, and in the rigors of a
Siberian winter, is to call forth a
nightmare of horror from which the
mind recoils.
Some private individuals and or-
ganizations made noble efforts to do
something to meet the situation, but
it was a problem that transcended
private enterprise. It was mani-
festly impossible to raise adequate
funds by public appeals, even if time
permitted. It was a task to be un-
dertaken by Governments, and pre-
eminently by the American Govern-
ment. It meant quick decision, prompt
organization and an appropriation of
perhaps $5,000,000, to be repaid
eventually by the home Governments
concerned. The effect of such an
act on the part of America would have
been out of all proportion to the
cost. The responsibility for in-
action rests squarely upon our De-
partment of State. Plans were dis-
cussed, memoranda written, and the
buck was passed and repassed, but
nothing was done. It is the old
story of bureaucracy over again. But
Secretary Lansing must sometimes
spend uncomfortable moments when
it is borne in on him that a little fear-
less and energetic action on his part
would have spared the agony and
death of all these thousands and given
happiness to other thousands be-
reaved.
The Case of Johns
Hopkins
'yHE exact plan upon which Mr.
■*- Rockefeller's magnificent gift of
fifty million dollars is to be devoted
to the urgently necessary object of
raising the salaries of teachers in
colleges and universities doubtless
remains to be determined. It has
been the policy of the General Edu-
cation Board, says Dr. Wallace But-
trick, its president, "to make contri-
butions to endowment conditioned
upon the raising of additional sup-
plementary sums by the institutions
aided." How closely this policy will be
followed in the present extraordinary
emergency remains to be seen, but
the keen judgment which the board
has exercised throughout its history
may be counted on to preside over its
action in this instance. It is desir-
able, however, that the country at
large should appreciate the peculiar
situation of one university that has
done unique service to the cause of
American education.
Johns Hopkins University was
founded a little more than forty
years ago. Its chief energies were
concentrated upon what in this coun-
try had theretofore been thought of
as merely an undeveloped annex to
the main body of a university — the
graduate school. What Johns Hop-
kins really did was to establish for
the first time in America a true uni-
versity, so far as regards those fields
of science and learning which lie out-
side the professional training of law-
yers and physicians. It is impossible
to overestimate the stimulus which
January 10, 19-20]
THE REVIEW
[25
the Baltimore institution thus gave
to universities all over the country.
From Massachusetts to California,
from Wisconsin to Texas, the idea of
the university has become as familiar
in America as it was unfamiliar forty
years ago.
Striking as was this achievement,
it is a singular fact that when, a
dozen years after the opening of
Johns Hopkins, a modest special en-
dowment— half a million dollars —
enabled it to open a medical school,
the achievement was repeated. It is
acknowledged on all hands, and has
been acknowledged by no one more
handsomely than by President Eliot
of Harvard, that the Johns Hopkins
Medical School lifted medical educa-
tion in America to an entirely new
plane. Both on the medical side and
on the "philosophical" side, the coun-
try is now dotted with institutions
that are carrying on as a matter of
course the kind of work for which
Johns Hopkins set the example.
But the peculiarity to which we
made reference at the outset is some-
thing other than this. Not only on
account of its comparative newness,
but even more on account of the fact
that the alumni of Johns Hopkins are
in the main men whom it has trained
for scientific research, for teaching,
and for the practice of medicine, it
has no considerable body of wealthy
graduates to draw upon for aid. In
comparison with Yale, Harvard,
Princeton and the rest, its possibili-
ties in this respect are pitifully small.
Confronted with the present extraor-
dinary situation, it is out of the ques-
tion for it to make the kind of "drive"
which its sister universities are so
successfully carrying on. The people
of Baltimore have on various occa-
sions responded handsomely to its
call ; but its service has been a na-
tional, not a local, service. We have
no doubt that all this will be duly
considered by the General Education
Board; but it is on every account
earnestly to be hoped that throughout
the country there will be found men
of large means whose intelligent per-
ception of the facts will lead them to
give generous help where help is at
once so urgently needed and so
abundantly deserved.
The Problem of Russia
^TiHE problem of Russia does not
■'• stand still, and he who would
formulate a policy to solve it must
needs mount it on wheels to keep up
with the rapidly changing situations.
A year ago prompt assistance to the
sound and loyal forces that were
struggling to restore the Russian na-
tional state would have cut the cancer
of Bolshevism out of Moscow and
saved the Russian people years of
suffering and degradation. It was
not necessary to send troops or to
interfere in Russia's domestic con-
cerns. There was needed only a uni-
fied plan and concerted action in sup-
plying material needs. Instead, we
had the Prinkipo proposal, the Bullitt
Mission, the disgraceful abandonment
of Odessa, the hampering interven-
tion in Siberia, and other demarches
whose stupidities would be laughable
did they not bring tragedy in their
train.
Now a new situation has arisen, a
situation that we must face squarely,
not letting past mistakes blind us to
present exigencies. The national
movements against the Bolsheviks
have crumbled or are crumbling.
Kolchak's army has practically ceased
to exist. Denikin, with his volun-
teers, of whom he was able to arm
but a sixth, swept up to within a
hundred and twenty miles of Moscow,
and now he is pushed back to the sea
and faces destruction. A brief space
may see the whole of Russia once
more dominated by the Bolshevik
autocracy, this time disposing of an
army of a half a million men, dis-
ciplined and well-equipped.
Viewing the Russian situation to-
day, one turns involuntarily to the
French Revolution for analogies,
dangerous and misleading as histori-
cal analogies frequently are. The
parallelism is startling, despite the
difference in time, in economic condi-
tions, in race and psychology. It is
of course unfair to compare the politi-
cal i-evolution in France with the
German-made plot to disintegrate the
Russian army and reduce Russia to
chaos; or the Girondin vision of
bringing the blessings of liberty to
all peoples, with the internationalist
Bolshevist propaganda to overturn all
organized governments. But the re-
sults were the same. Then as now,
divided counsel and delay, followed
by haphazard and ineffective aid to
local risings and movements, brought
about the organization of great oppos-
ing armies. To create and discipline
these armies the same method of
terror was used, though on an in-
finitely smaller scale. Civil and mili-
tary leaders sprang from the prole-
tariat. National consciousness was
aroused to a pitch unknown before.
Will the coming events in Russia
continue the analogy of the French
Revolution? In two respects at least
the probability is present. When in
France the armies of the Republic
were victorious on all fronts and the
necessity for the Terror had ended,
the people rose against the authors of
the Terror and took swift vengeance
on Robespierre and Saint- Just. In
Russia to-day the Bolsheviks, or Com-
munists, who rule with an iron hand,
are few in number and are the object
of universal hatred. Even granted
the inertia and resignation of the
Russians, it is unlikely that Lenin
and Trotsky can long survive the con-
clusion of the present civil war. It
would not be surprising if the next
act in the Russian drama would be a
revolution from the inside that would
overthrow the gang that for two
years has tortured and misruled Rus-
sia and expended millions of Russian
loot in debauching the ignorant and
susceptible of other lands.
The next phase, as in France, may
possibly be the emergence of a dicta-
tor and the development of a new
imperialism. This latter indeed is
already under way with the present
leaders and is becoming more and
more arrogant and threatening. Here
is an army of at least half a million,
and unlimited reserves to draw upon,
freed from the pressure of Kolchak
and Denikin, ready to be led west-
ward against Poland. It is like a
herd that has cropped the herbage to
the roots and must seek new pasture.
It will still shout the slogans of the
Revolution as in 1796, but it will have
visions of plunder and its leaders will
dream dreams of conquest. Lenin
asserts that with the collapse of the
26]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 35
anti-Bolshevik movements and civil
war, his purpose is to settle down to
the tasks of peace and the reorganiza-
tion of Russia's economic life, but he
can not expect anyone to believe him,
for he has by terror and by disrup-
tion rendered this impossible under
his regime. Rather there looms the
spectre of a bitter, revengeful, and
despairing Germany making common
cause with a movement that menaces
the very foundations of her enemies
and taskmasters.
What can be done to avert the
menace? What new policy can be
adopted that can save Europe? First
of all, there is the question of the
blockade. It is likely that this will
be lifted; indeed, if Esthonia makes
peace with the Soviet Government the
blockade can hardly be maintained.
The blockade really served its pur-
pose in the earlier period by prevent-
ing the criminals at Moscow from
disposing of their stolen gold and
looted property to supply the needs
of the Red Army at home and spread
revolution abroad. But the blockade
could only be effective as auxiliary to
active assistance to the anti-Bolshevik
forces, and when this was withheld,
it ceased to have a sound basis.
It is hardly thinkable that we can
recognize the present Soviet Govern-
ment. Its crimes against civilization
are too heinous; its promises of re-
form too transparently false. Appar-
ently, by our deportations of Russian
Bolsheviks and our official statement
regarding them, we have closed the
door to any such suggestion. But our
policy now must be that of non-inter-
ference. Those who from the begin-
ning have been for non-interference
will plume themselves on their su-
perior wisdom and foresight. But
they were not wise, even those who
were honest, for interference was al-
ways justifiable while the Bolsheviks
were carrying on war against us in
our own country and when real assist-
ance to the anti-Bolshevik forces
would have restored a friendly Russia
and spared untold needless sacrifices.
The present situation has resulted,
not from interference, but from the
lack of adequate interference.
If the present tyrants of Moscow
are overthrown from within, if they
are supplanted by a regime that rec-
ognizes the sanctity of agreements
and obligations, that secures to its
people the rights of life and prop-
erty, that shows good faith and
honest intention, then we can enter
into relations with it and join whole-
heartedly in the tasks of reconstruc-
tion, carrying out our oft-repeated
pledges of friendship to the Russian
people. But if the present regime
continues, threatening to destroy the
fruits of European culture and to
embroil all Asia, then we must gird
up our loins and prepare to defend
our civilization in the inevitable
struggle.
The Outlook in Europe
'T'HE last sun of the old year set
-'- upon a Europe little brighter for
more than thirteen months of armis-
tice than it was in the depth of the
war. Hunger, labor unrest, race an-
tagonism, frontier disputes, are ca-
lamities more keenly felt since the
stimulus of patriotic warfare has
ceased to uphold the suffering na-
tions.
For a short while it seemed as
if the prospect was beginning to
brighten. The Germans, we were
told, would, before Christmas, have
signed the protocol by which the
treaty would be put into effect, and
d'Annunzio was going to surrender
Fiume to the government of Signor
Nitti. But neither forecast has come
true. A disparity of 100,000 tons of
maritime equipment between the Ger-
man figures and the estimates of the
Allies' experts is responsible for
the delay in the former case. The
sending of an Allied Naval Com-
mission to Hamburg, Danzig, and
Bremen to ascertain the facts and re-
vise the estimates, if proved to be in-
correct, shows a disposition on the
part of the Entente to admit the possi-
bility of a mistake, and while insisting
on the payment of an indemnity for
the scuttled fleet of Scapa Flow, to
take Germany's basic needs into ac-
count. But while this question ap-
pears in a fair way of reaching a
solution, other causes of delay are
cropping up. Herr Ebert has echoed
Comrade Noske's protest against the
Entente's demand for the surrender of
the accused German officers, and will
resign the Chancellorship if the Allies
insist on their extradition, and the al-
leged presence in Upper Silesia of
80,000 German soldiers, including
large numbers of Von der Goltz's
men, is a new obstacle in the way of
the treaty's coming into force, as the
Supreme Council demands their re-
moval before the 20,000 allied sol-
diers occupy the plebiscite area.
The expected solution of the Fiume
tangle has also suffered a setback.
D'Annunzio has changed his mind
since the recent conference in Lon-
don induced him to enter into an
agreement with Signor Nitti for the
surrender of Fiume. He deems the
guarantees offered him by the Gov-
ernment insufficient to warrant his
leaving, in spite of the fact that the
twice-held plebiscite on the question
of accepting General Badoglio's pro-
posals for the substitution of d'An-
nunzio's forces by Italian regulars
resulted in 75 per cent, of the votes
being cast in favor of acceptance.
However, this dwindling of his fol-
lowing and the increased prestige of
Signor Nitti, both at home and
abroad, are indications that the com-
ing decision lies not with the poet,
but, as it ought to do, with the Italian
Government. The Premier's deter-
mination to come to a settlement with
the Jugo-Slavs themselves is the
wisest move he could make, as a solu-
tion of the problem agreed to by the
two interested parties is less likely to
meet with opposition in London and
Paris. The bad impression created in
Italy by the sensational speech of M.
Clemenceau has given some justifica-
tion to those pessimists who hold that
Italy stands isolated and can not rely
on the willingness of England and
France to make concessions on the
Adriatic question vdthout the consent
of the United States'. There is, in-
deed, some show of animosity in
Paris towards Italy, which may have
its source in the recent revelation of
a secret Anglo-Italian agreement
which — in exchange for Italy's ap-
proval of the so-called Lloyd George-
Wilson agreement touching the divi-
sion of 3,000,000 tons of German
merchant shipping — promises Italy
^^^
January 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[27
full compensation in kind for her
losses at sea, whereas a similar re-
payment for the loss of French mer-
chant shipping has been refused to
France. But this dissension, which
is apt to disturb the good relations
between France and England rather
than those between France and Italy,
proves the latter, country's isolation
to exist only in the fancy of Italian
pessimists, and there is little to war-
rant the conclusion that England and
France are not inclined to make con-
cessions without the consent of the
United States.
On the contrary, the Entente Pow-
ers are showing a firm determina-
tion to continue their peace trans-
actions in spite of Mr. Polk's depar-
ture from Paris and the uncertainty
as to America's attitude. The new
Hungarian Government of Karl Hus-
zar has been invited to send a peace
delegation to Neuilly, and Lloyd
George stated on December 18 that
"the delay in the peace-making with
Turkey was due to the necessity of
knowing what the United States in-
tended to do. We are now entitled to
say," he added, "that we have waited
up to the very minute we promised
America, and, without wishing to
deprive America of the honor of shar-
ing in the guardianship of Christian
communities, the Allies have decided
to make peace with Turkey at the
earliest possible moment." This
statement, to be sure, must be taken
with a grain of salt: America's in-
decision is not the sole cause of the
delay, but serves as a useful pretext
to screen the fear of the diplomats
at Paris lest the broaching of the
question how to dispose of Constan-
tinople may lead to fresh dissension
between the Allied Powers. The
French, distrustful of a British man-
date over Turkey, favor a plan which
would leave the Turk in possession
of the city under sufficient guaran-
tees for the freedom of navigation
through the Straits, and Venizelos
claims a mandate over the city for
Greece, which would find little favor
in Rome.
In their Baltic policy the Entente
Powers are also steering a course con-
trary to the one which the American
delegation would have approved. The
latter's standpoint has always been
opposed to the dismemberment of
Russia resulting from the establish-
ment of independent border States,
Poland of course being exempt from
this American ban. The Baltic States
with their great seaports, Narva and
Reval in Esthonia, Riga, Windau, and
Libau in Latvia, are the lungs through
which Russia draws her breath
from the sea. That accounts for
the endeavors of Sasoitov and other
leading Russians of the old regime in
Paris to prevent the recognition by
the Powers of these provinces as in-
dependent States. France and Eng-
land, especially their military experts,
are of a different opinion from the
one held by these Russians and the
American delegates. General Foch,
only a fortnight ago, was for charg-
ing General Niessel with a political
mission to the Baltic States in order
to solidify them against the Bolshe-
viki under at least the moral encour-
agement of the Allies. The Supreme
Council, however, voted to refer this
matter to the respective Allied Gov-
ernments, which meant an indefinite
postponement, and meanwhile one of
the three States in question, after a
protracted parley at Dorpat, has
signed a preliminary armistice with
the Russian Soviet Government. The
recent successes of. Trotsky's Reds
and the chronic hesitancy in the pol-
icy of the Entente are bound to make
Esthonia and her sisters more in-
clined to accept peace proposals from
Moscow than to let themselves be
used for the protection of Europe in
the manner proposed by General
Foch. Poland alone seems willing to
undertake that task; and she is better
equipped for it economically since the
Supreme Council has awarded East
Galicia to her under a mandate of
twenty-five years. Politically, how-
ever, this grant may have a weaken-
ing effect on Poland, as it creates
within her borders an Ukrainian irre-
denta, and a feeling of hostility to-
wards Poland among her Ukrainian
neighbors.
While the diplomats in Paris are
thus contriving means to keep Bol-
shevism in .check, hunger, its most
powerful ally, is rapidly gaining
ground all over Eastern and Central
Europe. Litvinov recently admitted
to a correspondent of the Daily Her-
ald at Copenhagen that Russia's re-
turn to capitalism is unavoidable un-
less other countries are converted in
time to the communism of the Soviets,
an unambiguous call to arms for the
radical elements which are respon-
sible for the labor unrest in the cities
of Europe. Some twenty millions of
people in the larger centres of Fin-
land, Poland, Austria and other parts
of Central Europe are staring starva-
tion in the face, and there is no better
soil for the seeds of revolt than the
despair of the hungry masses. Speedy
assistance may avert a. catastrophe,
but the extent of the misery makes all
efforts seem vain. For the relief
of Austria alone, $100,000,000 is said
to be needed. One can understand that,
under these circumstances, the popu-
lations of the Austrian border dis-
tricts would like to change their citi-
zenship for that of a self-supporting
adjoining State. Vorarlberg wants
to be incorporated with Switzerland,
Western Hungary with Hungary, and
similar movements for secession are
on foot in Salzburg and the Tyrol.
But in this instance the right of self-
determination is appealed to in vain,
for the Supreme Council, some three
weeks ago, communicated to Dr. Ren-
ner its decision to maintain integrally
the territory of the Republic of Aus-
tria. Thus the makers of the new
Europe, within a year of its incom-
plete organization, are called upon to
protect their creation against the ap-
plication of the very principle on the
basis of which they refashioned the
map of Europe — a bad omen for the
durability of their work.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weeki.y Coiiro«ATio!«
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Hahold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Rodman Gilder. Business Manager
Subscription price, five dollara a year in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian pottage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may Iw sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2. England.
Cofyrighl, 1920, in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD de WOLF FULLER
28]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 35
Life or Death for the Railroads?
'T'HE railroads of the United States
■'■ are to be returned to their owners
in two months. They have been in
the hands of the Government since
December 31, 1917. Under Govern-
ment management they have failed to
earn their "rental" by well over half
a billion dollars. The operating def-
icit, which has been supplied from the
public funds, is estimated at some
$550,000,000 for 1918 and 1919. The
ratio of operating expense to gross
earnings, which was about 70 per
cent, in 1917, was in 1919 about 85
per cent. The railroads owe the Gov-
ernment a considerable sum of money
for additions, betterment, and equip-
ment made under Government man-
agement with reference mainly to
war needs rather than to anything
else. Two-thirds of the companies
are at present short of earning their
fixed charges — excluding dividends —
and in some notable cases, chiefly in
the East, the business of certain roads
has been in large part destroyed by
diversion of the traffic to other roads.
The physical condition of roadbed
and equipment is generally below
standard. As things stand at present
it is not in the least degree an exag-
geration to say that the Government,
which took over at the end of 1917 a
solvent system of railroads in reason-
ably good physical condition, is hand-
ing it back to owners in a state of
physical deterioration and financial
insolvency. For correction of this
condition the owners must look to the
Conference Committee of House and
Senate. That committee has before
it two bills — the Esch bill, which
passed the House, and the Cummins
bill, which passed the Senate. The
purpose of both bills is to provide for
resumption of private enterprise in
American railroad management.
Between these two bills there is a
difference wide as the poles. Some
weeks ago, in the pages of the Review,
I pointed out a fundamental defect
in the Cummins bill, which was that,
while providing for a general regional
tariff schedule, the rates of which
were fair, from the shipper's view-
point, it limited the right of individ-
ual railroads to profits earned under
that schedule. But we all know the
reason for this compromise of prin-
ciple ; it was made to satisfy the com-
bined selfishness and ignorance of
what politicians commonly suppose to
be "the people," so as to make them
willing to allow living rates to the re-
gional group as a whole. It was be-
lieved that, under the Cummins bill,
which laid down for the first lime in
American railroad history not merely
an intelligent and sound rule of rate-
making, but tfie only intelligent and
sound rule for rate-making that can
be laid down, and also provided a
concrete rule for a minimum return
on capital invested in the railroad
business, the regulating authority
would have behind it a support strong
enough to give it the courage to make,
when necessary, increases in freight
rates. Therefore, there was ground
for believing that the Cummins bill
"principle" — if in its mangled state
one can call it a principle — would at
least give the railroads a living and
would enable private enterprise to
become at least partially effective.
The Esch bill may be summed up
in a word as the perpetuation of the
miserable system of control of rail-
roads which in 1914, when the war
broke out, was gradually but surely
starving the last sparks of life from
the carcass. It reiterates the same
ridiculous statement that rates are to
be "fair and reasonable," but is very
careful to avoid laying down any rule
by which "fair and reasonable" rates
are to be ascertained and put into ef-
fect. It places on the back of the In-
terstate Commerce Commission, al-
ready grotesquely overloaded with
powers which it does not and cannot
effectively exercise, yet additional
burdens and responsibilities. About
the only thing that the bill does to
clarify the rate situation is in the di-
rection of limiting the power of indi-
vidual States to hamper the making
or disturb the structure of interstate
rates. Under the Esch bill we shall
have the same wearisome, long drawn
out machinery of "rate cases" with
the same wretched results. We shall
have the Interstate Commerce Com-
missioners continually faced with the
necessity of doing a most unpopular
thing without anyone to whom they
can "pass the buck." We shall have
the same tiresome and futile lectures
on the past misdeeds of railroad men
offered as a reason for not giving the
railroads living rates. We shall have
the "New Haven-Frisco-Rock Island
— Rock Island-Frisco-New Haven"
Qhorus chanted from time to time,
with an occasional variant on "C, H.
& D." Whoever wants an "inside"
view of interstate commission psy-
chology may read with profit an ar-
ticle in the December issue of the
Atlantic Monthly, written by Judge
Anderson, late of the commission.
If anyone, after reading that article,
can suppose that the state of mind
there represented will ever supply
living rates for the railroads, he is
possessed of more imagination and
credulity than I am.
To put it plainly and brutally, if
the provisions of the Esch bill govern
in the shaping of legislation for the
railroads, it will mean simply that the
rope is once more around their
throats and that final strangulation
is a matter of a very short time.
The present rate-tariffs are not suf-
ficient to provide a living for the rail-
roads. The director-general some
time ago freely admitted this. He ex-
cused his failure to advance rates on
the ground that it would only tend to
drive the cost of living to yet higher
levels, and insisted that it would be
the duty of railroad managers to
apply for increased rates as soon as
they regained control of their prop-
erties. It is very difficult to maintain
one's patience when offered an argu-
ment of this sort. An advance in
freight rates next April will be just
as effective in advancing the "cost of
living" as it would have been last
November. Suppose that meantime
the Esch bill principle of "fair and
reasonable" rates becomes the law of
the land and the railroads come be-
fore the commission with a request
for an advance in freight tariffs large
enough to make the companies solvent
and enable them to raise new capital
so badly needed for improvements
and extensions — what will be the re-
Januaiy 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[29
suit? Can any reasonable man be-
lieve that there is any chance of their
getting it?
And if they do not get it, what will
be the result? The railroads are, to
say the least, in relatively poor phys-
ical condition; their forces are rela-
tively disorganized and inefficient,
and their working capital is insuffi-
cient. And they need a billion of dol-
lars new money in the next twelve
months ! Their chance of getting this
from the investing public is about
equal to Mr. John D. Rockefeller's
chance of getting a billion dollars
from Congress for his own personal
uses. How long will it be before the
present obvious anxiety of the sav-
ings banks, life insurance companies,
and other agencies for investing the
people's money will express itself in
an agonized cry for government own-
ership to make the people's money
safe? And how long will it be before
government ownership arrives as mu-
nicipal ownership is arriving in New
York City, and by the same route ?
The rate question is the heart of the
matter. Questions of labor, questions
of security issues, questions of exten-
sions, questions of combinations are
also involved and are of tremendous
importance. But all these are subor-
dinate to the question of rates under
any scheme of private enterprise in
the conduct of transportation. The
Cummins bill contains a scientifically
correct rule of rate-making; the
Esch bill contains no such rule.
Under the Cummins rule private en-
terprise will find it possible to func-
tion in railroad transportation ; under
the Esch bill it will be impossible.
The Conference Committee must
choose one or the other of the "prin-
ciples" represented by the two bills.
Upon its choice depends the future
of railroad transportation in this
country.
Thomas F. Woodlock
Washington Gossip
"WyHAT is to be the future orienta-
" tion of the Republican and
Democratic parties? This is the ques-
tion that meets one in all circles in
Washington, once one has traversed
the immediate topics of the Presi-
dent's health, the return of the rail-
roads, the settlement of the coal
strike, and the possible treaty com-
promise.
Democratic leaders are frankly pes-
simistic about the future, although
they cherish the hope that Republican
blunders and dissensions between ■
now and next November may save the
situation for them. While realizing
that the normal line-up in two-party
government is to put the conserva-
tives on the one hand and the radicals
on the other, neither party is willing
to place itself in either of these two
categories. Both parties are dodging
the i^sue and seeking to secure sup-
port from both elements within their
ranks as previously constituted.
That the issue can not be entirely
side-stepped, however, is indicated by
the views of a prominent and thought-
ful Democratic leader, frankly ex-
pressed. According to him, the
Democratic party is facing the dan-
ger of dissolution. The Gold Demo-
crats left the party in 1896 and, for
the most part, have not returned.
Although the President and his party
had yielded all possible concessions to
Labor, this had not sufficed to keep
Labor from turning Socialistic. With
the development of industry, the
South was becoming conservative and
only the race problem preserved the
South against Republican inroads.
The question was whether the Demo-
cratic party might not have to become
frankly radical.
In Washington circles it is felt that
Attorney-General Palmer and ex-Sec-
retary McAdoo are the respective
champions of the two opposing ele-
ments within the party. Palmer, by
his handling of the coal strike and by
his vigorous campaign against the
Reds, is appealing to the conserva-
tives. McAdoo is reported to have
suggested that the name of the Demo-
cratic party might well be changed to
the American Labor Party, and his
recent astonishing statement concern-
ing the earnings of the coal operators
during the war is looked upon as a
direct appeal for radical support. The
influence of President Wilson in the
situation is difficult to estimate. On
the one hand, it is clear that his
idealistic appeals in the past have
made a strong impression upon the
radical-liberals and many consider
them as provocative of social unrest.
On the other hand, it is claimed by
many political leaders that Wilson's
popularity has greatly declined even
among radicals and he would no
longer be an asset to the Democratic
party reconstructed along such lines.
Another factor that may upset
these calculations is the growth of a
boom for Herbert Hoover as a Demo-
cratic candidate. While it is recog-
nized that Mr. Hoover has nnver
been actively identified with politics
and that his affiliations have been
Republican rather than Democratic,
many Democrats believe that by rea-'
son of his close association with Mr.
Wilson and his administration, he
could be persuaded to accept the
nomination. They argue that, on the
one hand, he would appeal strongly
to the conservatives, who desire above
all a "business" administration, and,
on the other, would attract those who
earlier followed the Wilsonian "ideal-
istic" lead. Mr. Hoover is outspo-
kenly anti-Socialistic and his technical
and administrative training, joined
with his unequalled knowledge of
the international economic situation,
would make him an extremely strong
candidate. On the side of political
theory, however, he is regarded as a
man whose ideas are crude and un-
developed.
Equally the Republican party is
trying to ride two horses. There
seems to be a feeling among many
Republican leaders in Washington
that they are sure of the usual con-
servative support, and that in any
case it only remains to bring back
into the fold the Progressives of 1912,
no matter how far some of them have
developed in radical theory. Senator
Johnson of California, an opportunist
politician, is plainly endeavoring to
get aboard the band-wagon, and
Senator Lodge has welcomed his ser-
vices in fighting the ratification of the
unamended covenant. Another indi-
cation of the desire to capture the
30]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 35
radical vote is seen in the appoint-
ment of Col. Raymond Robins to the
Advisory Committee on Platform.
There is no doubt that Robins is a
gifted orator with demagogic power
and that he controls a considerable
following, but many Republicans view
this departure with alarm and believe
that it will alienate the better element
in the party without securing any
appreciable accretion of strength.
There is no gainsaying the fact that
th? radicals regard the Republican
party as reactionary and that they
do not propose to be taken in by so
palpable a trick as the recognition of
such men as Robins.
The undercurrent of opinion in
Washington seems to be that, in the
absence of a clear-cut domestic issue
on which the parties can line up,
both Democrats and Republicans will
seek to avoid the radical-conservative
line of demarcation. It is felt that if
the Republicans would take a definite
stand as the liberal-conservative
party they would have a fighting
chance to break the Solid South at
the next election, and we might see
the whole political situation turn
back again into the traditional two-
party system of Anglo-Saxon de-
mocracy. Courage, however, seems
to be lacking for making the plunge.
The Jazz Journals
T^HE jazz of the orchestras has
• ■■- been defined as a "fantastic riot
of accents." It is a callithumpian
fanfare, with drawling, crawling,
sliding notes interrupted by out-
bursts of calculated noise. "It seeks
... to sweep from our minds all
consideration of other things and to
focus our attention upon its own mad,
whirling, involved self."
The jazz of the instruments has its
analogue in the jazz of the printed
page in some of our present-day
"journals of opinion." Let us but
translate this print to an auditive
plane, and one definition will do for
both. True, the printed species has
several varieties: there is the oracu-
lar jazz of one periodical; the jere-
miad jazz of another; the pietistic
jazz of a third, the explosive jazz of
a fourth. And then there is the
timid, palpitant jazz of a fifth, ex-
pressing itself in relatively subdued
accents, though revealing a constant
tone of wistfulness for the Bolshevist
abandon of its rivals. But though
each has its distinctive dominant
chord, all run close to type in their
cadences of protest. The "fantastic
riot of accents" is surcharged with
abysmal grief and bitter resentment.
The jazz journals overflow with
anathema. Wretched and miserable
beyond words is this planet of ours,
with themselves, Mr. Lenin, Mr.
Trotsky, and Mr. Peters as the only
stars of hope in a sky perpetually
overcast and lowering ; and if good is
to come (which at best is doubtful),
it is to be forwarded mainly by the
incessant pouring forth of a stream
of fretful and railing accusation.
Ultra-modern are these journals;
and though their choral theme is old
beyond the computation of years,
their tonal gestures must be of the
latest. Liberal, or progressive, or
radical, or democratic, they call
themselves in varying degrees. But
their message — what is it? From
what central idea does it spring; of
what formulated creed is it the ex-
pression ; to what goal of social wel-
fare is it consciously directed? There
is no answer. The "fantastic riot of
accents" yields no clue to its own
meaning. It is incoherent; its parts
are incongruous ; in nothing is it con-
stant and consistent except in its un-
failing note of nagging discord. Have
the Allies, in a particular matter,
done thus and so? The fact is "sin-
ister." Have they done exactly the
opposite thing? The fact is even
more "sinister;" it is "shocking,"
alike to the intelligence and the sense
of decency of mankind. Has the
President failed again? Indubitably
he has, whatever he did or said. He
would equally have failed had he
done the opposite. Has Mr. Gompers
done this or that? If so, he has but
shown again his innate, inflexible re-
actionism and the tyrannous hold he
maintains upon the labor movement.
Has he done otherwise? He but re-
veals himself once more in his an-
cient character of an unprincipled
opportunist, desperately striving to
buttress his tottering throne. Does
any one, anywhere (other than a Bol-
shevist, an I. W. W., a pacifist pro-
German or something of the sort),
offer, by deed or word, a contribu-
tion which he imagines may be of
some use to the mass of humanity?
It is naught, it is naught, saith the
journal of jazz, and it goeth on its
way reviling.
Reaction, of course, they denounce ;
and most that they disapprove is
plastered with that name; yet they
have no qualms about aiding, often
in disingenuous ways, the assault of
reactionism upon the regular trade
unions. They advocate the unity of
labor; and yet they foster the agen-
cies which make for dual unions, they
encourage the turbulent local in its
secession from its international par-
ent, and more or less openly they
give their approval to the outlaw
strike. Despite their professions,
their aim — in so far as they are con-
scious of an aim other than the pro-
duction of jazz — is the disunity of
labor as labor is now organized.
One and all they clamor against the
alleged suppressions and falsifica-
tions of news by the "capitalist"
press. Valid opinion, they chorus,
can be formed only when the facts
are impartially recorded. Yet, one
and all, they habitually practice the
thing they denounce in others; they
suppress or distort the fact inimical
to the view they present; and grant-
ing the accuracy of their overdrawn
indictment, the sincere inquirer may
stiii retort that they themselves d-^,
with a fanatic eagerness and accom-
panied by a blare of pretentious vir-
tue, what the others do as a mere
matter of course — an incident of the
day's work.
They preach tolerance; and broad
tolerance unquestionably they* show
for some things — for pretense, for
fanaticism, for Jesuitry, for the dou-
ble-dealing of the revolutionists who,
along with an exoteric message of
peace and order, put forth an eso-
teric message of sabotage and vio-
lence. But for the rest — for the les-
January 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[81
sons of experience, for the standards
and sanctions which have knit and
held the social fabric together, they
reveal an intolerance as extreme as
that of a mediaeval inquisitor. "Bour-
geois" and "banal" and "discarded"
are their words of exorcism for ac-
cepted things; from the rubbish
heaps of the centuries they resurrect
and rehabilitate the old, which they
label the new and the wonderful.
Their tolerance is for the intolerable
things which the common sense of
mankind has rejected.
All this, with orchestral vehe-
mence, they sound forth as the tonal
interpretation of Democracy; the
overture to the New Order, the Bet-
ter Day. Yet it is nothing of the
sort. However it is intended, it re-
veals itself as merely the accompani-
ment to Reaction. It generates the
atmosphere and creates the environ-
ment in which Reaction flourishes. It
incites mean suspicions, petty antag-
onisms, a feverish unrest ; but it gives
to the imagination no vision of a goal
and it prompts the mind to no pur-
poseful action.
In their saner days none knew this
better than the party Socialists.
There was far less of this journalistic
jazz before the war — though quite
enough for all reasonable needs. But
what there was of it drew from the
Socialists a stream of ridicule and
denunciation. Vague and formless,
the mere ebullience of misdirected
emotion and incoherent thought, it
hampered, they said, the authentic
campaign for the emancipation of the
workers and the installation of the
cooperative commonwealth. No one
profited by it, they further said, ex-
cept the reactionaries ; and often they
asserted that part of it at least was
j financed from reactionary sources.
But alas ! though the Socialists rec-
ognized one phase of its harmfulness,
they did not recognize another — its
infectiousness. Fighting it as an epi-
demic, they neglected to immunize
themselves.
Its infectiousness no one need deny.
To many sorts of beings it makes its
appeal — but particularly to those who
take their adventures and their
achievements by way of the imagina-
tion. It reaches for the libido; and
to each of its devotees it tumultu-
ously expresses his subconscious self.
It assures the possession of the fac-
ulty denied by nature; it announces
the achievement of the impossible
deed, the realization of the futile
dream. Under its spell the timid find
themselves battling at the last ram-
parts of the capitalist fortress; a
lamb of the coteries sees himself a
new Lenin, exalted to the headship of
the American soviet state; and an
embryo Peters cons his "hanging
list," long ago compiled, and sharp-
ens his snickersnee for immediate ac-
tion.
"Your journal is a cup of clear
water in a parching desert," writes
an entranced being to the chief ex-
ponent of jeremiad jazz. "Your
journal is both an' inspiration and a
guide," writes another to the oracu-
lar one. Well, there ai'e such people
in the world; and gladly, according
to the Book, must we suffer them.
What they like, they like exceedingly ;
discords and incongruities are to
them but as the quiring of young-
eyed cherubim; and for the time at
least no Ephraim was ever so snugly
roped to his idols as are these. The
"inspiration" of this oracular jour-
nal may be conceded — the testimony
of the inspired is sufficient; but the
matter of guidance requires a word
of explanation. At various times,
and on various pages at the same
time, this journal advocated peace at
any price, peace at half-price, and
peace at no price ; peace without vic-
tory, peace with partial victory, and
peace with overwhelming victory.
On the various issues of the war as
they arose it took almost every con-
ceivable position, with occasional
lapses into a negation of all attitude.
It has both favored and condemned
the League of Nations. It has de-
nounced jingoes, nationalists, and re-
actionaries, and has yet joined them
in a common cause. For a time it
ponderously assailed the American
Socialists; but after they had issued
their manifesto declaring the war the
greatest crime in history and pledg-
ing themselves to obstruction by
every means in their power, it as-
sailed the Administration for not
"cooperating" with them. Guidance
there may be in all this; but a pre-
requisite for the recipient is an ex-
treme degree of "inspiration."
In these mutations and contradic-
tions there may, of course, be method.
The oracle must needs affect omnis-
cience; and omniscience must needs
justify itself to its following by con-
stant self-certification. "Has such
and such a thing happened? Lo, it
was predicted in these pages of old
time." The mad world may go as it
will; the course of history may be
such as to shatter all the major pro-
nouncements of this journal; yet
somewhere in the maze of its ver-
biage can always be found the mate-
rial out of which to make a trium-
phant showing of foreknowledge of
the event. The devotee can not but be
duly impressed; and if, puzzled by
some inharmony of pronouncement,
•some contradiction of terms or state-
ment, he permits a shade of dubiety
to cross his brow, he has only to
consult again the certification. He
knows then that authority has spoken
and there is no more to be said.
Jazz. journalism is a development
of the great war. It had some spo-
radic beginnings before the peace
was broken; but it has flourished
only since the day of American in-
tervention, while it has reached its
most violent stage only since the ar-
mistice. It is peculiarly a product of
the time. It grows out of the break-
up of former conditions; out of the
wreck of old opinions and the eager
hunt for new. It expresses the fever,
the uncertainty, the credulity, the
formless Utopianism of a part of the
mass ; the fierce zealotry of the revo-
lutionists (intensified a hundredfold
by the triumph of Bolshevism) and
of the pacifists (who make up for
their abstention from physical force
by an intensification of hatefulnese) ;
and it expresses no less the love of
imposture on the part of victim as
well as principal — a thing always
heightened during troublous times.
Will the phenomenon endure? He
is a pessimist and a cynic who would
say yes. With the passing of the con-
ditions which have brought it to its
present absurd stage, it must itself
pass away.
W. J. Ghent
32]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 35
Correspondence
German Despair
To the Editors of The Review:
Several letters have come to me lately
which contain interesting revelations of
what the Germans are thinking nowadays
in their homes and private lives. These
letters come from the north, east, and
west of Germany and from people igno-
rant of each other's existence. And yet
they all express much the same senti-
ments, much the same despair. There is
only one brief reference to the high cost
of living and only the following sugges-
tion of any wrongs committed by Ger-
many: "It goes without saying that
also on our side much happened that
should not have happened; war is war."
One of my correspondents is very
bitter toward this country and toward the
Allies in general, reverting only a few
weeks ago to the language of August,
1914, and italicizing with great freedom:^
I should be void of any patriotic feeling if
it were easy for me to write so soon to a
citizen of thai country which, or whose Presi-
dent, gave us Germans the deathblow. . . .
Behind all the beautiful speeches of our ene-
mies there hides of course only the one wish
and aim, to annihilate Germany root and
branch, and to obliterate the Germans. . . .
And since they could never have conquered
us by force of arms, they have been sending
their agents for years to spread discontent
among our people apd finally among our
soldiers too, and thereby they gained what
they would never have gained in honorable
fashion.
Another correspondent says:
I hope that sometime better days will come
when men will learn again the meaning of a
free and pure humanity! This madness of
imperialism must cease. I can say in this con-
nection that great hate of other peoples does
not exist in Germany, although we ourselves
have surely suflfered more than others.
The attitude of the middle class toward
the treaty is indicated briefly but to the
point in' one sentence: "Now as the end
of it all — far worse than the war — this
peace!" The following quotation speci-
fies:
Surely, in the whole history of the world
such degrading terms of peace have never been
presented to a people as these to us — when we
first read them (I have never been able to
read them through) we thought that we did
not see aright or that we had gone crazy.
. . . Such terms of peace as have been con-
cocted to destroy a whole people have never
before been offered to any country I
The most significant comments of all
concern the effects of the war and of the
blockade. One correspondent says:
Fortunately we have come through the last
years without serious illness in our family,
but if the food had been better, my boys would
have grown stronger than they are. ... It
has been a sad war for us Germans ; our Ger-
many that stood so high has fallen into
wretched ruins. ... I am often glad that my
dear husband (who fell in the war) did not
have to go through these times.
Another writes:
Whoever willed the war, the results for us
are in any case such that my generation and
the next, perhaps the third generation too,
will not and can not arrive at any joy in lifel
. . . Although I have not actually gone
hungry, my health did not improve exactly
during the years of insufficient nourishment,
and all the excitement has had an effect on me.
I think my arteries are much more choked ;
for example, my eyes have become far weaker
in recent times. . . . What this most terrible
of wars has destroyed in respect of ideals, that
too can never be made good.
A third:
Thus far we have been fortunate in the way
in which we have come through these terrible
years. We may not complain personally, but
nevertheless those years were bad. . . . Only
one who went through it knows what the
starvation blockade meant, a blockade to which
hundreds of thousands of women, old men,
and children succumbed. . . . The recollection
of the happy times up to 1914 affects us like
a dream of great blessings, and we ask our-
selves in vain : did all that have to be ?
It is impossible to read these letters
— or only these quotations from them —
without sensing the despair and agony
that are now at work in Germany. The
letters show beyond a doubt a stunning
realization on the part of the Germans
that they are a crushed, beaten nation.
In this realization there is food for hope.
As all of Germany's friends and enemies
may well desire, this realization may be
the beginning of wisdom.
George M. Priest
New York, December 19
A French Opinion of the
A. E. F.
(The writer of the following letter, a nephew
of Taine, is a French author of repute who
has published several notable books and arti-
cles on the recent war.)
To the Editors of The Review :
It was in March, 1919, four months
after the end of the war, that I saw the
American battlefields. I went over the
whole of the Meuse-Argonne fighting
grounds. Except that the dead had been
buried, the state of the country was the
same as if the battle had just been
fought, and everything testified to the
wonderful tenacity and dash of the
Americans.
The battle began on September 26,
1918. It was only after a few days that
the Germans grasped the scope of the
attack east of the Argonne, which in con-
junction with the French was to reach
the Mezieres-Sedan line and cut the
enemy's source of supply. The resistance
which they then managed to put up,
gradually increasing to the right of
the Americans, compelled the attack,
which had been at first directed south-
north, to wheel towards the east in the
direction of the Meuse. On November
6, the object of the tremendous battle
had been attained — the enemy's main line
of communication had been cut. Of
course one must not forget what the
French, who took some part in the
Meuse-Argonne struggle, and what the
British were doing on the other part of
the western front. But it was enough
to see the American battlefield, enough to
realize how the enemy, fighting for their
last foothold, had desperately defended
every yard of their ground, to come to
the conclusion that the Germans did not
stop the war of their own free will, as I
heard it often said in Germany, where I
was some months ago. They had to beg
for an armistice to avoid disaster.
It is generally understood in France
that the American contribution to the
war was absolutely decisive. Even be-
fore they had taken an important part
in the fighting, their fast increasing
numbers — they were coming in July at
the rate of 300,000 a month — allowed
Marshal Foch to engage, when the
French counter-attack began on July 15,
1918, all his French reserves. Nothing
more upset the German calculations than
the fact that the French lines were so
thickly manned. Ludendorff had reck-
oned on the exhaustion of our reserves.
But of course the American help was
not limited to that, and when they went
in for their big fights — St. Mihiel and
Meuse-Argonne — they showed a pluck
and a state of preparation that would
have honored seasoned warriors.
Andre Chevrillon
Saint-Clovd, Seine-et-Oise, December 20
Deflation Through Taxation
To the Editors of The Review:
In your issue of November 29 you con-
tend, accurately and truthfully as it
appears to me, that the recent sudden
rise in prices is due primarily to infla-
tion of currency and credit. The Review
therefore favors the reverse policy of de-
flation, but seems decidedly at a loss as
to how such a policy should proceed.
I wish to suggest one method of re-
lief: namely, by drastic and thorough-
going taxation, coupled with the speediest
possible payment of the public debt.
Surely, prompt and steady retirement of
all outstanding bonds just as soon as it
becomes legal to pay them must in the
nature of things have the effect of nar-
rowing the range of credit and of tight-
ening and hardening the money market
generally. That is, it would be deflation.
Of course, as a Single-taxer, I do not be-
lieve that any tax can in strict equity
be imposed upon any other form of prop-
erty than monopolized land-value. Still,
it may be frankly admitted that a tax,
even a radical tax, on inheritances would
cause but little disturbance to industry
and to business.
Tax land-monopoly then to the limit.
Tax inheritance so far as we dare. Pay
the public debt. And deflate credit.
Malcolm C. Burke
Washington, D. C, December 5
January 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[88
Book Reviews
At the Front in Poetry
Reynard the Fox. The Ghost Heath Run.
By John Masefield. New York: The
Macmillan Company.
Pictures of the Floating World. By Amy
Lowell. New York : The Macmillan
Company.
Dust and Light. By John Hall Wheelock.
New York : Charles Scribner's Sons.
Images. By Richard Aldington. London :
The Egotist, Limited.
Latin Poems of the Renaissance. Trans-
lated by Richard Aldington. London : The
Egotist, Limited.
Choruses from Iphigeneia in Aulis and the
HippoLYTUS of Euripides. Translated by
H. D. London : The Egotist, Limited.
IN Mr. Masefield's variously remarkable
"Reynard the Fox" not the least re-
markable thing is the sheer knowledge
and the control of knowledge. In knowl-
edge, as in land, to 02vn is one thing;
to use is another. Mr. Masefield in this
region is a man of vast possessions; he
cultivates every square foot. The yield
of interest, vigor, poetry, is continuous.
The thing is almost peculiar to our time.
Mr. Masefield, like Browning, Meredith,
and Kipling, increases the load, but in-
creases the energy with the load; when
he adds ball, he adds powder. The re-
sultant quality might almost be called
explosiveness.
The poem narrates a fox-hunt in some-
thing like twenty-five hundred lines of
octosyllabic couplet freely limbered in the
scurrying parts with anapests. The
passage I quote is representative.
At Tencombe Rings near the manor Linney,
His foot made the great black stallion whinny,
And the stallion's whinny aroused the stable
And the bloodhound bitches stretched their
cable,
And the clink of the bloodhound's chain
aroused
The sweet-breathed kyne as they chewed and
drowsed,
And the stir of the cattle changed the dream
Of the cat in the loft to tense green gleam.
The red-wattled black cock hot from Spain
Crowed from his perch for dawn again,
His breast-pufft hens, one-legged on perch.
Gurgled, beak-down, like men in church.
They crooned in the dark, lifting one red eye
In the raftered roost as the fox went by.
Mr. Masefield has mastered the great
art in poetry — to surprise us with the
usual. The vividness of this poem is
amazing. It is not the highest achieve-
ment of his imagination — the subject is
too restricted; but largely because the
subject is restricted, it is possibly the
most convincing test of his imagination.
Here there are no competing forces — no
story, no drama, no character or passion
in the ordinary sense. The imagination
is stripped and therefore you can test its
muscle; The average rhymer, the aver-
age poet, must feel in contact with this
force as the Roman dandy felt when he
passed his slender, shapely fingers over
the brawn of the herculean gladiator.
The continuity of the marvel is a sec-
ond marvel. Mr. Masefield's work is
packed with intensities. He responds to
every summons. He enters a stable
where all sorts of humble and menial
things are doing, and not a thing is
done in that stable that is not exciting
to Mr. Masefield. I frankly own that it
would rejoice me to catch him in a pass-
ing listlessness, an instant's nonchalance;
I should feel it a sort of voucher for his
enthusiasms. The rise and fall, the un-
dulation, which marks all human experi-
ence, all human excitement, which poetry
doubly recognizes in the throb of pas-
sion and the beat of rhythm, is scarcely
perceptible in "Reynard the Fox." Mr.
Masefield seems almost willing to expel
the unstressed syllables from his metre.
He writes: "Moustache clipped tooth-
brush-wise, and jaws." His English hates
particles like Latin; it must gorge itself
with nouns and verbs. It is all wonder-
ful, and it is genuinely, vitally good; but
were it less wonderful, it might be still
better; it might be more lifelike if it
were less vital.
Mr. Masefield is passionate, mystical,
melancholy. How does such a temper
comport itself in the treatment of a
Walter Scott or Rudyard Kipling theme?
The temper is still there, still discernible.
The passion shows itself in the half-
demoniac quality of the ride. The mys-
ticism reveals itself in our final sense of
something phantasmagoric in the whole
event. The melancholy shows itself in
two forms. The poet describes the per-
sons at the meet, individualizing after a
fashion no less than thirty-seven people,
and granting an enlivening stroke or two
to as many more. The strange thing is
that in about half these thirty-seven per-
sons, met for pastime on an English
countryside, there is something fell or
wry. The second point is still more in-
teresting. There is one element in all
this blithe excursion which answers to
Saul Kame, to Johnny, to Dauber, to Nan,
a straining, goaded, passionate, palpitat-
ing thing. That thing is the fox, and
on the fox Mr. Masefield's temperament
and his literary instinct inexorably and
inseparably fasten. One sometimes fan-
cies that in this chase Mr. Masefield's
game is the fox-hunter. That point,
however, is not clear. What one may
venture to suggest is that fox-hunting
in England would cease if Englishmen
could be brought to realize the mind of a
fox as interpreted by Mr. Masefield.
In the binding of Miss Lowell's new
book there are two colors. The back is
orange; the sides are lead-colored. Each
color has a field to itself. They meet, but
do not blend; their meeting is a concus-
sion, neither yields a jot to the other,
and their boundary is linear and absolute.
After the binding, take the book. Read
these phrases : "A black cat amid roses" ;
"He wore a coat with gold and red maple
leaves"; "I saw a beetle whose wings
were of black lacquer spotted with milk."
These colors resemble those in the bind-
ing. They meet. They may match-
that is, they may help each other. But
whether they help or hinder, they never
yield — they never blend. Each is abso-
lute; each reserves its sovereignty. If
they work together, it is not a fusion of
states, but a concert of autocrats.
The reason why Miss Lowell and her
group hate sentimentality, hate senti-
ment, hate the display, perhaps even the
avowal, of feeling, becomes gradually
clear. Take sentiment as an example of
the group. Its office is to blend, and, in
blending, it blurs. It mellows, it min-
gles; its enemies significantly call it
"mushy." It removes a little of the fact
from every fact, to replace it by an
emanation from itself. It slubbers the
reality with prepossessions — at its worst,
it obliterates the reality; obsei*vation dis-
appears, or becomes perfunctory.
Against the habits of the smaller Vic-
torians, Miss Lowell revolts. "Give us
back our facts," she cries, "the facts that
you have blurred and blinked." As the
facts that interest her are mainly sense-
impressions, she calls them images and
herself an imagist. She stands for the
integrity of the individual perception; if
beauty is to be kept at all, it shall be an
erect, inflexible, and trenchant beauty.
Let us carry geometry into art. The
theory, whether right or wrong, is enjoy-
ably robust, and a certain hardihood, al-
most hardness, in Miss Lowell's temper
has aided her in giving it embodiment.
We are helped in certain undertakings
by our faults, as we are obstructed in
others by our virtues. To call Miss
Lowell, as a person among persons, un-
feeling would probably be slanderous,
but I think it would be quite just to call
her unfeeling as a poet among poets.
This has helped her to give a special
eminence to those qualities with which
the presence or dominance of feeling
naturally interferes. One can get in an
oyster shell a firmness of texture and a
crispness of profile which are not to be
had in an oyster; but it does not follow
inevitably that the shell is the higher
formation of the two.
These thoughts enable me to grasp
more clearly than ever before the place
of free verse among the utensils of the
school. Lines of equal length, lines of
uniform metre, and rhymed lines tend to
run together, and the running-together
of things is for these lovers of saliency
the unpardonable, sin. Divide each line
from its neighbor by a new metre, and
its separation, its distinction, is insured.
If we look at a series of equal squares
or equal circles, the tendency to group,
to mass, to assimilate, is almost irresist-
ible. But if we look at a mixed series,
showing first a circle, then a rhomb, then
34]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 35
a hexagon, then a square, and so on in a
varying and unforeseeable order, there
is no excuse, no chance, for the relaxation
of attention. Free verse, whether right
or wrong, or both, is the logical instru-
ment for carrying out Miss Lowell's idea
of the independence and sovereignty of
the individual perception.
I have lingered so long with Miss
Lowell that I must cut short my parley
with her latest book. Less original than
"Can Grande's Castle," less notable in
single poems than some earlier volumes,
it is easier and pleasanter reading than
much of her earlier work. I count 272
poems on 257 pages. This carries out
the principle. The more poems, the more
jutties, friezes, and coigns of vantage,
the more relief and separation, in a word.
I have another reason for approving this
terseness. I am easily surfeited with
visual images in which I cannot trace a
per\-asive feeling or detect a supporting
thought. An unexplained group of im-
ages, if it be single or concise, allures
me by its mystery. A line of Hebrew
script stenciled on the plate-glass of a
Yiddish restaurant is a call and spur to
my imagination. But to run my eye
down line after line of Hebrew script in
a Talmud folio would baffle and irk me.
So I am moderately attracted when Miss
Lowell writes :
I have drunk your health
In the red-lacquer wine cups,
But the wind-bells on the bronze lanterns
In my garden
Are corroded and fallen.
But a page of this, in seeming to feed,
would merely famish me. I cannot make
a meal off the decorations on the china.
Some things in Mr. Wheelock's new
volume, "Dust and Light," impress me as
ornamental and labored; the dust veils
the light. In "Earth," he reaches an agree-
able and pellucid simplicity, and when he
tells us that earth's beauty flows equally
"Into a savior or a rose,"
the diction is aglow. Even here the
sentiment does not quite hold me. What
is a piece of rock to me? If it be eight
thousand miles thick, so much the worse.
The earth is dead. I am of the party of
life. Mr. Wheelock, too, in spite of him-
self, is finally of that party. He calls
the earth serene, humble, and tender; in
other words, he must make matter spiri-
tual, before he can really interest him-
self in the derivation of spirit from mat-
ter.
In the two sequences, "April Lightning-
and "Be Born Again," Mr. Wheelock dis-
closes a much more original and remark-
able personality. He is mystic and sex-
ualist, like many persons; but the great
difference between him and the tribe, or
crew, of his associates is that while they
are mystics by way of being sexualists,
he is sexualist by way of being mystic.
The ordinary lover-mystic goes from the
chapel to the couch; Mr. Wheelock has
an oratory in his bedchamber. I speak
plainly; Mr. Wheelock himself is plain.
His imagination is apparently kindled
and liberated at the very point at which we
suppose that the imagination is normally
dispossessed by the senses. Other poets
write prothalamia and epithalamia ; what
Mr. Wheelock writes is thalamia. In the
beginnings of love, its shyness, unfold-
ings, illusions, variations, he takes as
poet not the smallest interest. In his
love there is no spring, and its summer
is all August. Culminations attract him,
not for base reasons, but because in them
alone does his imagination complete its
bridal with the universe.
There are disenchantments, naturally,
which the poet in him finds hardly less
divine than the enchantments. Death
becomes the sequel of love, the replace-
ment of love, almost the equivalent of
love. I quote one sonnet of threnodic
temper.
The large day of the everlasting earth
Draws to sublime conclusion ; in the mood
Of ancient autumn, awful and subdued,
She waits the death that is the door to birth—
With bounty bowed against the days of dearth,
Holy and steadfast — but dreer leaves are
strewed
Over the tomb between her breasts, and rude
Wail the huge winds that mock at April's
mirth.
Lay your frail arms about my weariness.
Bare me that pale and patient breast again.
Gather me to you in one deep caress 1
For all my heart is breaking, and the pain
Of life is on me, and the loneliness, —
And death is dark, and love itself is vain.
Mr. Wheelock is an obstructed poet.
There are occasions and themes which
remove those obstructions. When they
arrive, his inspiration declares itself.
My hopes of Mr. Richard Aldington
decline. 'The "River," in an anthology, had
flung over me the light mesh of its deli-
cate preciosity, but "Images" has set me
free. There are things here indeed which
a little good-will may find pretty, things
in which lovers of the dusky and the
rustling may even detect charm. A.
slight veil of technical originality, free
verse and the like, blurring the common-
place and hence favoring the common-
place, enwraps the volume. Mr. Alding-
ton is not afraid to say "damn" — we
know that the English as a nation are
courageous. I am not disposed to com-
ment on this practice altogether in the
spirit of Chaucer's Parson, "What eyleth
the man so sinfully to swere?" but an-
other criticism seems to me in place.
The apology for profanity is spontaneity.
Mr. Aldington swears as if he had been
twitted with his inability to perform the
act, and had invited his friends and
neighbors to be present at the refutation
of the calumny. I like him best in two
bitter lines:
The bitterness, the misery, the wretchedness
of childhood
Put me out of love with God.
The poets' Translation Series has been
augmented by "Latin Poems of the
Renaissance," translated by Mr. Alding-
ton, and "Choruses from the Iphigeneia
in Aulis and the Hippolytus of Euripides,"
translated by H. D. The English of the
two books is only a shade better than the
competent, uninspired English of the
average careful translation. The Latin
poems to which obscure names like An-
drea Navagero and Marc-Antonio Flam-
inio are prefixed, are, so to speak, frosted
with ornament. When they forsake the
two great temptations to ornament, wo-
man and landscape, and betake them-
selves to domesticities, utilities, or an-
tiquities, the improvement is instantly
perceptible. As for the choruses, a rapid
comparison of one or two from the "Hip-
polytus" with the original educed some
peculiarities. H. D. is translating
choruses; yet lines 73-83, which are ordi-
nary iambics, are translated with the
choruses in choric metres, and of these
eleven lines three are silently omitted.
This seems an inconsequent proceeding,
but it is harmless compared with the
translation in the same passage of the
achromatic word, 6iiprET>»i, by a phrase
that reeks of the dye-vat, "swirls across."
0. W. Firkins
An Old Republican
Clemenceau: The Man and His Times. By
H. M. Hyndman. New York: Frederick
A. Stokes Company.
OF all the statesmen who guide the
destinies of nations to-day perhaps
the most hateful to a certain school of
thinkers is the veteran Premier of
France, Georges Clemenceau. To the
radical internationalist he is the incarna-
tion of French revanche and imperial-
ism, the implacable enemy of the new
light that has risen in Soviet Russia,
the crafty intriguer who has thwarted
idealistic plans for a new world founded
on fraternity and the Fourteen Points.
It may be surmised that Clemenceau re-
tains in face of these denunciations the
imperturbable calm of Marjorie Flem-
ming's pet hen. Yet there is a real dan-
ger that this incessant denunciation may
wholly distort in American eyes a figure
which should be naturally sympathetic
and appealing as the very incarnation of
Republican France. There has been per-
haps too much made of Clemenceau's
nickname, the Tiger. There is nothing
of the tiger's ferocity or blood-lust in
the man who pleaded for the pardon of
those Communists who a few years be-
fore had sought his life, nor can the
statesman who emerges from a half cen-
tury of French politics as poor as when
he entered be thought of as a beast of
prey. All that Clemenceau has in com-
mon with the tiger is his fighting spirit,
a quality which should not be altogether
repugnant to the countrymen of Wash-
ington, Grant, and Roosevelt.
Against all such misconception and
January 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[85
misunderstanding Mr. Hyndman's "Cle-
menceau, the Man and His Times" should
serve as an admirable antidote. It is
all the more valuable because the author,
old friend of Clemenceau as he is, writes
from the standpoint of an advanced So-
cialist and is by no means sparing of his
criticism. His work is no mere enthu-
siastic eulogy, not even a biography in
the ordinary sense, but a detailed pic-
ture of the social and political life of
France from the time of the second Em-
pire to the close of the present war,
centred upon the dominating person-
ality of Clemenceau. Mr. Hyndman
takes great pains to fill in the back-
ground; we come to know something of
his hero's friends and foes, of Thiers
and Gambetta, Delcasse, Jaures, and
Caillaux; and the author speaks of
Clemenceau and his times not with the
air of a student who has compiled his
information from books, but with the
assurance of a veteran partisan in Eu-
ropean politics.
Georges Benjamin Clemenceau was
born in a little village of La Vendee in
1841. His father, the descendant of an
old land-holding family in that province,
was a true type of the men who guided
the Revolution, a materialist, a philan-
thropist, and an aggressive radical. His
protests against the coup d'etat of Na-
poleon the Little earned him the honor
of imprisonment in 1851. His son has
inherited and developed the father's
principles and it is not without interest
to note that the first record we have of
Clemenceau's political activity is his
imprisonment by the Imperial Govern-
ment for a too enthusiastic eulogy in
some radical journal of the Republican
revolution of 1848. Clemenceau's early
life in an isolated province gave him a
highly valuable understanding of the
French peasant. "Rural France, the
real France," he told Mr. Hyndman who
was urging him to throw in his lot with
the Socialists, "is and will always remain
individualist, founded on property." "I
have seen the peasants close," he added,
"at every stage of existence from birth
to death and this is their guiding prin-
ciple in every relation of life."
But Clemenceau is something more
than a mere representative of rural
France. After some preliminary train-
ing he went to Paris to complete his
studies in the medical profession, and ex-
cept for brief intervals, including a visit
to England and a short sojourn in this
country, where he taught French in a
girls' school and married one of his
pupils, he has lived in Paris for over
half a century and knows the metropolis
quite as well as he knows the country.
He began his career as a doctor in the
workingmen's quarter of Montmartre,
and by his energy, generosity, and un-
daunted republicanism won such popu-
larity among his neighbors that on the
fall of the Empire he was at once chosen
Mayor of the quarter to administer the
district during the trying days of the
siege of Paris. As a representative of
Paris to the National Assembly at Bor-
deaux, he voted for a continuance of the
war and is the last living representative
of the signers of a protest against the
cession of Alsace-Lorraine. He was
deeply involved in the troubles of the
Commune. Sympathizing sincerely with
the opposition of the metropolis to the
reactionary policy of Thiers, he never-
theless risked his life in vain to prevent
the murder of the two nationalist gen-
erals by the Paris mob, which was the
direct cause of the bitter war between
Paris and the country. His counsels of
moderation and clemency so offended the
desperate leaders of the Commune that
an order for his arrest, the first step
to his judicial murder, was issued. He
managed, however, to escape from Paris
and went on a tour of radical propa-
ganda in the provinces, dogged at every
step by emissaries of the reactionary
Government.- In 1871 as in 1917 Clemen-
ceau spoke, worked, and risked his life in
the great cause of national unity.
It would take too long to give even a
brief sketch of Clemenceau's long and
illustrious public life. It falls naturally
into two parts, his career as a caustic
critic and occassional wrecker of a
succession of mediocre bourgeois ad-
ministrations, and his own work as
Minister and Premier in the later years
of his life. A steadfast champion of
radical republicanism, he consistently op-
posed in the Chamber and in the press
the policy of colonial imperialism by
which Ferry and others sought to divert
attention from the crying needs for
social reform at home. He helped to
wreck the attempt of Boulanger to es-
tablish a military dictatorship, exposed
the Panama scandals, and joined hands
with Zola in the heroic attempt to secure
justice for Dreyfus. A combination of
Socialists and reactionaries drove him
for a time from public life in 1893, but
after a brief period devoted to journal-
ism and to authorship he was returned
to the Senate, and in 1906 became for
the first time a member of the admin-
istration, serving as Minister of the In-
terior under Sarrien.
Clemenceau's career as Minister and
Premier has two equally important as-
pects. At home he was a strong advocate
of radical legislation for the benefit of
the working-class. Bitterly as he was
attacked by the Socialist party he was
warmly in sympathy with most of their
practical aims. "I claim to be a Social-
ist," he said. "Socialism is a social be-
neficence in action, the intervention of
all on behalf of the victim of the few."
But he was steadfastly opposed to any
of the outbreaks of class-warfare, which
destroyed the unity of the nation. He
sent troops to the Lens collieries at the
time of a great strike in that district,
not to break the strike, with which he
was largly in sympathy, but to prevent
rioting and disorder. He crushed an in-
cipient rebellion in the wine-growing
district of the South by a prompt dis-
play of force, and he promptly called on
the army to furnish engineers when a
strike of the electricians of Paris
plunged the city into darkness. "My pro-
gramme," he said in memorable words,
"is Social Reform under the law against
grievances and Social Order under the
law against revolutionists."
In his foreign policy the great achieve-
ment of Clemenceau was the establish-
ment of the Entente with Great Britain.
Throughout his life he had been an An-
glophile. In fact during the period of
English unpopularity in France he had
more than once been accused of being
a hired tool of Great Britain. But
against the storm of German aggression
which, from 1906, was gathering on the
frontiers the one sure help which Cle-
menceau recognized was the power of
free and liberal England. He had long
distrusted, rightly as events were to
show, the alliance with autocratic Rus-
sia, and from the time of his accession
to power he labored in conjunction with
Edward VII to promote that informal
but binding union of hearts which on
the outbreak of the Great War was to
prove the salvation of Europe and the
world.
Clemenceau's services to France and
the world since 1914 are too fresh in the
minds of men to need rehearsal. It is
enough to say that from the very begin-
ing he urged the energetic prosecution
of the war with such vehemence that his
organ, I'Homme Libre, was repeatedly
cut to pieces and frequently suppressed
by a timorous censorship, until he re-
baptized it with Gallic irony V Homme
Enchaine. He was recalled to power in
1917 because all that was best and
strong in France recognized that he
alone of public men possessed the en-
ergy, courage, and resolution to crush
the dangerous intrigues for a German
peace which a succession of cowardly
ministers had ignored or pandered to.
From the moment that Clemenceau took
the helm it was known the world over
that there would be no faltering or com-
promise with foreign enemies or traitors
at home. His repeated visits to the
trenches and cordial relations with the
military gave the heroic army the assur-
ance it desired and deserved, that the
civil government would support it to the
last. He risked his life again and again
in exposed sections with the one idea of
convincing the poilu that the ruler of
France was ready to share his dangers.
In the darkest hours of the German drive
his faith in final victory was unshaken,
and it is a fitting tribute to his services
36]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 35
that his name along with that of Foch
should by unanimous resolution of the
Senate be enshrined in the town hall of
everj' Commune of France as well de-
serving of the gratitude of the country.
T. M. PARROTT
Two "Latest Ettbrts"
The Black Drop. By Alice Brown. New
York: The Macmillan Company.
The Builders. By Ellen Glasgow. New
York : Doubleday, Page and Company.
THESE novels, like so much of our
current American fiction, are serious-
ly planned and earnestly labored. They
mean to mean something, at all costs.
What they lack is the quality no effort
can achieve: the genial quality of great
story-telling, the effect of a spontaneous
pouring forth, of energy released not
without pains, but without pain. This is
not Miss Brown's fault, or Miss Glas-
gow's ; but there it is, to account for the
qualified mood in which we read their
work. Never with them do we quite re-
lax and make ourselves at ease. Always
between us and the story we feel the
story-teller at work, with rigid hand and
knitted brow. . . . Since 1914 there
has been a notable increase of strain in
Miss Brown's fiction. Her peace of mind
was violated, with Belgium, in those first
days of August. From that moment her
poise deserts her, the quiet confidence of
the well-bred New Englander. She is
agitated, excitable; she thinks in super-
latives — mourns, execrates, exults,
prophesies. She speaks for thousands of
delicately constituted Americans to whom
the war in Europe came first as a per-
sonal outrage and almost at once as a
personal responsibility. The intolerable
weight was there, on their shoulders;
their only safety from madness lay in
taking sides once for all. This could
not be merely another wanton conflict of
national greeds and ambitions, could not
be like former wars : it was Armageddon,
the war, a crucial and final trying of
conclusions between civilization and bar-
barism, God and Satan, right and wrong.
You were saved or damned. Neutrality
was an unspeakable fraud. You bitterly
resented America's failure to leap into
the struggle. You pictured loyal Amer-
ica as composed of a magnanimous ma-
jority straining towards the privilege of
battle for the right, and a timid or blind
minority, headed by the Government,
ignominiously hanging back. And even
more than the Administration you de-
spised and feared the disloyal America,
the unknown quantity of hyphenates,
pro-Germans, and pacifists who were all,
consciously or unconsciously, backing up
the Hun.
To the worst of these categories be-
longs the villain of "The Black Drop."
Nor is villain a slovenly term for him.
It is the amiable contention of the "new
novelists" that no man born of woman is
either devil or angel. Charles Tracy is
the totally bad man of melodrama. Scion
of an old and honorable New England
family, there is the taint of some remote
and forgotten inheritance in his blood.
A marked personal charm is supposed to
conceal his true character. An actor
might convince us of this, but even he
would have a tussle with the lines. On
paper Charles Tracy is the miscreant,
the black and slimy soul marked from the
cradle; we instinctively hiss him on his
first appearance. And by contrast his
Helen is the radiantly beautiful and
noble-hearted damsel of black-and-white
romance, the perfect old-fashioned
heroine. She lives "married in name
only" throughout our acquaintance with
her, and when Charles has been discov-
ered by the authorities (as the gallery
has discovered him in the first act) and
his knavish pro-German profiteer tricks
are put a stop to, and he vanishes, sneer-
ing, with the adventuress — when he is
comfortably out of the way, his quondam
Helen remains before us "unawakened,"
virginal, wide-eyed, her one plaintive
note echoing to the last, "Grandsir, what
is love?" If you believe in fairies, good
and bad, and like them decked with the
graces of a considered and elaborate
style, here is your entertainment; though
the entertainer's dabbling in realistic de-
tail doubtfully waits upon illusion.
Miss Glasgow is a novelist who has
won popularity without letting herself be
drawn into hasty production. Like Win-
ston Churchill, she takes two or three
years to the writing of a novel — perhaps
again like Mr. Churchill she is a trifle
too solemn over the business. The effort
of the story-maker sensibly overweighs
the impulse of the story-teller. But "The
Builders" is less heavy-handed than its
predecessors. Its action is more compact
and its dialogue shows less tendency to
run to seed. Brave Caroline is some-
thing more than a replica of the con-
ventional romantic heroine. Angelica is
a mollusc-wife none too delicately drawn,
but " with a difference." And the other
women, Matty Timberlake the dragon of
beneficence, and Mary Blackburn the
Amazon in love, are excellent variations
from the familiar types. But the three
men of the story are hardly more than
capable "parts." The Allan who is so
easily lured from his Mary by the first
deliberate glance of a siren, the hand-
some wastrel Roane who, a perfect South-
ern gentleman, insults women with so
much charm and such comfortable im-
punity, are figures of "the screen." As
for Robert Blackburn, who, hopelessly
wedded to the mollusc-siren, is the
natural heaven-born mate for brave Caro-
line, few masculine observers will have
much patience with him. To his glory
the ancient chord of honor, duty, and
Southern chivalry is twanged without
mercy. The weak point about the story
is that its effectiveness all hangs on our
acceptance of Angelica. Unless we be-
lieve in her supreme beauty and charm,
unless we come directly under her spell,
the rest is naught. Literature is full of
ruthless and irresistible sirens; what one
of them but Shakespeare's Cleopatra has
really held us in her hands? There is
little subtlety in this Angelica's speech
or action, and for her physical subtlety
we have only her author's word. Why
should we believe that not only the
Roberts and the Carolines, but all of
Richmond (including the Blackburn
family doctor) could ever have been be-
fooled by her? Miss Glasgow's Angel-
ica, like Miss Brown's Charles Tracy, is
a rickety axle for our apple-cart.
H. W. BOYNTON
Business — and Aristotle
The Turnover op Factory Labor. By
Sumner H. Schlichter, Ph.D. With an
Introduction by John R. Commons.
New York : D. Appleton and Company.
IF the fine old Greek sage Herakleitos,
returning to earth, were to visit a
modern factory he would find there a
striking exemplification of the basic
principle of his philosophy — "everything
flows." Just as you can not step twice
into the same river, so you can not enter
twice the same factory. Even the walls,
that seem so enduring, are undergoing
continual, though imperceptible change;
the machinery is being rapidly worn out
and replaced; the raw material passes
• swiftly through the various processes of
manufacture and then out into the mar-
ket as a finished product; laborers come
and go in an ever-changing stream; and
even the management frequently changes
for better or worse. Of course, this
external flux, in that it follows the law
of being and becoming, can not be wholly
bad ; and yet instinctively we try to stay
the movement, forgetting that change is
of the essence of life and that things
stable and inert are either asleep or
dead. Doubtless Aristotle — for we are
still learning from the ancients — would
say that we must seek the golden mean,
which, being interpreted in times of
business management, implies that we
should adjust the flow of labor some-
where between an excessively rapid turn-
over and no turnover at all.
Amid a great mass of statistics Dr.
Schlichter mentions a number of inter-
esting and curious facts. The tremendous
increase in the demand for labor during
the war has greatly increased the rate of
turnover, as men are scarce and jobs
plentiful. For the same reason both
resignations and discharges are more
numerous in times of prosperity than in
times of depression, when men are anx-
ious to hold their jobs.
The psychologist, at least, has his
innings in this book, for the author de-
January 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[37
votes the latter half of it to an elaborate
discussion of the means whereby the
rate of turnover may be reduced; so, by
a somersault of its own, the book becomes
a manual on methods of handling men.
In this other vast field are many by-
paths, where the author loves to linger,
and others which he merely points out
along the way. He discourses on sci-
entific management, hiring and firing,
testing of candidates, the breaking-in of
new workers, the training of foremen,
the need of an employment manager or
supervisor of labor, the desirability of a
liberal labor policy as distinguished
from a merely enlightened policy. And
yet he never once mentions the impor-
tance of tact and a spirit of friendliness,
without which the best-laid schemes for
the scientific management of men must
come to naught.
Business men who read this book will
wonder how they have managed their
affairs in the past without an efficiency
expert, and how they will be able to
carry on during the next twenty years —
if they live so long. Verily, times and
customs change, and it is hard for the
older generation to learn the ways of
the new. Nevertheless, they must do it
or be prepared to turn over the manage-
ment to young fellows strong in theory
and self-confidence, but lacking in the
seasoned judgment that comes from long
experience of victory and defeat. Here
again the principle of the mean applies,
for in business as in war there should
be variety of talent, and though there
must be changes in leadership, there is
always need of a Nestor or a Ulysses.
The Run of the Shelves
WE have enough chemistry in our
make-up to know that a percolator is
something besides a coffee-pot. In the
chemical laboratory, as we remember
from ancient, malodorous days, it was
the name for a comical paper filter which
we used to separate a liquid from its
sediment, and which sometimes, when the
instructor's back was turned, we per-
forated with a pencil that the percolation
might be more expeditious — with disas-
trous results. We have no desire to punc-
ture Mr. Ellwood Hendrick's "Percolator
Papers" (Harpers) ; they run lightly and
swiftly enough as it is. But we should
like to filter one part of their composi-
tion from another. The metaphor is
mixed, but the meaning is clear. Where
these essays take the form of light, but
not trivial, comment on the ways of men
and the accidents of life, they are charm-
ing; the turn of thought is paradoxical
enough to be stimulating and the style
is of the right essay flavor. Such, for
example, is the paper called rather whim-
sically CjH^OH, which is no pedantic
treatise on the composition of alcohol, but
a very human document on the probable
effects of prohibition. This is the pure
liquid of Mr. Hendrick's little book,
which we should like to filter off from the
scientific dregs. For Mr. Hendrick has
a theory, which does not amuse us in
itself, and rather mars the entertainment
he otherwise has to offer. He calls it
"A Plea for Materialism," and preaches
it a paper of that name, not to mention
scattered allusions to it elsewhere. Of
course, it is not a gross materialism born
in the street, but the offspring of a pretty
flirtation between the laboratory and the
church, as if one should deck out in spir-
itual rags Taine's old dictum that the
emotions are merely chemical products
like sugar and vitriol. "So," says Mr.
Hendrick, "if we see the most beautiful
thing in the world, a mother turning to
her child, we shall find our vision en-
larged by the knowledge that she is act-
ing in conformance with unerring physi-
cal and chemical laws; that definite re-
actions take place within her," etc. We
wonder. The thing has to us a little of
that ancient smell of the laboratory in
those old Victorian days, when men
thought they knew a great deal more
than they really did know.
La Revue Mondiale surveys the field
of American humor with the following
result: "The United States hails in the
person of Don Marquis the successor
to Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Am-
brose Bierce, and other kings of Ameri-
can humor and satire." (By all means,
add Poe, Lowell, Josh Billings, and any
"autres" you can think of. We Ameri-
cans never do things by halves.) "A
part of the New York press considers
that his latest volume, 'Prefaces,' deserves
to be placed beside La Rochefoucauld,
Voltaire, Chamfort . . . Certain critics
even speak of him as the continuator of
Shakespeare and Renan." (Where are
Euripides, Lucian, Cervantes, Rabelais,
and Dean Swift?) "Alas! we have not
been able to find there a single stroke of
humor or satire which could entitle this
writer to a place above the humble level
of those journalists who struggle to pro-
duce a glimmer of wit out of none at
all — malgre son absence totale." (Helas,
once again. Though we are not sure that
the assertion could be maintained by the
single volume "Prefaces," Don Marquis
is, in point of rarely combined wisdom
and cleverness, about the best we have
to offer. Evidently, we should do well
not to offer him to the French.)
Senator J. S. McLennan of Canada is
the author of a history of the town of
Louisbourg, Cape Breton, a work hand-
somely printed and bound, and issued
under the title, "Louisbourg from Its
Foundation to Its Fall, 1713-1758"
(Macmillan). In the course of his nar-
rative, he has occasion to refer to a
Madame Eurry De la Perelle, a resident
of Louisbourg, and in his comment upon
her presents an admirable characteriza-
tion of the peculiar position which the
town occupies in the history of America.
Madame Eurry De la Purelle came to
Louisbourg when it was founded a young
woman of twenty. Her husband was the
first officer who died in the new settlement.
She lived there until the second capture;
her three sons were officers in the troops.
She did not die for twenty-four years after
the demolition of the town, all the fortunes
of which passed before her eyes. That the
life of a town should fall so far short of
that of one of its people suggests the in-
stability of the unimportant. Yet against
this one background, with this unity of
space and time, developed events which dis-
played the genius, administrative, economic,
military, of two peoples. The two-score
and six years of Louisbourg's existence show
forth causes and consequences as clearly as the
colonial history of two centuries.
This comparatively insignificant town
of Cape Breton, or Isle Royale, as the
French called the island, became famous
because of the part that it played in the
half-century struggle between France
and England during the years from the
Treaty of Utrecht to the Treaty of Paris.
It held a strategic position, not only in a
military sense, but in a commercial sense
also, for it controlled the fi.shing indus-
try of the Newfoundland banks and ad-
joining waters. It was the central point
of an area of conflict, and because of its
capture by the New Englanders in 1745.
its return to France by the Treaty of
Aix la Chapelle in 1748, its recapture
by the British in 1758, and its perma-
nent cession to Great Britain in 1763,
it became a subject of romantic interest
at the time and has remained so ever
since. Though popular attention has
been drawn largely to the military as-
pects of its history, the town deserves
remembrance quite as much for its com-
mercial significance, since commerce was
a more dominant factor in the eighteenth
century than national animosity and was
the starting point in the conflict which
ended in the downfall of the French
colonial empire of the West. This
downfall was due, as Mr. McLennan
admirably brings out, not to the de-
fects of the Frenchman as a colonist
or colonial administrator, nor to any
inferiority in the strength or morale
of the French soldier and seaman, but
to the weakness of the government at
home, which starved the French navy in
money, men and equipment, at the very
time when Great Britain was lavishing
the resources of her growing wealth on
ships and service at sea. The fall of
Louisbourg in 1745 and 1758 marks the
supremacy of British sea power and il-
lustrates the old French saying which
Great Britain made her own, "Le trident
de Neptune, c'est le sceptre du Monde."
The title of "White Shadows in the
South Seas" is suggestive of the style
of this volume rather than of its subject
38]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 35
matter. Frederick O'Brien spent a year
living with the remnant of natives in
the Marquesas, and the result is a clever
and picturesque book, filled almost too
full of dramatic high lights and descrip-
tive diction which only infrequently falls
into the sing-song wordiness of senti-
mentality. Tattooed and naive savages,
unearthly scenery, ancient music, and
cannibalistic customs — all are wreathed
about with romance and glamour. Al-
ways there runs the tragic strain of the
terrible slaughter and extermination
wrought directly by conquering white
men, and indirectly by the vices and dis-
eases of civilization. And yet where the
book should be powerful it is weak,
where we should thrill with the marvel,
or the tragedy, or the beauty of it all,
we are left almost unmoved. The writer
has lived and moved among the most
dramatic scenes, has recorded them cor-
rectly but heartlessly, photographically
but coldly. As in certain of the pictures,
the beauty of nudity is lost by the so-
phisticated photographer's gallery prop-
erties, so we feel that the opportunity
for a great book has slipped away from
the author, who has given time and la-
bor, but little heart or soul to his work.
New worlds — new words. The war
has brought a host of such, and even
outside the zone of hostilities the Eng-
lish language continues to demonstrate
its capacity for growth by borrowing
foreign words, fashioning new ones of
its own, and renovating old ones. Prof.^
C. Alphonso Smith in "New Words Self-'
Defined" (Doubleday) allows some of
the more frequent of these newcomers
to speak for themselves. It is well to
get them on record, for not a few of
them will sooner or later be forgotten
and, without such lexicographical aids
as Professor Smith here lays the foun-
dation for, will exist only to puzzle fu-
ture readers of the written page of these
tremendous days.
Professor Otto Jespersen, the distin-
guished professor of English, at the Uni-
versity of Copenhagen, Denmark, writes :
I am busy with a book on the development
of language. Just now I am writing the
chapters that are to deal with the influence
of children's speech on the evolution of lan-
guage in general, and I find that it would be
good if I had some more examples of those
new formations of words in which children's
speech abounds (such as flyable =: able to fly).
I have a great many examples from Danish,
but very few from English, and as I write in
English it would be splendid if I had some
more. Those who have written on this lan-
guage of children (O'Shea, Sully, etc.) have
paid too little attention to most of the things
to which I, as a linguist or philologist, attach
the greatest importance.
If any reader of the Review has ma-
terial of this sort in his possession which
he cares to communicate we shall see that
it comes into Professor Jespersen's com'-
petent hands.
Drama
On the London Stage
OUR best dramatists hibernated dur-
ing the war, and have not yet re-
awakened. From Mr. Galsworthy, Mr.
Masefield, Mr. Granville Barker we have
heard nothing for many a day. Mr.
Shaw has given us only a printed play,
"Heartbreak House," which may be de-
scribed as an essay in mannerism with
little or no substance behind it. Mr.
Sutro, Mr. Hichens, Mr. Somerset Maug-
ham, and Mr. Arnold Bennett have the
stage to themselves for the moment ; and
though their plays are of some interest,
none of them can be said to have notably
enriched our dramatic literature.
Of Mr. Maugham's irresistible farce,
"Home and Beauty," I need say nothing,
as I understand it has repeated in New
York its London success. "The Voice
from the Minaret," by Mr. Robert
Hichens, deals tactfully rather than
powerfully with a theme which has often
been treated with neither tact nor power
— that of a clerical Tannhauser in the
Venusberg. In the first act, Andrew
Fabian is not actually a clergyman, but
has strong spiritual leanings, when, on
his way to Jerusalem, he meets at Da-
mascus Lady Caryll, wife of an Indian
official, who is on her way to England to
obtain a divorce from her intolerable
brute of a husband. She does not go
to England ; she tarries at Damascus with
Andrew Fabian. Unfortunately the win-
dow of their sitting-room looks straight
out upon a minaret from which the muez-
zin, at the appropriate intervals, reminds
the faithful of their religious duties; and
Lady Caryll soon perceives that the re-
minder is not lost upon her lover. She
realizes that she has an unconquerable
rival in his clerical vocation; so one fine
day she quietly takes her departure, and
returns to the purgatory of her life in
India. Andrew Fabian completes his
journey to Jerusalem, both literally ^nd
spiritually, and becomes a clergyman of
the Church of England. He is on the
point of settling down into humdrum do-
mesticity with an agreeable young
woman who appears cut out for a clergy-
man's wife, when Lady Caryll once more
appears on the scene, and with her Sir
Leslie Caryll, her husband. This very
unlovely personage divines the mystery
of Damascus, and is on the point of mak-
ing himself openly unpleasant, to the
ruin of Fabian's career, when his oppor-
tune decease solves the difficulty. The
play contains some interesting scenes,
and has none of that sanctimonious sen-
suality which is so offensive in many
plays of similar subject. But it is an
ephemeral production which will scarcely
be remembered after it has served its
immediate purpose.
The same may be said of "The Choice,"
by Mr. Alfred Sutro, which is having a
remarkable success at Wyndham's The-
atre. It is an effectively-told sentimental
anecdote. It shows how a middle-aged
Captain of Industry, the Right Honor-
able John Ingleby Cordways, rashly fell
in love with the young and flighty Lady
Clarissa Caerleon, but discovered before
the fatal knot was tied an incompatibility
of temper which would have been disas-
trous had it developed six months later.
The rock on which the project of mar-
riage splits is well imagined. Cordways
has dismissed one of his subordinates,
because, though he is a man with a bril-
liant war record and with many fine
qualities, he has been several times guilty
of drunkenness. All sorts of infiuences,
public and private, are brought to bear
upon Cordways to induce him to give the
culprit another chance, but he is inflex-
ible. Then the man's sweetheart comes
to Lady Clarissa and tells her the piteous
story; and she, not knowing anything of
the matter or of all that it has come to
mean for Cordways, rashly pledges her
word that the man shall be reinstated.
Result : an insoluble conflict of will with
will — which, we are told, is the very
essence of drama. It is not surprising,
therefore, that the scene in which the
misunderstanding comes to a head proves
to be a very strong one. Fortunately,
though the conflict is insoluble, the en-
gagement is not; and there is the less
harm done as Lady Clarissa has another
string to her bow, or beau to her string.
Cordways, the stern, strong man, is
supposed to be broken-hearted; but one
fancies that if he had really cared very
much, he would either have surrendered
at discretion or arrived at some compro-
mise. The success of the play is perhaps
partly due to Miss Viola Tree's some-
what ungainly but realistic portraiture
of a young woman of the ultra smart
set. Mr. Gerald Du Maurier, too, an
actor with an enormous following, has
been gifted by nature with a jaw which
renders him the ideal representative of
the strong silent man.
When Mr. Arnold Bennett produces a
play, the critics never fail to tell him
that, because he is a professional novel-
ist, he is necessarily but an amateur play-
wright. As the author of two of the
most successful plays of the time, "Mile-
stones" and "The Great Adventure," Mr.
Bennett can afford to smile at this su-
perior attitude on the part of his men-
tors. The fact is that the skill he shows
in transmuting a novel into a play proves
that he is exceptionally endowed with the
dramatic instinct. "Sacred and Profane
Love," adapted from an early novel of
the same title, is certainly not what one
would call a well-built play. Its second
act might be dropped out almost entirely
without leaving any sensible gap in the
(Continued on page 40)
January 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
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40]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 35
(Continued from page 38)
action. But each individual scene is
alive and moving; and, after all, a dram-
atist who can hold the interest of his
audience throughout four acts, can
scarcely be set down as a mere bungler
at the job.
In the first act, a young girl, Carlotta
Peel, intensely devoted to music, is
thrown by chance into the company of a
great pianist whom she adores, and, in
an access of melomaniac passion, sur-
renders herself to him. The night over,
she deliberately disappears from his ken
— and from that of the audience — for
seven years. During this time she has
become a famous novelist; and in the
second act we find her on the verge of
becoming involved in a second love affair
— with her publisher, who is unhappily
married. But at the end of the act she
learns that the pianist, Emilio Diaz, of
whom she has heard nothing for years,*
has become a morphinomaniac and is liv-
ing in Paris in extreme misery. She
leaves her publisher to settle his domes-
tic troubles as best he may, and starts
for Paris by the night express. She
finds Diaz a pitiable wreck, living under
the most degrading conditions. In a
scene of great power, she takes posses-
sion of him and carries him off, and in
the last act we learn, not without sur-
prise and some skepticism, that she has
actually reclaimed him, and restored not
only his self-respect, but his genius. Ob-
viously this would have been a more co-
herent and perhaps more convincing play
if Mr. Bennett had cut out the second
act, with the episode of the publisher,
and had interposed a new act, between
his actual third and fourth, showing us
some of the process of the rescue of Diaz,
and (if possible) making us believe in
it. His omission to do so may even
awaken some doubt as to whether he be-
lieves in it himself. Be this as it may,
the piece is a vivid and arresting one.
Neither of the two leading characters is
rendered particularly interesting. Diaz
in particular, though played by an actor
of ability and experience, is not in the
least credible as a brilliant and fascinat-
ing interpreter of Chopin; and if we do
not feel that Carlotta loves the maestro
rather than the man, much of our sym-
pathy for her is sacrificed.
The Stage Society has given us a very
creditable performance of a very difficult
play — Mr. Herbert Trench's "Napoleon."
It is a perfect example of a play for the
study rather than the stage ; and even in
the study it demands a good deal of
thinking out. The story, briefly told, is
that of a young man, half English and
half French by birth, who, at the time
when Napoleon is planning an invasion
of England, sets forth to teach him the
error of his ways, and to bring him back
to the idealisms which are supposed to
have inspired his Italian campaigns. The
precise doctrine of the young apostle
does not emerge very distinctly. It seems
to be something to the effect that the
family is the basis of all human welfare
— a view to which one could imagine Na-
poleon replying that it was precisely in
the interests of several millions of
French families that he proposed to in-
vade England. He does not make this
retort — at least, I don't think he does,
but Napoleon's ideas are not much more
perspicuous than those of his self-ap-
pointed counsellor. "Dreamer! you speak
in violent foreshortenings," says the Em-
peror at one point, with incontrovertible
truth; but unfortunately he is himself
much addicted to the same practice. All
this bandying of ideas is hung upon a
not very skilfully spun thread of nautico-
military melodrama. In the upshot, both
the apostle and his brother lose their
lives, and Napoleon, after spending
twenty-four hours in England, sets off
for St. Helena, via Austerlitz, Moscow,
and Waterloo. The production was a
distinguished succ&s d'estime.
An offshoot of the Stage Society,
happily entitled The Phoenix, has recently
come into existence, with the object of
giving performances of neglected Eliza-
bethan and Restoration masterpieces. It
has taken up the work, in fact, of the
Elizabethan Stage Society, started some
thirty years ago by that amiable enthu-
siast, Mr. William Poel. A certain sec-
tion of the Stage Society has of late
years developed an enthusiasm for per-
formiances of Restoration comedies with
all the indecencies religiously retained;
and it is this section which has now split
off, and set up "on its own" as 'The
Phoenix. I venture to prophesy that the
society will do useful work (though not
exactly "according to plan") in explod-
ing the great Elizabethan-Restoration
superstition. It has raged for a hundred
years; it has been exaggerated to the
point of absurdity by Swinburne, in his
contention that "the silver age of Eng-
lish drama would eclipse the golden age
of dramatic poetry in any other nation
of modem times"; and it is now emi-
nently desirable that we should return
to sanity.
The Phoenix commenced its operations
this week with a revival of Webster's
"Duchess of Malfy," very appropri-
ately chosen as being perhaps the
fetish-in-chief of the Elizabethan cult.
Webster, I am not altogether sorry to
say, had a very bad press. Criticism has
regained sufficient independence of judg-
ment to realize the absurdity of educated
men and women coming together sol-
emnly to sit through five acts of clumsy,
ill-constructed, bloody melodrama, and to
listen piously to language which, if they
repeated it in the street outside, would
lead to their prompt appearance in the
police court. There is some undeniably
good writing in "The Duchess of Malfy,"
but why should we sit out five acts of arti-
ficial and sanguinary extravagance for
the sake of thirty or forty fine lines? It
may be interesting to note that the
Duchess was played with great charm,
but without much tragic power, by Miss
Cathleen Nesbitt, newly returned from
New York; and that Mr. William Rea,
who has now played Abraham Lincoln for
350 nights, lent his brogue and his lugu-
brious countenance to the part of the
villain Bosola.
William Archer
London, November 24
Books and the News
Profit-Sharing
The announcement, a few days ago, of
their further scheme for profit-sharing
by the Messrs. Ford, suggests some ref-
erences for reading. Perhaps the first
book is "Profit Sharing: Its Principles
and Practice" (Harper, 1918), by Ar-
thur W. Burritt, of the A. W. Burritt
Co., President Dennison, of the Dennison
Manufacturing Co.; Edwin F. Gay, and
others. This is a general study ; for sta-
tistics see "Profit Sharing in the United
States" (Government Printing Office,
1917,) by Boris Emmet, a Bulletin of
the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Whole No. 208. There are also two im-
portant British reports, "Profit Sharing
and Labor Co-Partnership in the United
Kingdom, 1912," and "Report on Profit
Sharing and Labor Co-Partnership
Abroad, 1914," both published by the
Department of Labor Statistics of Great
Britain's Board of Trade. Another
valuable work is the National Civic Fed-
eration's "Profit Sharing By American
Employers" (National Civic Federation,
1916).
An older book, an investigation of con-
siderable length, with historical details,
is Nicholas P. Gilman's "Profit Sharing
Between Employer and Employee"
(Houghton, 1889), while the same au-
thor, in "A Dividend to Labor" (Hough-
ton, 1899), devotes some chapters to this
subject. Charles R. Fay's "Co-partner-
ship in Industry" (Putnam, 1913), is a
brief historical sketch taking examples
chiefly from England and France. An-
other brief book, citing experiences of
employers in England, Europe and
America, is Aneurin Williams's "Co-
Partnership and Profit Sharing" (Holt,
1913).
"The Ford Plan" (Anderson, 1915, is
a pamphlet by Henry Ford. A. H.
Mackmurdo discusses the topic in
"Pressing Questions: Profit Sharing."
(Lane, 1913) ; Lord Leverhulme's "The
Six-Hour Day and Other Industrial
Questions" (Holt, 1919), contains chap-
ters on "co-partnership" or profit-shar-
ing.
Edmund Lester Pearson
THE REVIEW
Vol. 2, No. 36
New York, Saturday, January 17, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
41
43
44
45
46
47
Contents
Brief Comment
Editorial Articles:
Mock-Hysteria
The Jackson-Day Bombshell
Turkey and the Powers
End of the Steel Strike
"Two-Thirds of Both Houses"
Out of Their Own Mouths. By Jerome
Landiield 48
Can We Improve Our Public Schools?
By Caspar F. Goodrich 50
Correspondence 52
A Talk with Sir George Paish. By
Charles Henry Meltzer 53
Mr. P. E. More and the Wits. By
Stuart P. Sherman 54
Book Reviews:
Cooperating with Destiny 56
The I. I. I. 57
Roses and Games 58
Pointing the Way to a League of
Nations 58
Attic Red-Figured Vases 59
The Run of the Shelves 60
Contemporary Painting in Washington 62
Music :
Henry Krehbiel and Ernest Newman
Discuss Music 62
Drama :
"A Night's Lodging" at the Plymouth
—■'The Master Builder" at the
People's House 65
Books and the News: Socialism. By
Edmund Lester Pearson 65
llyTR. Bryan has never been deficient
■'■'■'• in logic. On the contrary, every
one of his campaigns, one may almost
say every one of his speeches, is an
exhibition of logical correctness. He
fixes his premises well in his mind,
and rams the conclusions from them
into the minds of his hearers without
trickery or fallacy in the reasoning.
He is a wooden thinker, a mechanical
thinker, but not a loose thinker. Con-
trary to a widely prevalent opinion,
his campaign for free silver, while it
rested on a fundamentally wrong
basis, manifested a very high degree
of genuine debating ability. Accord-
ingly, it is no surprise that in his
Jackson-Day speech on the treaty he
made a calm and convincing analysis
of the situation. His habits of thought
and speech are in diametrical con-
trast with those of President Wilson.
Mr. Wilson exhorts, but does not de-
bate; perhaps he is so sure he is
right that he is too proud to argue.
Mr. Bryan, too, is always sure he is
right ; but in his case the consequence
is that he is not afraid to argue.
pONGRESS should act at once on
^ Secretary Glass's recommenda-
tion that $150,000,000 be appropri-
ated for immediate use in rescuing
the starving populations of Austria,
Armenia, Poland, and certain other
countries. The Grain Corporation is
in a position to send the food supplies
the moment Congress gives the word.
Mr. Hoover, whose recommendations
are always based on knowledge and
foresight as well as on right feeling,
urges this action while cautioning
against undiscriminating extension
of credits in other ways. Usually de-
liberation is a virtue, but sometimes
it is a crime. To hesitate or delay,
in the face of such harrowing need
and such clear opportunity, would be
a criminal failure of duty.
p ERMANY, Great Britain, France,
^-^ Italy, and Japan, besides Belgium
and a number of other minor Powers,
affixed their signatures last Saturday
to the document that formally ends
the Great War. The fourteen months
since the armistice have been so full
of trouble, and so heavy with doubt
and danger, that the moment so long
awaited was far from being one of
elation. And the absence of the
United States added much to the joy-
lessness of the occasion. Not the least
of the injuries caused by our delay
in entering into the permanent rela-
tions of peace with Germany, and
with the nations associated with us
in the treaty, is the psychological
eflfect of the suspense. The world is
not going to forget the war the mo-
ment the treaty is disposed of; but
after all, there are other things about
Germany besides the great crime of
1914, and we must get to thinking
about these other things some time.
We must, sooner or later, if the world
is not to be an inferno, fall again into
the habit of dealing with Germans as
men — human beings with faults and
virtues like our own; men to be
treated according to their individual
merits, not men under a common ban
for a common crime. The way to get
back to that frame of mind is not to
change our opinion about the war,
but to stop thinking about the war
except when such thinking is of ne-
cessity thrust upon us. And this will
never happen until the treaty is out
of the way.
T\R. E. J. DILLON, in his valuable
^ history of "The Peace Confer-
ence," vouches for the truth of the
story of how the Council arrived at
its decision to bring the ex-Kaiser to
trial : "A few days before the treaty
was signed there was a pause in the
proceedings of the Supreme Council,
during which the Secretary was
searching for a mislaid document.
Mr. 'George, looking up casually and
without addressing anyone in partic-
ular, remarked: '1 suppose none of
you has any objection to the Kaiser
being tried in London?' M. Clemen-
ceau shrugged his shoulders, Mr. Wil-
son raised his hand, and the matter
was assumed to be settled. Nothing
more was said or written on the sub-
ject." Mr. George is now going
through the familiar experience that
the decision so easily taken is not so
easily carried into effect, and he no
longer supposes, but knows, that
among the English there is a strong
objection to the play being staged in
London. It will have taken him more
time than a lull in the discussions to
decide upon a solution which makes
him seem true to his word while ac-
tually evading its fulfillment. The
ex-Kaiser, we are now told, will be
summoned to trial before an Allied
Commission, and if he does not an-
swer he will be tried in his absence.
42]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 36
No pressure will be brought to bear
on the Netherlands Government for
his extradition. Wilhelm von Hohen-
zollern will be left chopping wood at
Doom, while the Allied Commission
hears the witnesses and reads the doc-
uments which are to establish his
guilt. This certainly would be the
wisest course to take. It deprives the
accused of a last opportunity to play
a martyr's part on the world's stage,
while giving satisfaction to those who
wish to see his guilt made manifest
and put on record.
"T>EFORE long, we may see labor
■'-' hiring capital," says Sir George
Paish in an interview which appears
in the Review to-day. This may sound
startling, but there is really nothing
strange, or even new, about it. For
Sir George Paish goes on to say,
"Groups of working people will bor-
row money for their purposes on the
best terms practicable." Nothing
would be more desirable than such a
development, and nothing would be
more in accordance with the hopes —
of the radicals of to-day ? — no, of the
"orthodox" economists of half a cen-
tury ago, like Mill and Cairnes. Co-
operation of workingmen in produc-
tion, participation of workingmen in
the ownership of capital, is what they
looked forward to as the best hope of
the masses. And if the money that
suddenly-enriched workingmen have
been spending on silk shirts or the
like during the last year or two had
been turned into this channel, a very
substantial beginning of such co-
operative enterprise could have been
made by this time.
CTUDENTS of the slum tenement
^ problem have been offered a fine
stimulus to work out a practicable so-
lution. Vincent Astor, Alfred E.
Marling, and others have provided for
prizes aggregating $6,000, the con-
testants to make a study of a typical
old tenement block picked for the pur-
pose and submit detailed plans for its
remodeling. The plans must not only
conform to modern progress in heat-
ing, lighting, sanitation, ventilation,
fire protection, privacy, etc., but must
present reasonable evidence that the
changes provided for will be a good
business investment for the landlord.
On the face of it, this seems to be an
unusually intelligent prize undertak-
ing. Entirely apart from the prizes,
the effort will be well worth while to
every contestant who enters the lists
with sufficient preparation to warrant
him in dealing with such problems of
domestic architecture at all. The
New York State Reconstruction Com-
mission and the Joint Legislative
Committee on Housing are co-operat-
ing in the movement.
rpENANTS in New York apartment
-'- houses were startled, a few days
ago, by a court decision apparently
giving the right to dispossess an oc-
cupant merely because the landlord
deemed him "undesirable," without
the necessity of alleging and proving
any specific ground of undesirability.
The judge has now stated that the de-
cision had been misunderstood, and
tenants are free from the danger of
being ejected as undesirable merely
because there is someone in the back-
ground ready to pay a higher rental.
It is still true, however, that apart-
ments in New York are quite gener-
ally held under leases wholly one-
sided, giving the tenant very little
power to enforce even the rights
which his contract, on its face, ap-
pears to secure. The Tribune has
well suggested that a standard form
of contract should be prescribed by
law, covering the leasing of apart-
ments for residence purposes, for
fixed terms. On the tenant's side,
the standard lease should make sure
the constant delivery, in full measure,
of the heat, water, elevator, and other
forms of service for which he pays,
or give a speedy and inexpensive road
to adequate recompense when any
part of such service fails. To the
landlord, it should secure the right to
enforce the proper care and use of
the apartments leased, and to receive
reasonably punctual payment there-
for, but not unreasonably pre-punc-
tual. And in the interest of both
owners and respectable tenants, there
should be no bar to the speedy dispos-
session of undesirable occupants,
subject to the tenants' right to de-
mand the presentation of proper evi-
dence.
"WTHAT purport to be the official
" statistics of the French Flying
Corps are nothing short of stagger-
ing. In the whole course of the War
the losses in the zone of military op-
erations were 1,945 pilots and ob-
servers killed, 1,461 missing, whose
death may now be accepted as certain,
and 2,922 wounded. To this must
be added 1,927 pilots and observers
killed outside the zone of operations.
In view of the care exercised by the
French in training their air forces
the last item is amazingly high. In
round numbers, the casualties were
eight thousand out of a full strength
of thirteen thousand, or something
over sixty per cent. The stark fig-
ures, at once splendid and terrible,
are more impressive than any com-
ment.
1%/fR. BERNARD SHAW was pres-
■^^■^ ent at the great fight between
Carpentier and Beckett, and has
granted the London Nation the priv-
ilege of printing his impressions.
Why should a paper so undauntedly
pacifist give prominence to the de-
scription of a prize fight, and why
was Mr. Shaw requested to write it,
who confesses not having attended a
boxingexhibition in thirty-five years?
Mr. Shaw has not abstained for thir-
ty-five years from attending a boxing
match because he disapproves of the
sport, but because of his conviction
that the English are congenitally in-
capable of the art. But Carpentier is
different. His display "overawes the
spectators; it often reduces them to
absolute silence." Even the perspi-
cacious Mr. Shaw does not know what
to make of him. At his first entrance
he was startled by the apparition:
"Nothing less than Charles XII, the
madman of the North;" but during
the fight he recognizes in Carpentier
"the complete Greek athlete. The un-
mistakable Greek line digs a trench
across his forehead." In less exciting
moments he is to Mr. Shaw what he
is to others, the French pugilist.
What golden opportunity was here
lost to his disagreeing wit! If Mr.;
Shaw had only known that Carpen-
tier's cradle stood in Holland! He
could have startled his readers with
a paradox which was a truth.
January 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[48
Mock- Hysteria
rpHE act of folly with which the
■'• lower house of the New York
Legislature- began its session may
prove a benefit to the country. We
have not been among those who be-
lieve that the nation is in a state of
hysteria over the Red danger ; but it
is quite possible for a mock-hysteria
— a thing that has the outward marks
of hysteria, although it has no real
hold on the patient — to do even more
harm than the genuine article. And
"it is time," as the hero of Tennyson's
Maud exclaims, "it is time that old
hysterical mock-disease should die."
The prompt and well-weighed con-
demnation which the course of the
New York Assembly has evoked from
high Republican, as well as from
Democratic, sources, should have a
sobering effect in more directions
than one. If the sharp shock which
the suspension of the five Socialist
Assemblymen gave to the political
and juristic instincts of men like
Judge Hughes and Senator Harding,
the scathing rebuke which it evoked
from an organization like the Young
Republican Club of New York, the
condemnation it drew from papers
like the New York Tribune, the ener-
getic action of leading members of
the New York Bar Association, the
prompt cognizance taken of the situ-
I ation by the New York City Club
' and Citizens Union — if this re-
markable movement of protest shall
serve to awaken public men, in both
; parties, to a sober sense of their re-
I sponsibility in dealing with one of the
gravest of possible issues in a Re-
public, the sensational coup at Al-
bany will have brought about a sorely
needed improvement in the temper of
our dealings with the problem of rev-
olution.
For there is no essential difference
between the way in which Speaker
Sweet has sought to deal with the
I presence of the five Socialist Assem-
blymen and the way in which Attor-
ney General Palmer has been con-
ducting his anti-sedition crusade, or
in which Representative Graham and
his sub-committee of the House Ju-
diciary Committee have been drafting
their sedition bill. In all three of
these instances, there may be real
reason for the substance of what is
being done or proposed ; that is a
question whose merits can be deter-
mined only by close and careful ex-
amination. But in all such matters
the method is as important as the
substance; and, so far as immediate
effects are concerned, the method is
infinitely more important than the
substance.
When Mr. Palmer, without a
word of authoritative public explana-
tion, sweeps thousands of members
of the Communist parties — big and
little, ring-leaders and thoughtless
or ignorant followers alike — into his
dragnet, he arouses a maximum of
justifiable resentment with a mini-
mum of salutary effect. When Mr.
Graham exhausts the possibilities
of the dictionary in specifying the
greatest conceivable variety of acts
which he proposes shall be declared
seditious felonies ; when in his eager-
ness he actually defines some of these
as treason, and, though he had been
at work on the bill for months, dis-
covers only after its text had been
published that the Constitution (in
one of its most familiar provisions)
forbids any such definition of trea-
son; when, after making this discov-
ery, he imagines that he can remedy
the difficulty by simply substituting
the word "sedition," or the word "fel-
ony," for the word "treason," while
yet retaining the death penalty pre-
scribed for the crime so labeled —
when such things as these are done,
we are in the presence of that same
phenomenon of the creation of a max-
imum of odium with a minimum of
benefit. And precisely that is true of
the performance at Albany.
Let us try to imagine what course
would have been taken by the Chair-
man of a legislative body confronting
in a serious spirit the serious prob-
lem presented by the election of a
group of men whose party obligations
were such as to make their exclusion,
necessary from the standpoint of
high public policy. He would have
sought, first of all, to make it mani-
fest that he realized the extraordi-
nary character of the proceeding
which he was about to recommend.
He would have taken care to make it
impossible to charge him with spring-
ing a sensational surprise upon the
men against whom the proceeding
was to be directed. He would have
made it plain that they were to have
all the benefits of the presumption of
fitness for the seats to which they had
been duly elected until they had been
deliberately adjudged unfit. Above
all, so far from asking for an imme-
diate judgment — even such provis-
ional judgment as that calling for
their suspension pending investiga-
tion— he would have impressed upon
the legislators the imperative duty of
deliberate consideration of so vital
a question before action of any kind
was taken upon it.
Had this been done, how different
would have been the effect on the pub-
lic mind! Fair-minded men might
still have decided against the pro-
posed exclusion either as being a vio-
lation of the general spirit of repre-
sentative government, or as being
contrary to the dictates of political
wisdom; but they would have felt
that a case had been put before them
which could be calmly argued upon
its intrinsic merits. Attention would
have been focused upon the one sub-
stantial question in the case: have
these men entered into an obligation
with their party organization which is
inconsistent with their oath of office?
As it is, the thought of the public is
centred on the crude brutality of
the onslaught, to the exclusion of the
question whether occasion existed for
any action at all in the premises.
Speaker Sweet may make all the dis-
tinctions he pleases between proscrip-
tion of opinion and exclusion of dis-
loyalty; people who begin by siding
with the Socialist members simply
because they have not had a square
deal will refuse to split hairs on the
subject.
The resolution suspending the So-
cialist Assemblymen was passed with-
out debate, and with only two dissent-
ing votes besides those of the Social-
ists themselves. This may very nat-
urally be pointed to as evidence of a
state of acute hysteria. Only under
the influence of intense excitement, it
may be said, could Republicans and ''^
Democrats alike have been swept into
such sudden action. But the truth, to
44]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 36
our mind, is precisely the reverse of
this. The thing was done with the
haste of a mechanical habit, not that
of intense feeling. We have fallen
into the way of going through the mo-
tions of hysterical excitement with-
out the least evidence of experiencing
the excitement itself. The rank and
file of the legislators were as much
taken by surprise as were the Social-
ist members. The thing presented it-
self to their minds as a question of
pronouncing a shibboleth rather than
of deciding a high question of law or
of public policy. The doctrines of the
Socialist platform are abhorrent to
normal Americans ; and what the leg-
islators, with no time for reflection,
thought they were doing was simply
to express this abhorrence.
The appearance of hysteria which
we encounter in so many ways arises
from a failure to distinguish between
the mere freeing of one's mind and
the taking of responsible public ac-
tion. If we were under the strain of
real anxiety over an immediately
threatening peril, we should be in-
finitely more careful than we are in
deciding upon our course of conduct.
We should be calculating conse-
quences, instead of merely expressing
desires. There might be a greater
amount of genuine hysteria, but there
would be incomparably less of the
mock variety. And while there would
be vastly less of spectacular moves,
either legislative or executive, there
would be much more effective defense
against the actual danger of revolu-
tionary agitations. Tp deny that that
danger exists is as foolish as to lose
one's head over its immediate formi-
dableness.
The Jackson -Day
Bombshell
TI/fR. Wilson's Jackson-Day letter
^^^ was almost universally under-
stood by the press as a declaration
against the settlement of the treaty
question by any practicable adjust-
ment of the difference between the
Democratic and Republican position
in the Senate. Acting upon this in-
terpretation, the three leading New
York papers which have stood by the
President through thick and thin
promptly expressed their emphatic
disapproval of his attitude. The
World, the Times, and the Evening
Post were all equally outspoken in
their condemnation. This would in
itself be an impressive phenomenon;
but its import is heightened by the
fact, which no reasonable person can
dispute, that public opinion had for
weeks been manifestly and over-
whelmingly displayed to the same
effect. There is plenty of room for
doubt as to what the country thinks
ideally desirable in regard to the
Covenant ; there is no room whatever
to doubt that its practical wish is
for an immediate ratification of the
treaty upon such terms as a reason-
ably conciliatory spirit on the two
sides in the Senate is capable of
bringing about.
If this popular desire were opposed
to the convictions or the judgment of
the Senators themselves, it would be
their duty to stand out against it.
But it is quite certain that the senti-
ment of the Senjjte is in agreement
with this wish of the people. As Mr.
McCumber said, in a speech which he
made in New York at the very mo-
ment when Mr. Wilson's manifesto
was being read in Washington: If
the President would say to-morrow,
"it is now up to the Senate, as a co-
ordinate branch of the treaty-making
power, free from Executive dictation
or pressure, to perform its function,
and up to each Senator to exercise
his own judgment," the treaty could
be put through, with the League of
Nations, within twenty-four hours.
It now looks as though the Demo-
cratic Senators were going to per-
form their Constitutional function
without waiting for the President's
permission. The spectacle of their
paralysis has been pitiful. Ithasbeen
all the more pitiful because they have
bowed to the President's will without
even knowing, without even profess-
ing to know, what that will was.
They do not know now. They are
perfectly justified in asserting, as
some of them have explicity done,
that the President's Jackson-Day
letter does not clearly shut the door
to compromise. Its language, though
arrogant in tone and giving no indi-
cation that he recognizes any neces-
sity of yielding an inch of his original
position, does not expressly assert
that he will not yield. Only when the
plain question of yes or no is put up
to him through the adoption of a
resolution of ratification by a two-
thirds' vote of the Senate will it be
possible to determine what his answer
will be. There is reason to hope that
the Senate will at last shoulder its
share of the task and thereby compel
the President squarely to shoulder
his. Not until that is done shall we
know whether Mr. Wilson is prepared
to take upon himself the awful re-
sponsibility of preventing our coun-
try from bearing its part in the effort
of the nations to safeguard peace,
and to restore prosperity, in a war-
racked world.
Never has the President given a
more striking illustration of the pos-
sibilities of a single-track mind than
on this occasion. Half a year ago,
when the treaty was first presented
to the Senate, he made an agonized
plea for its prompt ratification on the
ground of the world's desperate need
for a speedy settlement. Now he has
so completely forgotten that need that
it is not even remotely alluded to in
his letter. But the country has not
forgotten it. It is that consideration,
and no other, that has led men of all
shades of opinion, with the exception
of those who are fundamentally
opposed to any compact of the nature
of the League Covenant, to waive
their personal opinions and prefer-
ences. The state of the world is
neither more satisfactory nor more
assured than it was six months ago. :
Almost everything we hear from the j
other side of the water indicates the
eagerness of European nations to
accept America's participation in the j
League on any reasonable terms upon
which it can be had. The vague
rumors that the President or the
State Department had knowledge of
difficulties that would be set up by
some of the Allied Powers if any sub-
stantial reservations were made, have
ceased to be heard. The President
makes no reference to anything of
the kind ; so far as anybody knows, [
he is acting solely upon his own per-
sonal judgment, with no more counsel I
I
January 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[45
from foreign statesmen than from
the public men of his own country —
and that is about as near to absolute
zero as one can get.
With regard to the President's sug-
gestion that "if there is any doubt as
to what the people of the country
think on this vital matter," the next
election should be given "the form of
a great and solemn referendum" upon
it, there is room for an interesting
conjecture. As a reason for postpon-
ing action on the treaty, the sugges-
tion is absurd. But it would be
entirely possible for Mr. Wilson, in
case a ratification with reservations
were presented to him, to take the
position that his acceptance of that
result does not preclude the adoption
of the referendum proposal. It would
be a bold, but not a reckless, political
stroke for him to say that he takes
half a loaf not as a substitute for a
whole one, but as an instalment. He
declares that he knows what the coun-
try wants — it wants the Covenant as
it was drawn, and a whole-hearted
execution of all its provisions. If this
is his sincere conviction, the way is
perfectly open for him to act upon it
without placing at hazard the collapse
of all that has been accomplished, and
without keeping the world in a state
of intolerable uncertainty for four-
teen months.
The only way in which, in any case,
the referendum could be effectually
held would be by Mr. Wilson being
himself the candidate of his party for
the Presidency. With the treaty un-
ratified, this would be a monstrous
and wicked gamble — a game of double
or quits, with the world's peace and
happiness as the stake. But with the
treaty ratified it would be a fair and
normal contest on principles and poli-
cies. The issue indeed would be mo-
mentous, but the contest would not in
itself be a calamity. Mr. Wilson's
triumph would be accepted by the
nation as conclusive, no matter what
subsidiary causes might have played
their part in the contest. If he really
desires that solemn referendum, let
him insist upon it by all means; but
let him not demand that his wish be
gratified at the cost of untold evil and
incalculable danger to the country
and to all the world.
Turkey and the Powers
'T'HE dying body of the sick man has
•*- been lying on the operating table
ever since, by signing of the armis-
tice, he surrendered it to the mercy
of his surgeons. He had not deserved
any, and, until recently, could not ex-
pect to receive it. He was not laid
there to be cured, but to be made
harmless. For in health and in sick-
ness he acted the tyrant over the fam-
ily of races under his rule, and to
maim him into incapacity for evil was
a duty which the men in consultation
round the patient owed to humanity
and civilization.
But the operation was postponed
from month to month. The United
States was blamed for the delay by
Mr. Lloyd George, whose words to
that effect we quoted last week. Ex-
pectations roused by statements of
Mr. Wilson and Colonel House gave
the Allied diplomats reason to hope
that the acceptance by this country of
a mandate for Constantinople and
Armenia would free them from the
difficult task of settling the disposal
of Turkey ampng themselves. Amer-
ica's aloofness, however, leaves them
no other choice than to proceed with-
out her assistance, with the prospect
of disturbing their own harmony or,
in order to keep that in tune, of re-
storing the patient to life. Senti-
ment, both in America and Europe, is
opposed to leaving the Turk in pos-
session of Constantinople and Thrace,
but sentiment does not preside at the
councils of diplomats. Ideas of jus-
tice and honor give way there to con-
siderations of interests, and the clash
of these may result in serving no
one's interest but the Turk's.
The Porte has always traded on
the rivalry between the Powers. Fear
and distrust of Russia made England,
in 1853, fight Turkey's war in the
Crimea, and caused Disraeli, in spite
of Gladstone's denunciation of Turk-
ish horrors in Bulgaria, to plead for
the criminal at the Berlin Conference
of 1878. This policy of thwartingRus-
sia by aiding Turkey had the addi-
tional advantage of raising England's
prestige in India. By propagating
the notion that Constantinople was
the Dar-ul-Islam, the seat of Moham-
medanism, the British could pose as
the protectors of the Caliphate. His
reputed sanctity is actually a devel-
opment of recent growth in India,
and is now an obstacle to the Eastern
policy of the very Power which fa-
vored its spread. For the situation
in the near East has changed. Rus-
sia no longer covets the city that con-
trols the straits which are the key to
the Black Sea. To oust the Turk
from Europe would not be playing
Russia's economic game, but it might
cause indignation and unrest among
the Indian Moslems whom England
herself has taught to venerate the Ot-
toman Sultan as ipso facto Caliph.
And discontent in India must be pre-
vented at any price, as the new Rus-
sian danger is in the exploitation of
such discontent for the spread of Bol-
shevism in Asia.
It would seem, therefore, that Eng-
land's safety would prescribe to her
a policy that would concur with that
of the Quai d'Orsay. For reasons
similar to those which, in the days of
the Tsardom, made Great Britain an
ally of Turkey against Russia, the
French prefer a continuation of the
Sultan's rule in Constantinople to a
British mandate for the city. In
spite, however, of this double advan-
tage of placating both India and
France, the Government in London is
reported to favor a different solution
of the problem. Two years ago Mr.
Lloyd George did not yet contemplate
expelling the Sultan from Europe. On
January 5, 1918, he declared: "We
are not fighting to deprive Turkey of
its capital or of the rich and re-
nowned lands of Asia Minor and
Thrace, which are predominantly
Turkish in race." What has hap-
pened since then to make the British
Prime Minister change his mind?
Public opinion in England is prob-
ably responsible for this volte face.
The massacred in Armenia and the
dead of Gallipoli call from their
graves, and the prospect of a Con-
stantinople wrested from the Asiatic
usurper makes an appeal to the
popular imagination too strong
to be ignored by the Government.
Lloyd George will have to find a
solution that is a compromise be-
tween British sentiment and the
46]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 36
practical policy of Paris. The for-
mer requires that it shall not be
Great Britain, the latter that it shall
not be the Turk, who in. future will
control the bridge between Europe
and Asia. If Clio were an arbiter
at the Council of Paris, she would
assign the mandate for Constan-
tinople and Turkish Thrace to the
one nation that can claim it with
any right consecrated by the past.
But Mr. Venizelos will plead in vain.
Italian jealousy will oppose a. Greek
mandate, and the bitter hatred be-
tween Bulgarians and Greeks, which
would expose Constantinople under
Greek control to Bulgarian raids and
invasions, makes that solution inad-
visable. The substitution of an inter-
national state for the Sultan's rule in
European Turkey seems, under these
conditions, the only possible solution.
It is better to charge the various con-
flicting interests with a common re-
sponsibility for the future of the city
than to entrust its control to a disin-
terested outsider who, if a great
Power, will, in course of time, by his
political ascendancy become a dan-
gerous rival of the others in the eco-
nomic field as well. And a small
Power, as a mandatory for Constan-
tinople, would scarcely escape being
made the dummy of either France or
England, or, if it did escape, would all
the same be suspected of being one.
Norway, it is rumored, will be offered
the mandate for Armenia. A similar
responsibility for Constantinople is
evidently, and justly, not suggested to
her. An international regime such as
controls the navigation on the Rhine
and the Danube is doubtless the best
that can be devised for the city whose
situation on the Straits, controlling
navigation between the Black Sea and
the Mediterranean, makes it a bone
of contention between the Powers.
The Sultan's loss of his temporal
power over Stamboul and European
Turkey need not involve his expulsion
from the city. If the veneration of
the Moslem in India for the Dar-ul-
Islam and the Caliphate is actually as
genuine as it is said to be, it would
be wise policy to leave the Sultan like
the Pope in Rome, as the spiritual
head of the Sunnite Mohammedan
world, in the holy seat of Islam.
End of the Steel Strike
AT its begnning, and for a few
weeks thereafter, the steel strke
took a leading place in the news col-
umns of the dailies, in editorial com-
ment, and in the thought of the
masses. Its officially declared ending,
last week, and the resignation of
William Z. Foster, the secretary by
whom it had been organized and
largely directed, drew a sensational
headline from no single newspaper
that has come under our observation.
To all intents and purposes, as a
strike, it had passed out of existence
long before its demise was officially
announced.
In truth, the germs of its inevitable
dissolution were visible from the
start to competent observers from the
outside, and probably to many of the
better informed labor leaders them-
selves. Its lurid pictures of alleged
conditions in the steel industry were
not generally believed, indications
pointed to different aims from those
openly set forth, and its maragement
was largely directed by men dis-
trusted because of known revolution-
ary beliefs and connections. Under
such conditions, its appeals for popu-
lar sympathy and support were futile.
If there is satisfaction to any in the
belief that it nevertheless cost the
steel interests scores of millions of
dollars, this satisfaction can not be
denied. It was a costly experience,
nor did the loss and inconvenience
stop with the manufacturers and im-
mediate consumers of steel. The evil
effects of such an interruption in any
great productive industry extend in
greater or less measure to all. In
proportion to ability to stand the loss,
perhaps the greatest sufferers were
the workmen and their families.
Are there any gains to set off
against this loss? If not, if such an
experience could leave a country
without at least some lessons of value
for the future, the hope of progress
would be small indeed. The steel
strike, we think, has helped to con-
vince most laborers themselves that
no strike any longer holds promise of
success if it does not command the
moral support of the mass of citizens
not immediately connected with either
side of the controversy. This is
a limitation of the strike imposed
by the very nature of free society,
and the sooner labor leaders accept
it and conduct themselves accord-
ingly, the less likely will they be
called upon to accept limitations of
a severer nature imposed by the
law of the State. The riot of striking
which has marked the past year has
strained the public patience to the
point where a continuance of the
nuisance would soon make it impos-
sible to get popular sympathy even
for justified strikes.
If labor leaders will not take
this lesson seriously to heart, sub-
stantial injury to their legitimate
interests may easily be the result.
There is danger of this in the case of
the steel workers themselves. There
has been great improvement in their
wages, and in the conditions under
which they work, but there is war-
rant for the belief that a satisfactory
state has not yet been reached. It
seems probable, though exact in-
formation is hard to obtain, that the
twelve-hour shift is far more com-
mon than is consistent with the in-
terests of the workers and with sound
public policy, which will not seek in-
creased production at the cost of vital
injury to the manhood which pro-
duces. It must not be forgotten, of
course, that for four hours of the
twelve-hour shift the workman re-
ceives "time and a half" in wages, a
difference which may easily mean to
many the purchase of a home within
a few years' time, or a good savings
account against the mischances of the
future. The question is whether the
opportunity to make this extra money
can be retained without compelling to
the twelve-hour shift thousands who
do not desire it, and to whom it is a
great evil and hardship. But the mis-
representations of existing conditions
uttered by Foster in support of the
strike served only to exasperate em-
ployers ' and disinterested citizens,
and to take their thoughts away from
the existence and the needed solution
of such problems.
The resignation of William Z. Fos- I
ter may indicate that another needed
lesson has been at least partially
learned. His good American name
Januaiy 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[47
does not alter the fact that he had
deeply identified himself with agita-
tors and ideas wholly alien to the
Americanism which the great major-
ity accept, and stand ready to defend
with life if it shall be seriously as-
saulted. Against his claim to have
abandoned these offensive ideas, the
public could only place his former as-
sertion that none of the commonly ac-
cepted standards of moral obligation
must be allowed to stand between the
social revolutionist and his object.
The man who has thus given himself
license to lie if he chooses, in order to
promote an offensive purpose, is not
likely to convince thinking men, by
his word alone, that he has given up
that purpose. The presence of Foster
at its head indissolubly connected the
steel strike, in the minds of thou-
sands, with revolutionary ideas, per-
sons, and purposes, thus contributing
heavily to its unpopularity and injur-
ing its power to aid in the removal
of such genuine causes of grievance
as may exist. The American Federa-
tion of Labor and minor organiza-
tions may move slowly and gently in
letting down a few objectionable in-
dividuals, but the coming year is
pretty likely to show a marked reac-
tion against being "bored from with-
in" by agitators of the William Z.
Foster type, whether they have pro-
fessed conversion or not.
But the very facts which thus made
the failure of the steel strike inev-
itable, also estop us from considering
that failure as a final settlement of
the labor problem in the steel indus-
try. With the immediate menace to
that industry removed, it becomes the
duty of the heads of the Steel Cor-
poration to consider the underlying
causes of labor unrest in a more
fundamental way than they have
yet done. The Steel Corporation's
case, by its magnitude and complexity,
is, to be sure, in a class by itself, and
it would be rash to make any specific
recommendation concerning it. But
we trust that the problem of the best
practicable relation between employer
and employed will receive, at the
hands of Judge Gary and his associ-
ates, that earnest and intense atten-
tion which its vital importance de-
serves.
"Two-thirds of Both
Houses"
TN a case in which Mr. Root is act-
•*- ing as chief counsel, it is claimed
that the Eighteenth Amendment is
null and void because two-thirds of
the members of Congress did not, by
joint resolution or otherwise, declare
that they deemed it necessary. The
language of the Constitution on the
subject is as follows: "The Congress,
whenever two-thirds of both houses
shall deem it necessary, shall propose
amendments to this Constitution."
Nothing is said about a two-thirds
vote ; nothing is said about the mem-
bers present; what is called for is
"two-thirds of both houses." The
objection thus raised rests on no fine-
spun or metaphysical view ; it is sim-
ply a question of fact. It was not
"two-thirds of both houses," but only
two-thirds of the members voting,
that placed the Eighteenth Amend-
ment before the Legislatures for rat-
ification. The Supreme Court, when
the case is brought before it, will
have to pass upon the question
whether two-thirds of the members
voting are to be regarded as two-
thirds of the house.
The point derives a great deal of
added force from the fact that in the
provision of the Constitution which
refers to the ratification of treaties,
the language is altogether different.
The President, it says, "shall have
power, by and with the advice and
consent of the Senate, to make trea-
ties, provided two-thirds of the sena-
tors present concur." The presump-
tion is very strong that if the like had
been the intention in the case of pro-
posal of amendments to the Consti-
tution the language would have so
stated with the same clearness. Fur-
thermore, there is strong inherent
reason for a distinction between the
two cases. A treaty, generally speak-
ing, comes up as part of the ordinary
business of the nation; an amend-
ment to the Constitution makes a per-
manent change, possibly a change of
underlying and structural impor-
tance, in the frame of our govern-
ment. The vote of two-thirds of the
members present may not only fall
far short of two-thirds of the whole,
but may conceivably be barely more
than one-third of the whole, since a
majority is sufficient for a quorum.
If, over and above the import of
the words themselves, the Supreme
Court should feel it proper to take
into account the circumstances of the
particular vote now in question, this
would add greatly to the force of the
contention against the amendment.
It was passed by Congress at a time
of abnormal tension, in the midst of
the greatest of wars, and when the
thought of the nation could not be
effectively directed to the subject. It
had been promoted by a propaganda
organized with unprecedented effi-
ciency, which never for a moment re-
laxed its pressure. It had not been
an issue — that is, not openly an
issue — in the elections. Every cir-
cumstance that should distinguish the
character of the process by which an
amendment is adopted was absent.
The emotional force of the spirit of
sacrifice evoked by the war was cap-
italized to the utmost in the interest
of a measure which was not to go
into force until the war was over,
and which was thereafter to affect
the lives of all the inhabitants of the
nation for generation after genera-
tion. If there ever was a case for
insisting upon the rigorous fulfill-
ment of the requirements of the Con-
stitution, surely this is such a case.
If the Constitution is to be subjected
to amendment by snap judgment —
and above all to amendment of a
character so revolutionary as this —
we have a right to demand that,
however much the spirit of our or-
ganic law may be violated, its letter
at least shall be strictly observed.
THE RF.VIRW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National VVeeklv Coiipo«atio!<
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklik, President
Hakold de Wolf Fi'U.k«, Treasurer
Rodman Gilder, Business Manager
Subscription price, five dollars a /ear in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign ix>»l-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may >>« »">*
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St, Strand, London, W. C. 2. EngUnd
Copyright, 1920, in the United Stales of
America
Editors
F.\BIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
48]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 36
Out of Their Own Mouths
THE publication by the State De-
partment of a "Memorandum on
Certain Aspects of the Bolshevist
Movement in Russia" is a departure
of unusual importance. It is obvious
that much of the information obtained
by the Department in the conduct of
its work is private and confidential,
and delicate negotiations might be
jeopardized by making it common
property; but the more the public is
made acquainted with the fatts the
better. The State Department has
better sources of information than
other agencies, and by giving out to
the public all that is permissible and
consistent with the public interest it
not only forestalls and confounds
those who deliberately circulate false
information for their own purposes,
but establishes a sound basis for
popular support of its policies. This
is preeminently the case with the
pamphlet that has just appeared.
Complaint has been made that its
publication was delayed some three
months after it had been prepared and
printed, and that this delay was due
to uncertainty as to the attitude of
the President. But — better late than
never; for the clear showing in its
pages puts an end once for all to any
talk of recognizing the autocracy at
Moscow or compromising with evil
because it appears triumphant.
In this connection, the introduc-
tion is illuminating and shows plainly
the conclusions reached by the State
Department after its examination of
the Bolsheviks' own material.
The Russian Division of the State Depart-
ment has prepared from original sources this
brief summary of what appear to be some of
the fundamental Bolshevist principles, methods,
and aims. As will be seen, the statements are
based almost entirely on translations from
the Bolshevist newspapers in the files of the
Department. These newspapers are the of-
ficial organs of the All-Russian Central Ex-
ecutive Committee of Soviets, of local Soviet
committees, or of the Russian Communist
Party Bolsheviks ...
The theoretical "dictatorship of the prole-
tariat," acknowledged to be the rule of a
minority, with a definite policy of preliminary
destruction, is found in fact to have degen-
erated into a close monopoly of power by a
very small group, who use the most opportun-
istic and tyrannical methods, including "mass
terror."
While existing on the accumulated wealth
of the country, the Bolshevist regime has
brought about a complete economic collapse,
with consequent famine and epidemic. The
claim of the Bolsheviks that economic isola-
tion is wholly responsible for economic chaos
in Soviet Russia cannot be sustained. The
Bolshevist program has not worked and Bol-
shevism has to its credit no constructive ac-
complishment.
One of the main aims of the Bolshevist lead-
ers from the very beginning has been to make
their movement a world-wide social revolu-
tion. They incidentally declare that success
in Russia depends on the development of cor-
responding social revolutions in all other coun-
tries. Bolshevist policies and tactics are sub-
ordinated to the idea of the international pro-
letarian revolution. Apparent compromises
with "bourgeois" governments or countries
have proved temporary and tactical.
The Memorandum is a scholarly
production and its method is above
criticism. It takes up in turn various
phases of Bolshevik rule, including
the "dictatorship of the proletariat,"
the elections to Soviets, the Extraor-
dinary Commissions, mass terror,
class discrimination in food rations,
the Red Army, and the protests of
the peasants, and in regard to each
quotes verbatim the official Bolshevik
decrees and newspapers. Similarly
it describes the economic results of
Bolshevist control, showing the aban-
donment of announced principles, the
policy of destruction, the issue of
billions of worthless paper money,
the disorganization of administrative
machinery, the tyranny over labor,
the breakdown of transportation, the
distress in the agricultural districts,
and the general industrial collapse.
Finally, there is set forth the Bolshe-
vist programme of world revolution,
in which frank acknowledgment is
made of the propaganda carried on
throughout the world, as well as
cynical disregard of any treaties or
agreements which may be entered
into. Half of the Memorandum is
devoted to translations of the Bol-
sheviks' own decrees and documents
— indisputable and complete evidence.
Among the quotations from the
official Bolshevik papers, some are
especially striking. A man in the
Province of Tambov writes to Izvestia
the following, which is pretty good
evidence as to why the peasants hate
the Bolshevik Government:
Help! We are perishing! At the time
when we are starving, do you know what is
going on in the villages? Take, for instance,
our village, Qlkhi. Speculation is rife there,
especially with salt, which sells at 40 rubles
a pound. What does the militia do? What
do the Soviets do? When it is reported to
them, they wave their hands and say, "This
is a normal phenomenon." Not only this, but
the militiamen, beginning with the chief and in-
cluding some communists, are all engaged in
brewing their own alcohol, which sells for 70
rubles a bottle. Nobody who is in close touch
with the militia is afraid to engage in this
work. Hunger is ahead of us, but neither the
citizens nor the "authorities" recognize it. The
people's judge also drinks, and if one wishes to
win a case one only needs to treat him to a
drink. We live in a terrible filth.
The following figures given out by
Rykov, President of the Supreme
Soviet of National Economy, in a
statement to the Moscow Soviet last
March and published in the Severnmja
Kommuna, express more clearly the
economic ruin wrought by the incom-
petence of the Soviet authorities than
any statement made by their adver-
saries.
We have 100,000,000 puds (1,650,000 tons) of
coal, 10,000,000 puds of grain, and several mil-
lion puds of fish at our disposal which we can
not move. In the spring a part will spoil.
Transport is impossible, as we have no fuel,
and the situation in regard to the want of it is
that 2,000,000 puds of machine oil had to
be used as substitute for want of liquid fuel.
Railroad communication will have to be re-
duced, which will again reflect on the supply
of food. We have, therefore,, to utilize
transport by river as soon as navigation is
opened. We also will have to fight with the
local Soviets, who often hide their stocks,
as, for instance, the Yarovlav Soviet hiding
500,000 puds of petroleum. The textile indus-
try is also in a critical state ; up to 10,000,000
puds of cotton is wanted and flax is scarce, as
the peasants spin for their own needs or use
it for heating purposes. A way out of these
difficulties would be to take the Caucasus with
its supply of petroleum and to increase pro-
ductiveness of labor. At present we produce
only five pairs of boots for 100 people, and
however so many Kerensky rubles we would
pay to workmen, only 1 in 20 can receive a
pair.
The same paper quoted a report
made by Zinoviev at a meeting held in
connection with the strike at Putilov
factory to the effect that from August,
1918, to February, 1919, the factory
had turned out only five locomotives,
while for the year 1918 the factory
had cost the State a deficit of 58,000,-
000 rubles.
This Memorandum of the State De-
partment will serve another good pur-
pose. It will open the eyes of Amer-
ica to the militant danger of Bol-
shevism. Hitherto there has been a
tendency to regard our own Bolshe-
viks as misguided individuals, mostly
aliens ignorant of or out of sympathy
with our democratic institutions.
Now we know that they are the flying
squadron of the propaganda army
and that we have among us citizens
invoking for these agents the protec-
tion of the rights of free speech
January 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[49
merely as a smoke screen to cover
their hostile activities.
The Bolshevik regime in Russia has
become an aggressive imperialistic
power, disposing of a large military
force and directing also a vast and
well-trained propagandist army. It
is no longer a contest of ideas that
confronts us — if indeed it ever was.
These imperialistic aims are ex-
pressed in a programme for world
revolution, and the extent to which
any government could count upon
their good faith in making agreements
or treaties is made clear in their own
singularly frank announcements.
Thus Trotsky in his "Peace Pro-
gram," says :
If in awaiting the imminent proletarian flood
in Enrope, Russia should be forced to con-
chide peace with the present day Governments
of the Central Powers, it would be a provi-
sional, temporary, and transitory peace, with
the revision of which the European Revolu-
tion will have to concern itself in the first in-
stance. Our whole policy is built upon the
expectation of this revolution.
A similar attitude is disclosed even
more strikingly in the speech made
by Zinoviev, President of the Petro-
grad Soviet, last February :
We are willing to sign an unfavorable
peace with the Allies. ... It would only mean
that we should put no trust whatever in the
bit of paper we should sign. We should use
the breathing space so obtained in order to
gather our strength in order that the mere con-
tinued existence of our Government would
keep up the world-wide propaganda which
Soviet Russia has been carrying on for more
than a year.
Lenin himself, however, sets forth
the whole plan with singular clarity
and characteristic Bolshevik logic in
his proclamation calling the Congress
of the Communist International :
The present is the period of destruction and
crushing of the capitalistic system of the whole
world, and it will be a catastrophe for the
whole European culture, should capitalism
with all its insoluble contradictions not be
done away with.
The aim of the proletariat must now be im-
mediately to conquer power. To conquer
power means to destroy the governmental
apparatus of the bourgeois and to organize
1 new proletarian governmental apparatus.
The new apparatus of the Government must
' xprcss the dictatorship of the working class
I and in certain places even the dictatorship
'f the half-proletariat in the villages, that is,
the peasant proletariat), that is, to persist in
the systematic suppression of the exploiting
flasses and be the means of expropriating them.
\'o false bourgeois democracy— this treacher-
ous form of the power of a financial oligarchy —
with its mere external equality— but a prole-
tarian democracy able to realize the freedom
't the working masses; no parliamentarism.
'Ut the self-government of the masses through
their elected organs; no capitalistic bureau-
cracy, but governing organs which have been
appointed by the masses themselves, through
the real participation of these masses in the
governing of the country and the socialistic
work of reorganization— such ought to be
the type of the proletarian state. The Soviet
power or a corresponding organization of gov-
ernment is its concrete expression.
The dictatorship of the proletariat must be
the occasion for the immediate expropriation
of capital and the elimination of the private
right of owning the means of production,
through making them common public prop-
erty. The socialization (meaning doing away
with private property and making it the prop-
erty of the proletarian state, which is man-
aged by the workers on a socialistic basis)
of the large-scale industries and the central
bodies organized by the same, including the
banks, the confiscation of the capitalistic agri-
cultural production, the monopolization of
large-scale commerce, the socialization of the
large buildings in the towns and in the coun-
try; the establishment of a workmen's gov-
ernment and the concentration of the econo-
mic functions in the hands of the organs of the
proletarian dictatorship— are the most essen-
tial aims of the day.
In order to protect the socialist revolution
against external and internal enemies, and to
assist the fighting proletariats of other coun-
tries, it becomes necessary to entirely disarm
the bourgeoisie and its agents and to arm the
proletariat.
The world situation demands immediate and
as perfect as possible relations between the
dififerent groups of the revolutionary prole-
tariat and a complete alliance of all the coun-
tries in which the rervolution has already suc-
ceeded.
The most important method is the mass ac-
tion of the proletariat, including armed strug-
gle against the Government power of capital-
ists.
The destruction of State authority is the
^im which all Socialists have set for them-
selves, Marx included and at the head; with-
out the realization of this aim true democra-
tism, that is, equality and liberty, cannot be
realized. This aim can be realized in actual
fact only by a Soviet or proletarian democracy,
for by bringing into constant and actual par-
ticipation in the administration of the State
the mass organizations of the toilers, it be-
gins immediately to prepare for the complete
decay of any State.
The national anti-Bolshevik move-
ments in Russia have failed, and the
spring may see Poland and Rumania
swept by the Red armies. Then
Europe faces another war, a war for
which the Allies are ill-prepared, a
war from which America can scarcely
stand aloof. With eastern Europe
in revolution and all Asia ablaze, we
may have again to throw our forces
into a struggle that is a greater
menace to civilization than was Ger-
man imperialism.
And those who are accounted
statesmen are taking no wise or ade-
quate measures to meet the menace.
Mr. Lloyd George seems inclined to
come to terms with the Soviet Gov-
ernment if only it will promise to
cease its campaigns against Persia,
Afghanistan, and India, hoping at the
same time to win to himself the pro-
Bolshevik labor element in his own
country. Of course, the promise
would not be kept, but even if it were,
one can scarcely picture a proud and
self-respecting nation buying peace
on such craven terms. M. Clemenceau
still clings to the cordon sanitaire and
barrier-state idea, an equally ineffec-
tual and dangerous plan. It is, indeed,
repugnant to think of egging on the
weak new states of eastern Europe,
already torn with long-continued
warfare, with unstable governments,
and disorganized economic life, to do
our fighting for us. Furthermore,
nothing would tend more to consoli-
date the Bolshevik power and rally
to it Russian national feeling. Every
Russian would feel that these coun-
tries were being hired for the task and
that slices of Russia would be the price
paid. They already believe that the
Allies, and especially England, cov-
ertly desire that the Russia of the
future shall be weakened by dismem-
berment. Lloyd George practically
admitted as much in his speech of
November 19.
Our situation in the face of the new
menace is similar to what it was when
German imperialism threatened the
world. The same forces are at work
to blind us to the issues. Bolshevik
tools and dupes are among us, arous-
ing feeling against Great Britain by
false tales of oppression in India,
by pleas for Egyptian independence,
by Sinn Fein propaganda; stirring
up animosity against Japan ; inciting
labor troubles and class hostility;
and camouflaging all their multifari-
ous activities under the cloak of
"liberalism." We have let go the
opportunity to act in time to save
the greater sacrifices. A year ago
generous aid in money and supplies
to the loyal Russian forces would have
eradicated the cancer from Moscow,
without the need of sending a soldier.
But the moral issue was not clear, for
our people listened to cunning propa-
gandists, who represented Kolchak
and Denikin as reactionaries and re-
storers of Tsarism and diverted atten-
tion from the actual tsarism of Lenin
and Trotsky. The opportunity passed,
and millions of lives have already
paid the price of delay.
Jerome Landfield
50]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 36
Can We Improve Our Public
Schools?
TT'OR holding the views on the sub-
-'■ ject of education which are ex-
pressed in this article, the writer has
been accused of heresy. Granted that
a plain sailor can not pretend to be
an authority on such matters, yet, as
the onlookers at a game of chess often
perceive situations and possibilities
that escape the notice of the players
themselves, he has reached the con-
clusion that in some respects the pres-
ent scheme of public education is
fairly open to criticism. It is in the
hope that his humble contribution to
the discussion of an important topic
may prove useful that he offers these
random observations, if only as a man
of straw to be knocked down.
To begin at the beginning — can
anything be more depressing than the
sight of children, some of them tiny
tots, lugging home piles of text-books
every afternoon that the next day's
lessons may be learned by them out of
school hours, or, as is more frequently
the case, taught them by their par-
ents? Why should such a practice be
tolerated? What are teachers for if
not to teach? Why should parents
be called upon to do work for which
teachers are paid, thus turning the
latter into mere hearers of lessons?
The custom seems quite universal and
encouraged, or at least not discour-
aged. Yet, in my opinion, thus to en-
croach upon a child's play hours,
which should be devoted to healthy
exercise, is little less than a crime.
Never do my eyes fall on this painful
spectacle but I say to myself, "The
school that child attends is rotten."
If the school hours are adequate, must
we not believe that they are misused
— wasted? To extend them is un-
thinkable. Going a step farther, I
am convinced that the taking home of
text-books and the studying there of
lessons should be positively prohibited
to boys and girls under, say, thirteen
years of age. Their health and
strength and growth are too precious
to themselves and the nation to be
jeopardized. Had I a child subjected
to this merciless regime, I should
peremptorily forbid it to bring any
text-book out of school.
Still another step along this icono-
clastic road which I am inviting my
readers to tread with me; why any
text-books at all for these young
scholars, saving only history and
readers? As they seem unnecessary
to me, I am led to wonder whether
schoolmasters and schoolmistresses
do not follow the line of least resist-
ance and assign lessons to be learned
from text-books rather than do the
teaching themselves. It is distasteful
to suggest that they should choose
upon which horn of the dilemma to
impale themselves, laziness or incom-
petence ; therefore some other reason
must exist as to which my ignorance
needs enlightenment.
Except readers, there were no text-
books at Professor Thomas's school in
New Haven, which I attended when a
youngster, and as, in my belief, no
better primary school ever existed on
this planet, I have good ground for
my opinions. Of course, I must admit
that he was an extraordinary master
— his Christian name should have
been Deodato, for surely never was a
pedagogue more truly God-given.
When his school closed for the day his
scholars were absolutely free. What
results attended his system, it may be
asked. Suffice it to say that his boys
of twelve could read well, write well,
indite a good letter in accepted form,
both business and personal; spell ex-
cellently, draw maps from memory,
cipher with the best. They knew
their history thoroughly as far as he
carried them, and a little about chem-
istry and mineralogy as well, through
practical demonstrations; many of
them could set up type, and they did
with their own hands make out, com-
pose, and print the weekly school
standing ; all could keep books in
double entry. The secret lay in that
Professor Thomas did nothing him-
self which he could make his boys do
for themselves. Few were the lessons
he heard in person or the exercises he
corrected, although from his raised
platform he supervised all. In spell-
ing, geography, and mental arithme-
tic, for example, the boys themselves
conducted the quiz after the manner
of the good old New England spelling
bee. In dictation each boy pointed
out the mistakes on some other boy's
slate (for of course the wasteful pad
had no place in this model school),
and was marked not only for his own
errors, but for those also which he
had failed to note on the slate passed
to him.
Under Professor Thomas, scholars
acquired those most essential of all
faculties, mental abstraction and the
knowledge of how to study. Do
these find their place in our common
schools ? I greatly fear not, yet even
after the lapse of many years they
still remain with me as priceless pos-
sessions.
In the great world outside the
schoolroom every man finds himself
working under the inexorable law of
rewards and penalties, and he whose
career is crowned with success has
won more of the former and incurred
fewer of the latter than his fellows.
What rewards do our schools hold out
for close application and the rapid ac-
complishment of the daily task ? Ab-
solutely none except, possibly, the
prizes offered at the end of the term.
To expect the average boy to work
hard over his books during what
seems to him an eternity that he may
at its end receive, perchance, a book
of poetry, is mere folly; something
more immediate and appealing to his
nature is required.
Let us digress a moment and in-
quire into what it is that makes prog-
ress so slow in our schools. Un-
doubtedly the cause lies in the fact
that the so-called dull boys hold back
their brighter comrades, just as in the
navy the speed of the slowest ship is
that of the squadron. To increase the
latter the former must be increased.
There is no alternative. I do not
know whether the expediting of the
laggards is the guiding principle in
our schools, although convinced that
it ought to be ; while I have no reason
to suppose that the teaching of how
to study is recognized as the most
important part of a master's duty. ;
If that is achieved all the rest of edu-
January 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[51
cation becomes plain sailing. I may
be a heretic in holding that unless a
master or mistress can teach how to
study he or she is of little value. This
can not be done by punishment, as,
for instance, "keeping after school."
Experience has demonstrated the fu-
tility of such a procedure. Why not
take the other tack and try the virtue
of competition and rewards, the very
basis of business management?
To illustrate, suppose I were given
a free hand in dealing with one aver-
age class. I would first see to it that
a playground for pleasant and a gym-
nasium for foul weather were avail-
able. I would then address my boys
somewhat after this fashion;
"I have a stop-watch here by
which to time you in learning a cer-
tain poem. When I say 'go,' open
your books at page 82 and begin to
memorize the poem. As soon as any
one of you knows it perfectly, let him
raise his hand. At my nod, he can
leave the schoolroom and play outside
until the bell sounds at the end of the
hour, when of course he must return.
Now be sure that you do know the
poem perfectly. I have someone
waiting outside who will test you and
send you back if you do not. More-
over, your word next time will not be
fully accepted; you will have to pay
for your error by remaining in your
seat for a while. And let me warn
each of you not to get into the hafeit
of deceiving himself. The one per-
son with whom you must always be
honest is your own self. Now for the
race— Go!"*
I would note the exact time re-
quired for each boy to do the task —
thus getting a measure of his mental
speed and self-honesty, as well as data
upon which to gauge and record his
progress in concentration. It is to
the laggards, thus self proclaimed,
that I would then devote all possible
attention, helping them to lubricate
their brain mechanism by taking
them under intensive trainingthrough
one small part of the lesson at a time.
Eventually I should be in a position
to report to the Superintendent that
Johnnie Green, for example, was men-
*I have taken the simplest case, that of pure
memorizing. The reader can easily extend
the idea to cover more complex cases.
tally so far below normal that he
should be set apart and not be kept
in the class to hold back his fellows —
a rank injustice to them. It is the
best pace of the normal or average
boy which should be accepted for the
whole class — not that of the cleverest
or of the dullest.
Granted that some boys are
brighter than others, just as some
machines work with less friction and
more efficiency than others, yet I feel
strongly that very often the so-called
dull scholar merely lacks the faculty
of abstraction and close attention.
He will confidently assert that he has
devoted the whole hour to his lesson
and he really thinks he has done so.
As a matter of fact he has done noth-
ing of the sort. His mind has wan-
dered from the text-book pages to
dwell upon the next baseball game,
the coming of the circus, etc., etc.
He longs for the ending of the school
session and wishes he were a man
with this horrid confinement and re-
pulsive study behind him. The con-
sequence is that of the hour allowed
he really gives but a fraction to his
Soudy. To such as he is the chance
of getting out of doors and of joining
his playmates comes like manna in
the wilderness, furnishing a powerful
incentive to stick close to the lesson.
It is difficult to determine in advance
how much time he would in this way
gain for his sports, but I am sure it
would prove astonishingly great.
The laws of physics apply here as
everywhere else. Exactly the same
amount of mental energy is expended
by each boy in learning any given les-
son, the difference being that some
work with the minimum of friction
and without stopping; others with
undue friction or intermittently. It
may be possible to lubricate the gears
— as to this I can only hope — but it is
eminently practicable to keep the
wheels moving uninterruptedly. Is
not this worth attempting? And is
not the method I suggest extremely
promising? So entirely convinced
am I on this point that I am almost
ready to engage to take any class,
and, after a few months' training,
prove that the hour allotted to study
could be reduced possibly to twenty
minutes without detriment. If I am
correct in my forecast, this class
could eventually have its tasks
doubled in length and yet have twenty
minutes playtime out of every hour.
Of course these figures are only hypo-
thetical, but I have seen at Professor
Thomas's school such extraordinary
results of the mental concentration
and the knowledge of how to study
inculcated there that I can not think
them wildly visionary.
This supposititious class would, if
I am right, go easily and thoroughly
over the school course in half the time
now allotted. It could keep up its
speed in the grammar and high
schools and be prepared for college at
the age of fourteen, to graduate at
eighteen, then to enter a university
and go out into the world at twenty-
one equipped at once to undertake
its life work.
The objection will be raised that
boys of fourteen are too young to
leave home. Quite true, if they go to
a university where the student is re-
garded as a man fully competent to
take care of himself. What I have in
mind is a small college exercising su-
pervision over the conduct, habits, and
morals of its charges. That I myself
went to the Naval Academy at four-
teen years of age and, thanks to Pro-
fessor Thomas, went through the four
years' curriculum in three years,
graduating before I was eighteen,
shows that my ideas are not so very
chimerical after all, since I was
merely an average lad, except in this,
that under dear old Professor Thomas
I had learned how to study and how
to abstract myself from my sur-
roundings. He discarded text-books,
other than readers, completely, using
wall maps and similar displays
for other branches such as spell-
ing, arithmetic, etc. To any person
really anxious to learn Professor
Thomas's system in detail t'ne invita-
tion is freely extended to come to me
for a conference. A private school
in any one of our large cities would,
I am convinced, prove a gold mine if
faithfully conducted on his lines. Our
public schools would, I fear, not con-
sider such a tremendous change, im-
peratively necessary as this heretic
thinks it to be.
Caspar F. Goodrich
52]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 36
Correspondence
Mr. Roscoe and the Church
of England
To the Editors of The Review :
In his article on "The Established
Church of England," in the Revieiv of
December 20, Mr. E. S. Roscoe leaves little
unsaid that might be said in its dis-
praise. He is, indeed, so apparently con-
fident that the Church of England is a
dead thing that he almost persuades one
that it must be so. If he is to be credited,
not only has the inefficiency of the
Church as an organized body "been clear
for a long time to impartial observers,"
but it is even recognized by the Church
itself. Surely a parlous state. We are
also reminded that the Church of Eng-
land has been out of touch with national
feeling in England, and "never more so
than during the Great War"; and that
it is "tolerated good-naturedly by the
nation as a whole." The Church is
"characterized by lack of enthusiasm";
it "produces no great divines"; it lacks
both "the simple emotionalism of the
Nonconformist Churches" and "the
simple-minded and unquestioning devo-
tion of the Roman Catholic Church to its
faith and to its purpose"; it "appeals
now, wholeheartedly, neither to reason
or feeling; it has neither an intellectual
nor an emotional influence." A most
comprehensively damning indictment. If
all this were true, as of course it is not,
in spite of Mr. Roscoe's contrary belief,
this corporate Esau might well lament
the loss of both a birthright and any
vestige of a blessing.
It would be insulting the intelligence
of your readers to attempt to tell them
what the Church of England has done
in the past, and what it is doing to-day,
in the general cause of Christian civili-
zation, what it has contributed to the
education of England's sons and daugh-
ters, what a factor it has been in the
social life of that country, how its mem-
bers clerical and lay did their part in
the Great War. It has been a living
force, and is still a living force, in Eng-
land, as it has been and still is throughout
the British Empire, and as the sister
church has been and is in the United
States. It does seem to me that the
Church of England, or the Protestant
Episcopal Church, stands for certain
things that were never more vitally im-
portant than they are to-day. It stands
for broadmindedness, for tolerance of
the views of others, for intelligent patri-
otism, for the reasonable freedom of the
individual, for self-control rather than
control by the state. It teaches its mem-
bers to be charitable in the broadest and
best sense of the word, to be helpful but
not meddlesome, to pray but not in the
market-place, to be good citizens, to play
the game, in a word to be gentlemen and
gentlewomen. Any church that does
these things, or even makes an honest
attempt to do these things, will live.
L. J. B.
Ottawa, Ont., Jammry 1
Inviting Revolution
To the Editors of The Review:
Now, as always, it is the Reds who de-
sire the coming of the "Social Revolu-
tion"; but many of the invitations to this
festive chaos are at the present moment
being issued by the Repressionists. Un-
depreciated Americanism demands that
both the Reds and Repressionists be dealt
with as enemies of the Republic; and it
is the task of the much abused and dis-
credited Liberals in this country to make
the demand effective. For so doing, this
party of orderly progress may expect to
be bitterly attacked by both sets of ex-
tremists ; but it may also confidently hope
to avert a disastrous social upheaval.
This is the day of the Liberal; not the
day of his prosperity and popularity, but
the day of his opportunity. Liberalism
alone can offer adequate backing for that
salutary doctrine — now, unhappily, in
eclipse — which requires justice for those
"to whom we do not wish to be just."
The Liberal can not tolerate the use of
revolutionary expedients by either of the
parties to an industrial dispute, nor by
the Government itself. When organized
labor prepares to compel political change
by means of a general strike, the Liberal,
however much he may sympathize with
labor's grievances, must needs oppose
this method of redressing them. When
organized capital presumes to use as one
of its weapons the withdrawal, in certain
districts, of the ordinary citizen rights
of free speech, free assemblage, the even-
handed public justice, the Liberal is
driven to protest, even though he fears
the impending tyranny of labor. And
similarly, the Liberal is bound to oppose
in every lawful way any action by the
Government in which it seeks to guard
the general welfare by discriminating,
wittingly or unwittingly, against one in-
dustrial class and in favor of another. In
each of these cases the guiding principle
of Liberalism is an unflinching adherence
to orderly justice.
It would be superfluous to urge so ob-
vious a principle as this, were there not
in the social chaos of to-day many and
powerful temptations to violate it, and
a widespread yielding to these tempta-
tions.
The Liberal whose sympathies incline
toward the Reds often allows himself to
drift into the position of acquiescing in
revolution, if not of actually inviting it.
He may be skeptical about the reality of
the so-called democracy in the United
States to-day, reasoning somewhat as
follows :
Our democracy is political only; in industry
we still have autocracy. And even our politi-
cal democracy is more apparent than real. Are
we not in fact under a minority control, thanks
to public inertia, indifference, and timidity,
ignorance and mis-education ; thanks also to
plutocratic pressure on newspapers and maga-
zines, on hired brainpower in general, and on
political parties and officials? Is not our de-
mocracy, after all, essentially a minority dicta-
tion in the interest of stability and the capi-
talist class? W9uld it not probably involve
more of gain than loss if, by "direct action,"
another minority dictatorship were substituted,
in the interest of change, perhaps progress,
rather than stability, and of the labor class in-
stead of the capitalist?
The Liberal who answers this last ques-
tion in the affirmative has ceased to be a
Liberal. He has become a Red. By hesi-
tating to give it a negative answer, many
Liberals are at the present moment in-
viting revolution. To distrust the use
of unlawful violence as a means to prog-
ress is the very essence of Liberalism;
and the demand for "direct action" is a
clear call to unlawful violence against our
Governmental institutions.
The Liberal whose sympathies incline
toward the Repressionists is in an equally
perilous predicament. He sincerely be-
lieves that law and order must be main-
tained at any cost in these unsteady
times; hence he finds it easy to condone
the "treat 'em rough" tactics so com-
monly used against "undesirable citi-
zens." The following news item will
illustrate:
Cincinnati, Nov. 18. — Three hundred mem-
bers of the American Legion, led by their offi-
cers, raided Iieadquartcrs of the Socialist party
here to-night. Hundreds of pounds of litera-
ture were tlirown to the street, where it was
burned.
However bitter the Liberal's opposition
to Socialism may be, and however
enthusiastic his support of the American
Legion, his plain duty is to condemn this
outrage and do his part in seeing that it
receives a suitable punishment. To do
anything else is to fall weakly into line
with those who are inviting revolution.
The Industrial Workers of the World
provide many similar illustrations. Be-
cause the Liberal abhors the I. W. W.
and all its works, his soul rebels against :
the duty of shielding its members from
unlawful violence. Is not lawlessness the
very cement that binds them together?
Is it not their common aim to overthrow ,
in an unlawful manner the basic institu-
tions of modern society? What right, j
therefore, have they to claim the protec- i
tion of the law or equitable treatment in |
the courts ? If the Liberal be intelligent, '
arguments such as these proceed from i
his angry heart, not from his cool head.
For a very little of sober reflection can
not fail to convince him that it comports
ill with the dignity of a great people to
fight crime with crime, and that the ulti- ;
mate safeguard against revolution is a
January 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[58
record of even-handed justice to all. And
he must feel grave concern as he reads
the bitter arraignment of modem society
bj' the Reds, and knows that many of
their charges are based upon fact. Every
crime committed against a Red, whether
by a court, a public administrator, or
a "law and order" mob, is an invitation
to revolution — an invitation that thou-
sands will accept and other thousands se-
riously ponder. The all-important job of
the Liberals during the next few months
is to lessen the number of such invita-
tions.
Henry W. Lawrence, Jr.
Middlebury, Vermont, December 20
A Talk With
Sir George Paish
AFTER reading of Sir George Paish
in the "yellows," one might be par-
doned for imagining that expert on
finance as a delusive, wily, rather dan-
gerous person. Those who meet him face
to face, and exchange views with him,
will be surprised to find that he is just
the contrary.
I had the pleasure of a long and serious
talk with him the other day, when he
explained to me some features of his
mission. He had been disconcerted by
the comments of those "yellows" on what
they fancy he is trying to do in this
country.
"I can not understand," he remarked,
"why I have had my mission so misrepre-
sented. On my arrival I supposed I
had made it clear that I had come here,
not to arrange an enormous loan for any
government, but as the spokesman of a
philanthropic group, the Fight the
Famine Council, to enlist the sympathies
of moneyed men and others in the United
States on behalf of starving Europe.
"It is no part of my purpose to induce
your Government to lend billions of
dollars to Great Britain. What I desire
is to convince you of the urgent need of
the unhappy peoples over there who have
been victims of the war. I would not for
a moment even criticize the attitude of
your public men or anyone at all here
on this point. But, in a few days, I
may venture to reply to Mr. Hoover and
some others.
"I feel, as we all do in Europe, that the
assistance which the United States has
rendered the Old World has been magnifi-
cent. Nothing could have been finer
than the way in which your armies
fought with us, or than the way in which,
at a most crucial time, you sent us food
for lack of which we must have perished.
"I am here to try to show you the need
of not withholding the supplies which
you, above all, can assure the stricken
nations. All that we ask is that you
should go on exporting what you raise to
Europe. I wish to show how you can do
that in a normal way — not by extending
credit on a gigantic scale with risk of
loss, but with safety to yourselves, with
guarantees. I mean guarantees of a
responsible Government."
"What's wrong with the whole world
just now. Sir George?"
"The world has been disordered by an
explosion. It must be brought back to
its normal state. I do not doubt — indeed,
I have never doubted that, soon or late,
the United States will realize this fact
and do its part to restore order. In the
long run I have never known America to
fail in doing what is right. Since my
arrival, after conferring with important
business men, I have convinced myself
that henceforward business interests
here will see that their future lies not
only in the development of domestic trade
but also in the expansion of foreign
trade. In the future, I believe, this coun-
try and Great Britain will work amicably
together, more or less as partners. There
will, of course, be friendly competition.
But Great Britain will not try to get
monopolies of trade in certain countries
— for example, in the Far East. And the
United States will, I believe, be equally
generous.
"The war, you know, has taken from
us two great fields on which we used to
draw for our supplies — Russia and
Rumania. This country is to-day the
only source from which we can hope to
get the things we need urgently.
"It was most fortunate for us that, at
a crisis of our fate, you Americans awoke
to a new consciousness of your own for-
eign interests. What you did by sending
us wheat can not be overestimated. You
know what happened. The normal pro-
duction of wheat and so on here increased
enormously; so greatly as to make up
all the deficit in production on our side.
When it again sank, owing to bad har-
vests, you economized. Had you not
done so, we might have been ruined,
though I believe that England could have
starved a little longer, at the worst, than
Germany."
As to Russia, Sir George held the
opinion that it would be advisable and
even necessary to let the Russians work
out their own fate without interference.
There seemed, indeed, to be no possible
alternative, as the French and British
soldiers baulked at fighting Russians.
He had also much of interest to say as
to the ferment of the world regarding
social issues.
"I have had occasion," he remarked,
"to talk with soldiers at the front. I
asked one group of men — about seven
hundred Tommies — what they thought.
In answer, I was asked if it was true
that, while they were offering up their
lives to serve their country, the profiteers
at home were growing rich. There is no
doubt, of course, that while the late war
lasted, outrageous profits were made by
many employers. As a natural conse-
quence, the working people insisted on
their share of those huge profits. So
wages were put up. And this in turn
increased the cost of living. The cost of
living must be gradually reduced. It if«
at the root of all the trouble in the world
The workers are unhappy because they
are having a bad time of it at home. The
women understand that it means more
to their men folk and their families to
lower expenditure than to get higher
wages. A great portion of the burden
of the people must be reduced by taking
away excessive profits.
"The tendency in England, as I see
things, is towards what is known there
now as Guild Socialism — really a move-
ment in the direction of cooperation in
production and distribution. There have
been efforts to attain these ends in Eng-
land, due to the initiative of broadminded
employers. But we may see the attempt
on a much bigger scale. Between capital
and organized labor, what we call the
middle classes (and more particularly
the professional classes, clerks and so
on) have suffered greatly. It is but fair
that they should be considered in all
social re-adjustments. I do not know
exactly what has been accomplished so
far by the middle class unions and
leagues in England. We hear much less
of them than you suppose. Such organi-
zations are, however, badly needed."
And then, after a pause for thought,
Sir George said this of what to him
seemed an impending social change of
vast importance, "In times past, capital
has been in the habit of hiring labor.
Before long we may see labor hiring
capital. Groups of working people will
borrow money for their purposes on the
best terms procurable. And, as the work-
ing people grow in intelligence, the terms
on which they will be able to raise money
will grow easier."
"But will that help the rest of the
community?"
"Yes, in the end, I think it will. The
workers will not be able to dispense with
the assistance of the professionals, whose
interests are perhaps nearer to their own
than to those of the capitalists. Eventu-
ally all classes may cooperate, and share
the profits of production and distribu-
tion."
In quoting Sir George Paish, I have
not always tried to repeat his very words.
At times he took some pains to make it
plain that he was not nailing himself
down to rigid prophecies, but merely
formulating views with which he sym-
pathized. His general outlook on the
future seemed optimistic. Especially as
to the willingness of American business
men, or at least the more farsighted of
them, to do their share in restoring peace
and order to a distracted world.
Charles Henry Meltzer
54]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 36
Mr. P. E. More and The Wits
IF Mr. Howells is the dean of our fiction,
Mr. More is the bishop of our criti-
cism. His classical and Oriental schol-
arship, his reverence for tradition, his
reasoned conservatism, his manner, a
little austere at first contact, and his
style, pure and severely decorous, all be-
come the office. By the serenity of his
pleasure in letters and the life of the
mind he recalls those substantially happy
old churchman-scholars of the eighteenth
centur>-, Warton and Percy and Warbur-
ton. By the range of his deep and difficult
reading he suggests Coleridge, to whose
intellectual dissoluteness, however, his
intellectual organization and concentra-
tion are antithetical. By his aloofness
from the spirit of the hour and its con-
troversies he reminds one of Landor,
striving with none, because none is
worth his strife. By his touch of mystic
ardor and his sustained moral intensity
and philosophic seriousness, he belongs
with Savonarola and the great French
ecclesiastics of the seventeenth century,
inspired by the poignancy of a Pascal and
the weight and amplitude of a Bossuet.
One may visualize him in these later
years, since his retirement from editorial
duties, as sitting in external and internal
placidity under a pallid bust of Pallas in
a commodious library, learnedly annotat-
ing in fine small hand an interleaved
edition of Plato, or poring with a reading
glass over the Latin folio of Origen, or
perhaps quite lost to the world in the
wide wilderness of Leo XIII's Aquinas.
Men with such companions are less
solitary than they seem. Upon a schol-
arly leisure so austerely industrious, you
and I would not lightly venture to in-
trude, even though we had heard that
after a week with St. Augustine Mr.
More enjoys a Saturday evening with
Anna Katharine Green; or will good-hu-
moredly meet the Princeton pundits and
Bluestockings at a rubber of bridge,
bringing to the solution of its problems
the logical rigor of Duns Scotus and the
transcendental insight of Plotinus. On
another night, at tea-time or after, Sam-
uel Johnson would not hesitate to stumble
in, and, stretching his great legs towards
the fire, challenge Henry Holt's views of
Patience Worth and the ouija board, or
put the Princeton Platonist to a defense
of the thesis, somewhat wearily stoical,
which he has carved in tall Greek letters
across the face of his mantel shelf — a
thesis of which this is the gist: "Man's
affairs are really of small consequence,
but one must act as if they were, and
this is a burden." Later in the evening
one can imagine that saturated student
of Queen Anne's time, Professor Trent,
completing the semicircle; and then the
three of them, confirmed Tories all three,
joining in an amiable but heated alterca-
tion on the merits of Milton and Defoe,
or more harmoniously discussing, judg-
ing and gossiping over the "wits" of tav-
ern and coffee-house whom Mr. More has
gathered into his latest volume*: first,
Beaumont and Fletcher, Halifax, Mrs.
Behn, Swift, Pope, Lady Mary, Berkeley,
the Duke of Wharton, Gray; and then,
more summarily, those golden bugs, those
"decadent" fellows, who wore the green
carnation and sipped absinthe for coffee
between the reign of Wilde and the reign
of G. B. Shaw.
It is good literary talk — better is not
to be heard in these degenerate days. It
is talk now grave, now gay, richly allus-
ive and erudite and deliciously seasoned
with malice — "at every word a reputa-
tion dies." For the host, quoting Samuel
Butler, has given his guests this note:
"There is nothing that provokes and
sharpens wit like malice." What a lurk-
ing Whig or a modern Democrat or a
Romanticist would miss, if he were eaves-
dropping there, is a clash of fundamental
belief and theory. Professor Trent may
differ tenaciously on a nice point, such as
the circumstantial evidence in the case
of Lady Mary's virtue. But as to the
a priori evidence, they are all in substan-
tial agreement; for they accept with a
dreadful Calvinistic accord man's nat-
ural predisposition to evil. They all ap-
plaud the wits for saying so sovereignly
well those infamous things about human
nature, which, alas, every now and then,
human nature deserves to hear. They all
speak suspiciously and derogatively of
the mobile vulgus. And they fail, as
nearly every militant classicist does, to
recognize the "grand style" in Shake-
speare, though, as Mr. More's favorite
abomination, Professor Saintsbury, truly
says, the heretic has but to open the plays
anywhere and read fifty lines, and the
grand style will smite him in the face
"as God's glory smote Saint Stephen."
Mr. More, receding from the position
taken in the second series, now admits,
indeed, that the greater plays are in their
substance "profoundly classic," which is
as much as one ever extorts from a de-
fender of the Acropolis; but he clings to
his heresy in the case of "Komeo and
Juliet," ranking its exquisite symphonies
of meaning and music below the ethical
plain-song of the "Hippolytus."
We are interrupting better talk than
our own. "Stay, stay," as a German vis-
itor exclaimed on another occasion, "Toe-
tor Shonson is going to say something."
"Sir," cries the Doctor dashing at
"P. E. M." with brutal downrightness,
"in your essay on a Bluestocking of the
Restoration, you have applied a vile
phrase to Congreve. You have done an
♦With the Wits. Shelburne Essays. Tenth
series. By Paul Elmer More. Boston :
Houghton Miiiflin Co.
injustice to Congreve by coupling him
with Wycherley and Mrs. Behn as 'wal-
lowing contentedly in nastiness.' A critic
should exert himself to distinguish the
colors and shades of iniqtlity. Wycher-
ley splashed through the filth of his time
like a gross wit. Mrs. Behn dabbled in
it like a prurient and truckling wit.
Swift, indeed, wallowed in it, not con-
tentedly but morosely, truculently, like a
mad wit. But Congreve picked his way
through it disdainfully, like a fastidious
wit."
"But did you not," inquired Mr. More,
"in your Lives of the Poets remark that
the perusal of Congreve's works will
make no man better?"
"True," retorts the Doctor, "but I ac-
knowledged that I knew nothing of Con-
greve's plays. Years had passed since I
had read them. I am better acquainted
with them now. Sir, in the Elysian
Fields, Hazlitt, Thackeray, and Meredith,
your best judges of wit and the beauties
of English prose, converse with the mem-
bers of my Literary Club in the language
of Congreve. In my days of nature, I
did him at least the justice of recording
that he could name among his friends
every man of his times, Whig and Tory
alike, whom wit and elegance had raised
to reputation. A man who wallows in
filth does not win universal esteem. No,
sir; Congreve was an acute critic, a
man of taste, and a fine gentleman, a
very fine gentleman. In your next edi-
tion you must retrieve your blunder of.
representing the patrician wit of the Res
toration as wallowing in nastiness."
"I will make a note of it," says Mr,
More with an audible sigh of regrei
For, to tell the plain truth, Mr. Mor(
values the writers of the Restoratio:
chiefly for their wickedness. It is such
good ammunition to use on the humani-
tarian enthusiasts and the whitewashers
of human nature. He can forgive Pope
his virulent personal satire, but not his
deistic optimism. He praises Swift above
Pope for his consistent adherence to the
representation of his fellows as "the most
pernicious race of little odious vermin
ever suffered to crawl upon the face of
the earth." He requires, or thinks he
requires, the Yahoos as hideous cary-
atides to uphold the towering superstruc-
ture of his aristocratic political and so-
cial philosophy.
"Cheer up. More," interposes Professor
Trent jocosely, "don't let the loss of
Congreve shake your beautiful faith in
human depravity. The Doctor allows
that Congreve was a rare bird, a very
phoenix. I'll tell you a Yahoo friend of
Defoe's that you can put in his place.
Swift knew his English people. For my
part, give me the Turks."
A belief in the baseness of average hu-
man nature is, as I have said, something
that Mr. More requires as a builder re-
quires a basement, not expecting to live
s-
J
1
Jaruicary 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[55
in it. Despite his profession of love for
Pope, I suspect he has little more fellow-
feeling for the sad wags of Anne's time
or of Victoria's than Milton had for his
kitchen-folk. When Professor Trent and
Doctor Johnson grow weary of impaling
ghosts on epigrams and are packed off to
a nightcap and to bed, one can fancy "P.
E. M." returning to the library to recover
possession of his soul. Extinguishing
the lights, he sinks into his easy chair,
and watches for a time the flickers of his
expiring fire fingering the dusky folios,
while the Princeton chimes announce
the midnight, and silence envelops that
quaint little imitation-English city, striv-
ing so bravely, amid the New Jersey oil-
refineries, to be a home of lost causes
and to dream, under the Cleveland me-
morial tower, like the Oxford of 1830.
As he meditates there in the fitful gloam-
ing by the hearthside — Mr. More is one
of the last of the meditative men — the
gossip and scandal of the evening's talk
rise from his mind like a phantasmal
smoke, in which the huge illusory bulk
of Johnson appears but a whirling eddy
in knee-buckles and the slighter form of
Professor Trent but a momentary shape
in frock coat, floating wisp-like heaven-
wards.
From his mood of recreative dissipa-
tion "P. E. M." passes into his mood of
critical self-collection, thence into his
mood of philosophic contemplation, and
so to his mood of mystical insight, in
which space and time, like insubstantial
figments of the imagination, dissolve and
mingle with the smoke and the Professor
and the Doctor, and drift up the flue into
night and nothingness. "Such stuff as
dreams are made on," he murmurs in a
mood like that in which Carlyle saw
through the transparent body of Louis
XVI the Merovingian kings wending on
their ox-carts into eternity. A chill per-
vades the still air of the study. Into
the vacant chairs glide one by one the
quiet ghosts of Henry More the Plato-
nist, and Sir Thomas Browne, for whom
Oblivion scattered her poppy in vain, and
Cudworth rising from his tomb in "The
True Intellectual System of the Uni-
verse," and pale John Norris of Bemerton,
wafted hither by a passion of loneliness
from his dim prison in "The Theory of
an Ideal World." There is no sound of
greeting; but the four silent figures
commune together in perfect felicity on
That Which Endureth Forever. They
speak not a word, yet they understand
one another by a mere interpenetration
of their beings. . . . And when
the Northern Waggoner has set his sev-
enfold team behind the steadfast star,
and Chaunticlere warns erring spirits to
their confines, "P. E. M." rouses himself
from his deep trance, and says to him-
self, softly under his breath, "Hodie
vixi— to-day I have lived!"
After two cups of coffee and a bit of
toast, he goes to his desk and, without
haste or rest, sets to work upon — what?
A man who keeps such company and
lives such an internal life should write
his memoirs, a new Biographia Literaria,
a philosophical autobiography. Such a
book from Mr. More, delivering in his
pure grave style a continuous narrative
of the travels and voyages of his spirit
from Shelburne, New Hampshire, by way
of India to ancient Athens, making all
ports which for storm-tossed sailors trim
their lamps — such a narrative, plangent
through all its reserves with nostalgia
for the infinite, would be of unique inter-
est and value to us, complementing the
brave venture of Henry Adams, and
deepening the resonance of American let-
ters.
But Mr. More, returning to his desk,
either continues his history of Neo-Pla-
tonism, which I wish he could leave to a
scholar with no autobiography to write;
or else, which fills me with malice, he
supplants that great work by a Shelburne
essay on Aphra Behn. This "pilgrim of
the infinite"— what has Aphra to do with
him, or he with Aphra! But what is a
Shelburne essay? It is generally an im-
perfect, fragmentary cross-section, some-
times only the outer bark of a cross-sec-
tion, of the character and personality
which I have been sketching. It is criti-
cism, it is history, it is philosophy, it is
morality, it is religion, it is, above all, a
singularly moving poetry, gushing up
from deep, intellectual, and moral sub-
strata, pure, cold, and refreshing, as
water of a spring from the rocks in some
high mountain hollow. This poetry of
ideas was abundant in the first and the
sixth series of the Shelburne essays, and
was nearly continuous in some of the
single essays like The Quest of a Century
in the third series and Victorian Litera-
ture in the seventh. By its compression
of serious thought and deep feeling it
produces the effect of one speaking be-
tween life and death, as the Apology of
Socrates does. There is a pulse in the
still flow of it, as if it had been stirred
once and forever at the bottom of the
human heart. It is for this poetry that
we love Mr. More. But one has to go so
far for it ! In the long series, it is so in-
termittent! There is so much territory
through which it does not flow.
A young friend of mine who takes his
world .through his pores, little expe-
rienced in literary exploration, unable to
discover the spring, announced to me,
after a brush with the "wits," that the
essays are "dry." He is mistaken. A
Shelburne essay is not infrequently, how-
ever, astonishingly difficult. Mr. More
has not attended to the technique of in-
gratiation by which a master of popu-
larity plays upon an unready public with
his personality, flattering, cajoling, se-
ducing it to accept his shadow before his
substance arrives. He takes so little
pains, I will not say to be liked, but to
be comprehended, that I sometimes won-
der whether he ha.s ever broadly consid-
ered the function of criticism — in a de-
mocracy, as different as ours is from that
in Athens. He writes as if unaware that
our General Reading Public is innocent
of all knowledge of the best that has been
said and thought in the world. He writes
at least half the time as if he contem-
plated an audience of Coleridges, John-
sons, and Casaubons.
Let me illustrate. Occasionally he will
give you some paragraphs of literary his-
tory as plain as a biographical dictionary
and as dry as, let us say in deference to
Mr. Mencken, as dry as a professor of
English. But of a sudden, in a harmless-
looking essay, say that on the eighteenth-
century dilettante, William Beckford,
you, if a plain man, stumble and lose your
footing over "the law of autarkeia. the
perception of the veritable infinite within
harmonious self-completeness which was
the great gift of the Greeks to civiliza-
tion;" and down you go whirling head-
long into the bottomless pitfall and
abyss of a discussion of the difference
between the Oriental and the Occidental
sentiment towards the infinite and to-
wards personality, while Hinduism, Sem-
itism, Alexandrianism, Platonism, and
the Gnostic and Manichean heresies rush
past you with the flash and roar of the
wheels within wheels that dazzled Eze-
kiel when the heavens were opened and
he saw "visions of God" — and "my
word," as Mr. Drinkwater's Lincoln would
say, what a God! You are, it is true,
brought out of that headlong plunge into
the unfathomable, as a skillful sky-pilot
brings you out of a "nose-spin," or as
a dentist brings you out of the gyrations
of a nitrous oxid trance; and you hear
Mr. More at your side quietly, suavely,
assuring you that now you understand
"why Goethe curtly called romanticism
disease and classicism health." Maybe
you do; but it is not by reason of your
ride behind him on the Gnostic night-
mare. What passed in that flight is only
a shade more intelligible to you than a
Chinese incantation. Your education
was imperfect; you are neither a Cole-
ridge nor a Cudworth.
"Perverse as it seems to say so," re-
marked Matthew Arnold in reply to Pro-
fessor Newman's charge that he was ig-
norant, "I sometimes find myself wish-
ing, when dealing with these matters of
poetical criticism, that my ignorance
were even greater than it is." How often
one wishes that Mr. More would steal an
hour from the study of Neo-Platonism to
meditate on that paradoxical utterance!
How often one wishes that Mr. More's
ignorance were far, far greater than it
is. With many of Arnold's fundamental
intentions in criticism he is profoundly
sympathetic; but he has never, as it ap-
pears to me, felt in a compelling way the
56]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 36
Englishman's passion for diffusing his
ideas, for making them "prevail," for
carrying them from one end of society
to the other. He has never taken ade-
quately to heart Arnold's true and mem-
orable description of the "great men of
culture." They are those, he declares,
"who have labored to divest knowledge
of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult,
abstract, professional, exclusive; to hu-
manize it, to make it efficient outside the
clique of the cultivated and learned, yet
still remaining the best knowledge and
thought of the time, and a true source,
therefore, of sweetness and light."
When I ask myself why "P. E. M." has
not taken these words more obviously
home, why he writes so exclusively for
the "clique of the cultivated and learned,"
I come invariably to one conclusion,
namely, that his interest in the unculti-
vated and unlearned is horribly chilly, is
not much livelier, in fact, than his mas-
ter Plato's concern for the Helots, who
are silently to bear on their shoulders the
burden and splendor of the Athenian Ke-
public ; is not much warmer than his mas-
ter Burke's concern for the driver of
oxen, the carpenter, and work-master,
who are not to be sought for in counsel
but are "to maintain the state of the
world." When I consider how rich "P.
E. M." is in the very wisdom which our
democratic populace needs and vaguely
desires, and when I observe how per-
sistently he repels the advances of the
vulgar by flinging a handful of political
and social icicles in their faces, I wish
from the bottom of my heart that he
had loved the exclusive, metaphysical,
aristocratic Plato less, and the hobnob-
bing, inquisitive, realistic, democratic
Socrates more.
If Socrates were among us to-day, I am
convinced that he would be leader of the
Democrats in the House; but Plato, I
suspect, would be a member of the Senate
from Massachusetts. Having Plato as
his monitor, Mr. More sides politically
and socially with the little group of
Americans who hold that there are only
half a dozen great families, all in the
Republican party, capable of governing
and guiding the destinies of the United
States. Though they may pass without
question for "good" citizens, distin-
guished and patriotic, they have never
accepted one characteristic word that
Jefferson wrote into the political Scrip-
tures of the American nation; they have
never felt one generous throb of the faith,
regenerative and sustaining and uniting,
which Jefferson poured broadcast upon
the spirit of the American people — faith
in the sense and virtue of the community
and in the sense and virtue of the
majority of its components.
With Socrates as his guide through
the modem world, "P. E. M." might have
left his library and have broken from the
circle of his Immortals, to stand on one
leg and grow wise in the market-place.
He might have suppled and vulgarized
his tongue to chat with the work-master
and carpenter and the driver of oxen
who have had an American education and
have fought under the American flag
from Verdun to Archangel for, as they
thought or hoped, an American demo-
cratic faith. He might have fallen in
with the young carpenter, cited for gal-
lantry in the Argonne, who is repairing
my roof; or with another, concealing a
Carnegie medal, who built me a tolerable
bookcase after saving, single-handed,
seventeen lives in a fire. He might have
met with a Northern peasant farmer of
my acquaintance who, after recounting
the hardships of his winter work in the
absence of his eldest son, said to me, with
a smile as profoundly philosophical as
anything in Epictetus: "Well, I suppose
that is what we are here for." He might
have read the halting, ill-spelled letters of
that stalwart eldest son who, while break-
ing mules for the Expeditionary Force in
France, wrote to his old mother with a
filial piety as beautiful as anything that
Mr. More commends in Pope.
If he had enjoyed opportunities such
as these — somehow he seems always to
have evaded them — he would have recog-
nized with dismay that Swift and the
wits have coarsely libeled the mobile vul-
gus and have deceived him about its ca-
pacities and tendencies. He would have
discovered in the average man — along
with healthy self-interest, petty vices,
and envy enough to keep him stirring —
courage, fortitude, sobriety, kindness,
honesty, and sound practical intelligence.
If he could have pressed critically into the
matter, he would have discovered some-
thing even more surprising. He would
have learned that the average man is, like
himself, at heart a mystic, vaguely hun-
gering for a peace that diplomats can not
give, obscurely seeking the permanent
amid the transitory; a poor swimmer
struggling for a rock amid the flux of
waters, a lonely pilgrim longing for the
shadow of a mighty rock in a weary land.
And if "P. E. M." had a bit more of that
natural sympathy, of which he is so dis-
trustful, he would have perceived that
what more than anything else to-day
keeps the average man from lapsing into
Yahooism is the religion of democracy,
consisting of a little bundle of general
principles which make him respect him-
self and his neighbor; a bundle of prin-
ciples kindled in crucial times by an in-
tense emotion, in which his self-interest,
his petty vices, and his envy are consumed
as with fire ; and he sees the commonweal
as the mighty rock in the shadow of
which his little life and personality are
to be surrendered, if need be, as things
negligible and transitory.
I am speaking of the average man and
traits of his which I can never contem-
plate, being one myself, without a lift of
the heart; and I frankly avow that it
vexes me to hear this emotion which does
so much to keep us average men from
weariness, and from the devastating cyni-
cism of the wits, and the horrid ennuis
of the great, and from their sense that
the affairs of men are really of small con-
sequence— it vexes me to hear this emo-
tion dismissed as fatuous democratic
self-complacency.
But even as I write these words, I
seem to hear Mr. More, in an accent
slightly eighteenth century, exclaiming
not without asperity, yet rather in pity
than in anger: "Sir, I perceive that you
are a vile Whig !"
To which I reply, not without anima-
tion yet more in affection than in malice,
"Sir, I perceive that you are a stubborn
Tory."
"Sir," says Mr. More, "I am obliged
to lean a bit backward to counterbalance
the vileness of your Whiggery."
"And Sir," I conclude, "I am obliged
to lean a bit forward to counterbalance
the stubbornness of your Toryism."
Stuart P. Sherman
Book Reviews
Co-operating with Destiny
Ideals of America. Analyses of the guiding
motives of contemporary American life
by leaders in various fields of thought and
action. Prepared for the City Club of
Chicago, 1916-1919. Chicago: A. C. Mc-
Clurg & Co.
THE reviewer wolfed a mouthful of
books from the shelf behind the edi-
tor's desk and trotted off to the smoking-
car before he dropped his prey to sniff
at it and see what he had caught. He
slipped inside the first red cover, labelled
"Ideals of America," and splashed into
the following:
An era ended in July, 1914. A civilization
reached its conclusion. We are now far
enough away to begin to see its affairs in per-
spective. Nineteen hundred and fourteen is
detached from the present. The year so recent
has begun to take its place with 1896, 1861,
and even with 1775. This almost immediate
past is already becoming as alien to us as are
the epochs we have learned through the written
chronicles of the past. What is ahead we can
not say with assuredness, although the rude
outlines of the future are visible now to the
clear-eyed as objects perceived in the semi-
light of approaching dawn. At such a season
of transition it is, accordingly, especially valu-
able to attempt to take stock so that thereby
we may cooperate with destiny in achieving a
more satisfactory society.
As he came up gasping and began to
search his mental pockets, the train boy
thrust a pictorial cover under his nose,
announcing "Mutt and Jeff — all the latest
Mutt and Jeff pictures in a book." The;
reviewer took a good look at the familiar
figures with a comfortable feeling as of
firm ground after quicksand. Here at
least was something from that utterly
alien past whose curve registered noth-
Januaiy 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[57
ing of the late seismic disturbance. As
they were before Sarajevo, so are they
after Versailles. He opened the red
cover and ventured in again arm in arm
with Mutt and Jeff to steady him over
the quaking surface of the morass.
By conscious efforts towards clarifying and
organizing our thought and feeUngs can the
high, but hazy, ill-defined . and ill-adjusted
moral conceptions, which admittedly feature
our life, be composed into the symbol of a fit
creative purpose for to-morrow? . . . Can
we as Americans justify our occupation of a
continent by unfolding and pursuing a benefi-
cent, an upbuilding ideal, outbidding disrup-
tive motives and matching the inciting chal-
lenge and resources of our day?
From the corner of his eye the reviewer
saw Mutt with a bent forefinger pressed
against the dome of his forehead, above
which hung a radio-active question-mark
registering "I don't get you."
If the task thus crudely hinted at can
be successfully prosecuted, if a more
worthy, adequate, and dynamic objective
for our social life —
"Say," interrupts Mutt, "Wot fell's a
dynamic objective?"
"I know," says Jeff, "It's droppin G.
I.'s on an ammunition dump."
"How am I gonna cooperate with
destiny?" pursues Mutt.
"Let's ask the Perfesser," suggests
Jeff.
There follows a "symposium," a Greek
banquet of codfish and baked beans, a
white-pine Parthenon with a steeple
overlooking the culture of onions and
tobacco.
Same old Mutt and Jeff. They keep
their hair on (what there is of it).
And the fact that their familiar
attitudes express so readily these in-
expressibly new phases of life "casts
an oblique light" on the newness
and on us. In Mutt's well-known pose
we see ourselves, a static pose to express
the dynamic, an attitude of tense for-
ward straining in expectation of any-
thing but the familiar, when suddenly the
familiar hits us from behind, and over
we go on our noses. At the promise of
something new we shut our eyes and
open our minds wide. Common-sense flies
out; does anything better fly in? The
professor does his part to supply us
with something to make us wise — if only
we could shut our minds on it and hold
it when we get it.
In turn the professors come forward.
There is one each for politics, law, labor,
science, education, society, business,
music, religion, philosophy, literature,
and things in general (Human Pro-
gress). For the most part they speak
well and reason soundly. But the re-
viewer has to snuggle close to Mutt and
Jeff to keep from dizziness, as ideals
wheel across the zenith like the spokes
of the Aurora Borealis, and flash from
hilltop to hilltop. The three find them-
selves in a rather flimsy wagon at the
switching tail of a free-lance comet. Far
below, the world they have left "spins
like a fretful midge." They would be
glad to hitch their wagon to a star, just
one star, friendly and fixed. Jeff has
much ado to keep his hair on, and the
glow of Mutt's radiolite question-mark
outdoes the pale moon. The reviewer is
ready to go into the hands of a moral and
spiritual receiver. In the matter of
ideals, he thought he had assets enough
for his modest business, but this board
of examiners exhibits his liabilities in a
light that spells bankruptcy, and he be-
gins to wonder what percentage his
assets would represent amongst this
army of creditors. Jeff dodges a switch
of the comet's tail and shouts in the
reviewer's ear, "Say, I ain't strong for
this cooperating with destiny — me for
old-fashioned competition!"
The I. I. I.
Bulletin de L'Institut Intermediaire Inter-
national. Publication Trimestrielle. Haar-
lem (Pays-Bas) : H. D. Tjeenk Willink &
Fils; La Haye: Martinus Nijhoil.
THESE are not the initials of a new
political party for the cult of self as
an offset to a rife and flabby communism.
They stand for the name of an institute
whose aims are purely altruistic. The
"Institut Intermediaire International,"
though the study of world politics is an
indispensable part of its activity, does
not hold a brief for any political pro-
gramme in particular. It is intended as
an international clearing-house of in-
formation on all matters of international
interest, connected with politics, eco-
nomics, and statistics. It wishes to act
as an intermediary between peoplp who,
ignorant of each other's language and
living in different parts of the globe,
have no other means of getting into con-
tact together. Some one in China wish-
ing to be informed concerning a certain
law obtaining in Spain, an Englishman
desirous of some economic data about
Russia, a South African journalist anx-
ious to gather material for an article
on the Swedish Constitution, an Ameri-
can professor intending to lecture on
the history of the international conven-
tions and treaties regulating the naviga-
tion on the Danube and the Rhine, will
all, without any charge being made, find
information they are in search of at
the "Institut Intermediaire" in The
Hague. The initiative was taken by
some prominent Hollanders, and the
present organization is controlled and
financed by exclusively Dutch intellect
and capital. Jonkheer J. Loudon, late
Minister of Foreign Affairs, and at
present Minister Plenipotentiary in
Paris, is the honorary president of the
Institute, and on its executive board sit
such eminent authorities on International
Law as Dr. B. C. J. Loder and Jonkheer
Dr. W. J. M. van Eysinga.
In addition to its work of information,
the Institute publishes a series of mono-
graphs on questions of international in-
terest, and a quarterly bulletin which has
just entered on its second year.
The first four numbers contain a
wealth of information, which makes one
look forward to their sequels of the cur-
rent year. In a long contribution, run-
ning through all the four numbers, an
admirable survey is given of the genesis
of the peace in the form of summaries of
diplomatic document.s, official notes, im-
portant editorials and magazine articles.
Recent documents relating to Zionism
are published by Mr. Fischer, the ques-
tion of the dissolution of the Austro-
Hungarian monetary system is discussed
by Dr. de Roo de la Faille. Highly
interesting is a summary of the regula-
tions and efforts for the resumption of
economic relations between the countries
made during the first half of the year
1919. Lavivers will find useful informa-
tion in an extensive collection of juris-
prudence of the Prize Courts in the
various belligerent countries, and in a
number of articles by Dutch, Swiss, and
Norwegian financial experts on the fiscal
legislation in their respective countries
relating to the question of double im-
position.
Each issue of the bulletin contains a
selection of the most important questions
which have been addressed to the Insti-
tute during the past three months.
One of these was to enquire whether
legal regulations exist in France concern-
ing the possession, the purchase, and the
sale of rural or other immovable posses-
sions by foreigners domiciliated in that
country. The answer, supplied by the
Institute's French correspondent, M.
James Paul Govare, Avocat a la Cour
d'Appel, Paris, denied the existence of
any such provisions with a special view
to foreigners, but referred to certain re-
strictions contained in the peace treaty
which tend to derogate from this legal
equality between native and foreign resi-
dents. Another question was for a list
of articles directed against the League
of Nations, and the enquirer received
from the Institute about fifty cuttings
from daily papers and numbers of the
New Republic, the Ne%o Europe, the
Arbitrator, and the Nation. "What is the
legal status," runs another question, "of
a person of German birth, residing and
domiciled in Belgium since 1878, who has
lost his German nationality according to
articles 16 and following of the German
law of June 1, 1870, a loss confirmed by
an "Entlassungsurkunde" of 1899, passed
by the Government of the Grand Duchy
of Baden?" In a lengthy reply the en-
quirer had it explained to him that he
could not claim Belgian citizenship on
the ground of his long residence in that
country. He had to be satisfied with
being "heimatlos."
58]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 36
The importance of an institute of this
nature is self-evident. A more correct
knowledge of the laws of foreign coun-
tries is a safeguard against international
misunderstandings and thus contributes,
indirectly, to the "rapprochement" be-
tween the nations. That Holland has
taken the initiative in such an enterprise
of world-wide importance is a guarantee
that the ideals which Hugo Grotius
preached to an uncomprehending age are
still revered by his compatriots in these
more internationally minded days.
Roses and Games
Pink Roses. By Gilbert Cannan. New York :
George H. Doran Company.
THE pink roses are artificial roses on
the hat of one of those professionally
pretty ladies who have recently drifted
into the foreground of British fiction.
They dawn, in our first chapter, upon the
vision of the languidly dissatisfied young
gentleman, Trevor Mathew. They be-
come and remain for him a symbol, as, in
another way, a certain real pink rosebud
is to become later on. Trevor Mathew,
just out of Oxford, has been ready
enough to become a hero with his two
chums, Hardman and Peto, in the first
days of the war. A "systolic murmur"
turns up to disqualify him. Hardman is
killed pretty promptly, and Peto sent
back a hopeless cripple. This is distress-
ing for Trevor, and helps open his eyes
to what is really going on in the world.
It is borne in upon him that the war is
an abominable and unendurable sacrifice
of Hardmans and Petos and the sacred
youth they represent. He is supposed to
be "in articles," but how can a chap
study law with all that sort of thing
going on over there? What's the good of
work, what's the good of anything?
"Nothing went on except the war, and
that went on and on. Nothing that
happened in it had any significance."
The old world had been destroyed and
nobody knew how to dream even of a
new one. "Men died for liberty, but
liberty disappeared because life as it had
been planned and dreamed had died."
Most unpleasant for Trevor, all this, and
he is about to take it quite hard, when
the damsel with pink roses in her hat
winks at him one evening from a neigh-
boring bench in Hyde Park. She with-
draws demurely to a cafe, whither cur
young friend Trevor enchantedly fol-
lows her. She and her pink roses vaguely
symbolize for him youth and pleasure
and release from responsibility. His
good and nice looks attract the lady, who
is at a loose end. They, as it were, take
each other on. Like Mr. Bennett's pretty
lady, this Cora makes a sentimental point
of "being good to" the war-worn male
as an institution. For a time, according
to Mr. Cannan, she is the best thing that
could have happened to the distraught
Trevor. Later, as she develops a con-
suming passion for him, the relation be-
comes less comfortable from his point of
view. She even dreams of achieving
marriage and respectability with him.
However, he steers clear of this without
much trouble, and they presently tire of
each other sufficiently to drift apart with-
out anything resembling anguish on
either side. They have both, we gather,
gained by the relation. Cora has added
new charms to her professional equip-
ment, and Trevor has been safely tided
over a perilous time of crisis. Now he is
qualified for a true union with the mate
who has also (for his sake eventually)
been passing through her little appren-
ticeship at love.
The reader of this note may perceive
that, stripped of Mr. Cannan's decorative
gloss or, if you will, imaginative inter-
pretation, this is pretty much the same
old story— the youth just out of Oxford
who in the course of a few months in
London not only runs the gamut of sex,
but becomes the mouthpiece of whatever
"philosophy of life" his author may
chance to be swearing by at the moment.
Trevor Mathew is quite a talkative little
prophet from first to last, however
negligible a little man. We must confess
that apart from his megaphonic function,
he is much the same at the end of our
acquaintance as at the beginning, a
flabby, selfish, and rather fatuous dabbler
at life. As for the "philosophy" he rep-
resents, it is difficult to put one's finger
on. The main thing is to disbelieve in
anything other people incline to agree
about, especially other people struggling
under the disadvantages of maturity and
experience. I am young; a lot of us are
young; and the world is in a horrible
mess, and youth is all right, so it must
be the fault of the old fellows. This war
is the old man's war fought by the young.
But it won't happen again because age
has at last over-reached itself. It has
destroyed the ancient illusions and in-
hibitions— smashed the checkerboard on
which its own game was played. Now is
the world to be remoulded to youth's
desire. Alas, our young Trevor does not
much care what he says or thinks, so
long as it is clever and exciting. For
days after the news of the Russian revo-
lution his life is "one long chant of pure
idealism" ; but this does not prevent him
from slipping complacently, at this very
time, into his snug berth as an heredi-
tary pillar- of the law "up North." The
law, he decides comfortably, "does some-
how prevent the rogues and the dear
bourgeois innocents who want their ten
per cent, from having things their own
way. That and our folly make us what
we are. We can get along without revo-
lutions." Still, we see that without sacri-
ficing any personal advantage from soci-
ety as at present constituted, he loves
the idea that something altogether new,
and probably inconvenient, is about to
happen to a great many other people,
the old, the stodgy, the respectable, and
all in authority. He and the still yourger
oracle, Leslie, settle it between them.
Says Leslie:
"They think we're awfully young, but
we do know — all the things that people
like my father have pretended not to
know. We've got to know, because some-
thing's hurting us all the time and we've
got to find a way out. You know what
I mean. Evolution, and all that. . . .
Well, it's as if things were rushing away
from you at about a million miles an
hour, and all the things you'd been told
were important turned out to be nothing
at all, and as if when you tried to play
the game according to the rules it turned
crazy because the game was a new game,
and the rules were old rules."
"Why, that's the war," cried Trevor,
beginning to grasp what the boy was
driving at.
"That's it. We aren't playing the old
game any more. Nothing that my father
did can ever be done by me because I'm
a different being, something quite new.
So are you. So is Ruth. I can tell them,
the new people, as soon as I see them,
and I can't make out why the old game
goes on."
"You see," said Trevor, "we are not
allowed to say that it is a new game
because the old people want us to say
that it is better. But we don't say any-
thing of the kind. We only say that
it's new. Whether it is better or not
remains to be proved. . . . But the
people who are the first to play the new
game will have a lovely time."
The italics are mine: a not unmeaning
bit of commentary in themselves, per-
haps, on Trevor, his author, and their
new game.
H. W. BOYNTON
Pointing the Way to a
League of Nations
Judicial Settlement of Controversies Be-
tween States of the American Union.
Cases decided in the Supreme Court of the
United States. Edited and collected by
James Brown Scott, A.M., J.U.D., LL.D.
2 Vols. Carnegie Endowment for Interna-
tional Peace. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
THESE ponderous quartos cover even
a broader field than is indicated by
the title, which in turn does not disclose
the real purpose of the editor. No inter-
state controversy is involved in most of
the earlier cases reprinted. The first
case, indeed, does not present a decision
of a Federal Court, but of the State
Court of Pennsylvania. It does deal, how-
ever, with the legal status of the United
Colonies, after their separation from
Great Britain, and before the adoption
of the Constitution, and it declares a doc-
January 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[59
trine, which has been accepted by Fed-
eral Courts, that the Colonies became a
body corporate from the moment of their
association as the United States (Respub-
lica V. Sweers, 1 Dallas 41, A. D. 1779).
The second case (Ware v. Hylton, 3
Dallas, 199, A. D. 1796), which is from
a Federal Court, decides that upon sep-
aration from the Mother Country each
Colony became a sovereign and independ-
ent State, with the "right to govern
itself by its own authority and its own
laws, without any control from any other
power upon earth." Then follow cases
showing the nature of "The Union of the
States under the Constitution" and the
relations of the Federal Government to
the Territories of the Union.
Thus far we have no trace of inter-
state controversies, but we get a hint of
the editor's prime purpose, which is to
show how sovereign and independent
States have voluntarily associated them-
selves under a polity which binds them
to submit their controversies to judicial
determination rather than to the arbitra-
ment of war. This purpose is further
disclosed when the editor inscribes the
collection of the "Justices of the Supreme
Court of the United States, as contain-
ing the contribution of that court to the
Judicial Settlement of International Dis-
putes."
An important part of that contribu-
tion is found in a group of cases which
establish the distinction between jus-
ticiable questions and those which are
merely political. Many boundary dis-
putes have arisen between the States.
From one point of view the question of
State or National boundary is a political
one. Accordingly, the Supreme Court
has refused to inquire into the accuracy
of the decision of the political depart-
ment of government that certain terri-
tory belongs to a specified nation (Will-
iams V. Suffolk Ins. Co., 13 Pet. 415).
From another point of view, the ques-
tion of boundary may be one of property
and involve the determination of facts by
a court. In such cases the question of
sovereignty is subordinate to that of
property (Virginia v. West Va., 11 Wal-
lace 39). Which of two opposing gov-
ernments in a State is the legitimate one
is for the political and not the judicial
department of government (Luther v.
Borden, 7 Howard 1) . Whether the form
of government in a State is republican
is a political question, with which the
courts will have nothing to do (Pacific
Telephone Co. v. Oregon, 223 U. S. 118).
Proclamation of blockade by the Presi-
dent is conclusive evidence of a state of
war, and courts will not entertain an in-
quiry as to whether a state of war in fact
existed (The Prize Cases, 2 Black 635).
This distinction between inter-state
controversies which are determinable by
the application of established legal
rules and those which involve only or
mainly considerations of policy has been
made clear by a long line of Supreme
Court decisions. This distinction, the
editor believes, will be found helpful in
determining whether a particular inter-
national dispute falls within the justici-
able or non-justiciable class.
The greater part of the collection con-
sists of cases in which serious contro-
versies between States have been ad-
justed. For example, the boundary be-
tween Nebraska and Iowa is in part a
varying line, because of the shifting
course of the Missouri River, which sep-
arates the States. Under the decision
of the Supreme Court, each State ap-
points a Commission by which from time
to time a compact is made as to the tem-
porary boundary. In case either State
failed to comply with the decision the
Court would appoint an official to locate
such boundary. Thus is removed all pos-
sibility of hostile action by either State.
The most notable inter-state dispute,
the most prolonged as well as the most
ably contested, arose from the efforts of
Virginia to recover from West Virginia
a proportion of the public debt of the
former. Upon the organization of West
Virginia it agreed to assume a stipulated
part of the debt of Virginia as it stood
on January 1, 1861. It did not perform
its agreement, and Virginia sought to
enforce its claim by suit. All sorts of
defenses were interposed by the debtor
State, some of them purely technical,
some of them dilatory, some of them
going to the merits of the claim. The
case was presented to the Supreme Court
many times and the opinions appear in
nearly a dozen different volumes of the
reports. Technicalities were swept aside
by the Court, dilatory pleas were un-
heeded. Attention was repeatedly called
to the fact that the litigation was not
between individuals but between political
sovereignties and therefore possessed a
quasi-international character. Decision
was to be based not upon technicalities,
but upon the actual merits of the con-
troversy. Nor was it to be doubted that
these States would perform their obliga-
tions, once these had been announced by
the Court. In fact, this protracted liti-
gation was brought to a close without
the employment of legal process to en-
force final judgment. The appeal of the
Supreme Court to West Virginia's sense
of honor sufficed. That State has passed
an "Act providing for payment of West
Virginia's part of the public debt of the
Commonwealth of Virginia prior to Jan-
uary 1, 1861, as ascertained by the judg-
ment of the Supreme Court of the United
States and adjusted by the two States"
(Chapter 10, Extraordinary Session
1919).
No one can read the record of these
and of similar decisions without wishing
to study the editor's conclusion that
"as a result of argument, debate and de-
cision, practice has been settled and pro-
cedure adopted in the light of experi-
ence, which is as applicable to States of
the Society of Nations as to States of
the American Union." Most readers.
probably, will agree with the editor in
the further statement that the Supreme
Court, in its judgment of disputes be-
tween States, has shown itself "a proto-
type of that tribunal which they would
like to see created by the Society of Na-
tions, 'accessible to all in the midst of
the independent Powers.' "
We cannot take leave of these volumes
without calling attention to the fact that
they contain a variety of intere.sting ma-
terial not suggested by their title. The
Articles of Colonial Confederation, The
Constitution of the United States, part
of the Declaration of Independence aru
reprinted, as are a number of cases from
the Privy Council and English Equity
reports. These decisions have served as
precedents not only in boundary contro-
versies, but one of them is certainly the
fountain head of the doctrine of judicial
control over the constitutionality of leg-
islative acts. This is followed by the
reproduction of various Colonial ca.ses of
a similar character which are often re-
ferred to but are not accessible to most
readers.
Attic Red-Figured Vases
A Handbook of Attic Red-Figured Vases.
Signed by or Attributed to the Various
Masters of the Sixth and Fifth Centuries,
B. C. Two Volumes. By Joseph Clark
Hoppin. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
THESE two fine volumes represent an
immense labor and a great confi-
dence. They rest upon the conviction
that all Attic red-figured vases can be
classified by their artists. This cata-
logue makes that ambition a fact, in-
corporating, besides the investigations of
Beazley and Furtwangler, a host of
minor researches.
The plan of the catalogue is alpha-
betical. In the first instance artists'
signatures are considered, next potters'
signatures, finally stylistic groups not
confirmed by signatures. The latter nat-
urally predominate. Thus the cata-
logue begins with "The Achilles
Painter" and ends with the "Painter
of the Yale Oinochoe." In the single
list you will find Andokides, Brygos,
Phintias, The Bowdoin Kylix Painter,
etc., each in its alphabetical place. Under
each artist the arrangement is alpha-
betical by places.
Though Dr. Hoppin is accomplished
in this game of attributions, he wisely
60]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 36
brings no new ascriptions of his own
into the catalogue. When one vase is
ascribed to several masters, as often be-
falls, he serves as arbiter, referring to
the piece, however, under every master
to whom it has been assigned. Thus
the brief entries carry with them a
generous amount of bibliography. Be-
sides the general index, which is chiefly
of artists and subjects, there is a mu-
seum index in which Boston looks im-
pressive even among the European capi-
tals, an index of inscriptions, one of
graffiti, and one of publications. Every-
thing is most convenient, and despite
the inevitable ambiguity of such pro-
visional names as The Niobid Painter,
the student should from one list or an-
other be able to locate in the catalogue
any given vase. Here we may protest
against the multiplication of fanciful
names. Where the stylistic group centres
upon a vase in a great museum the
name of the museum should be the catch-
word. Thus, Louvre Niobid Painter is
much better than Niobid Painter. In
this matter the author had to take mat-
ters as he found them.
The plan of illustration is to repro-
duce in small working cuts all signed
vases and no others. It would have con-
siderably added to the value of the cata-
logue to reproduce the most representa-
tive example of each unsigned stylistic
group, but it would have also added to
bulk and expense. As it is, the student
will do well to take Dr. Hoppin's ad-
vice to use the best reproductions and
then go slow on attributions.
In the nature of the case, no catalogue
of world-wide scope can be complete.
Doubtless many additions will promptly
be made to the upwards of four thou-
sand vases listed by Dr. Hoppin. We
happen to know of a score in the uni-
versity and private collections of Prince-
ton, New Jersey, and a couple in the Cen-
tury Club, New York, and we have less
certain report of a few at Williams Col-
lege. Such minor omissions should
merely encourage Dr. Hoppin's colleagues
to report all scattered pieces which have
escaped his notice. His catalogue will
be indispensable to the special student
of Greek vase painting, and occasionally
useful to all students of graphic design.
It is a well-conceived and conscientious-
ly executed piece of minute scholarship,
one of the most important contributions
to classical archaeology which has been
made in America.
One may envy the painting classes
that heard such talks as are gathered
in Charles H. Woodbury's "Painting and
the Personal Equation" (Houghton Mif-
flin Co.). His counsels abound in mother
wit, and are blessedly free from the jar-
gon of the studio. He advocates a modi-
fied naturalism. The greater color re-
lations of a picture should be observed
in nature, for the rest the artist is free.
No forms of conventional and decorative
design are considered. We are really
talking about open-air sketching and its
pictorial derivatives. Within this limi-
tation, the book is full of sound thinking
energetically expressed. "Originality
does not mean that you are superior to
law, but rather that you are keener than
others to discriminate between law and
custom. A picture must be based on
the great considerations of color values;
acquaint yourselves with these for they
are the law, and beyond them all else is
custom to be followed or broken as it
seems to you best." On the ever-urgent
issue of technic we have the following
golden words: "The actual manipula-
tion of the brush is a skilful matter,
and yet it requires more intelligence than
manual dexterity. Art is psychology,
not science, and there ever must be one
unknown factor, the personal equation.
You must know what you see, why you
see, and what is worth seeing." Here
may naturally follow Mr. Woodbury's
excellent variation on Merimee's famous
definition of art. "Art is subtle exagger-
ation, not carried to the grotesque.
It is dangerous ground, of course, but
let us take it as one of the perils of
the profession." A final quotation may
suggest the quality of a book which
should be read in its entirety. "In the
final analysis, art is the search for order
and it has the significance of a basic
human instinct. Art, science, philoso-
phy, psychology, all are seeking the laws
that assign us our place in the universe
and help us to fill it understandingly.
It is not the thirst for knowledge that
drives us, but rather the instinct to
escape from chaos. We do not know
where we are going, but we do know
what we are leaving behind us. Wherever
the tendency arises to deny order,
whether it be in the arts or the art of
living, there comes degeneracy."
The Run of the Shelves
THE "Silver Age" (Scott and Seltzer)
is the agreeable title of a rather non-
descript volume of stories and sketches
by Mr. Temple Scott. More specifically,
it is the title of the not unpleasing open-
ing sketch, dealing with a man's passage
into that period of life when young peo-
ple, even his own children, value him
chiefly as a convenience or an antiquity.
Mr. Scott's observation is rather good.
His sentiment, on the other hand, is
watery, and a certain sponginess is the
inevitable and unprofitable result of its
copious diffusion through such dilatory
narratives as "Reb Yankel" and the
"Lady and the Singing-bird." In "New
York at Twilight," in which he declares
that the true and great New York comes
out in the dusky interval between the
avidities of its daytime and the relaxa-
tions of its nights, he shows an advance
in substance which is pretty nearly
counterpoised by a retreat in style. He
is capable, at the longest intervals, of
cumulative epigram. For instance, he
has this to say of the commercial side
of art in New York City: "The artist
toadied the dealer, the dealer toadied the
critic, the critic toadied the editor, the
editor toadied the advertiser."
It would be pleasant to speak only
praise of Mr. Gamaliel Bradford's "Por-
traits of American Women" (Houghton
Mifflin) ; for it is a nice thing to turn
out these volumes of what the author
has called "psychographs" — or something
of the sort — and wears the appearance
of disseminating culture. But we can't
help feeling that Mr. Bradford has the
fear of the editor of the popularized At-
lantic Monthly in his eyes, and writes
down a little to the flattering editorial
opinion that magazine readers need to be
titillated. Mr. Bradford's portrait of
Emily Dickinson, for instance, ought to
be interesting, and is in fact mildly so;
but there is a kind of jump in his reflec-
tions on human life which bothers us.
Much more important is the essay on
Sarah Alden Ripley, for here the author
has had access to private papers and
gives us information about a character
unique in its way. A private scholar of
whom Professor Child could say: "The
most learned woman I have ever known,
the most diversely learned perhaps of
her time, and not inferior in this respect,
I venture to say, to any woman of any
age"^ — such a woman, scholar at once
and very human, ought to be better
known, and we are grateful to Mr. Brad-
ford for telling her life. We should have
been more grateful if he had quoted more
freely from her letters. Other essays deal
with Abigail Adams, Mary Lyon, Har-
riet Beecher Stowe, Margaret Fuller
Ossoli, Louisa May Alcott, and Frances
Elizabeth Willard.
The poet-laureate. Dr. Robert Bridges,
dumb through the war, has at last
spoken, but through prose, and not
through poetry. The year before the
War broke out he was busy founding a
society to combat what he regards as
the dangerous influences at work in de-
grading the language, and widening the
gulf between ourselves and the sonorous
speech of Shakespeare and Milton. It
is called the Society for Pure English;
not, however, to convey the idea that
words of foreign origin are impurities
in English, but rather assuming that
they are not. Professor Henry Bradley,
editor of the great Oxford Dictionary,
and Sir Walter Raleigh, were with him
in the project from the beginning; and
over a hundred rank as original mem-
bers, including the Right Honorable
Arthur H. Balfour and Mrs. Humphry i
January 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[(51
Ward. The first of its publications has
just come from the Clarendon Press, in
the shape of a Tract on English Homo-
phones by Dr. Bridges. An Englishman
from one of the southern counties, him-
self, he makes it a particular grievance
that the careless treatment of the con-
sonant r is leading to the blurring of the
distinction between such words as shore
and sure, oar, ore and awe. A Phonetic
Dictionary of the English Language, the
joint work of an Englishman and a
Prussian, has been published in London
to register this habit of speech. This
work of Michaelis and Jones, now in its
second edition, gives the poet-laureate
no little concern. With the prestige of
coming from the British capital, and of
being compiled by the lecturer on Pho-
netics at University College, London, it
may work, he fears, no little harm.
To most minds the word desert means
the opposite of all that is pleasing. Sand
and snakes and thirst and cactus— what
else is there to write about? Some years
ago George Wharton James wrote two
big volumes on the "Wonders of the
Colorado Desert." Many other authors
have discoursed eloquently on its lures.
The latest of them is J. Smeaton Chase,
the author already of "Yosemite
Trails" and "California Coast Trails,"
and now of "California Desert Trails"
(Houghton Mifflin). He goes so far as
to say that the desert's hold upon those
who have fallen under its spell is deeper
and more enduring than is the charm of
forest or sea or mountain. He also
ventures an explanation of this fact, if
fact it is. In olden times man was en-
I gaged in a perpetual struggle with the
I inexorable forces of nature. While this
struggle lasted, the vast and the wild
raised no thrills but those of dislike and
fear. But now, after centuries of ease
and home comforts, the desolate, gaunt,
and dreadful in nature attract us by the
law of contrast; "the risk is, indeed, that
they may run to overvaluation." Per-
haps, the author thinks, even the pranks
of those funny fellows, the "futurists,"
"cubists," and "vorticists," in poetry,
music, and the other arts, might be ex-
plained by this clue: "Civilization has
got on their nerves, and they simply
have to scream."
Mr. Chase's book is not "a scream."
There are, indeed, exciting episodes a-
plenty in its pages, and he often dwells
on the ugly, repellent side of the desert
—the torturing sun, the constant risk
of a horrible death by thirst, the fre-
quently befouled water holes on which
the traveler's life depends, the monot-
ony, the sand storrhs, the rattlers, the
mosquitoes, and a number of other
things undesirable; but for the most
part he writes about the features that
help to explain the puzzling allurement
of the desert to those who know it well
— the sea of sand, with dunes perpet-
ually reshaped by the terrific blasts of
the wind; the oases of date palms; the
terrestrial "moonscapes"; the myste-
rious mountains with their hidden min-
eral treasures that have lured so many
men to death; the bracing night air;
the annual spring episode with its won-
derful blossoms of divers species of cac-
tus; and, above all, the marvelous color.
In the field of color effects, the author
boldly claims, the desert is supreme; his
descriptions affect one the same way as
Nansen's of the aurora borealis.
With the human inhabitants of the
desert Mr. Chase was, on the whole,
impressed favorably. Hospitality was
freely offered and he liked the home life
of the Mexicans on both sides of the
border, for the Colorado Desert, concern-
ing which he writes, lies in California.
When this desert was labelled, in 1853,
there was as yet no State of Colorado.
Winter and Spring are the time to visit
this desert; the necessary equipment is
described by the author — and don't for-
get a mosquito net. A ferryman, on
being asked how he endured these tor-
mentors, answered: "Why, there's no
more blood in me, you see. They got
the last out of me about 1910 ; so they've
quit coming around."
In "The Heritage of India" a
succession of volumes is projected
dealing with the Sanscrit and Pali lit'
eratures; with the different vernacular
literatures both in histories and illustra-
tive volumes of selections ; with the philo-
sophical systems; with the fine arts and
music; and with biographies. Alto-
gether, between thirty and forty volumes
are now in sight, all written to foster
in the Indian student class a feeling for
their ancient heritage and to put before
them in a healthy way its treasures of
knowledge, wisdom, and beauty. The
books are to be cheap and non-technical;
but they must also be scholarly and sym-
pathetic. The second in the series has
just appeared, a short study by James
M. MacPhail, of the life and times of
Asoka as king, missionary, and scribe,
with the early history of Buddhism and
with Asoka's place in history (Oxford
University Press). It is an admirable
little volume, full, interesting, and care-
ful. A second volume has also just ap-
peared in "The Religious Life of India
Series," and fifteen more are in prepara-
tion. It is a study of the Ahmadiya
movement, by the late H. A. Walter and
issued by the same publishers. This, by
the nature of the case, had to be a much
more elaborate book and is one of more
immediate modern interest. The Ahma-
diya sect has been widely rejected by
Moslems as in essential heresy with
Islam; yet it may be said to represent
Islam officially in England by its mission
to Christians at Woking and by its Eng-
lish monthly, the Review of Religions,
On one side the sect is intensely and con-
servatively Moslem, as opposed to the re-
formed Islam centred at Aligarh in In-
dia; but on another it has combined with
Islam much Christian and Hindu doc-
trine. The founder, Ghulam Ahmad,
claimed to be not only the Moslem Mahdi,
come in a peaceful form, but also Jesus
in his second coming and an avatar of
Krishna; and his followers, since his
death, now regard him as having ful-
filled the prophecies in all religions of a
great spiritual leader to come. They
would, therefore, unite all religions by
fulfilling in one figure all their eschato-
logical hopes. On another side the
founder is a figure of great psychological
intere.st, a mediumistic prophet of the
most primitive pathological type, a Mo-
hammed without the genius and sim-
plicity of the author of Islam, yet living
under modern conditions and in contact
with critical attitudes which he tried to
use and only half understood. When he
brings forth wonderful things from the
Encyclopaedia Biblica he helps us to un-
derstand Mohammed's crazy syncreti.sms
from the theology of the Greek Church
and the mythology of Zoroastrianism.
Mr. Walter's book can, therefore, be
heartily commended to students of re-
ligious psychology and history, as well as
to specialists in Islam.
The latest issue of the "Cahiers Bri-
tanniques et Americains," the series of
brochures which M. Georges-Bazile pub-
lishes in Paris (13 Quai de Conti), has
just arrived in this country and is de-
voted to a translation of some of Presi-
dent Wilson's literary essays. The
pamphlet opens with an Introduction by
Mr. Theodore Stanton, in which it is
pointed out for the first time, we believe,
that the President descends from the
Rev. Robert Woodrow, the distinguished
Scottish Presbyterian clergyman and
historian of the seventeenth century, one
of whose sons emigrated to this country,
bringing with him a queer old manu-
script volume belonging to his father,
which is now deposited in one of the
libraries of the University of New Jer-
sey, at New Brunswick. Its mates, a
score in number, are to be found in the
Advocates' Librar>' at Glasgow, where
Robert Woodrow spent most of his life.
"Roget's Thesaurus," as the "The-
saurus of English Words and Phrases
by the physician Peter Mark Roget is
commonly called, has been issued in two
compact little volumes in Everyman s
Librarv (Dutton). Arranged on philo-
sophical rather than alphabetical prin-
ciples, the work has long proved useful
to writers, not only in suggesting a word,
but also, sometimes, an idea.
62]
TPIE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 36
Contemporary Paint-
ing in Washington
WHATEVER may be true of other
phases of our national life, Ameri-
can painting, to judge from the current
presentation of it at the Corcoran Gal-
lerj', has not yet become fully aware of
our participation in the late war. While
the mere titles of a half dozen or more
canvases designedly echo the event, only
three or four possess any genuine pic-
torial connection with it. Both George
Luks" "Czecho-Slovak Chieftain" and
Henrj- Reuterdahl's "The Destroyer
Patrol" may be considered only addi-
tional reasons for lamenting that calam-
ity. But John C. Johansen's "The Daily
Conference," fresh from Paris, is inter-
esting. George Bellows' already widely
known "The Murder of Edith Cavell,"
while theatrically powerful, is not a
truly great work of art. This brief
summarj' fairly indicates the minor role
played by the avowedly "war" pictures
in the Corcoran's extraordinary exhibi-
tion.
On the whole, the unimportance of
such work in its present surroundings is
not a matter for regret. It is a profound
satisfaction again to see a representative
collection of paintings the vitality of
which arises not from the heart-breaking
strain of war or the spasms of artificial
"movements" but from artistic health
and sanity. Whether the very evident
aliveness of our present-day painting, to-
gether with certain marked changes on
the part of individual painters, are indi-
rectly due to the war, to its natural tend-
ency to rouse men out of routine — this
is a question that might be very prettily
argued on both sides. But, however it
has come about, American painting, as
set forth in Washington this month, is
full of life and significance. It gives
adequate ground for pride in the visible
accomplishment of our painters and
affords a basis for speculation as to the
future.
True, the older men are passing.
Weir's death after his two paintings had
been placed on the walls of the Corcoran
lends emphasis to this sobering thought.
And to stand in the presence of such
work as that by which both Weir and
Thayer are represented is to wonder if
their equals can be found among the
younger men even when the younger
shall have become the elder. For the
former's "The Sisters" and the latter's
"Boy and Angel" have in them certain
qualities of spirit higher than all possible
technical accomplishment; and it is these
subtle higher values that one misses
when studying the mass of proficient
paintings now being produced. But such
qualities come by endowment and not by
acquisition. It would be as unreasonable
to expect them to prevail throughout a
whole generation of painters as it would
be to ask nothing but masterpieces in a
contemporary show. And even were
these two works of the first rank absent,
the Corcoran's exhibition would remain
remarkable for its high level of accom-
plishment.
Sargent's "Portrait of John D. Rocke-
feller" and Melchers' "MacPherson and
MacDonald" are both familiar to other
sections of the American public; but the
latter's "At Home" is the newest example
of his extraordinary capacity for sur-
mounting technical difficulties. Indeed,
there is no lack of capable, and in some
instances distinguished, figure-painting
in this exhibit, ranging in style from
Paxton's characteristic "Girl Sewing" to
the calculated modernity of Norwood
MacGilvary's "The Self."
However, as to be expected of any rep-
resentative collection of native work, it is
in landscape that our school's ability is
especially noteworthy. For it is in this
field that its talent for brilliant tran-
scription has freest play. Frank Swift
Chase, in his "Edge of a Forest,"
achieves individuality without eccentric-
ity. Charles C. Curran's "After the
Storm" is decidedly more decorative than
his painting which won a prize at the
last Academy. Jonas Lie's two masterly
water scenes call for admiration. It is
a pleasure to note a more spirited sense
of color in Robert Spencer's capable
work. Charles H. Davis' "The Sunny
Hillside," to which was awarded the sec-
ond prize, is a decided departure from
his accustomed manner. But at once the
most eminent and the most marked in-
stance of change is afforded by the three
canvases of Edward W. Redfield ; and the
"bravura" of these spring songs is de-
lightful. The most striking single piece
of landscape here shown, a painting that
would be remarkable in any exhibition,
is Gardner Symons' "Where Waters Flow
and Long Shadows Lie"; it will add
strength to even the Corcoran's strong
permanent collection of American work.
Faithfulness to surface facts can not be
claimed for Charles Rosen's "Old Wil-
low," designed as it is to attract attention
at the expense of its neighbors; and to
the conservatively minded it will seem a
good omen that the majority of our land-
scape painters do not rely on such forced
mannerisms in attaining decorative and
emotional quality.
In conclusion, this article can only add
its note to the chorus of praise for the
exhibition as a whole. It combines a
high excellence sometimes attained in
smaller shows with a comprehensiveness
attained in no other regularly recurring
assemblage of native painting. The
radical element of our school plays its
due part in the ensemble, but no more
than its due part. The predominating
conservatism of the school has its recog-
nition in the proportional representation
here accorded to it. The thing worthy of
note in this connection, however, is that
this predominating conservatism does
not involve unthinking repetition of
ancient formulas. Of course, this may
in a measure be true of a painter here
and there ; such individuals, like the poor,
we have always with us. But this con-
temporary exhibition as a whole is ses-
■ thetically sane and unquestionably vigor-
ous. That this should be true of our
painting in the particular stress of cir-
cumstances now prevailing is the most
encouraging thing one could be privileged
to chronicle.
The eminent degree of success with
which the policy of the Corcoran Gallery
has met warrants the hope that "The
William A. Clark Prizes" may be made
permanent. A real tradition of quality
and comprehensiveness has been firmly
established by this latest of the series
begun in 1907; and with the prestige of
such a tradition to live up to, the per-
manence of these awards could not fail
to have a satisfactory effect on American
painting. Were former Senator Clark
to perpetuate the prizes now so promi-
nently associated with his name, he would
ensure not only the worthiest possible
form of remembrance for himself, but
also for the Corcoran Gallery such an
influential role in our art as is not
held by any other existing institution.
Virgil Barker
Music
Henry Krehbiel and Ernest
Newman Discuss Music
More Chapters of Opera. By Henry Kreh-
biel. New York : Henry Holt and Company.
A Musical Motley. By Ernest Newman.
New York : John Lane Company.
IN the latest of his chronicles of New
York opera Mr. Krehbiel deals spe-
cifically with the period extending from
1908 to 1918. We may disagree with
Mr. Krehbiel's views on opera. But as a
chronicler, we admit he has no rival. Not
many men alive would have the patience
he has shown in noting down year after
year all that takes place in all the New
York opera seasons. And yet, if no one
had his diligence and patience, where
should we go for our musical re-
minders— where should we find out when
this opera was first sung, or where that
singer first enthralled the New York
public? To the recorder, as a recorder,
of these "Chapters" we owe all our
gratitude. To the critic who has ana-
lyzed and made his comments we owe
only truth.
On many points, if time and space
allowed, it would be a pleasure to fight
Mr. Krehbiel strenuously. For, as a
(Continued on page 64)
January 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[68
The
Wires
Both Professor Crocker and
Dr. Wheeler operated the tele-
graph key prior to the invention
of the telephone in 1876. In
this year these two electrical
engineers manufactured a tele-
phone a model of which is still
in existence.
Both Professor Crocker and
Dr. Wheeler manufactured
batteries for telephone and
telegraph.
t naidenf
Crocker- Wheeler Co.
Ampere, N. J.
New Yokk
Boston
Syracuse
Chicago
Cleveland
BiNGHAMTON
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Newark
New Haven
Philadelphia
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San Francisco
Tiffany & Co.
Jewelry Silverv.\re Watches Clocks SxAnoNERY
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Purchases may be made by Mail *
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Just Published
THEODORE ROOSEVELT'S
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
This is a new edition of the immortal autobiography of the great
man — perhaps the best source of all to turn to for an understanding of
his remarkable qualities and his amazing career. Jlluslralcd. $5.00
A BOOK OF R. L S.
WORKS, TRAVELS, FRIENDS, AND COMMENTATORS
By George B. Brown
A most interesting and valuable gathering of information about
Stevenson, as the author describes it in his sub-title. The whole is
alphabetically arranged, so that it forms a real Stevensonian enc}xlo-
psedia. Illustrated. $l.y>
MEMORIES OF GEORGE Mt REDITH, O. M.
By Lady Butcher
An entertaining and informal book of intimate anecdote and re-
membered talks, witty, whimsical, and serious, with a writer whose
personality was always as interesting as his work. Lady Butcher was
a friend of Meredith and his family from her childhood and for more
than forty years. Readers of his "Letters" know her well l»>th under
her married name and as Alice Brandreth. $t.6o
SOME DIVERSIONS OF A MAN OF LEITERS
By Edmund Gossc
"Some Diversions of a Man of Letters" is a collection of essays
in various fields of literature that lie somewhat outside the author's
usual path and represent, in fact, diversions from the themes on which
he has principally addressed the public. .Among the contents are:
"The Songs of. Shakespeare." "The Message of the Wartons." "The
Charm of Sterne," "The Challenge of the Brontes," "Disraeli's Novels,"
"The Lyrical Poetry of Thomas Hardy." "Some Soldier Poets." "The
Future of English Poetry," "The Agony of the Victorian Age." $-'.jO
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
PUBLISHERS - FIFTH AVENUE AT 48TH STREET. NEW YORK
64]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 36
Established 1851
Nassau and Pine Streets
The Hanover National Bank
OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
WILLIAM WOODWARD .....President
SAMUEL WOOLVERTON
JOSEPH BYRNE
CHARLES H. HAMPTON
HENRY P. TURNBULL . . .
Capital, $3,000,000
E. HAYWARD FERRY Vice-President
Vice-President WILLIAM E. CABLE, Jr Cashier
Vice-President J. NIEMANN Assistant Cashier
Vice-President WILLIAM DONALD Assistant Cashier
!.'.".'!!!.'.. .Vice-President GEORGE E. LEWIS Assistant Cashier
FOREIGN DEPARTMENT
WILLIAM H. SUYDAM Vice-President and Manager
ROBERT NEILLEY Ass't Manager
FREDERIC A. BUCK Ass't Manager
Surplus and Profits, $18,000,000
(Continued from page 62)
critic, he is sometimes narrow; swayed
by harsh puritan moralities and codes;
too apt to damn things that are new.
His inability to sympathize with the best
achievements of the French Modern
School is almost exasperating. His ful-
minations against certain gifted artists
who offend him ethically — not aesthetically
— stir one to anger, and now and then
to pity. But at his narrowest (as, for
example, in his onslaughts on Mary
Garden) he does not justify a doubt as
to his honesty. And that seems but to
aggravate his want of charity, his failure
to allow for the faiths and convictions
of others.
The decade of which Mr. Krehbiel tells
us in his new "Chapters" saw many very
important shifts and changes in the New
York opera world; the last phases of
the war between Mr. Hammerstein, at
the Manhattan, and Mr. Gatti-Casazza,
at the Metropolitan; the withdrawal
from the stage of such charming singers
as Marcella Sembrich and Emma Eames;
the regretted deaths of Lillian Nordica
and Putnam Griswold; the rise and exit
of that great artist and conductor, Tos-
canini; the elimination from the opera
field of poor Mr. Hammerstein; the slow
and grudging, but still steady concessions
of the Metropolitan management to the
demand that opera should be made more
understandable to its devotees, by being
sung to them in clear, good English; and
the invasion of New York by the late
Maestro Campanini with the Chicago
opera company.
Regarding the vexed question of opera
in Engli-sh, Mr. Krehbiel wobbles. He
has at various times held various views
upon this all vital subject. Long years
ago, he seemed to favor English. Then,
by aloofness and by more than coldness,
he seemed to discourage it. And now he
has, apparently, come back to his, old
faith. For is not his own English version
of Wagner's "Parsifal" soon to be sung
here at the Metropolitan?
We owe thanks to Mr. Krehbiel for his
statistics. They throw a flood of rather
startling and distressing light on the
allotment of rewards in opera. In the
second year of Mr. Heinrich Conried's
consulship, according to our recorder, the
sums expended on the Metropolitan
"artists" (i. e., singers) and staff totalled
$544,153.11. In the same season the
amount paid to composers and others
(presumably publishers and copyists) for
"music and royalties" was $3,499.67.
Since then the cost of opera has increased
greatly. But the composers are still
treated almost shamefully, while their
interpreters have princely fortunes
heaped on them.
Mr. Ernest Newman, the English
critic, in a most interesting \?olume of
reprinted essays, writes brightly and in-
cisively of singers, critics, composers,
amateurs, and mock-critics. His method
may perhaps be best described as the
antithesis of Mr. Krehbiel's. He knows
much more of music than most men do.
But he is far too sane to pose as one
omniscient. I am not sure that he would
keep from smiling if he got hold of one
of those new "Chapters" in which our
Henry E. upholds the dignity and glory
of his calling. The pose pontifical would
never suit the true-born Englishman. To
make his points he affects the cap and bells.
The articles included in "A Musical
Motley" are of the most diverse char-
acter. They range from grave to gay,
from wise to trivial. In taste, thank
Heaven, their author is eclectic; quite
broad enough to enjoy all schools and
styles.
He is not too dignified to shrink from
quips and anecdotes. He is not too
hampered by unnecessary reverence to
speak freely of the highest gods of art.
To him the Slavs, Tschaikowsky and
Rachmaninov and Chopin, are "Weary
Willies," with a tempering dash of
Werther.
Nor is he more respectful to his own
guild. He pokes fun at musical criticism,
though, incidentally, he mocks at those
who scorn it. "The profession of
musical critic," he explains in one of
three "Open Letters" to a young, ardent
critic, "is the easiest in the world. It
is perhaps the only profession that can
be practised by the man in the streets
with as much assurance as by the man
who has given his life to it. . . . The
butcher, the baker, and the candlestick
maker are all more competent to speak
authoritatively on music than the
critic. . . . However, if you don't take
it too seriously, you may get a lot of
fun out of it." After which he lays down
the rules for "safety first" in criti-
cism.
He darts nimbly and alertly from
Andre Wormser and his fascinating pan-
tomime scores to Debussy, Brahms, Mous-
sorgsky, d'Indy, and Wagner. He de-
clines to rank the classics as supermen
and even ventures to suggest that the
most famous master of them all may
have made errors. He goes so far in
this iconoclastic strain in his "Putting
the Classics in their Place," as to declare
that even old music by the great com-
posers might be improved upon by
modern re-constructors.
The Dryasdusts of music may be hor-
rified— they must be pained — if they dig
into Mr. Newman's essay on "The Elastic
Language"- — otherwise harmony. What
may pass muster in the schools as laws
of harmony, he says, is really nothing
but the teaching of harmonic analysis.
To Mr. Newman there are no rules and
no grammar for that art or science. "It
is because harmony is not only a lan-
guage but the most elastic of languages
that it can not be taught." And, "just
as a poet could weave the subtlest rhyth-
mical patterns without ever having even
heard of the terms dactyl and spondee,
so a born musician can write abstruse
harmony without being able to name a
number of the chords that he uses in-
stinctively." All this is most upsetting
to the Dryasdusts.
One article on the "Nonsense Music"
of Satie and other modernists of a fan-
tastic turn has special value to explorers
of such offshoots from the beaten track
of music. But almost everything in this
delightful "Medley" will bear reading,
both by musicians and by laymen who
love music.
C. H. M.
January 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[65
Drama
"A Night's Lodging" at the
Plymouth— "The Master
Builder' ' at the People's
House
THE subject of the Gorki play which
Mr. Arthur Hopkins now offers to the
public in special matinees at the Ply-
mouth is a place — a slum — or rather that
region of the human spirit which finds
in the place in question its adequate and
vivid symbol.' Its hero is everybody —
that dusky personage who seems to
occupy the halfway point between the
substance of somebody and the vacuum
of nobody. Particular fates count for
naught or little in this sombre atmos-
phere in which catastrophes seem inci-
dental and little speeches almost cata-
clysmic. A consumptive woman dies, but
it matters little to us. What really
leaves its mark upon our souls is the
capmaker's undisturbed comment : "Well,
we've done with that coughing at last."
When the actor hangs himself, the point
is not that a man has ended his own life,
but that the gambler says: "He's spoilt
our song, the fool." In point of sheer
horror and grimness, the place in which
such deeds are possible is as nothing in
comparison with the place in which such
words are possible. Gorki's play is a
symptomatic play — in other words, a play
in which the subject is a condition, and
the acts and words alike are measured
by their value as interpreters of that
condition.
Gorki's play, read in English, is not a
great drama. A great slum-play should
show us the terror, or the pity, or the
t intensity of life. Gorki's play is rather
sordid than terrible or touching or vital,
and, even more than it is sordid, it is
harsh. Here is a group of persons in
whom misfortune and degradation have
evolved a self -protective hardness, a shell
or carapace, which is at once impervious
and rasping. It is human nature petri-
fied. The evangelist Luka, who is vague-
ly fraternal and indistinctly consoling,
rather weakens the robustness of the
piece, but the fashion in which he drifts
in and drifts out suggests pointedly
enough that the conscience is the only
transient in the lodging house.
The play is undramatic in the closet;
it has no unfolding action. On the stage
it remains undramatic, but it becomes,
to a quite unforeseen and astonishing
degree, theatrical. As read, it leaves be-
hind it an impression of congestion and
squalor. This effect is greatly softened
in representation ; on the stage there was
space and darkness; the space liberated
and the darkness cloaked. The original-
ity of the setting, which on the printed
page had been largely neutralized by its
meanness, now revealed itself to the im-
agination in the power of its novelty
and the vividness of its release. I had
a sense of departure from the world. The
speeches uttered had often the strange
effect of aerolites projected into the void
of space, and while this impression was
far from continuous, the intervals were
partly filled by the exhilaration of watch-
ing in the murk for the outleap of these
meteorites. There were drawbacks un-
doubtedly. The story of Pepel and the
two sisters was too big and powerful
for the frame, and, while it did not
finally get out, in its struggle to get out
the frame was very nearly cracked.
Again, the fourth act on the stage is
superfluous and intolerable. There is a
story and a study in the play. By the
end of Act III the story is ended and
the study is complete. Extension beyond
those limits is disastrous.
The acting of a fragmentary play is
of course fragmentary, but the sugges-
tiveness and poignancy of many of these
fragments was an honor to the cast. I
was astonished at the evident sympathy
of American actors for these Russian
parts, at the meat, the salt, which they
unmistakably found in the lines. The
merit was general rather than particu-
lar; nearly every actor had his lustrous
moment; if I paused on any one part, it
should be on Mr. Dinehart's rendering of
the thief Pepel. There was one serious
error. Paroxysms are out of place in
this Gorki play, which is pitched in a
key of stoicism that borders the cour-
ageous on one side and includes the
brutal on the other. Yet paroxysms of
the worst kind — describable by a line
from Mr. Masefield's latest poem, "a
swearing screech, like tearing sacking,"
were scattered broadcast through the
play. Frenzy and Russia appear to have
been inseparable ideas in the mind of the
supervisor of the performance. The
emphasis I am constrained to give to this
objection only heightens the pleasure
with which I felicitate Mr. Hopkins on
the intelligent fulfillment of a gallant
design.
On Christmas night I saw at the
Workmen's Theatre in the People's House
a presentation of Ibsen's "Master
Builder" by the English actors, Mr. Leigh
Lovel and Miss Octavia Kenmore. The
performance was called a dramatic re-
cital, but differed from a regular per-
formance only in the use of an unvarying
and doubtfully appropriate "set" for the
three acts. Mr. Level's Solness was
ashen and, nevertheless, by an odd
anomaly, was made capricious and sple-
netic almost to the verge of hysteria.
There was a brief period in the last half
of the first act when Miss Kenmore's
Hilda Wangel filled expectation to the
brim, with a beauty and measure in cer-
tain passages hardly rivaled in my
memories of New York. But when the
second act began I saw that what Miss
Kenmore had grasped and rendered so
delightfully was not the real Hilda, the
whole Hilda, but only a single mood or
phase — what might be called the rapt
Hilda. Her Hilda as a whole took its cue
from the alpenstock. What we saw was
a hardy, sturdy, upright little Swiss girl,
finely indignant with Solness for his im-
moral treatment of Ragnar, and shocked
as any other school-taught and church-
bred girl would have been at the disaster
to which her urgencies drove the half-
unwilling Solness. As the last curtain
descends, Hilda is on the earth in an
anguish of sorrow and remorse, and the
attitude is prostration for Ibsen's Hilda
in a double sense.
0. W. Firkins
Books and the News
Socialism
HERE again is a subject about which
the books alone fill shelf after shelf
in any large library. The profound
student views with contempt an en-
deavor to name a few, or brief, books
for the general reader. But the busy
man will not scorn the suggestion of a
few titles, nor even the intimation that
there are one or two books which may
give the beginner a general survey of
the field. As with Prohibition, and other
proposals for changes in the existing
laws, the advocates of the change have
had the most active pens, and the dif-
ferent varieties of Socialists have out-
written their opponents in quantity, at
least.
The conscientious Socialist, or the
reader who aspires to a citation for con-
spicuous gallantry, will, it may be, boldly
attempt the three volumes of the great
Bible of the Socialists: Karl Marx's
"Capital; A Critique of Political Econ-
omy" (Kerr, 1908). Less ambitious
souls will content themselves with read-
ing one of his defenders, Louis B.
Boudin's "The Theoretical System of
Karl Marx" (Kerr, 1918) and one of
his opponents, Albert E. F. Schaffle's
"The Quintessence of Socialism" (Scrib-
ner, 1892). With these books should be
named Thomas Kirkup's "History of
Socialism" (Macmillan, 1913), an un-
biased work, emphasizing English So-
cialism.
Have you time or inclination for but
one book, and that a short one, of less
than one hundred and fity pages? My
suggestion is Ira B. Cross's "Essentials
of Socialism" (Macmillian, 1912), which
is an attempt to tell what Socialism is,
and fairly to state the arguments for and
against it. There is a good bibliography
in it.
Now, for the advocates of Socialism:
{Continued on page 68)
6(5]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 36
'WINTER'S FOR BOOKS"
The books advertised in this issue have been specially selected
by a group of book publishers as likely to meet the needs and
tastes of readers at this time.
Offered during the newly created Midwinter Book Season,
many of these books are brand new; all are believed to be
worthy of discriminating attention.
The small ornamental device that is
found on the title-page or elsewhere in
almost ever\' book printed to-day is the
sur\'ival of a quaint old custom that dates
back to the time before printing was dis-
covered. These devices, generally called
colophons, have come to be known merely
as the trademark of various publishing
houses, and have outlived any former
purpose. Many of them, however, have
individually a history quite as interesting
as that of old coats of arms, or old book-
plates.
The term colophon has been in use for
several centuries, but with the years its
meaning has gradually changed until the
original significance has been lost. One
of the "seven ancient towns" which
"claimed Homer dead," yet had spumed
him when through their streets "he
begg'd his bread," was the Ionian city
Colophon, famed for the rich aristocracy
that ruled it and for the dashing cavalry
that won its battles. It was said that the
final charge of the Colophon troop of
cavaln,' always proved "the finishing
stroke" in rendering victory decisive.
Whether or not this is the correct
etymology of the term, the word "colo-
phon" was later applied to "the finishing
stroke" given to old manuscripts and
printed books. In the early days this
term was applied to the paragraphs ap-
pended to the manuscript or book by the
scribe or printer. Title-pages were then
unk-nown. and books often appeared
without clue to the date or place of issue,
the printer, or even the author, unless
this information was added by some en-
terprising pnnt»"r with an eye to making
history and to securing future business.
Frequently he asked heavenly blessing on
his work and invoked the prayers of his
readers.
At the end of one old manuscript
written in 1338 and, of course, in Latin)
the copyist added a very full note, wind-
ing up with a verse which may be freely
translated as follows:
"Let this book prove the writer free of
evil ;
May Jesus bless and save him from the
devil."
These notes sometimes contained praise
of the workmanship of the book, or of
the art of printing, of the town where
the book was issued, or the great man for
whom it was written. Later the printer
often added his own coat of arms or that
of his patron. In this way colophons
first took on an ornamental aspect, and
ceased to be for information only. As
the title-page became customary, the
practice of appending a final paragraph
or colophon gradually lost its usefulness
and a purely ornamental device was
added as "the finishing stroke." In mod-
ern times the colophon of a well-known
publisher is no doubt as effective a stroke
as we need to make his book worth read-
ing and worth keeping.
place design in the exhibit of the Press
at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San
Francisco. It suggests a frosty night
without a roaring fire within, a com-
fortable bench, and a good book — as
cheery an argument for midwinter read-
ing as we have seen.
The Association Press has been using
since October, 1916. the Triangle colo-
phon designed by William J. Colby and
drawn by John Butler. The Association
Press is the Publication Department of
the International Committee of Young
Men's Christian Associations. The
Triangle is the adopted insignia of the
threefold idea of the Y. M. C. A. — Spirit
— Mind — Body. The phrase below the
Triangle. "The Mark of a Book Written
to Meet a Need," was added in 1919.
"It helps," says Mr. Colby, "to define the
meaning of 'Books with Purpose,' as we
aim to publish only books for which there
is a distinct human need." The initials
stand for .Association Press.
The colophon of the Abingdon Press
as shown here, was adapted from' a fire-
Since 1911 books issued by the Atlantic
Monthly Press have borne a colophon
drawn by Bruce Rogers from a classic
design. It shows a Neptune figure, with
the familiar trident and dolphin, and i
said to represent "Father .Atlantic — th-.
American Neptune."
(To be continued)
Attractive offerings are made during the Midwinter Book Season.
Januaiy 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[67
Abraham Lincoln
As A Man of Letters
By Luther Emerson Robinson, A. M.
Professor of English, Monmouth College
TN the wealth of Lincoln literature there is
-*- nothing else like Professor Robinson's book.
It has a human quality. . . . The author ap-
proaches his subject with a ripe equipment and
writes with a loving understanding. . . . The
generous appendix embraces all of Lincoln's most
famous addresses, letters and state papers.
So far as we know, this is the first book to study
Lincoln in the capacity of a man of letters. The
study is interesting and the analysis closely reasoned
and convincing. — The Outlook.
Professor Robinson's study is an excellent presen-
tation of the chief material upon which Lincoln's
claim to a place in literature is based. — -The Continent.
Professor Robinson shows us with a very keen and
delicate touch how the great experiences of Lincoln's
life reacted on his written words until finally, we
have from him at least two of the masterpieces of
literature. The new Lincoln book should find a large
field for itself. — U. S. Artillery Journal.
A Book for Every American's Library
Publishers
PRICE, $1.50 NET
THE REILLY & LEE CO.
Chicago
TIMELY BOOKS-
Labor and the Common Welfare
Compiled and edited by Hayes Robbins from the writings
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SAMUEL GOMPERS
A much-needed, clear, concise statement of the position and
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To be followed shortly by a companion volume : —
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Labor and the Employer
The two volumes together cover very fully the "Labor
Movements and Labor Problems in America," and should
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preacher, or writer, — in brief, by every loyal American.
Birds in Toivn and Village
By W. H. HUDSON, author of "Far Aivay and Long Ago,"
"The Purple Land," etc. ----- $4.00
Studies of bird life which take the reader through
Devon lanes and Cornish villages, old London gardens,
etc., in the most delightful companionship imaginable.
Illustrated with pl-ates in colors. In press.
A Little Garden the Year Round
By GARDNER TEALL $2.50
Wherein much joy was found, experience gained, and
profit, spiritual as well as mundane, derived without loss
of prestige in a practical neighborhood.
E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY
681 Filth Ave. (Opposite St. Thomas's Church) Nciv York
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RUDYARD KIPLING'S
VERSE: Inclusive Edition,
1885-1918
ALL of Kipling's verse — the songs that for
decades have been the marching tunes and ex-
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the songs that are, according to Brander Mat-
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Among them is "Great-Heart," that magnificent
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index to titles and first lines. 800 pages. Boimd
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Cloth, net, $5.00. At all bookstores. Pub-
lished by DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO., Garden
City, N. Y., and 25 Richmond St., W., Toronto.
Attractive offerings are made during the Midwinter Book Season.
68]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 36
(Continued from page 65)
William E. Waiting's "The Larger As-
pects of Socialism" (Macmillan, 1913),
•The Socialism of Today" (Holt, 1916),
by Walling, Phelps Stokes, and others (a
source book with documents), Jessie W.
Hughan's "American Socialism of the
Present Day" (Lane, 1911), and H. G.
Wells's "New Worlds for Old" (1908).
John Spargo's "Socialism" (Macmillan,
1918) was written before he resigned
from the Socialist party, and represents
his pre-war views. Another by Mr.
Spargo and similar in circumstances of
publication is "Social Democracy Ex-
plained" (Harper, 1918), while his
"Americanism and Social Democracy"
(Harper, 1918) consists of essays on the
situation since the outbreak of the war.
An able presentation of the case
against Socialism is Oscar Douglas Skel-
ton's "Socialism: A Critical Analysis"
(Houghton, 1911). The view of the
Church of Rome is given in Father
Vaughan's "Socialism from the Christian
Standpoint" (Macmillan, 1912).
Edmund Lester Pearson
Books Received
ESSAYS AND CRITICISM
Gass, S. B. A Lover of the Chair. Marshall
Jones. $2.50 net.
Morley, Christopher. Mince Pie. Doran.
BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
Braithwaite, W. S. The Story of the Great
War. Stokes. $3 net.
Cotterill. H. B. Italy from Dante to Tasso.
Stokes. $5 net.
Loti, Pierre. Madame Prune. Stokes. $3
net
Paton, Lucy Allen. Elizabeth Gary Agassiz.
Houghton, Mifflin. $3 net.
FICTION
Austin, Mary. Outland. Boni & Liveright.
Bacheller, Irving. A Man for the Ages.
Bobbs Merrill. $1.75 net.
Harland, Marion. The Carringtons of High
Hill. Scribner. $1.60 net.
James, Henry. A Landscape Painter. New
York : Scott & Seltzer. $1.75 net.
Keller, Gottfried. Seldwyla Folks. Bren-
tano's.
Merrick, Leonard. The Worldlings. Intro-
duction by Neil Munro. Dutton. $2.00 net.
Zamacois, Eduardo. "Their Son," "The Neck-
lace." Translated by G. A. England. Boni &
Liveright. $1.25.
GOVERNMENT AND ECONOMICS
Hadley, A. T. The Moral Basis of Democ-
racy. Yale. $1.75 net.
Morris, R. T. The Way Out of War.
Doublcday, Page. $1 net.
Spargo, John. The Psychology of Bolshe-
vism. Harper. $1.35 net.
LITERATURE
Goldberg, Isaac. Studies in Spanish-Ameri-
can Literature. Introduction by J. D. M. Ford.
Brentano's.
Magnus, Laurie. European Literature in the
Centuries of Romance. Dutton. $7 net.
MISCELLANEOUS
Herford, Oliver. The Giddy Globe. Doran.
MUSIC
Hobbe, Gustav. The Complete Opera
Book. Putnam.
Krehbiel, H. E. More Chapters of Opera.
Holt. $3.50 net.
Newman, Ernest. A Musical Motley.
Lane. $1.50 net.
POETRY AND DRAMA
Brady, E. J. The House of the Winds.
Dodd, Mead.
Cabot, Elise Pumpelly. Arizona, and Other
Poems. Dutton. $2 net.
Mann, D. L. An Acreage of Lyric. Bos-
ton: Cornhill Pub. Co. $1.25.
More, Brookes. The Lover's Rosary.
Boston: Cornhill Pub. Co. $1.25.
Smith, Mrs. L. W. The Lamp of Heaven.
Boston. Four Seas Co.
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
Jackson, H. E. The Community Church.
Houghton MifBin.
Singer, Ignatius. The Rival Philosophiet
of Jesus and of Paul. Open Court Publishing
Company.
SCIENCE
Fabre, J. H. The Glow-Worm. Dodd,
Mead. $1.75 net.
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION
Dunsany, Lord. Tales of Three Hemi-
spheres. Boston : Luce.
Laughlin, Clara E. The Martyred Towns
of Prance. Putnam.
Malins, Geoffrey. How I Filmed the War.
Stokes.
Shipley, A. E. The Voyage of a Vice-
Chancellor. Putnam.
Scarborough, Dorothy. From a South-
ern Porch. Putnam.
Wilson, H. P. John Brown, Soldier of
Fortune: A Critique. Boston: Cornhill
Pub. Co.
THE FLOWof VALUE
By Logan Grant McPherson
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and a relativity of profit. He makes plain the relation
between production and consumption, the relation be-
tween the employer and the employee, and clarifies the
long-standing dispute as to the quantity theory of
money. This book sets forth the principles in accord-
ance with which economic activity must be directed to
serve human welfare and promote human progress.
Price $2.50
At All Bookstores
Published by THE CENTURY CO. New York City
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January 5, 1920.
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THE REVIEW
c1
Vol. 2, No. 37
New York, Saturday, January 24, 1920
IIl'TEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment
69
Editorial Articles:
The World's Economic Restoration 71
The New Policy Toward Russia 72
Admiral Sims's Memorandum 74
The Father of Victory 75
President Butler on the Classics 76
Moscow's Campaign of Poison. By Ex-
aminer 77
The Government of India Act. By A. J. .
Barnouw 80
Correspondence 82
Book Reviews:
The Tragedy of von Tirpitz 84
Sensitivism 85
Hard-Boiled Poetry 85
The Art of the Etcher 87
The Run of the Shelves 87
Our American Shoe Men 89
Drama:
French Plays — Carlo Liten and "Les
Bleus de 1' Amour." By O. W. Fir-
kins 90
Music :
The Chicago Opera Season — "Zaza" at
the Metropolitan. By Charles Henry
Meltzer 92
Reginald de Koven 92
Books and the News: The Theatre. By
Edmund Lester Pearson 94
WrHAT answer the Navy Depart-
" ment will make to Admiral
Sims's charges, it is entirely too early
to forecast. But it is of the first
importance that the public should
understand from the start the exact
character of the simplest of those
charges, and the one that has at-
tracted the greatest amount of atten-
tion. Admiral Sims does not say, as
many of the newspaper defenses of
the Navy Department represent, that
the Department was half-hearted in
its conduct of operations throughout
the war. So far as this aspect of the
matter is concerned, the stress is all
on delay — on the precious time that
was lost in the early period of the
war. Admiral Sims's express state-
ment on the point is as follows :
13. For some reason, which has never been
explained, the Navy Department, during the
first six months of the war, failed to put into
actual practice a whole-hearted policy of co-
operation with the Allies — a policy required for
the winning of the war with the least pos-
sible delay. (The italics are ours.)
It is no answer to this charge, nor
to the detailed statements to similar
effect, that we did ultimately do
splendid service in cooperation with
the British Navy. Still less does Sec-
retary Daniels's own statement, in
rebuttal of Admiral Sims, that the
primary duty of the American Navy
was to safeguard the transports that
carried our boys overseas have any
bearing upon this issue. We did not
begin to transport troops in any con-
siderable numbers until long after
the period during which the half-
heartedness of which Admiral Sims
so bitterly complains was exhibited.
The Navy Department should have,
and will have, a fair hearing for its
side of the case. But it must meet
specific allegations with specific facts.
We all know that the war was won,
and that the American Navy played
a great pait in winning it. But the
facts of 1917 must stand on their
own bottom, and can not be shut out
from view by merely pointing to the
victory of 1918.
"TF the Senate ratifies the treaty,
I
subject to the proposed reserva-
tions," says the New Republic, "he
[President Wilson] will not have ac-
complished any of the constructive
political objects which he sought to
accomplish when he proposed the
entrance of this country into the
war." Whatever objects Mr. Wilson
may, in his own mind, have "sought
to accomplish," he did not "propose"
them to the Congress or to the people
of the United States. The clear im-
plication of the New Republic's state-
ment is that unless these "construc-
tive political objects" were to be the
sure result of the war, we were not
justified in standing with the other
free peoples of the world in their
resistance to the German militarist
autocracy, even after the outrages
committed by it upon our own rights
had passed the limits of endurance.
That this is the real mental attitude
of the semi-Bolshevist intellectual
coterie in this country, there is
abundant reason to believe; but they
are very careful to avoid any frank
expression of it.
OPEAKER Sweet has not mended
^his case by the announcement
that he is going to rest it on specific
facts which are said to have been dis-
covered in relation to the personal
conduct of the five Socialist Assem-
blymen. When he summoned them
to the bar of the House and asked for
their immediate suspension, he put
the proposal on no such grounds. If
he had done so, everybody would at
once have seen the impropriety of
passing sentence of suspension be-
fore the facts were investigated. If
he has a good case, he has horribly
muddled it; and whether he has a
good case or not, he has done the
Socialist cause a service which only
the prompt and sincere repudiation of
his position by leading citizens, by
public organizations, and by the press,
has prevented from being of the
most signal advantage to it.
IvrOT a campaign of education, but
-'-* what is much better, a natural
process of education, is what the
American people are in these days go-
ing through upon the subject of free
speech. During a number of years
past — for the period dates far back
of the war — the issue has been
clouded by irrelevancies. Many good
people were stirred up to indignation
over supposed violations of the right
of free speech which were really
nothing more than the assertion of
common sense and decency as against
obstreperous antics. On the other
hand, many were so incensed by the
Bouck White type of thing that they
thoughtlessly went to extremes in the
70]
THE KKVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 37
advocacy of repression. The case of
the Rev. Percy Grant is one of the
things that should help to clarify gen-
eral thought on the question. To in-
terfere with his freedom to say what
he thinks about the deportations, or
about socialism, would be an outrage,
and we believe that nearly all men of
sense recognize this, or will soon rec-
ognize it. Upon those who do not,
it is extremely desirable to impress a
realization of the stupidity of any
such suppression from the standpoint
of i>olicy. It is not only that such
persecution breeds a hundred advo-
vates to one that it suppresses; the
worst of it is that once it becomes
understood that radical clergymen
will be gagged, the value of what con-
servative clergymen may say will
be reduced to very near zero.
TT was not surprising that Mayor
•*■ Hylan should start the sale of
"bonds" to finance the propaganda of
the "Irish Republic" by officially ad-
mitting De Valera to the freedom of
the city. It was only natural that
Assemblyman Edward J. Flynn
should introduce a resolution at Al-
bany indorsing the sale of these
"bonds." But that the Assembly
should actually pass that resolution,
as it promptly proceeded to do, will
be a shock to citizens who have
thought of that body as, on the whole,
possessing in a fair degree the sense
of official responsibility.
TN a letter sent to Lord Curzon, the
-*■ two representatives of the Sinn
Feiners at Paris denounced the
League of Nations as "a monument
of English hypocrisy, entombing the
liberties of millions of men in Ire-
land, Egypt, Dutch South Africa,
Persia, India, and the Far East."
However that may be, these British
tombs can not be so bad as the cata-
combs of ancient Rome. There is no
subterranean wail in the voice of
General Jannie Smuts, and when-
ever he raises it in his South African
grave it sounds much more like a
message from Sir Robert Cecil than
an echo of the sentiments of De Va-
lera. The other millions entombed to
which the letter refers are the same
that are promised excavation by the
heralds of Bolshevism. Sinn Fein is
one of the many forces, now astir all
over the world, that work indirectly
for the spread of that plague by its
agitation against the chief hygienic
organization, the British Empire.
rpHE Zionist organization of Amer-
■*■ ica is planning a campaign to
raise $10,000,000 for immediate work
in Palestine. Land for the new im-
migrants will have to be purchased,
and be made habitable by the de-
velopment on a large scale of natural
resources. Work already in progress
in Palestine must be maintained and
developed, such as the Hebrew edu-
cational system, public welfare work,
extermination of malaria, and im-
provement of housing conditions.
Funds are also needed for the work
which is being done for Palestine in
the United States. The organization
does not limit its appeal to Jews only,
and it is justified in trusting to a gen-
erous response from outside by the
fact that among the members of the
National Advisory Committee of the
Palestine Restoration Fund are some
of the leading Christians of the land.
CTRANGE news it is which the
^ Vienna correspondent of the
Frankfurter Zeitung has reported to
his paper. If we are to believe him,
an offensive and defensive alliance
has been concluded between Austria
and Czecho-Slovakia. There is at this
moment only one enemy that jeopar-
dizes the very existence of the Aus-
trian people, and the only way effect-
ively to fight that enemy is by an
economic union with Czecho-Slovakia.
The visit of Mr. Benes, the Czech
Foreign Minister, to Paris, just a
month ago, coinciding with Dr. Ren-
ner's presence at the French capital,
and the latter's subsequent departure
for Prague, were generally believed
to prognosticate an understanding be-
tween the two republics, under which
Czecho-Slovakia would come to the
economic rescue of starving Austria.
But we fail to see why a military
alliance should be contemplated by
a country that is in danger of soon
having not a soldier left physically
fit for service, nor a child alive for
whose sake it needs to be saved.
/GOVERNMENT by the people is
^-^ progressing. The New York
Tribune offers an opportunity to the
plainest citizen to help write the Re-
publican platform, and holds out as a
further inducement the offer of vary-
ing quantities of perfectly good 48-
cent dollars to be awarded to those
who submit the best planks. The
project is wholly commendable. Even
if the platform resulting from this
sort of communal composition is not
the one that is finally adopted, it can-
not fail to have its influence. But
its chief value appears in the prob-
able effect on the amateur plank-
makers themselves. They must
sharpen their wits as well as their
pens against a time, soon to come,
when no citizen unfurnished with his
plank can venture out without risk
of ostracism.
■W/"ITH a Presidential election in
" the offing, one of the things we
ought to be thinking about is public
economy. And the thing that would
enable us to think clearly about it is
a budget system, for it would give us,
for the first time, an accurate pic-
ture of what the Government was
trying to do with our money.
When you take out of productive
industry some $5,000,000,000 a year
in taxes, everybody is hit. The big
man and the little man have to help
pay the bill. Now, so far as any por-
tion of this $5,000,000,000 represents
wasted effort, duplication or overlap-
ping of endeavor, or unwise ventures
on the part of the Government, a
budget system will at least uncover
the facts.
What we want is a business sys-
tem in Washington. Unless all pres-
ent signs fail, the Select Committee
on the Budget of the Senate will pass
a bill which will go to conference.
The result of that conference will
probably be a compromise bill which
will set up a fairly good budget sys-
tem. It will not provide for a com-
plete system, for that will come only
after our people are sufficiently
aroused to demand the necessary re-
forms in the rules of Conrgess. When
high-minded, public-spirited men like
Taft, Butler, and scores of others, go
to Washington to add the weight of
January 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[71
their judgment and experience in
favor of establishing a sound budget
system, the least the individual citi-
zen can do is to tell his representa-
tives in Congress to push through
now real budgetary reforms.
THERE are books enough. How to
get them distributed is the prob-
lem— how to get them into hands
that grope blindly for them and in
vain, hands that have never yet
sensed the comfortable heft of a
book. The war taught us that we
were not so literate a people as we
thought we were. But the war also
brought literature to many who had
been deprived of it. America was
equal to the occasion, and the soldier
and the sailor were liberally fur-
nished with books. America's four
million in arms read greedily; read
for entertainment, finding relief from
dull routine and relaxation after
strenuous endeavor ; read, too, for in-
struction in the highly technical mat-
ter in which they were suddenly
called upon to excel. Most of them
are once more plain citizens. But
they do not propose to do without the
pleasure and utility of books.
i~\F the many forms of energy that
^-^ were organized for war purposes
none has a fairer field in time of
peace, a clearer call to continue its
I work, than the American Library
I Association. If it was the generosity
j of the American people that provided
\ the funds, it was the A. L. A. that got
I the books into the hands of the boys.
This group of some few thousand or-
ganized librarians has, now that the
war is over, vast stores of books on
hand ; and, more than that, it has
j some very definite notions of what to
do with them, and an organization to
carry out their plans. The wiser use
(of our growing flood of books and
journals, and the wider spread of
igood books and journals, is the gist
I of the programme it has set before
itself.
It proposes to keep the navy and
the merchant marine supplied with
books. In the Coast Guard and
Lighthouse service there are some
9,000 men to whom books spell all the
difference between life and mere dull
existence. There are service men still
in hospitals, or taking the first halting
steps in civil life, to whom books are
bread and more than bread. There
is the blinded veteran with his deli-
cate exploring finger, who if he can
get the right sort of books can re-
cover some great part of the light
that has been lost to him. So much
is largely a continuation of the A. L.
A.'s war work. There are to be met,
besides, the conditions which sent so
many illiterates before the Draft
Boards. There are rural and moun-
tain communities, logging camps and
mining camps, oil towns, industrial
plants, which through their country
libraries and other agencies can be
furnished with the books they so des-
perately need. The enlarged pro-
gramme of the A. L. A. deserves the
same hearty support'that it received
in war-time.
TT is to be hoped that the Federal
Prohibition commissars will go
about the stern business of adminis-
tering the law without adding to its
horrors by expatiating on the ethical
aspects of the matter. Said one of
them the other night, addressing a
huge assemblage of clergymen : "The
passions, the appetites, and the de-
sires of men made it necessary for
the promulgation of the Ten Com-
mandments." No doubt if our Pro-
hibition friends had been present
when that desirable piece of legisla-
tion was promulgated they would
have seen to it that it was accom-
panied by an adequate enforcement
act. As it is, for a good deal more
than half of the Ten Commandments
there is now no external compulsion
whatever. "Yet," as the commissar
says, "they still stand and are obeyed
by the great mass of the American-
people." Temperance, which is the
only ethical aspect of prohibition,
has also been held a cardinal virtue,
and its obverse, gluttony, a deadly
sin. For most people the one has
not been perhaps the most difficult of
the virtues nor the other the most
tempting of vices. But with our new
idea of "making it easy to be good"
we may end by making it so darned
easy to be good that nobody will take
any interest in it.
The World's Economic
Restoration
TN line with efforts that have been
-*■ made, from time to time, for many
months past, but more impressive
than any that has preceded it, is the
statement and appeal issued last week
by eminent public men and financiers
of the United States, Great Britain,
and the neutral nations of Europe.
It recommends, so far as this country
is concerned,
that the Chamber of Commerce of the United
States designate representatives of commerce
and finance to meet forthwith (the matter be-
ing of the greatest urgency) with those of
other countries chiefly concerned, which Should
include the United Kingdom and the British
dominions, France, Belgium, Italy, Japan, Ger-
many, Austria, the neutral countries of Europe,
the United States and the chief exporting
countries of South America, for the purpose
of examining the situation briefly set forth
below and to recommend upon the basis of
authentic information what action in the vari-
ous countries is advisable among the peoples
interested in reviving and maintaining inter-
national commerce.
The statement which accompanies
this recommendation does more than
merely "set forth the situation." It
points out the defects of policy which
must be removed, as a condition pre-
cedent to the possibility of any rem-
edy; and, while not going into details,
it lays down the principles which
should guide remedial effort when
that condition has been fulfilled.
In the very first line the memoran-
dum justly places the disorganization
of the monetary medium. The memo-
randum opens with these words :
The war has left to conqueror and con-
quered alike the problem of finding means
effectively to arrest and counteract the centin-
uous growth in the volume of outstanding
money and of Government obligations and
its concomitant, the constant increase of prices.
Unless this process is stopped, "the
depreciation of money, it is to be
feared, will continue, wiping out the
savings of the past and leading to a
gradual but persistent spreading of
bankruptcy and anarchy in Europe."
Before a country can be brought
within the scope of any large scheme
for the supply of credit, it must
"bring its current expenditure within
the compass of its receipts from tax-
ation and other regular income." So
far as Germany and Austria are con-
cerned, it will be the duty of their
conquerors to see to it that this con-
dition shall not be made impossible
72]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 37
of fulfillment by the burden of the
indemnity. They must be required
to do all that the most drastic prac-
ticable taxation can effect; but to
press them to the point of insolvency,
or of a disastrous lowering of the
standard of living, would be ruinous
to conquerors as well as conquered.
With these necessary conditions
supposed to be fulfilled, the memoran-
dum sets forth the general character
of the international cooperation
through which the supply of the nec-
essary credits may be obtained. It
must come chiefly from "those coun-
tries where the trade balance and
the exchanges are favorable" ; it must
be furnished only "so far as it is ab-
solutely necessary to restore produc-
tive processes," and thus not obvi-
ate the necessity of those efforts and
sacrifices on the part of the people of
the borrowing country which are
essential to the restoration of equili-
brium ; so far as possible, the assist-
ance should leave "national and
international trade free from the
restrictive control of governments";
the loans offered to the public should
be on such terms as to "attract the real
savings of the individual, otherwise
inflation [in the lending country]
would be increased" ; and the borrow-
ing country must give such preferred
standing, and such guarantees, to the
loans as will provide the best availa-
ble security.
In all this, there is nothing novel;
but the circumstance that it accords
with the views previously expressed
by so many leading financiers and
publicists does not detract from its
value. The importance of the pro-
posal arises, indeed, from the fact
that, backed by the weight of its sign-
ers, and coming at a time when all the
world is ready to recognize the ur-
gency of the need, it is to be hoped
that the appeal will result in accom-
plishing at last that concerted action
which individual exhortations to the
same effect have failed to bring
about. By far the largest share in
the great work of financial and in-
dustrial restoration of Europe must
fall upon the United States, and the
one thing needful is that a plan shall
be matured which will draw out for
the purpose the enormous, the incom-
parable, resources of our country.
That this should be done by voluntary
investment, and not by governmental
benevolence, is essential to sound pro-
gress ; and in order to draw out that
investment, it is necessary that a
plan for establishing credits upon a
solid basis, and directing the credits
to the right ends, shall be formulated.
While it is with the restoration of
normal conditions in Europe that the
memorandum is concerned, it would
be well for us to take to ourselves
one very important part of its mes-
sage. "The continuous growth of
outstanding money and of Govern-
ment obligations, and its concomi-
tant, the constant increase of prices,"
is a phenomenon which has been just
as manifest in this country as in Eu-
rope. It is a thousand pities that,
six months ago, when the Govern-
ment first turned its attention to the
general question of high prices — or
"high cost of living" — it directed pub-
lic interest to matters which, in this
respect, are of quite negligible magni-
tude, instead of clearly recognizing
the dominant part which expansion
of the monetary medium — both by
bank credits and by the actual issue
of circulating notes — has played in
the raising of the price-level. If
"profiteering," and hoarding by spec-
ulators, have been anything more
than mere natural accompaniments
of a rise of prices which would have
taken place just the same in their
absence, they have at most been fac-
tors of utterly insignificant impor-
tance. Slack production has, of course,
contributed a large share, but even
that has been a minor cause in com-
parison with the expansion of the
monetary medium.
One reason for the failure to ap-
preciate the truth of this matter has
been the extremely unusual relation
between the state of the currency in
our own country and the value of
gold. In ordinary times, any expan-
sion in the volume of the monetary
medium in our country, beyond the
increase in the volume of its produc-
tive activity, would tend to drive gold
out of the country, and this would
check or prevent the rise of prices
that the expansion would otherwise
produce. There might be a consid-
erable temporary disturbance, but
the level of prices would not be per-
manently raised, except to the ex-
tent that the entire level of prices in
the gold-standard world was raised,
which would be no great matter. But
in these times we are ourselves the
only one of the great commercial na-
tions of the world that maintains the
gold standard; no common level of
gold prices is maintained between
the United States and England or
France, because prices in England
and France are not gold prices. It is
upon our own domestic policy — not
exclusively, but almost exclusively —
that the purchasing power of the dol-
lar depends. If we flood the country
with dollars, we raise the level of
prices, and there is in our relations
with foreign countries little to coun-
teract the effect. The policy of re-
striction of credits upon which the
Federal Reserve Board recently en-
tered is usually thought of as merely
a means of checking speculation ; but
to the public its effect upon the gen-
eral level of commodity-prices is of
incomparably greater importance. If
this were generally recognized, more
vigorous prosecution of that policy —
a policy of contraction, to be sure,
which is always fraught with trouble
and has unavoidable drawbacks —
would be demanded by public opinion.
The New Policy
Toward Russia
A CERTAIN brilliant and resource-
■^^ ful, if not entirely practical, pro-
fessor at one of our Eastern univer-
sities was about to close his house for
the summer. Warned by his wife to
safeguard against mice some cases of
personal effects stored in the attic,
he took somewhat original measures
which he described to his friends
naively and with great satisfaction
"I purchased several pounds o:
cheese, cut it into small pieces, anc
spread it over the floor. Of course n(
intelligent and self-respecting mousi
will attack the cases in preference ti
this dainty food." Similar considers
tions seem to have actuated Mr, Lloyi
George in the formulation of the ne\
Russian policy that has just been aiij
Januaiy 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[78
nounced by the Supreme Council at
Paris. It remains to be seen whether
as a result the Bolsheviki will be dis-
suaded from continuing their cam-
paign against Persia, Afghanistan,
and India, the menace of which is
uppermost in British minds to-day.
The announcement is typically
Lloyd-Georgian, and is primarily in-
tended to meet domestic political con-
ditions in England. No one knows
better than the Welshman the incon-
gruity of proposing to deal through
the Russian Cooperatives and at the
same time to maintain the attitude
of uncompromising hostility to the
Bolshevik power. But by proclaiming
both these policies at the same time,
he hopes to mollify the radical labor
element with a promise of lifting the
blockade, and reassure the more sta-
ble elements that realize the militant
danger of Bolshevism in arms.
The lifting of the blockade was,
however, well-nigh unavoidable. As
we pointed out two weeks ago, the
blockade of Soviet Russia had a rea-
sonable basis only as auxiliary to a
general support of the loyal and pa-
triotic forces in Russia in their strug-
gle to overthrow the Bolshevik tyr-
anny. Such aid was never given in
season or in adequate measure, and
the national movements collapsed.
Now, to be sure, the Bolsheviki are
at war with the civilized governments
of the world. Some of the methods
by which they carry on this warfare
are clearly set forth in an article in
our present issue. Besides this, the
Bolsheviki have in the field a large
army which presents a definite mili-
tary threat to Europe. A continu-
ance of the blockade would be mor-
ally justifiable; the question is
whether it is calculated to attain the
desired end.
The blockade never starved the
women and children of Russia. Star-
vation in the cities of Russia was due
to the incompetence, graft, and crazy
economic experiments of the Bolshe-
viki themselves, as Mr. Hoover, with
his customary clearness and economic
insight, has shown. Why this is so is
evident. The peasants in the country
have food, but not for the cities.
The Bolsheviki, having told the peas-
ants to seize all the land, proceeded to
socialize it and proposed to take for
the state all food-stocks that exceeded
thirty pounds per month per capita.
Then they tried to buy the grain
with worthless paper money. They
had no manufactured goods to ex-
change for it, since they had de-
stroyed industrial production. So
they turned to forced requisitions,
which Red Guards carried out with
ruthless brutality. But even when
they procured food in these raids, it
could not be brought to the cities in
adequate quantities, for the transpor-
tation systems had broken down and
they were incompetent to put them in
order. Turn over the management
of the railroads entering New York
to a committee of soap-box orators
and I. W. W., and see what would
happen to our food supply.
The lifting of the blockade will not
save the people of Russia from starv-
ing, but, as Mr. Hoover wisely ob-
serves, it will expose to all the world
the failure of the Bolshevik theory
and practice. "The greatest blow
they can receive," he says, "is to
have such an exposure of the com-
plete foolishness of their industrial
system to their people. Moreover, a
lifting of the blockade will allow the
real truth of the horror of Bolshevik
rule to come out of Russia." The
blockade has furnished most potent
propaganda material to the Bolshe-
viki and their sympathizers, for they
have been wont to allege that but for
this their communistic experiments
would have succeeded.
In its announcement of the lifting
of the blockade, the Supreme Council
displays neither cleverness nor wis-
dom. Among the Bolsheviki it can
not but cause contemptuous amuse-
ment. It proposes to give import
facilities to the Russian Cooperative
organizations while maintaining its
previous policies toward the Soviet
Government! Do the Allied states-
men take the Bolshevik leaders for
children when they propose thus
openly a measure avowedly directed
toward undermining them at home?
Do they think for a moment that
Lenin and Trotsky would permit this
trading to take place independently
of their control or fail lio turn it to
their own political advantage? If
80, they utterly misunderstand the in-
ternal conditions in Russia and un-
derestimate the shrewdness of the
Commissars — who, incidentally, have
outplayed them at almost every point.
The Cooperative referred to in the
announcement is of course the Cen-
tral Union of Consumers' Codpera-
tives, whose existence under the So-
viet regime was full of vicissitudes.
These Cooperatives flourished exceed-
ingly during the war, when prices of
their stocks mounted skyward and
private means of distribution fell
down. Because of its large and wide-
spread membership, the Bolsheviki
did not dare lay hands on the Coop-
erative system at first, but after
they had consolidated their power
they undertook to legislate it out
of existence by nationalizing all do-
mestic trade. As usual their crazy
experiment failed, and they had to
fall back upon the Cooperatives. This
time, however, they seized the Mos-
cow Narodny Bank, the bank of the
Cooperatives, and made it a branch
of their State Bank, and proceeded to
issue decrees concerning membership
and management of the Cooperatives.
The country units have managed to
retain some slight vestige of their
former independence, but the Coop-
eratives of the cities lost all freedom
of action. The Cooperatives of each
province are largely under the control
of the provincial Commissars.
To trade with the Cooperatives to-
day, as proposed in the announce-
ment of the Supreme Council, is to
deal with the Soviet Government. In
any case, goods can only be trans-
ported by the Bolsheviki on their
railroads, and in practice it will be
the Soviet that will buy goods and
then trade them to the peasants in
return for food for the cities. It is
the Soviet alone that can deliver gold
or raw materials for export. Pos-
sibly the fact that these goods will
have been stolen or confiscated from
private owners may seem like an un-
important technicality to the covet-
ous foreigner. The gold reserve of
Rumania, amounting to $125,000,000,
was removed to Moscow for safe-
keeping when the Germans occupied
Bucharest, and besides this the Bol-
sheviki have in their possession com-
74]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 37
paratively little, consisting of their
plunder from banks and individuals.
If this gold is accepted by foreign
merchants, a serious international
question will be raised, to say noth-
ing of the fact that it means recog-
nition of the Bolshevik Government.
It may well happen that in spite
of the temporary political and ma-
terial service that the lifting of the
blockade may render to the Soviet
Government, its deeper effect will be
to strengthen the forces in Russia
that are making for its overthrow
from within. Certainly the opening
up of Russia to the outside world
must in a large measure put an end to
the horrible methods of terror by
which that Government has main-
tained its savage rule, and once this
terror is relaxed, there will be an
overwhelming demand for deliver-
ance from its authors.
Finally it must be borne in mind
that the military menace of the Red
armies is still with us. A peace with
the Bolsheviki is for them but a
breathing space in which to carry on
their propaganda the more inten-
sively. For them to stand still or
compromise is to be lost. To counter
their propaganda, we are as children,
with our deportations and anti-radi-
cal legislation; they can give us big
odds and win with ease. Only the
hard facts of experience will open the
eyes of their dupes. Just now the
gravest danger is that a military
struggle against them may be trans-
lated into a war against Russia, unit-
ing all the Russian national elements
and forces against the world.
If such a climax should crown the
past two years of blunders in policy,
then will Allied diplomacy indeed be
. bankrupt. To avert such a catastro-
phe a positive, unequivocal policy
must be stated. It must be made
clear to the Russian people that while
the Allied and Associated nations are
uncompromising enemies of Bolshe-
vism, they will welcome every oppor-
tunity to aid Russia materially; that
they contemplate no policy that
means its dismemberment; and that
they look forward to hearty coopera-
tion with the Russian nation when it
shall have thrown off the incubus of
the Bolshevist despotism.
Admiral Sims's
Memorandum
A "MEMO" is the simplest and most
^ informal type of military letter.
It is usually informational and needs
no answer. Admiral Sims's "Memo"
on "Certain Naval Lessons of the
Great War" occupies five columns of
print, every word of which is of im-
port to every American. It is the
duty of Congress to force the most
explicit answers to the questions
raised in this most important docu-
ment. Although Admiral Sims re-
veals the fact that he was constantly
hampered in his work as high naval
commander abroad, inadequately sup-
ported, disregarded, unfairly dis-
trusted, there is no trace of personal
resentment in his indictment of our
naval administration. He writes
with dignity, detachment, and au-
thority. Expressions of opinion are
as few as they are weighty. The
emphasis is on facts.
Late in March, 1917, with war not
yet declared but certain. Admiral
Sims was sent to England incognito
with a single aide. In lieu of the
customary written orders, he received
instructions which are described by
him as follows:
Brief orders were delivered to me verbally
in Washington. No formal instructions or
statement of the Navy Department's plans or
policy were received at that time, though I
received the following explicit admonition :
'"Don't let the British pull the wool over
your eyes. It is none of our business pulling
their chestnuts out of the fire. We would as
soon fight the British as the Germans."
On arriving in England, Admiral
Sims found that the submarines were
in a way to starve out England in-
side the year. Accordingly he recom-
mended an immediate concentration
of all available fighting forces in the
real theatre of the naval war. The
Navy Department promised four de-
stroyers. Admiral Sims appealed to
Ambassador Page, and the number
was raised to sixteen. In April, 1917,
the British Admiralty requested that
the American fighting fleet should
guard the English Channel. Trans-
mitted to Washington by Admiral
Sims, the request never received the
courtesy of a reply. Meanwhile our
battle fleet, Qhough ready for action,
was performing no military service
1
of any sort. In July, 1917, Admiral
Sims recommended that four coal-
burning battleships should be as-
signed to the British great fleet. This
modest request was honored only in
November, after Admiral Benson had
verified in England the information
he had possessed for many months
through Admiral Sims. Soon after
his arrival Admiral Sims requested
that all available tugs be sent over.
They were wanted to salvage ships
which the submarines had crippled
without sinking. None were sent,
though at the time dozens of Navy
tugs were tied up idly at the wharves
of Norfolk, Philadelphia, Brooklyn,
Newport, and Boston.
From this state of things two in-
ferences are to be drawn. First, that
the Department grudged a whole-
hearted and effective aid in the war,
adhering still to the hope of "peace
without victory ;" next, that there was
no strategic plan at Washington, but
merely a welter of smaller purposes.
For three years of world-wide war-
fare, and with constant dangerous
friction with Germany, President
Wilson and his war lords held to the
theory that our national policy was
to set a good example to the world
by neglecting our obvious military
interests. The result was that in the
hurry of belated preparation, two
lives were lost where one would have
sufficed, two men were wounded
where one would have sufficed, and
more than two dollars were spent
where one would have sufficed. With
the ultimate value to humanity of a
policy not without its own idealism
history must some day reckon. Its
immediate and practical result may
be simply expressed in the form of a
commercial statement:
Wilson, Baker & Daniels, Ltd.
In Ac. with the American People.
Credit : — By any mora! good accomplished by
neglecting a reasonable military prepared-
ness in 1915-16.
Debit : — To 35,000 Americans killed unneces-
sarily.
To 160,000 Americans wounded unneces-
sarily.
To $10,000,000,000 spent unnecessarily.
However this account be balanced,
the Navy merely suffered with the
rest. Its case was not special. Ad-
miral Sims in noting the vacillation m
and absence of naval counsels at
Washington is not indulging in retro-
January 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[75
spective recriminations, nor are we.
He is pointing a solemn lesson for
future use.
So far Admiral Sims's letter merely
gives a new emphasis to familiar
facts. There is another and more
startling side to his revelations which
no loyal American can consider with-
out a sense of shame. It appears that
having appointed him to high com-
mand, the powers-that-be regretted
their action. Not daring to take the
straightforward course of relieving
him, they attempted to make his posi-
tion impossible and force him out.
In so doing they imperilled the effi-
ciency of our naval effort abroad.
Sustained by a high sense of duty, he
achieved the impossible — stuck to his
post, and, under heavy disadvantages,
did his work. This is our allegation,
not his, but the facts are plainly to
be read between the lines. Let us con-
sider the bare facts.
In April, 1917, Admiral Sims was
ordered abroad with a staff of one
aide. Repeated requests for a suit-
able administrative staff were re-
fused on the ground that no officers
were available. Meanwhile competent
and willing officers were on fifty idle
ships. In July, now Commander in
Chief for the European campaign,
and his aide exhausted, he was
allotted three officers. Such a staff
the young lieutenants commanding
at sub-bases like Block Island, Nev;
Bedford, and Nantucket were al-
lowed for their flotillas of half a
dozen patrol boats. In vain Admiral
Sims requested the staff customarily
allowed to the commander of a squad-
ron of destroyers. Facing adminis-
trative disaster, he finally adopted the
desperate but only expedient of re-
cruiting his staff by depleting his line.
Eventually he thus combed out of his
ships two hundred officers with a
thousand enlisted men and civilians.
Meanwhile his destroyers and scout
patrol boats sailed their arduous sta-
tions short-handed. To make matters
more difficult, he was denied the usual
right of enlisting competent Ameri-
cans abroad and of awarding tem-
porary promotion to his own officers.
As an additional humiliation, he was
not permitted to select his personal
aides. Among the British and in his
own command his authority was by
so much diminished.
From these deplorable but neces-
sary exposures the accomplishment
of the professional Navy emerges in
a brighter light. In spite of certain
incompetence and probable malice at
Washington, it splendidly did its task.
That so perilous and discreditable a
chapter should not be repeated is
Admiral Sims's chief concern. In fix-
ing the responsibility where it be-
longs, between Secretary Daniels and
Admiral Benson, Admiral Sims has
deserved well of the Navy and the
Republic. Now let the complete cor-
respondence between Admiral Sims
and his superiors be published, and
let Congress fearlessly probe the
whole matter to the bottom.
The Father of Victory
TjtTE sincerely regret that M. Clem-
^ enceau's exit from the political
stage had its impressiveness marred
by a final discomfiture to . which he
exposed himself by drawing a wrong
conclusion from his popularity. The
unexampled success which crowned
his tenure of office had silenced, for
the time being, his many political
opponents among Roman Catholics
and Radicals. The people's unani-
mous recognition of his great service
t'^ the country was no guarantee of as
complete a consensus on his eligibility
for the Presidency. Different capaci-
ties from those which made him an
eminent leader in the onset towards
victory are needed for the representa-
tive figure at the highest post of
honor. Neither his temperament nor
the power which his popularity se-
cures him would have let him be
satisfied with the mere glory of that
dignity. Fear of his influence, greater
than tradition has sanctioned, on the
Government's conduct of affairs dic-
tated to the majority of Senators and
Deputies their adverse vote. The
painful dilemma was not of their
choosing. We should do them an in-
justice by believing their motive to
have been personal enmity. They had
to decide between honoring the man
and serving the country, as in their
eyes the two were irreconcilable. And
M. Clemenceau will have been the
first to admit that, such being their
opinion, they chose the better of the
two.
For in his long, eventful life the
one motive which actuated his every
word and act was France and the
glory of France.. In a political atmos-
phere replete with self-seeking in-
trigue, he moved invulnerable, thanks
to a proverbial integrity. "What is
this talk," he said one day, "about
my having overthrown so many Gov-
ernments? It was always the same
Government — with only different
names." The paradox gives a char-
acteristic description of the man. The
Cabinets he ousted from power were
all one to him in that they ruled to
the detriment of France. Personal
consideraions had no weight with
him. Old 'friends lost his friendship
if France was no longer served by
them in the way he considered best
for her. It was on M. Clemenceau's
recommendation that M. Freycinet,
in 1886, fixed his choice on General
Boulanger for Minister of War in his
Cabinet. But it was Clemenceau,
again, who two years later, when the
General aspired to a dictatorship,
was foremost among those who op-
posed him, and after the sensational
scene in the Chamber, in which Bou-
langer had called Premier Floquet "a
■ damned liar and an impudent pedant,"
Clemenceau, as Floquet's witness, took
his challenge to the insulter. In the
same way he challenged, on behalf of
France, the strong and the unscrupu-
lous who loved her less than them-
selves. A disturber of peace, people
called him. "Why can you not let
the country rest?" he was asked by
an interruption in the Chamber. "Be-
cause there is no rest for free na-
tions," he retorted. "Rest is good for
monarchies. The nation is a living
organism, and life knows no rest."
His own life has been a vivid illus-
tration of that maxim. And it seemed
as if, with the increase of his years,
his energy grew in intensity. The
youthful elan which inspired his in-
domitable nature rekindled the fire
of enthusiasm in whose steeling
flames the country has always re-
covered strength to overcome its
vicissitudes. By grace of that spirit
in him he had become the savior of
76]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 37
his country. It owes him a debt of
gratitude too great to be adequately
expressed by its conferring on him
even the highest dignity that a
Frenchman can win. Ambition, "that
last infirmity of noble mind," is in
this man of impetyous energy a
symptom only of his restlessness,
which, in his own words, is life itself.
Until his dying hour, to live, with
him, will be to aspire. But the nation
knows better than he that the highest
he could aspire to is already his.
History will add many more names
to the list of Presidents of the French
Republic, but one Frenchman only
will be remembered in her record as
the Father of Victory.
President Butler on
the Classics
THE paragraphs of President But-
ler's Annual Report which deal
with classical studies in Columbia
University are interesting rather for
certain suggestions which they con-
vey than for their statement of facts.
We are all aware, of course, that the
proportion of students taking Latin
and Greek under a purely elective
regime is comparatively small. Our
chief concern lies not with the fact,
but with the underlying reason. Dr.
Parkin, in discussing the Rhodes
Scholarships, has pointed out that the
surprisingly high ratio of failures on
the part of American students to pass
the Oxford University entrance tests
holds good for the more modern sub-
jects as well as for the classical lan-
guages. "May it not be true," Dr.
Butler asks, "that the American
student resents the demand for the
close and long-continued application
necessary to an accurate knowledge
of any difficult subject?"
In the matter of the classics, it is
a fair question how far the responsi-
bility for numerical loss rests pri-
marily with the r.tudent. In a country
town in the Middle West, a few years
ago, the study of Latin was saved,
against an iconoclastic superintend-
ent, by the insistent demand of boys
and girls determined to study it. A
few years ago a State Normal College
west of the Alleghenies had a strong
department of Greek, wholly on the
elective basis, and the Greek play
which it presented each year was one
of the most distinguished events of
the college calendar. The department
died, not from loss of interest, but
by peremptory edict of a new Presi-
dent who, during the summer vaca-
tion, before he had ever met the col-
lege in session, countermanded the
order for Greek text-books and an-
nounced that the study would be
dropped, as "unpractical." On the
other hand, from within a few miles
of Columbia University comes the re-
port that a class in Greek has been
organized in a New Jersey high
school, at the urgent request of stu-
dents desiring to enroll. Opposition
to classical study in the public schools
comes far more from educational
theorists than from pupils, or par-
ents, in search of the "practical."
Fought by "modernists" on every
hand, and a requirement for gradua-
tion almost nowhere, Latin still has a
very strong hold in the high schools
in all parts of the country. If a fair
proportion of students who have car-
ried it successfully through the usual
four preparatory years were to con-
tinue it in college, there would be no
talk of the decadence of Latin. In
view of this fact, it may be questioned
whether any great share of the loss
• that occurs just at the point of en-
trance to college is due, as President
Butler suggests, to an aversion of the
American student to "the close and
long-continued application necessary
to an accurate knowledge of any diffi-
cult subject." Something must be
granted to this influence, no doubt,
nor can an unrestricted elective sys-
tem ever free itself from the charge
of encouraging such an aversion. But
there are other influences at work
which tend to deprive classical studies
of an even chance in the mind of a
freshman making up his schedule.
Thus the faculty representatives of
the newer subjects, as Dr. Butler says,
often insist on programmes which
make it difficult for the student to
take an extended course in classical
studies.
President Butler makes it evident
that his own desire is for the building
up and continued maintenance of
strong departments of Greek and
Latin in Columbia. Towards that end
he suggests an increased striving on
the part of teachers for a readier
power of sight translation ; the bring-
ing of the student more closely into
touch with ancient ideas and ideals;
political, moral, and social relation-
ships ; and the development of courses
having to do with Greek and Roman
customs, and Greek and Roman art,
architecture, etc. Friends of broad
educational ideals will hope that this
declaration of interest will be fol-
lowed by a duly liberal financial
policy in providing the material
equipment required to carry out, with
the fullest degree of success, the im-
provements in method suggested in
this report.
Dr. Butler quotes and accepts Gil-
bert Murray's statement that the
study of the present alone isolates,
while the study of far distant times,
if they be really great, sets the stu-
dent free. In every specialist walk of
life, there are men to-day of the high-
est competence and reputation who
do not hesitate to assert that their
calling is suffering from the failure
of its devotees to broaden their men-
tal vision, and their range of human
interest, by studies of this kind. "I
am going to be a scientist, and there-
fore will not elect any studies in the
classical departments," is a very gen-
eral attitude of mind among incoming
freshmen to-day. "My life as a scien-
tist will necessarily tend to narrow
my range of interests unduly, and
therefore I will guard against the
danger in advance by including a
fair amount of the study of the great
civilizations of the past in my course,"
would represent a far more promis-
ing state of mind.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Corporation
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Rodman Gilder, Business Manager
Subscription price, five dollars a year in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright, 1920, in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Janiiiirv 2i, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[77
Moscow's Campaign of Poison
A FEW months ago the Executive
Committee of the Bolshevik Gov-
ernment in Moscow sent to its agents
everywhere abroad a confidential
circular of which the following is a
translation :
GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS
The revolutionary work of the Com-
munist Party.
The work of Bolshevist organizations
in foreign countries is regulated as fol-
lows:
1. In the domain of international re-
lations.
(a) Assist all chauvinistic measures
and foster all international discords.
(b) Stir up agitation that may serve
to bring on industrial conflict.
(c) Try to assassinate the represen-
tatives of foreign countries.
(Thanks to these methods interior dis-
cords and coups d'etat will occur, such
agitation working to the advantage of
the Social Democratic party.)
2. In the domain of internal politics.
(a) Compromise by every possible
means the influential men of the country;
attack people in office; stir up anti-gov-
eramental agitation.
(b) Instigate general and particular
strikes; injure machinery and boilers in
factories; spread propaganda literature.
(Thanks to these methods destruction
of governments and the seizure of power
will be facilitated.)
3. In the economic sphere.
(a) Induce and sustain railroad
strikes; destroy bridges and tracks; do
everything possible to disorganize trans-
port.
(b) Interfere with and prevent if
possible the transport of food supplies
into the cities; provoke financial
troubles ; flood the markets with counter-
feit banknotes; appoint everywhere spe-
jcial committees for this work.
I (In this way total economic disorgani-
!!ation will bring its inevitable catas-
Itrophe and the resulting revolution
iigainst the government will have the
'sympathy of the masses.)
, 4. In the military sphere.
(a) Carry on intensive propaganda
jimong the troops. Cause misunder-
standings between officers and soldiers.
ncite the soldiers to assassination of
he higher officers.
(b) Blow up arsenals, bridges, tracks,
owder-magazines. Prevent the delivery
f supplies of raw material to factories
nd mills.
(Thus the complete destruction of the
rmy will be accomplished and the sol-
iers will adopt the programme of the
jcial democratic workers.)
A later circular issued as Cam-
paign Order No. 4, again for secret
distribution in foreign countries, de-
fines the methods to be pursued
among the agricultural classes. "It is
necessary to find out everything pos-
sible about the living conditions of
the farmers ; it is urgently necessary
to know all those who are in debt or
find difficult the payment of their
rent. It is important to assist them,
discreetly and prudently, and at the
same time to explain to them that
only revolution will put them on their
feet. In this work, as in all others,
it is necessary to work principally on
the feelings of the women, and beyond
this conversations should be carried
on principally with young people, who
are more susceptible to revolutionary
influences."
These are merely samples of the
secret orders that flow out from the
poison spring in Moscow. It takes
no very careful study of them to see
that they represent no "great con-
structive force," as is claimed by our
American parlor bolshevists. It is
clear that their authors care nothing
for the interests of the proletariat, as
is urged by certain sentimental Amer-
ican paper-radicals and by the still
undeported representative of Lenin
in New York. Ideas such as these
orders contain are brutal and brutal-
izing; they are false and propagate
falsehood ; they point to suffering and
misery as an end to be sought. They
are purely destructive in intent and
give not even a hint of a constructive
future. Tear down; destroy; create
economic chaos; cause famine and
cold; kill your fellow men — and to
what end? To bring about revolu-
tion! But surely modern man has
sufficient mental and moral stature
to realize that revolution is not an
end to be desired ; that it is endurable
only as a last resort to secure a great
gain to civilization which is not
otherwise obtainable. The danger of
these circulars is that they are not
intended to fall into the hands of
those who have attained well-bal-
anced mental and moral growth. They
are not intended to educate the
masses or to be read by the intel-
lectual, but to instruct the dark and
secret agents of destruction, all of
them queerly abnormal people who
have their prototypes in Russia —
Lenin, a great force, an idealist who
can not understand that ideals can
be realized only through imperfect
human agents and that realization
before humanity is perfect must de-
stroy their original purity, a man
with a vision that reality has dimmed
and necessity brutalized; Chicherin,
a man of the upper classes, who has
twice been confined in an insane
asylum, who is incapable of thinking
straight; Trotsky, intellectually pow-
erful along the narrow path of his
enthusiasm, morally a monster ; Zino-
viev, a man of little mental and no
moral capacity, but with an enthusi-
asm that borders on madness and
that makes his commonplace words
ffame ; and the others, inevitably most
numerous, who may better be name-
less, who are of varying capacity and
are Bolsheviks for sordid hope of
plunder or of power. Into the hands
of men similar to these the instruc-
tions are carried by highly paid
agents, and the instructions are
passed on to the rank and file, not as
they came, but in the form of specific
orders to cause a strike here, to de-
stroy there a factory, or to assassinate
a man of influence and integrity.
There are few crimes so dastardly
that an excuse for them can not be
found in some generally-worded in-
struction, but the character of the
specific deed is usually a reflection of
the personality of the agent who
issues the final order.
These circulars, as has been noted
above, are not in any sense propa-
ganda. They are orders, issued to
chosen individuals and not intended
to be seen by others ; but such orders
can not be carried out in a country
where the ground has not been pre-
pared by propaganda. Even in Rus-
sia itself, where the vast proportion
of the population shivers under the
rule of an autocratic and blood-
thirsty minority, the Bolshevist
regime could not retain power if it
admitted the truth. If it lies at home,
why should it be truthful abroad?
On November 8, Zinoviev said in a
78]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 37
speech in Petrograd, "The White
Army was followed by an American
mission which pretended to feed our
children in Gatchina, but the first
thing it did was to rob the orphan
asylum. When Gatchina was cap-
tured a Jewish pogrom took place
and the population received only a
few herrings." This is a good ex-
ample of Bolshevist defensive propa-
ganda within the borders of Russia.
The truth was that there was no po-
grom in Gatchina and that the Amer-
ican Relief Administration under-
took immediately, and continued until
the retreat of, the White Army, the
daily feeding of three thousand
starved children. In Russia the truth
can be and is suppressed. Along the
borders of Russia it can be and is
partially suppressed, but this sup-
pression becomes more difficult as
operations must be carried on further
from the centre. Hence, the further
propaganda is carried from Moscow
the more subtle it must become to
be effective. Half truths and clev-
erly manipulated whole truths must
be substituted for lies, propaganda
must be attuned to the instincts, sen-
timents and desires of those to whom
it is addressed, with the purpose of
preparing as large a field as possible
in which the seed of the definite
orders may flourish and bear its red
fruit. Propaganda in different coun-
tries, therefore, varies widely in
method and arguments employed;
whereas the instructions vary almost
not at all.
Twice, so far, this subtly prepared
propaganda has made possible the
carrying out of the orders. In Hun-
gary, which is essentially a conserva-
tive country, Bolshevist propaganda
was confined almost entirely to Buda-
pest, because only in that city was
there a nucleus of industrial workers
— always more accessible to any form
of propaganda because concentrated
— and because the capital was the
heart of the country. Supplies were
short and therefore the opening of an
avenue to "the limitless food stocks
of Russia" was harped on continu-
ously. The Karolyi Government made
just enough half-hearted reforms in
land tenure and in the education of
workingmen to a knowledge of their
due and of their potential power, to
arouse the instincts of acquisition
without recompense — in plain Eng-
lish, "plunder" — but it was too weak
to carry its reforms through to their
logical conclusion. A peasant one
day appeared at the ticket window of
a local station and said to the ticket
agent, the only visible government
official, "I have come for my share."
"Your share of what?" the agent de-
manded. "My share of the money,"
the peasant aifswered. "Is not Hun-
gary now a republic and in a republic
do not all share alike?" The com-
munists said to this man and others
like him, "If you put us in power
this belief of yours will come true.
We will divide among you the prop-
erty of the rich." But, in spite of
ignorance and hunger, the Bolsheviks
could never have gained the power in
Hungary had they not appealed to
the strongest passion of all, the in-
stinct of nationalism, which is really
the negation of all Bolshevist prin-
ciples. When bordering states en-
croached more and more on the
boundaries defined by the torms of
the armistice, and when it was clear
that Karolyi could not get the ex-
pected support from the Allies, the
Bolsheviks seized the Government as
champions of nationalism. Bela Kun
was tolerated because he promised to
drive out the invaders. When he
failed in this and began to preach
communist doctrines, the people
drove him out. This Hungarian epi-
sode is an interesting example of
Bolshevist propaganda, because it
succeeded by an appeal to local pas-
sions through promises that were
wholly false and based on principles
wholly contrary to the dogmas of
communism. It proves that the means
are never considered so long as they
seem to make possible the carrying
out of the orders.
In Bavaria, as in Hungary, Bolshe-
vist propaganda made possible the
temporary establishment of a com-
munist Government. In Munich, as
in Budapest, war-weariness and hun-
ger prepared the ground. In Bavaria
propaganda pointed to the insincerity
and the failures of the German Social-
Democratic Government. It played on
the fact that, although the war was
over, living conditions were growing
worse instead of better, and insinu-
ated that the Entente intended treach-
erously to destroy Germany through
starvation, since it had been unable
to obtain a real military decision. It
again appealed to narrowly national-
istic feelings, already irritated by the
obviously centralizing tendencies of
Weimar, by pointing out the danger
of a bitter military domination of
Bavaria by Prussia, by saying that
communism would mean the complete
severance of Bavaria from the Ger-
man realm and consequent freedom
from the State's share of the German
war debt. Outside of the cities no
one was convinced by these argu-
ments, and Bavaria, being more gen-
erally intelligent than Hungary and
far more accessible to information
from outside, tolerated its Bolshevist.
Government for only a few days.
In Switzerland radical propaganda
has two distinct phases : that actually
directed against the Federation and
that sent into Switzerland or manu-
factured in Switzerland for purposes
of foreign distribution. Except in
Basel and Zurich, industrial centres,
the extreme Socialist following is
small and, with the restoration of
something approaching normal eco-
nomic conditions, it will still further
decrease, unless communism should
gain temporary sway in surrounding
countries. The increase of the num-
ber of seats gained by the Socialists
in the recent elections is not an indi-
cation of party growth but is the
natural result of a change in the elec-
tion laws. The Socialist party itself
defeated by an overwhelming popular
vote the proposal to join the Third,
or Moscow, International. Among the
Swiss themselves propaganda clever-
ly accentuates every misunderstand-
ing between federal and cantonal
authority; it aims at creating jeal-
ousies between the French, German,
and Italian speaking populations of
the various cantons; it suggests to
the townspeople that the farmers and
dairymen are withholding food, and
to the countryfolk that the towns are
trying to force the sale of foodstuffs
at prices ruinous to the producers.
All this has had little effect, however,
and when orders were issued to turn
Januaiy 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
the Basel strikes into an insurrection,
failure was immediate and complete.
Switzerland has, on the other hand,
been less successful in its endeavor
to prevent the country from becom-
ing a centre for the distribution of
propaganda. In spite of drastic laws
and thorough inspection at the fron-
tiers, quantities of literature are
brought in, and quantities, printed in
Switzerland, are sent out into France
and Italy. It is also only fair to
Switzerland to admit that much
literature with the imprint of Basel
or Berne was actually printed in Ger-
many. (This was recently proved in
the case of a pamphlet intended to
create disturbances in Alsace.)
A keener edge is put on propa-
ganda in France by references to
Germany intended to incite national-
istic feelings or to irritate by com-
parisons. For example, this from
another order that was probably
actually prepared in Germany : "It is
essential to make clear to our com-
rades, especially to those who have
had only a little instruction, that the
victory of the Entente, that is, the
victory of imperialism and capitalism,
places the Latin worker in a position
inferior to the German." It is fair
to say, however, that although this
sort of thing may appeal to some few
people in France— and the recent
elections seem to emphasize the nar-
rowness of the appeal— the country
ias a whole is too well aware of the
continuing German danger, too con-
scious that it is the negation of those
principles for which France has suf-
fered so bitterly, to be seriously af-
fected now. Only if France should
lose the cordial support of England
and America, might it be willing to
experiment with another revolution.
Bolshevist propaganda in Germany
is exceedingly difficult to estimate.
How much of this propaganda, how
many of the secret orders come from
Russia, and what proportion origi-
lates in the German communist
3arty? It seems clear that the Ger-
nan Reds are less formally under
)rders from Moscow than are the
^eds of the smaller adjoining coun-
ries, also that their association is
lore intimate. It is the expressed
'Pmion of Moscow that Germany, in
[79
securing a Socialist Government, has
progressed further than other coun-
tries, and that the benefits resulting
from this modified Socialism will
make the people demand more and
more. Lenin knows, also, that the
Germans consider themselves the
"original Socialists" and that obvi-
ous interference from outside would
offend their pride of proprietorship
of the idea. He can, therefore, only
point out that it is the Independent
Socialists who hold fast to the doc-
trines of Marx in their pristine pur-
ity. This party was and is the hope
of the Bolsheviks. Under the leader-
ship of Hugo Haase, it proved im-
possible to lure the Independents as
a party to the extreme left. After
Haase was killed, the extremists
gained control, and during its recent
convention the Independent Socialist
party went over bag and baggage
to the communists. This action
establishes in Germany a strong,
recognized Bolshevist bloc, a party-
grouping pledged to the Third Inter-
national and having the closest
affiliation with Moscow, a group
believing in direct action and in the
dictatorship of the proletariat on the
Russian model.
The probable effect on Germany
need not be discussed here except to
note that the political situation be-
comes more explosive and that at the
same time the more conservative, re-
constructive parties have exchanged
for a hidden and secretive foe, one
who must in the future fight in the
open. There is probably no formal
or binding understanding between
the Berlin and the Moscow Govern-
ments. When the German Govern-
ment wishes to communicate with the
Soviet it does so through a group
of former German prisoners con-
verted to Bolshevism and now living
in Moscow. These men are a con-
venient medium because they have
no recognized diplomatic standing
and can be repudiated if need arises ;
but they are sufficiently official to
satisfy the Soviet. Through them
Lenin corresponds with the German
Government, but how far that Gov-
ernment consciously plays into his
hands and how far it is his dupe is
an open question. Germany is obvi-
ously trying to steer a middle course
that will leave it the friend of Rus-
sia, whatever the outcome of the Rus-
sian internal struggle. When a gov-
ernment is as weak as is the present
German Government, a middle course
is generally not actually this but
rather an erratic veering from one
side to the other of the stream. So
the German ship of state sails in
meaningless zigzags because there is
no competent helmsman. Its captains
—for they are many and all inefficient
—publicly refused to comply with the
Entente request for a blockade of
Soviet Russia. At the same time they
supported the formation of an Army
in Courland to attack Soviet Russia
and then permitted that army-
stated, of course, to be insubordinate
—to attack the Letts at a moment
when the attack necessitated the
withdrawal of Esthonian forces from
the anti-Bolshevist front of Yude-
nitch, just when the situation was
critical for the Soviet. German offi-
cers in the Ukraine assisted Petlul-a
to attack the rear of Denikin just as
Denikin was driving the Bolsheviks
back on Moscow. There are two really
strong groups in Germany, the reac-
tionaries and the communists. On
international policy they are at op-
posite poles, but so far as Russia is
concerned it is often expedient for
them to unite. The communists want
to aid the Soviet on principle; the
reactionaries are willing to aid the
Soviet whenever there seems a chance
that forces of law, order, and democ-
racy, favorable to the Entente, may
definitely secure peace and stability
for the country. Between these two
forces the German Government is
helpless and bewildered. In propa-
ganda, also, the two extremes co-
operate. The communists freely re-
ceive, manufacture, and distribute
their propaganda in Germany, where
the reactionaries feel themselves
strong enough to combat it ; and the
reactionaries assist the communists
in their distribution of propaganda
and secret orders abroad, because it
is in the interest of all Germans to
cause industrial unrest in foreign
countries.
In the United States, as well as in
Europe, this propaganda is active.
80]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 37
Even the orders of the Soviet reach
our radical chiefs and are interpreted
as seems expedient at the moment.
Last summer a circular was issued
giving a detailed programme of dis-
orders in this country. A steel strike
was to take place in October; this
was to be followed by a coal strike in
November and a sudden railroad
strike in December. The circular
stated frankly that this series 6f
strikes would cause such suffering
and consequent disorders that by
Februarj- the country would be ripe
for insurrection against a "capitalist
government" unable to prevent such
deplorable conditions. The circular
•was not dictated by Moscow, because
the Russians are willing to leave de-
tails to their lieutenants, but it might
well have been, because it contained
nothing whatever beyond the purely
destructive philosophy of the Soviet.
In the way of Bolshevist propaganda
the United States suffers from an
influx of Russian ideas sedulously
propagated by German agents. Our
pro-Bolsheviks disclaim the accusa-
tion of pro-Germanism, but how
many of them can be found who did
not hinder recruiting, who did not
condone — or deny, as being more con-
venient— the German atrocities in
Belgium? Forwaerte, the mouthpiece
of the German Government, recently
stated that it was important for Ger-
many to destroy competition by creat-
ing industrial unrest abroad, "espe-
cially in England and the United
States." Lenin said a few days ago
that the communist system could not
at this time be permanently estab-
lished in a largely agricultural coun-
try like Russia, but that its real
future lay in the more educated,
highly industrial nations of the west.
The Soviet admits that it wants peace
primarily so as to be able to send its
propagandists freely to all parts of
the world.
We in America are too prone to
sigh with relief when a few Reds are
arrested, and perhaps deported, and
to think that this is sufficient. A few
individuals are of little enough im-
portance in the face of a determined
propaganda, carried on with Russian
fanaticism and German thorough-
ness; a propaganda that is insidious.
cleverly compounded of truth and
lies, fashioned to make its s ecial
appeal wherever there is sentim atal-
ity or distress. To save itself and to
save civilization the American Gov-
ernment must steer a firm course be-
tween reaction and capitulation. It
must not be a zigzag middle course
like that of the German Government,
but straight, with the pilot eternally
vigilant, with its route carefully
charted, with its aim so clearly de-
fined that all the people may approve
and support it in every crisis.
The Bolsheviks have one great
argument. It is this : "The war has
cost the world over two hundred
billion dollars. Perhaps five per cent,
of this amount has been paid for.
The rest of the war was fought on
credit. It will take the world, espe-
cially the poor people of the world, a
hundred years to pay off this enor-
mous debt. This means sorrow, suf-
fering, incessant labor. Bolshevism
will wipe all debts from the slate.
The world can begin afresh a new,
finer life of justice." What wonder
that this appeals, that there are Bol-
shevist agents in all lands who can
elaborate these themes ! And only the
man who thinks on a groundwork of
robust intelligence understands that
the plan, if carried out, would lead
the world back to the times of the
cave-dwellers, that with the crash of
credit would come also the crash of
civilization with all that it has given
us of good as well as of bad — the end
of education, of art, of literature, of
everything that makes life attractive
to rich or poor.
I went into a bookshop the other
day to get a magazine. It was one of
those little highbrow bookshops that
have recently sprung up in our cities,
the kind that has nothing for the
tired business man, that deals only
in books with a moral — generally a
very bad moral. I asked for the
Review. The polished proprietor re-
gretted that he did not keep it. He
offered me the New Republic but I
told him that I was tired of Bolshevist
propaganda. He looked a little disap-
pointed and offered me the World To-
morrow, a journal, as he pointed out,
that is working for a Christian world.
I took it because I had never heard
of it. The first article I read was a
defense of Bolshevism — in a journal
working for a Christian world! — a
defense of a system which prohibits
the Bible because the Bible dares to
speak of God as a being superior to
man. This was a trivial thing but
deeply suggestive. We Americans
must defend ourselves not only
against the blatant propaganda of the
yellow press but against the far more
insidious propaganda of the highbrow
bookshop. Russian fanaticism, Ger-
man thoroughness, working together,
the one actuated by idealism gone
stark mad, the other by selfish ma-
terialism !
Examiner
The Government of.
India Act
Now that a semblance of peace
has superseded the European
state of war, the attention of the
world is turning towards that part
of the globe the control of which was
the deeper-lying cause of the conflict.
Germany's support of Austria in the
Balkans was dictated by the wish to
secure for herself a firmly guarded
corridor to Constantinople and Asia
Minor through which Berlin was to
launch its trains for the far-off goal :
Bagdad. Once in control of that Bal-
kan route and with Turkey reduced
to a vassal state, she saw the way
open, via Bagdad, into Persia and
India, for German enterprise and po-
litical expansion. And while thus
stretching one tentacle across Tur-
key and Persia towards Great Brit-
ain's Asiatic possessions, she hoped
to lay another on the Netherland
East Indies by forcing the kingdom
of Holland to become merged in the
super-state of Middle-Europe. Fried-
rich Naumann, in estimating the fu-
ture area of that economic state,
arrived at an extent of about 9.3 rail-
lion square kilometres, "if we claim
all European and Asiatic Turkey and
venture to count in, to a, it is true,
somewhat arbitrary extent, the over-
seas possessions of neighboring
states which have not yet joined us."
Thus, in the last resort, the world
war was a struggle between Ger-|
January 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[81
many and England for the economic
control of India.
The danger, though averted by
England's victory, has during its
long imminence aggrandized another
since long astir vi^ithin. The intel-
lectual elite of the native population
did not withhold its support from the
Government, but it reckoned on a
fair return for its loyalty in exten-
sion of its share in the government
of the country. The danger was not
in the necessity of complying with
that request, but in the unrest which
insistence upon it aroused among
the totally ignorant and politically
immature masses, which echoed with
less patience and no comprehension
of the difficulties involved in the de-
mands of their political leaders.
The Government of India Act is
intended to meet these wishes for
home rule. It is not extorted from
the Government, as the tendency to-
wards granting the native element
political responsibility was manifest
before 1914. In the Netherland East
Indies, whose native population could
not base its claim of self-rule on any
deserving role played in the war, the
Dutch Government has anticipated
the British by the introduction of a
transitional form of administration.
The war has only in so far influenced
the legislative procedure as it has
accelerated its course.
It would require much space to
give a detailed comparison of the dif-
ferent ways in which the British and
the Netherland Governments intend
to inaugurate a democratic form of
colonial administration. The Dutch
plan is, obviously, modelled on the
parliamentary system at home; the
British one has no counterpart in do-
mestic institutions and seems an orig-
inal attempt to initiate self-rule by
setting up a dual form of administra-
tion, nicknamed Dyarchy by its op-
ponents.
The Hollanders have created a
People's Council (Volksraad), the
majority of which is appointed by
the Government, the native minority
being elected by an extremely limited
electorate, the members of the provin-
cial and local councils, who themselves
are mostly appointed by the Govern-
ment. This "Volksraad" is one day
to become the legislative power of
Indonesia, but in its probation pe-
riod it is entrusted with only an ad-
visory function. It is consulted on
the budget and appropriation bills,
on the negotiation of loans, the im-
posing of military duties, and on all
questions on which the Governor-
General deems it desirable to hear
the Council. The former, in draw-
ing up the provisional budget, is
obliged to abide by the Council's ad-
vice; it is only the Minister of Colo-
nies and the Parliament at home
which, in the last resort, may disre-
gard it.
This primitive frame-work for the
construction of a central autono-
mous government of the future is a
copy, on a larger scale, of the provin-
cial and local councils inaugurated
in 1903 with a view to turning
the provinces and the larger local
communities into semi-autonomous
organisms. In these, as in the Volks-
raad, there are appointed and elected
members whose function is limited
to the control of the budget and ap-
propriations. It is in these local
councils, first of all, that the native
will be educated to the knowledge of
political administration and a sense
of his personal responsibility for the
conduct of affairs which is involved
in his new right to control them.
The Government of India Act,
which has recently passed through
the two Houses of Parliament, is a
much more radical scheme in so far
as it gives the native element, at the
outset, an active part in the adminis-
tration. It splits the Government in
each province into two sections: on
the one hand, the Governor with his
official colleagues in executive council,
on the other, the Governor with Min-
isters drawn from the legislative as-
sembly. To the former will be re-
served the administration of the
heavier duties of the state, such as
the maintenance of law and order,
and those functions which require a
great deal of technical knowledge
from the functionaries, such as the
administration of universities, in-
dustries, harbors, land revenue, for-
ests, irrigation. To the other section
will be transferred the remaining
duties, such as the control of local
bodies, primary education, sanita-
tion, agriculture, excise, roads, and
bridges. The Governor will be the
link between the two sections of his
Government, and has the difficult
task devolved on him of seeing to it
that the two, while each remains fully
responsible within its own sphere,
shall collaborate with a common pur-
pose and an harmonious policy. After
a ten years' trial, a parliamentary
committee will go out to India and
advise on the success of the experi-
ment. If its report is favorable, fur-
ther subjects will be transferred to
Ministers. And so the process will
go on until full responsible govern-
ment is established, the official half
of the administration disappears, and
the transitional system of dualism is
superseded by a unified popular ad-
ministration. The Act further pro-
vides for a two-chamber system of
legislature at Delhi, and abolishes the
maximum of eight, and most of the
statutory qualifications, for the Vice-
roy's executive council, with a view
to a larger appointment of Indian
members.
The success of these reforms de-
pends largely on the attitude of the
native intellectual leaders. On their
side, there must be an earnest will and
endeavor to cooperate with the Eu-
ropean officials in the task of educat-
ing their own people to a clear sense
of what this incipient measure of
autonomy involves. Criticism of the
new course, both in Holland apd in
England, is chiefly based on a disbe-
lief in the necessary support from
that side. The masses are ignorant
and wholly incapable of realizing that
reforms of this nature can not be
brought about with the miraculous
swiftness of an Arabian Night meta-
morphosis. Ambitious leaders can
acquire an easy popularity by refus-
ing to remind their followers of the
necessity of a probation period. In
both the Netherland and British
Colonies there are extremists who
clamor for a speedy and complete
surrender of the Government to the
Indians.
"Insulinde," a strong organization
of radical nationalists in Java, has
much in common with the left wing
of the British Indian Home Rule
82]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 37
League, which condemned the
Chelmsford-Montagu reform scheme
before it could even have taken cog-
nizance of its bearings. In the In-
dian National Congress held in Delhi
in December, 1918, where the Ex-
tremists were all-powerful, great im-
patience was displayed at speeches in
English, and the tone of the discus-
sions was one of defiance. The mod-
erates, who realize that an immediate
assumption of full responsibility of
government would lead to chaos, have
their own organization in the Na-
tional Liberal League, a political
counterpart of the Javanese "Boedi
Oetomo" (Noble Aspiration). But
neither group has such a strong hold
on the masses as have the extremists
of the Home Rule League and Insul-
inde. Both are always more likely to
veer round towards radicalism under
pressure from below than the radi-
cals are to be brought to moderation.
The British Indian leaders made a
move in the direction of the extrem-
ists' views when, in reply to Lord
Chelmsford's statement that "we
have carried the advance right up to
the line beyond which our principles
forbid us to go," they declared the
proposed reforms to be "an irreduci-
ble minimum."
The Mohammedan population of
British India, organized in the All
India Moslem League, had a twofold
reason for opposing the scheme. In
the first place, they were afraid of
Hin(}u domination after the reforms
had been introduced, and, secondly,
the "Young" Mohammedan elements
saw in opposing them a welcome
means of wreaking vengeance on
Great Britain for the humiliation of
Turkey and the Sultanate. Loyalty
to the Caliph thus made them allies
of the Hindu Home Rule Leaguers,
the very party whose domination they
feared. In the Malay Archipelago,
with its preponderantly Mohamme-
dan population, the "Sarekat Islam"
(Islamic Union) is not withheld by
any fear of Hinduism from giving
its support, though by no means un-
qualified support, to the Netherland
Government's reform programme.
The British Colonial Government,
therefore, is faced with a more diffi-
cult task, the problem how to edu-
cate the people to autonomy being
crossed by the no less difficult ques-
tion how to do this without sharpen-
ing religious jealousies. The distinc-
tions of caste are an additional cause
of trouble to the Government at
Delhi. The Non-Brahmin Commun-
ity of Southern India feared, as a
consequence of the proposed reforms,
a reimposition, with all its ancient
weight, of the yoke of the Brahmins,
whose ambitions are voiced by the
Home Rule League.
These are the conflicting forces —
race hatred, religious intolerance,
caste antagonism — which have to be
reconciled by one system of legisla-
tive reform. It is only natural that
many English at home and in India,
realizing that no law, however per-
fect, could ever successfully cope with
that task, are anxiously inquiring
whether the continuance of the old
bureaucratic system would not have
been preferable to this democratic
departure, which, if it fails to answer
the natives' expectations, will cause
more discontent and unrest than the
approved administration is responsi-
ble for. The riots of Amritsar and
Ahmedabad, the culmination of a
long campaign of discontent and race
hatred, are ominous symptoms of
what will happen if disappointed
illusions should look towards Soviet
Russia for their realization.
However, it would have been wrong
policy, unworthy of the British Em-
pire, either to give in to the wildest
demands of native demagogues in
order to take the wind out of the Bol-
shevist sails, or to refuse to the Mod-
erates the inch they justly claim from
a fear lest the extremists should take
an ell. To admit a fear of having
one's justice abused is only a confes-
sion of weakness. It requires less
strength and courage to deny a just
demand than, having granted it, to
stem any attempt to take undue ad-
vantage of the concession. It was not
fear, but rather self-reliance, which,
in the course of the debate on the
second reading, made Mr. Montagu,
the father of the Act, tell the House
of Commons that "You dare not and
ought not to do less than we propose
in this Bill."
A. J. Barnouw
Correspondence
What Shall We Do to Be
Saved ?
To the Editors of The Review:
The present political outlook is cer-
tainly not encouraging. Both of the
great parties are so deficient in real
leadership as to make them appear al-
most hopeless. All of the bungling of
the party in power is met by equal, if
not worse, bungling by the opposition.
Even citizens who were ardent sup-
porters of the Democratic party are
greatly dissatisfied with its conduct of
affairs. It has shown great faults and
shortcomings in handling larger matters,
and at every point where the administra-
tion of affairs touches the individual it
has been bungling and stupid beyond be-
lief, and constantly irritating. The policy
almost appears to be to make it as hard
as possible for the individual to live with
his Government.
If one may judge from the talk of the
average man, regardless of political
affiliations, the country is eagerly and
impatiently awaiting the opportunity for
a change. But where can we look for
improvement? Certainly not to the Re-
publican party, unless some miraculous
change shall take place in its leadership,
and there is at present no evidence in
sight of any tendency in that direc-
tion.
Thoughtful citizens are in a great
dilemma. What shall we do to be saved?
I have been able to see but one hope,
and that is to nominate Herbert Hoover
on an Independent ticket. Mr. Hoover,
it seems to me, could unite the conscience
and intelligence of the country, and
could draw enough votes from both par-
ties to be sure of an election ; and, if
elected, would be free to draw upon the
best and most capable elements of both
parties for the support of his Adminis-
tration. Mr. Hoover seems to be the
one man in sight who would be likely to
give our present problems the sane con-
sideration which they need; he is the
one man in the public eye whose every
word and act has been thoroughly sane;
who commands the respect and admira-
tion of the entire world, and who has
to his credit what is perhaps the great-
est piece of administrative work in his-
tory.
I was an ardent supporter of Mr.
Wilson in his first campaign, and should
have voted for Hughes at the last elec-
tion, had his conduct during the cam-
paign permitted it. As it was, I re-
frained from voting, for the first time
in my life in a Presidential election.
M. L.
Philadelphia, January 16
January 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[88
No Pilot at the Wheel
To the Editors of The Review:
For several months our country has
had a chief executive in name only; is
it not time that we provided ourselves
with one in fact? Since the President
was struck down in the early fall he
has seen almost no one but his wife, his
doctor, and his private secretary. We do
not know the nature of his affliction. We
do not know what reports of the state of
the nation are made to him. But we
do know beyond all doubt that the coun-
try is entering upon a critical period of
its history which even threatens the
stability of its form of government; the
ship of state meanwhile is drifting
through these perilous waters with no
one at the wheel. Dr. Grayson tells us
the President is progressing steadily.
We all hope that he is; but let us not
delude ourselves into thinking that he is
likely ever to recover completely from his
stroke. ■ Rest and freedom from strain
of all kinds may in time bring back the
semblance of normal health, but nothing
can restore the vigor of mind and body
needed to meet the coming struggle. Let
us consider frankly : can the Government
continue much longer without a chief?
,1, for one, doubt it. The Constitution
provides for such an emergency. Let us
avail ourselves of this provision.
I Francis Rogers
'New York, January 6
Queries Concerning the
"Social Unit"
jTo the Editors of The Review:
! The article "The Social Unit at Cin-
pinnati," and your remarks thereon, are
'ertainly thought-provoking. I find one
)r two matters of rather fundamental
mportance on which Mrs. Tiffany gives
!io information. Is the Social Unit a
epresentative government, or do the
'oters have direct control? That is, do
he seven members of each "Council"
lave a fixed term of office, or are they,
ike the Soviet delegates, bound by threat
'f "recall" to carry out the behests of
^heir constituents ? And have those who
sit on the Central Citizens' Council" a
' xed term of office, giving them a reason-
ble freedom to use their own (presum-
bly) expert knowledge, or are they bound
y threat of "recall" to carry out the
olicies of the "Councils" that elected
|hem? And the same question may be
flised in regard to the "Occupational
iouncils." If the latter alternative is the
me one, the Social Unit is not repre-
'Jntative government, and is against the
hole spirit of our political order. We
1 not mean to govern directly by the
aople; we— in theory at least — select
)ecially qualified men to govern us, and
agree to abide by their judgment,
making them, of course, responsible
in the end to the people. Ours
is a compromise-system between rule by
the expert and pure democracy, or rule
by the people; and its virtue lies in this
compromise character. But if the So-
cial Unit gives no independent power to
its elected Councils, then it would seem
to be uncompromising, unqualified de-
mocracy, and essentially like the Soviets
— omitting the class-war and murderous
methods. And if that is the case, it
would be potentially a thing of evil; for
it would kill the very spirit of leadership
and independent thought which it pro-
fesses to foster. We hear much of com-
munity spirit, community organization,
and the like, in these days, and we must
beware lest these things become a fad
and fashion, blindly accepted because of
their humanitarian or democratic color.
Let us have, as you put it, "a careful
study of possible tendencies and pur-
poses." And accordingly I (and doubt-
less many others) would be glad to be
informed on the above points.
WiLMON H.Sheldon
Hanover, N. H., January 9
Intervention in Mexico
To the Editors of THE Review:
One of the most puissant — and vener-
able— arguments against American in-
tervention in Mexico is that the rest of
the Latin-American nations will say: "I
told you so. See ! The Monroe Doctrine
is a sham; the Americans are hypo-
crites."
And yet, when we intervened in Cuba,
they said the same thing. When we
withdrew from Cuba, they were dumb-
founded. They could not understand
American altruism, or, better, enlight-
ened self-interest. There must be some
hidden motive for such an extraordinary
phenomenon.
Our second intervention (to restore
order) explained the whole situation.
Of course it was a grab game, cunningly
camouflaged by a temporary retirement.
"I told you so," again.
Our final retirement from Cuba prob-
ably has never been understood by the
Latin-American mind. That a powerful
nation should voluntarily and in accord-
ance with its word of honor relinquish
conquest was to them, and many other
nations, it must be confessed, inconceiv-
able. Yet it is an historical fact. The
United States did retire from Cuba after
assisting her to self government, did
intervene to restore order, and after
order was restored, did retire and leave
the Cubans to govern themselves so long
as they should refrain from revolutions.
We insisted that ballots rather than
bullets should decide who was to be the
next President in Cuba. Voild, tout!
Expressed in the crudest terms the
attitude of the United States towards
Cuba has been about this: "You have
our best wishes. Go ahead and govern
yourselves. We will guard you against
outside interference. We look to you to
be decent in internal affairs. If you
start a roughhouse, we shall turn the
hose on you. Adids, amigos."
We intervened in Cuba because the
political conditions of our next door
neighbor were an intolerable nuisance.
We abated the nuisance and then re-
tired, retaining the right to abate a
similar nuisance should occasion require.
Those are the plain historical facts.
Since the days of Porfirio Diaz politi-
cal conditions in Mexico have been a
nuisance which we have tolerated for
the sufl!icient reason that we have been
otherwise occupied. International obli-
gations have been openly and flagrantly
disregarded, contracts broken with the
most sinister disregard of alien rights,
systematic persecution of American na-
tionals fomented. As far back as 1907
and 1909 when I was living in Mexico I
could see the German machinations
against American trade, American con-
cessions, and American citizens.
Shibboleths and formulas have a tre-
mendous effect on the human mind. But,
after all, a formula expresses, often im-
perfectly, public opinion or aspiration
formed on existing conditions. But con-
ditions in this world are constantly
changing, and the formula of yesterday
does not always fit the conditions of to-
day. In strict accordance with our
ancient and favorite political formulas,
what right had we to impose the Piatt
Amendment on the Cubans? What right
to interfere and restore and compel law
and order in the affairs of San Domingo
and Hayti? Clearly none at all.
And thus doubtless we shall sooner or
later be compelled to ignore ancient for-
mulas and to interfere in Mexico to re-
store order and respect for international
obligations. The task of control of the
country will be enormous, and recon-
struction still more difficult. A fanatical
crew akin to our ante-bellum pacifists
will raise a howl and will invoke ancient
gods. But in the end Mexico will be in
the condition of Cuba, peaceful, prosper-
ous, and self-governing. It will be worth
the price. In the beginning the Latin-
Americans will raise their eyebrows, will
shrug their shoulders and say, "I told
you so. The Yankees are hypocrites ; the
Monroe Doctrine is a camouflage for ag-
gression." But when we go out of
Mexico without confiscation of territory,
the Latin-American perhaps will begin
to understand that the United States
really means what we say and that there
is no hypocrisy about us. The lesson to
the rest of the world will be of incalcu-
lable value in international affairs.
E. L. G. Morse
Chicago, III, December 26, 1919
84]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 37
Book Reviews
The Tragedy of von Tirpitz
My Memoirs. By Grand Admiral von Tirpitz.
In tTo volumes. New York: Dodd. Mead
& Company.
THE bright red dress of these volumes
was not appropriately chosen. The
color belongs not to the mood or the
words of Admiral von Tirpitz, sitting in
sorrow at Zabelsberg and penning the
recollections of a disappointed life, as it
looks through the clouds of the past five
years A better dress would have been
the twilight gloom of an overcast sea,
with a bedraggled German flag for a
cover design, flapping on a mast-head
peering out of the brine of Scapa Flow,
over the grave of a German dreadnought.
In the first fifteen chapters, the author
traces his own history from boyhood,
through the Naval Cadets' Institute, to
officer's rank in the navy, and on through
increasingly responsible commands, with
growing influence, until at the outbreak
of the war, in 1914, he was not only
Grand Admiral of the German navy, but
more than any other single man the
creator of that navy as it then stood. He
had developed the torpedo arm, and he
had been the most powerful factor in the
victorv of the "battle fleet" policy over
that of a fleet of cruisers. Back in the
'eighties, he had been in close touch with
his kinsman Caprivi, then at the head
of the Admiralty, whose constant state
of mind he sums up in the words, "Next
year we shall have a war on two fronts.
And thev had planned together how von
Tirpitz was to run a torpedo division
into Cherbourg the moment war was de-
clared, to be followed at once by the
battle fleet and a bombardment. By
training and temperament he was fully
prepared to be a leader in actual war.
And at last "the war," always lying
as a possibility just under the horizon,
loomed up into view. From that moment
on, von Tirpitz sees in the official con-
duct of his country little but a continued
succession of deadly blunders. The war,
he thinks, could and should have been
avoided. Germany had all but reached,
without war, the point where it would
have required no war to establish and
maintain her supremacy— in other words,
though he is careful not to put it in
just that form, the point where she could
have dominated the world by making it
prohibitively dangerous for any nation,
or feasible combination of nations, to
challenge her power. The superman was
just about to have his superiority gen-
erally admitted. And just at that point,
the superman began the four-year series
of blunders and follies and general in-
efficiency which finally saw the German
army hastening back to, and over, the
Bhine, with the Allied forces at its heels,
the HohenzoUern dynasty shattered, the
Emperor an exile, and the fleet, the pride
of the Grand Admiral's life, wallowing
beneath the waves of Scapa Flow, sunk
in bitterness and littleness of spirit, by
its own commanders.
Though holding that Germany blun-
dered into a war which by wise diplo-
macy she could have averted, he is still
quite sure that the guilt of bringing on
the war belongs elsewhere. "The com-
plete absence of instinct with which the
Chancellor proceeded" was not so grave
an oif ense against international morality,
in his view, as "the vagueness of Eng-
land's attitude during the crisis," a
vagueness persisted in by the British
Cabinet, "though it was well aware of
Bethmann's love of peace and his whole
nature." Of course this means that if
England had made it certain that she
\vould be a participant, Germany would
have avoided the conflict. But did any-
body outside of Germany doubt, during
those days of crisis, that if the storm
was allowed to break England was sure
to be there? The judgment of wn
Tirpitz against England is that "the
ca^lia rcmota of the world war lies, ac-
cording to the judgment of all honest
observers of European events— the Bel-
gian Ambassador, for example— in the
English policy of encirclement 'which
originated in the 'nineties in trade
jealousy, then hid behind pretexts
(Transvaal, Navy), poisoned the press
of the world, linked up all the anti-Ger-
man forces in the world, and created a
tense atmosphere in which the slightest
mistake could cause a most terrible ex-
plosion." All this, if true, would prove
a very high degree of efficiency in that
nation which the superminds of Berlin
had so often pictured as hopelessly effete.
But the war once irrevocably let loose.
Admiral von Tirpitz is sure that the one
and only correct policy required an im-
mediate attack, in full force, upon the
British fleet. Delay meant loss of pres-
tige to the navy outside, loss of morale
within, and steady gain in relative
strength to the British. Furthermore,
is not the history of naval warfare full
of instances in which the lesser fleet,
better managed, has conquered the
greater? But from start to finish his
advice was not taken, he could not get
the confidence of authorities higher up,
he had no freedom of action, not even
the poor privilege of resigning his official
station and taking his humiliation and
chagrin out of the public gaze. "Here
I sit and do nothing!" he wails again and
again, all the more bitterly because of
his unshakable confidence in his own
ability to make things go better. "Has
Ingenohl the genius of a conqueror?
Pohl certainly hasn't. . . . Obviously
the Kaiser is prejudiced against me.
Apropos of which I feel, where these
questions are concerned, that I have more
in my little finger than Pohl in his whole
anatomy." ^ 4. n .
The submarine warfare was fatally
mismanaged, he thinks, at every point.
It was a bad blunder to shock America
with such an act as the sinking of the
Lusitania at the start. American opinion
should have been worked up gradually
to the point where it could have stom-
ached such strong food without revulsion.
But, the blunder once made, there should
have been no drawing back, or even ap-
parent admission that any real wrong
had been committed. The submarine
campaign should have begun with some-
thing which it could really accomplish,
such as the blockade of the Thames,
which he officially advised. But "I was
not consulted at all" he says, "the cam-
paign being started over my head and
against my will, and in a form which
did not promise success." The ground
yielded to Wilson in the Sussex note was
the beginning of German capitulation;
"from the time of this decision we went
downhill." And when the submarine was
again taken up with vigor, it was ar
equal blunder, for it ivas then too late.
The Admiral sees little but gloom ai
he peers into Germany's future. He ii
unable to "shake off the fear that Ger
many has lost her last chance of risinj
to the rank of a great power." At an;
rate, she must first "come to her sense
and recognize her old traditions and th
forces which made her great." But h
can not believe that this can happe
under a republican government. "Ou
breakdown is not due to any defects i
our old state system, but to the inad(
quacy of the persons who tried to ru
it." But those inadequate persons— an
they appear to have been all but tl
Admiral himself, in his own judgment-
were brought to their positions by tl
normal working of that old state sy
tern; so there you are. Human natu
evolves a race of supermen, and organiz
them into a superstate, only to tear tl
latter down through the blundering i
efficiency of the former.
These volumes are intensely interes
ing, mistaken to the point of absurdi
sometimes in judging of outside mattei
but richly profitable as a study of t
state of mind that plunged Germany in
a war which that same state of mi
made it impossible that the world shoi
ever allow her to win. The tragedy
von Tirpitz, doomed to see his own li:
work, without fruition, sink in dishor
beneath the brine of Scapa Flow,
merely a replica in little of the m(
stupendous tragedy of modern Hohenz
lernism. Fame and fortune await \
dramatist who has the genius and co
age to break away from present drama
habit, and put either the lesser or '
greater of these two tragedies into
form which Aeschylus or Sophocles wo
have chosen.
January 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[85
Sensitivism
Ecstasy : A Study ok Happiness. By Louis
Couperus. Translated by Alexander Teix-
eira do Mattos. New York: Dodd, Mead
and Compan\'.
September. By Frank Swinnerton. New York :
George H. Doran Company.
"T?CSTASY" considerably antedates
Hi the four "Books of the Small Souls,"
by Couperus, which have recently been
rendered into English by Mr. de Mat-
tos. It is the third of his novels, written
in the early nineties when he was con-
sciously one of a school of Dutch novel-
ists who styled themselves "sensitivists."
An English (or English-writing) critic
of the time defined this "sensitivism" of
theirs as "a development of impression-
ism grafted upon naturalism." Stepping
delicately away from this slough of
-isms, after a hasty acknowledgment of
its depth, let us look at our small res-
cued object. It belongs to the period of
languid-intense ingenuities, of over-ripe
ffistheticism to which the term "deca-
dence" attached itself. Holland, like
France and England, was bored with the
usual thing, the ordered tempestuous-
ness of the romantic mode as well as the
ordered beauty of the classic mode.
There remained the relatively unex-
ploited beauties of dubiety, ugliness, and
decay, flickeringly illumined, in default
of any constant star, by phosphorescent
gleams of emotional and temperamental
yearning towards the unattainable. Cou-
perus' people impress us first with their
unescapable fellow-humanity. Dutch in
name and tongue and habitat, they are
in substance, in their real being,
strangely familiar. Friends? neighbors?
Cousin this or that? Why, ourselves!
Ourselves ingeniously denuded and ex-
posed to minor but persistent torments,
suffering subtly but intensely; creatures
held in life as in a cage, by ties of blood,
social convention, personal habit. Selves
by no means despicable, yet rarely able
either to seize a bold happiness or to
rise above plaintiveness and self-devour-
ing melancholy to the higher tragic
plane. "Small Souls" — such are the
beings by whom, in Couperus' eyes, the
modern world — that is, the end-of-the-
century world — was peopled.
In "Ecstasy" he has not yet developed
the later formula whereby his sensitiv-
ism, though it never leaves the scene,
does yield the foreground to a realism
less feverish and somewhat more robust.
There is a brooding plaintiveness in all
of Couperus' work. The only happiness
he can apprehend is a happiness of illu-
sion; and it is of this kind of happiness
that the present novel is a study. It is
a story of two persons. The woman is
by chance a widow with two children,
but still "unawakened;" a girl dreaming
contentedly enough of she knows not
what: "It was the dreaming of one on
whose brain lay no obsession either of
happiness or of grief, the dreaming of
a mind filled with peaceful light; a wide,
still, grey Nirvana, in which all the
trouble of thinking flows away and the
thoughts merely wander back over form-
er impressions, taking them here and
there, without selecting." She languidly
cares for her children, reads a little,
keeps a diary in which are luxuriously
recorded her tiny emotional and aesthetic
reactions. But day-dreaming is her
chosen state: "I only feel myself alive
when I am doing nothing," she confesses,
with a tolerable degree of complacency.
Now, of course, all a young woman in
this mood needs is, as it were, the jolt
of love. Our Cecile gets it at the hands
of the masterful Quaerts. In their
matching of egotism, active and passive,
he wins, hands down. For him, over-
experienced in carnal love, a spiritual
passion chances to be in order; poor
Cecile is to be both its object and its
victim. She takes too literally his pro-
testations of disinterested idealism, and
throws away the real man in order to
keep the empty phantom of his worship.
All this in a strain of well-nigh excru-
ciating sensibility, or should we say sen-
sitivity?— a sensibility refined and intel-
lectualized to the point of deliberate
self-torture.
Henry James's method (bred of the
same period) was akin to this, though
so much cooler emotionally and keener
intellectually; and so, in some of his
work, at least, is the method, the more
characteristic process, at least, of one of
England's newest among "new novel-
ists," Frank Swinnerton. It achieved its
own kind of perfection in "Nocturne,"
which seemed to sustain its extraordi-
nary pitch and vibrancy without effort.
In "September," with its larger scale
and necessarily more variable mood, the
effect is less certain. Here are a well-
bred English pair, fifteen years married,
no . longer lovers, and not yet content
with wedded friendship. It is the peril-
ous "mid-channel" phase so often inter-
preted in recent drama and fiction. Are
youth and its happiness really past, or
may not one more taste of it be some-
how snatched, even now, from unchari-
table time? The husband is a natural
philanderer, and the discovery of his pas-
sion, at forty-nine, for a young girl,
arouses contemptuous pity rather than
any more poignant emotion in the wife.
It is with her discovery that she her-
self is capable of a similar lapse, or re-
awakening, that we are chiefly con-
cerned. At thirty-eight, with her beauty
only beginning to fade, she is a natural
object for chivalrous adoration on the
part of an imaginative youth of twenty-
six. What happens in the end to these
four people is by no means astonishing
or even novel, as fact and fiction go.
The real action takes place in the heart
and mind of the wife Marian. In her
person, as it were, a person concealing
beneath its notably calm and even cold
surface a temperament of extreme sensi-
tiveness, we suffer the quivering torments
of a passion acknowledged and cher-
ished, yet never revealing itself even to
its object. And we seem to share her
heroic yet inevitable sacrifice to youth and
its rightful emoluments. Mr. Swinner-
ton's sensitivism, if the term may prop-
erly be applied to him, is on the side
of the angels. Unlike many of his con-
temporaries, he does not throw decency
overboard because hypocrites exist, or
exalt impulse over principle. This is a
study of character triumphing over tem-
perament. His concluding sentences,
with their frank didacticism, would be
unimaginable from a Cannan or a Mac-
kenzie :
Marian was now very composed and reso-
lute, and entirely mistress of herself, as she
had always been and as she always would be.
She had been able to feel sympathy and under-
standing because she had the power to give
inexhaustibly; but her reward thenceforward
was to lie in the love and trust of her fellows
rather than in any satisfaction of her own
passion for happy experience. If Marian could
have prayed for a gift, she would have de-
manded joy in her life. Instead, nature had
given her as compensation the strength and
courage to endure her own pain and the ability
to imagine and soften the distress of others.
If it is not the first of gifts it is among those
most rarely bestowed upon poor mortals, and
is without price.
H. W. BOYNTON
Hard-Boiled Poetry
Yanks. .A.. E. F. Verse. Originally published
in the Stars and Stripes, the official news-
paper of the American Expeditionary
Forces. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons.
TVTAR brings out the distinction be-
W tween "rare" poetry and poetry
hard-boiled. Rare poetry is precious. Of
hard-boiled poetry the quality is not
strained nor the diction restrained, and
it falls pitilessly on the just and on the
unjust. It is the poetry of the hard-
boiled guy, who accepts only that which
expresses his own moods and experience
in his own phrase. Since as a rule he
does not swagger gracefully (he is apt
to be muscle-bound), such sentiment as
it has is usually without glamor or ro-
mance. It is the iron ration of literature,
warranted to withstand any climate and
all the exigencies of war and for the time
being to sustain emotional life. It has
no pride of birth nor consciousness of
its heritage. Mr. Kipling achieves it; it
eludes Mr. Serviss as an ideal; but for
the most part it emanates from men who
normally scoff at the very name of poetry,
which they give to everything they dis-
like in literature and then kick it about
the floor— in contradistinction to the op-
posite party who give the name poetry
to whatsoever they love and discard all
else. In time of peace, we have it in
cowboy songs, railroad songs, sailor
chanteys and all such, but, like eggs
86]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 37
cooked in the crater of the volcano, it is
at its best when it tastes like — war.
"Yanks" is a collection of the hard-
boiled poetry of the war, and as such it
is distinguished from other anthologies
of war poetrj'. To the young veteran
the first pleasure of the book will be that
of the fireside return to the memory of
hardship. "Forsan et haec olim memi-
nisse juvabit" was a frequent mood in
the A. E. F., usually expressing itself
in the form of allusions to future ses-
sions about the cracker barrel and the
stove of the comer store, or in rocking-
chairs on the veranda "when we join
the Soldiers' Home — A-h-h-men-n !" In
these verses the "soldier come from the
war" greets old friends who were with
him in the thick of it. He recalls where
he met them last, not long ago, to be
sure, but still distant enough in time and
space to have become part and parcel of
his sentimental past. He recalls the day
when the Stars and Stripes came into
camp. He always tried to reach the
Y. M. C. A. hut in time to get one, and
turned first to about page 7 for Wall-
gren's comics, then to page 4 for the
"Army Poets" — then it would be "Say,
fellows, listen to this:
Rations ? Oo-la-Ia ! and how we love the man
Who learned how to intern our chow in a
cold and clammy can. . . .
Mess kits flown the coop, cups gone up the
spout ;
Use your thumbs for issue forks, and pass the
bull about.
Here it is now on page 121 — and here's
the one Bill had pasted up in his bunk;
and here's the one Mac always sprung
when you tried to graft anything off
him; and here's the one Blondy wrote
and would never have sent in if we
hadn't told him it had the others skun
a mile — and look at it now! He finds
many old favorites, but looks for others
in vain. Where is that profound truth
about a chance meeting with a poilu
which ended
rie left at last with a gay "Bon chancel"
And all the cigarettes I had?
There were some little gasps in free
verse that one would not willingly let die :
An' she (She's my girl)
An' she said
And a wail about
Sick of the smell of billets,
Sick of the chow.
Want to leave France and put on long
pants.
Want to go now !
Of course the editors could not print all,
but if they could have taken a plebiscite
of the readers of "The Army Poets"
column as a basis for their selection,
they might have made the book even
more interesting than it is to both reader
and student.
The mood of "Yanks" is the mood
of the A. E. F., serious of deed and light
of speech. Sentiment where it occurs is
first of all sincere, then broken across by
a flash of realism or of humor. The
bugler who can no longer blow taps since
he played his buddy off ends his con-
fession with a pun;
I can't blow taps no more . . . but say I
I tapped a German skull the other day,
And that squares me!
It shows again in "Me — an' War Goin'
on—"
Me, that ain't a poet, growin' poetic . . .
Me- — a-murmurin' a prayer for Maggie,
An' stoppin' to laugh at Slim,
.^n' shoutin' "To the right of the road for the
Swoi-zant-canze !"
Them babies that raise such hell up the line,
An' marchin',
."Vn' marchin' by night.
An' sleepin' by day,
An' France,
An' red wine, '
An' me thinkin' o' home;
Me — a-leadin' a column, —
An' war goin' on I
which gives us also the rarer mood in
which the conscious artist has stepped
outside the man and each wonders at
the other. Again we find the artist
conscious but not self-conscious, his
mood truly lyric, and the product any-
thing but ballad-like:
The wise years saw him go from them.
Untaught by them, yet wise ;
He had but romped with the hoyden years,
Unwitting how time flies ;
Whose laughter glooms to wistfulness
At swift, undreamt good-byes.
We with the war ahead,
You who have held the line,
Laughing, have broken bread,
And taken wine.
If these are not hard-boiled, neither are
they so rare as one might suppose, nor
specially significant. A body of men like
our army overseas has its lyric poets,
and its scholars as well; he who writes
of "The Old Overseas Cap" seems to
know his Marlowe no less than his
Homer: Helen went a. w. o. 1. to Paris,
and
Shipping boards gave no trouble with quarrels
or slips:
The beauty of Helen had launched all the
ships.
But most of this verse is like folk-lore
in that it is lyrically anonymous, express-
ing none but communal feelings in the
communal phrase. There is little of the
"hero stuff," nothing of pomp and cir-
cumstance. For the most part it is rou-
tine turned into literature. The dough-
boy finds himself in
A world of
Hizzing (sic) bullets,
And mustard gas.
And cold, sleepless nights,
And no food for days,
And huns who cried
"Kamerad !"
(When their ammunition was gone),
And filthy clothes,
And cooties.
And cooties,
And cooties.
There he expresses in racy idiom his re-
action to the things that are real to him :
reveille, pie, mud, the girl at home,
camions, corn-willy, mother, the "8-40"
train, R. T. 0., kid sister, the bugler,
the guns, the censor, the campaign hat,
the little towns, the orphans of France.
For the most part, it was the folk who
made the poetry of the army in France,
and if students of balladry do not collect
and study the product they miss their
opportunity. The editors of the Stars
and Stripes sifted it first for the news-
paper, and now again for the book, and
for the general reader it is better so.
But the student of American popular
poetry would find in the heap of chaff
much to interest him. These pieces are
homeless, nameless, parentless waifs and
strays that drifted through camps and
trenches. A few of them have found
their way into print, many circulated
in manuscript, others, especially the
"high-kilted" ones, lived in memory and
passed by word of mouth, and the col-
lector gathered them as best he could
from oral rendition. Songs of the vari-
ous branches of the service are fairly
well-known :
The Ordnance, the Ordnance, we play with
T. N. T.
Dynamite is our delight, we take it with our
tea;
We play baseball with hand grenades, and cans
full of H. E.
We all drink nitro-glycerine when we go on
a spree.
There are those which celebrate the vari-
ous organizations, as that of "The Shock-
ing 144th," which declares that when
the news of its arrival in the trenches
reached Berlin
All the Reichstag tore their whiskers —
"Mein Gott ! the beans are spilled I"
More of the true ballad is in "The
Koamer's Romance in France," unsophisti-
cated, though with occasional journalistic
turn of phrase, as, in speaking of the
heroine.
We need not describe her beauty, for her
looks were rare to find,
As her eyes reflected loveliness were smiling
as they shined.
Her appearance favored America's type, for
not many years before
She had resided there and journeyed here in
the early days of war.
As an example of such sentiment as hard-
boiled poetry allows itself, we have the
lyric burst which ends
Just kindly remember wherever you roam
That Shakespeare was right, kid, there's no
place hke home.
or
Why keep me feeling lonesome, why keep me
feeling blue,
When you know that the thing that will cheer
me up is only a line from you?
Probably none exceeded in popularity
that which described how
With vigorous hop we go over the top
In the terrible Battle of Paris . . .
But say, on the square, I'd rather be there
On the Somme, on the Marne, or at Arras ;
For with vin blanc a snootful itis hard to be
neutral
In the famous Battle of Paris.
Jamian- 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[87
From veterans of the battle this senti-
ment receives hearty endorsement ;
Why six months here with conscience clear
would surely rate the Legion ;
Eight months or so the D. S. C. for fighting
in this region.
Of medals known for war alone you've seen
the great selection ;
If we survive the female drive we'll rate the
whole collection.
All was grist that came to the mill, from
the medical officer's prescription,
"Here's a cure for all your ills,
(Iodine and C. C. pills).
Just take this and you'll feel fine
(C. C. pills and iodine)."
down to the discharge papers :
As Willy-with-the-Wallops.
As Boy-that-Took-a-Chance,
You put a dozen scallops
In Kaiser Billy's pants . . .
And so we do not need you,
'Tis sad, hut even so ;
It cost a lot to feed you,
And we must let you go.
So, knowing this condition.
And with a silent sob,
We hand you our permission
To hustle for a job.
In such as these, there is little of high
seriousness, but they ring true, and that is
what they have in common with the best
of the verses in "Yanks." It is fitting
to close with lines from Pvt. Baukhage's
"November Eleventh," the last poem in
the volume.
We stood up and we didn't say a word ;
It felt just like when you have dropped your
pack
After a hike, and straightened up your back
And seem just twice as light as any bird. . . .
If you had listened then I guess you'd heard
A sort of sigh from everybody there.
But all we did was stand and stare and stare.
Just stare and stand and never say a word.
Though this stands above the level we
may accept it as true to type, for unde-
niably it is hard-boiled, and beyond ques-
tion it is poetry.
Robert P. Utter
The Art of the Etcher
Etchers and Etching. Chapters in the his-
tory of the art, together with technical ex-
planations of modern artistic methods. By
Joseph Pennell. (The Graphic Arts
Series.) New York : The Macmillan Co.
"TO" PENNELL is nothing if not al-
,1 ways interesting, instructive, stim-
ulating— and combative. These qualities
are in evidence whether he is engaged in
a newspaper controversy or writing a
book of technical and historical instruc-
tion such as the present one. Aggres-
siveness in the service of one's beliefs
may be an exceedingly useful quality,
and it often is with Mr. Pennell. But it
may also engender a temperamental
habit, with a suspicion of querulousness,
which runs to the facile picking out of
minor errors (as in the remark re W. C.
Brownell on page 6) and to a disconcert-
ing want of coherence, of balance. And
the obvious is at times stated with the
aplomb of a challenge.
Our author tells us that he has often
been' criticised for making statements
strongly, but that if one writes "what
one knows and believes, one cannot
write too strongly." Quite true, and
that's just why, when all is said, one
would not have missed reading the his-
torical portion of this book. But writ-
ing strongly is different from proving a
point by a downright inconsistency. In
one place, Diirer's "Cannon" and Rem-
brandt's "Three Trees" are contrasted in
order to make a comparison between
etching and engraving. Mr. Pennell
hastens to admit that "some say The
Cannon is etched, not engraved." But he
continues: "To me it looks like an en-
graving. Feels like it." Then, on page
145, comes the serene statement: "The
Cannon is said to be engraved, but I
have the courage to doubt it — the line is
so vital, so superb." Of course, the mat-
ter is really of no consequence, and the
Dlirer plate will be enjoyed one way or
the other.
Elision of names from the list of
etchers worthy of a place in the book
has been practised to a point described
in a statement overheard: "There is no
god but Jim, and Joe is his prophet."
However, the author's iconoclasm usually
has some basis of reason, even if not
fundamental. One cheerfully under-
scores objection to the over-rating of
artists of the past whose chief distinc-
tion is their antiquity. But to-day, also,
etching is to more than one an all too
facile affair. Here, too, to use Whis-
tler's phrase, art is "chucked under the
chin" by the passing artist-gallant.
That's the trouble with not a little etch-
ing to-day. Such passing flirtation will
not disclose the finer nature of etchir<^
to the artist.
Mr. Pennell's preface is a true over-
ture; it sounds the keynote of the opus
that follows. One notes, with satisfac-
tion, the admonition to the student to
start "by looking at good art intelli-
gently." That is the best sort of advice.
Good hand-books are necessary for him
who looks for guidance in the appreci-
ation of etching. They help him "get
there" (if they are the right kind), as
the guide-book does the traveler. But
the ultimately necessary thing is to
see for oneself. Montaigne's dictum is
applicable here, too: "A mere bookish
learning is a poor, paltry learning." In
a postscript to the preface, written at
the end of the four years during which
publication was held up by the war, Mr.
Pennell states a fact which many do not
yet realize — that new inspiration in art
is not to be hoped for from the war.
It was to be expected that so very able
a craftsman would lay due stress on the
qualities of the medium, on the funda-
mental necessity, for the artist, of un-
derstanding its limits and possibilities.
"A work of graphic art," said Bracque-
mond, "must bear on its face, undis-
guised, the character of the technique
by which it was produced." That is a
truth which well bears repetition, and
Mr. Pennell's inevitable insistence on it
naturally leads to the second and rather
more important part of his book. In
that he places the rich fruit of his
knowledge and experience before the
etcher, offering him a technical guide of
real value. Processes and tools (ground-
ing, re-grounding, needles, biting, print-
ing, ink, paper), allied processes such as
aquatint, sand-paper method, mezzotint,
monotypes, are described in a practical
and helpful manner, illuminated by the
author's illustrations. There are divert-
ing whacks, aside, at the "system" of
trials and states, as also at cataloguers
and curators and other little things that
get in Mr. Pennell's way.
The proofreading has apparently been
carefully done, and the book does not
show the typographical errors which
marked both editions of the very useful
volume on "Lithography" in this same
series.
As a piece of book-making the volume
bears evidence of great care, and the
reproduction of the prints (the photo-
gravures are all carefully credited to
F. A. Ringler & Co.) is exceedingly well
done — an American achievement that
need not fear European competition, and
that fills one with a pardonable satisfac-
tion.
The Run of the Shelves
MISS DOROTHY SCARBOROUGH is
a porcher. "Porcher" is a new
word. Why should not the English lan-
guage put forth a new tendril, particu-
larly when it is engaged in the vine-like
function of twining ornamentally around
porches? Miss Scarborough divides her
time between New York and Virginia.
If any one complains that New York is
uncomfortable and 'Virginia unexciting,
the answer is plain : Miss Scarborough's
comfort in New York is to idolize Vir-
ginia, and her excitement in Virginia is
to abominate New York. She has writ-
ten a book. The instant disquiet which
that solemnity called a book awakens in
all right-minded people is allayed by the
publishers (G. P. Putnam's Sons of that
City of Destruction, New York) in a
note which affirms that the book is a
"book of whimsy," and that the author
"loafs." Other comforts await us in the
"Foreword." It makes one's mouth
water to be told that, the book has been
"written with tongue acheek." It breaks
every rule of "unity, coherence, and con-
tinuity," as all books that have virtue
enough to be wicked should do. Rules
are like those paper-filled hoops in the
circus whose only end and aim is to show
the dash and grace of the equestrienne
88]
THE REVIEW
as she plunges headlong through their
ruptured tissue.
Miss Scarborough is the most amiable
of women. She has angers now and
then, but they are only the irresistible
little rages of a golden-hearted person
whose slumbers on the porch have been
interrupted by love-parleys on the part
of inconsiderate young people. She
loves Virginia (its beauty "wrings" her
heart); she loves landscape; she loves
birds; she loves even reptiles, at which
word the shy reviewer lifts his head m
proud reciprocation of her smile; she
loves negroes; she loves negro songs, and
their pleasant, glistening lines strew her
pages like streaks of maple syrup on the
hot cakes, smoking from the griddle of
which this toothsome book undoubtedly
consists. Speaking of eating— but who
can speak of eating but Miss Scarbor-
ough? She eats on the porch where,
amid other viands, she "devours the dew-
washed morning." "The joyous birds
slip singing down (her) throat," like Gi-
rondists singing on the way to execu-
tion. She recommends that the inspira-
tion of poets should be gastric, and her
playfulness on the nourishment of corpses
is simply irresistible. "The city person
is dead when he eats, and a corpse never
does properly assimilate his victuals.'
But this is not enough. As if to add
the last touch of diabolic completeness
to her equipment for the bewitchment
and bedevilment of her kind, she eats
slices of tvatermelon in her bath.
The examples already given suffice to
prove that Miss Scarborough is the jol-
liest person left on this woe-begone
planet. Her book is a "joyous, irre-
sponsible jumble" of things she likes,
and she has frisks and pirouettes that
are inimitable. "Lucia is the kind of
girl for whom everybody likes to do
things— particularly trousered every-
body." Such archness and such discre-
tion! "If either of you saw my ankles,"
said the agreeable Miss Mowcher to
James Steerforth and David Copperfield,
as she jumped upon the table, "I'll go
home and destroy myself." It is impos-
sible to take leave of a volume that has
all but made farewells impossible without
reiterating that it is the rosiest, coziest,
raciest, laziest, craziest, sunniest, fun-
niest, gypsiest, tipsiest book that the
bounty of destiny has ever permitted
the author of this note to meet.
The difficulty with which books are
published in our time is remarkable.
Hardly less remarkable is the ease with
which they are published. On our table
is a book by Mr. Robert Cortes Holliday,
entitled "Broome Street Straws," to
which the publishers (George H. Doran
Company) have been generous in the
accessories of thick paper, wide mar-
gins, and large print. The author of
these stories, sketches, and critiques, is
far from a stupid or brainless person.
Like many of us, he is bright when he
is lucky; and, again like many of us, he
is lucky sometimes and unlucky often.
The point is that he is like the rest of
us and why he should be lifted to the
rank of an accredited entertainer or in-
structor by the enshrinement m a book
of his casual and fleeting journalism is
a mystery which possibly only cashiers
could solve. As journalism these sketches
were flanked by work from other hands,
and they are the sort of sketches to
which the neighborhood of other work is
valuable. The hazards of continuity are
great. Why give us unmixed Holliday .'
There is good sketch-work in the "Ro-
mance of Destiny," and respectable, if
rather desultory, criticism in "Tarking-
tonapolis." There are also gayeties
which amuse without surprising us, and
serious critical dicta, like those on Mr.
Belloc and 0. Henry, which surprise
without amusing us. Mr. Belloc writes
the "best English now going in Eng-
land" ; 0. Henry's failure was "amazing.
The two assertions may keep each other
in countenance.
Mr Holliday calls Mr. Stephen Lea-
cock a "rotten bad critic." We pass the
discourtesy, more regrettable perhaps on
Mr Holliday's account than on Mr. Lea-
cock's. We pass "rotten" merely as
slang without objection, since that ob-
jection would be received by slang-users
as inverted homage. But we should like
to point out that "rotten" in the collo-
quial sense is slang decaying, slang worn
out, and as such should be obnoxious to
lovers of novelty in its own field. Slang
is the repudiation of antiquity; it is
often singularly blind to its own age. A
man may wear a circus suit, if he likes,
instead of the ordinary street costume,
but a circus suit is the very last costume
in which one can afford to be visibly
threadbare and dingy.
"L'Amiral de Grasse" (Paris: Pierre
Tequi) is interesting for two reasons.
The first, because it was Admiral de
Grasse who contributed largely to the
success at Yorktown, and the second be-
cause it brings out the little-known fact
that the Count's four daughters fled to
America at the time of the Terror, mar-
ried here, and, according to the list at
the end of this volume, have left over
two score descendants in the United
States, among whom are members of
such well-known families as the Living-
stons and Schuylers. The following un-
published letter from the author. Canon
Max Caron, of Versailles, gives evidence
that the old dislike for Lafayette still
exists in conservative circles in France.
Here is how I happened to write this life
of the great sailor. During a number ot
years chance, or Providence rather, caused me
to spend my two-months' vacation in the
Chateau de Tilly, which belonged to the Ad-
miral, and where he spent his closing years.
In the church of the village of Til y was de-
oosited as was asked in his will, the Counts
heart So, naturally, I was led to examine
into the career of this man, as everything in
the chateau and the church spoke to me of
him And the result was that I arrived at
this conclusion— that it is much more to Ad-
miral de Grasse than to General Lafayette
that the United States owe their liberty. And
vet everybody celebrates the latter and nobody
speaks of the former! The real truth lies
here— the then Minister of Foreign Affairs
Vergennes, conceived the thought of an armed
intervention on the part of France in aid of
the insurgent Americans; Louis XVI tar-
nished the means and Count de Grasse car-
ried out the plan. If I have succeeded m
proving this, as I think I have, I have done
a good thing for my country and for America.
It may be the vogue of the rhymed
advertisement— those little verses about
somebody's soup and somebody else's
cough lozenges which so delightfully
sing themselves into one's memory—
that has led Mr. Emile Berliner to put
forth in the interest of hygienic im-
provement some illustrated "Health Jin-
gles" under the title of "Muddy Jim" :
A naughty lad was Muddy Jim,
He hated soap and water,
Nice little girls wouldn't speak to him,
Tho' he wished and thought they ought to.
Jim, it appears, was rather too— too Bol-
shevik in his personal habits. But to our
thinking the treatment which the nice
little girls meted out to Jim was pre-
cisely calculated to confirm him in his
evil tendencies. Their behavior will in
all probability goad him on to violence.
Further on in the book, germs are held
up to scorn and derision. Very danger-
ous. Who can say what harm germs may
be capable of if they are treated in this
contumelious fashion? Then comes a
picture of a trim housemaid sweeping
a room. Why put such absurd notions
into a child's head? It leads to things
like this :
Mother, will you tell me why
We are told to "swat the fly"?
Yes, my dear, because it brings
Dirt, disease, and filthy things.
How much better to tell the child that flies
should be reasoned with, not "swatted"?
Indeed, we are quite prepared to find
near the end of the book a column
of smart-looking soldiers following the
American flag. This is the sort of result
such misguided propaganda inevitably
leads to. Or, last picture of all, accom-
panied by an apparently innocent verse
in praise of sleep, behold the fairy. Cap-
italism, lulling a child-like society into
forgetfulness of its wrongs. We are
hopeful that so reactionary a volume will
be suppressed before it has the effect of
bringing in the revolution.
For those who like literature written
in the "Spearmint" dialect the first pari
of Ring W. Lardner's "Own Your Owr
Home" (Bobbs Merrill) is funny. Thert
is an unfailing source of humor, if oti(
chooses to look at it that way, in th(
Fanuary 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[89
ribulations that beset the man who pays
he bills and does the worrying inciden-
al to the building of a house. And
lere the language helps. But the latter
part of the story recounting the efforts
of a detective to break into society are
not very funny. All, however, of Fon-
taine Fox's little illustrations are.
Our American Shoe Men
{By a Staff Correspondent)
WE produce like gods and distribute
like brutes," says an English
s^riter, with whom I do not agree, for I
hink that we do neither. Rather, I
hink, our organization for distribution,
vlthough less consciously developed than
;hat of production, is on the whole quite
IS good through its being a survival of
nyriads of individual instances of the
jxercise of common sense in the adapta-
ion of means to an end.
But we must all agree that the problem
)f distribution is well up-stage and
learing the spotlight. It is not surpris-
ng, therefore, that a gathering of retail
iierchants like that of the National Con-
•ention of Shoe Dealers at Boston last
veek drew to the big hall of Mechanics'
building a considerable number who
vere not of the calling.
One must become a little accustomed
0 the convention jazz of electric lights,
if badges, and of the clatter of group-
ngs and greetings before it is possible
' eally to take notice, for this visible glare
!nd audible clamor is not the conven-
ion.
They are not themselves so par-
icularly well-shod, these shoe dealers —
pparently all that is shoe .selling is not
old.
There is a programme, of course,
eard throughout by earnest souls, and
ireated with the utmost respect by all:
liey take their programmes seriously,
lese conventions of American business
len, but a little stiffly, somewhat as the
ewiy rich take their evenings at a
eethoven concert. There are thought-
i\ papers, thoughtfully discussed, but
le programme is not it.
I One might judge from all the boom-
jig of localities by patriotic sons that
lie next year's meeting place was the
rime object of the convention. Or,
jjain, one might think that the election
l' next year's officers was the principal
iterest. These certainly had their
lace in the sun, but were not it.
The palpable effort of manufacturers
create a nice, optimistic buying spirit
inong these kings of the fitting parlor,
ho hold our feet if not our fates in
e hollow of their hands, was also suf-
iiently in evidence — but still was not it.
JThe something that was the spirit of
lis convention refuses to admit that
•'y of these brass-band elements are
JDre than adventitious. Slowly it takes
^irm in our minds as a message ■ — a mes-
*.?e gathered from impalpable things,
hm the general atmosphere of integ-
jf
rity, from the careful explanations of
the processes of shoe-making and shoe-
machine making, of methods of jobbing
and of retailing — a message to the Amer-
ican people that American business is
sound at the core, and that it may be
counted on to meet its problems with
courage, honesty, and good sense.
Now, shoe manufacturing and selling
happens to be one of the most highly or-
ganized of American industries. No-
where have the triumphs of American
inventive genius been greater, American
superiority of method and process more
manifest, and nowhere are the manifold
phases of industry more finely correlated
— shoe-machine making with shoe man-
ufacturing, shoe manufacturing with
jobbing, jobbing with retailing. And,
very significantly, a subject prominently
discussed at this convention was that of
possible closer relations between the re-
tailers of different industries; that is to
say, more and better organization.
There has been, and is, a persistent
group of agitators in American life who
would convince us that all of this organi-
zation is bad, that it defies law, fosters
an insatiate corporate greed, and ex-
ploits the public. The facts do not seem
to bear out this contention.
War prices, and (what is worse) post-
war prices that have given us our new
swear-word, profiteering (we may soon
be writing p g, as we write d — n;
•for we are enunciating it with increasing
sulphurosity), are the results of factors
too numerous and too complicated to be
glibly ascribed to this or that single
cause. Admitting that the term infla-
tion covers most of the underlying sin,
there is still a goodly portion from
Adam's fall in other forces, and in none
more certainly than in the disorganiza-
tion of business that has resulted from
the sudden entry and sudden departure
of governments as customers.
Regular profits are lucrative — more
so in the long run than irregular ones —
but they tend toward a perpetual paring
down of excrescences. The regular or-
ganization of business automatically
tends to increase service, reduce costs,
limit margins of profit. It is in the
state of disorganization that speculation
flourishes, and with it that sister of un-
certainty, our prcfane friend, profiteer-
ing. A return to normal organization
carries with it a quick death to specu-
lation, and a rapid return to normal
service and prices.
And after all, what but organization
do our overheated uplifters and social-
ists desire? Surely, that, and that only,
but with this important difference:
They desire a form of organization
drawn up on paper (by themselves, of
course), an artificial rule-of-three or-
ganization to replace one which has
grown up through the generations of
our free industrial life. That is as if
we should cut down all our growing fir
trees and replace them with those little
made-in-Germany Christmas trees of
waxed paper and wires — how regular
their branches, and how very green their
leaves! But I am sure that America
will always prefer the free-growing
type that has its roots in our own soil
and is not German-made, nor grown in
the hotbeds of European discontent, and
whose branches are always moist with
the sap of new growth and healthy vigor.
Of this higher type of organization
the shoe industry of America is an ef-
fective example. A clerical gentleman
once differentiated two denominations of
Christians by saying that the one car-
ried on its national concerns in the spirit
of a village parish while the other car-
ried on its village parishes in a national
spirit. The shoe industry is of this lat-
ter type — largely, I suppose, because of
the permeating influence of that great
industrial organization by which its
shoe-making machinery is manufactured,
leased, kept in order and always abreast
of the inventive skill of the age. Out
of this continuing relation a spirit has
developed that creates a living organism
rather than a paper-made organization.
Before we go to displacing this growth
of years, with its silent but effective dis-
ciplines, let us be very sure that we
understand and appreciate it. Possibly
We may come to the conclusion that it is
as much better than anything we could
sit down and draw up on paper as the
Constitution of England is better than
More's Utopia.
But we are arrived at ladies' night,
and the motor sight-seeing tours; the
place for the next annual meeting is se-
lected; the officers for the coming year
are all chosen; the jaded hotel clerks and
bell-boys are listless and lazy; only the
bill-clerk is very busy and very smiling,
and the home-going is near. The con-
vention is over, but we have learned a
lesson. We have sat in with five thou-
sand as sensible, as brave, as honest-
souled business men as the world ever
bred and — blow hot, blow cold— we are
not to be panic-stricken by the rantings
of the business-baiting press. And shoes
will come down in price? Well, these
men no more than others can re-create
in a day the wastes of war, or set at
naught the effects of world-wide infla-
tion; but this much in all soberness may
be said — the organization of the shoe in-
dustry in America is such as to give rea-
son to believe that it will be among the
first to pass on to the public the benefits
of bettering conditions.
90]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 37
Drama
French Plays— Carlo Liten
and "LesBleus del' Amour"
NEW YORK has not yet awaked to the
value of the five-week season of
French and Belgian plays which M. Carlo
Liten is producing in the original tongue
at the Lenox Little Theatre at 52-54 East
78th Street. The repertory ranges from
Verhaeren's "Cloitre," which has bulk
and significance, through Richepm's
"Flibustier" which has bulk (in modera-
tion) without significance, and Maeter-
linck's "L'Intruse," which has signifi-
cance without bulk, to Halevy's "L'Ete
de la Saint Martin," which possesses
neither bulk nor significance. All these
plays, I hasten to add, have a place in
literature; I restrict the term "signifi-
cant" to works that illuminate the march
of tendency. Personally, I should have
thanked M. Liten if he had given us
either six full-length and full-strength
classic masterpieces or six modern plays
of the originality and distinction of
Verhaeren's "Cloitre."
"Le Cloitre" is a play which, in the
process of gestation, seems to have un-
dergone something akin to a change of
species. The feeling which I expressed
some time ago stays with me to this
hour: that this play is a comedy which
has been seized and carried off by a
tragedy or melodrama. The comedy is
the more valuable, even the more inter-
esting, of the two; but the tragedy or
melodrama has the physical force on its
side, and the spectator is caught up and
swept along in its train. It is as if a
man were looking at some fine etchings
when a conflagration, breaking out in the
next street, lit up his windows with its
feverish glare. He might sincerely pre-
fer the etchings, but against his will his
eyes would be held by the conflagration.
"Comedy" in this case must be taken
in a rather special sense— the sense of a
play, not humorous, but satirical, and
tending only by accident to a catastrophic
issue. Verhaeren has painted a worldly
cloister; he has charged it with the con-
tentions, jealousies, ambitions, master-
ships, proper, though not peculiar, to the
world. The world is, after all, an emana-
tion from our hearts, and the cloister,
in shutting the world out, shuts the heart
in. Verhaeren has done this thing in a
high way. His severity is respectful;
his exposure is considerate. These men
have behind them a lofty past symbolized
in a noble dwelling, and the dignity which
has forsaken their aims still clings to
their manners. Respect does not stop
here. The ancient high spirit persists
in a young brother called Mark, a recluse
from the world within the cloister no
less absolutely than from the world with-
out. In Dom Mark's voice, insisting that
civil crime shall answer to the civil law,
the cloister judges and condemns its own
sophistications. As Spenser, following
Du Bellay, said, "Only Rome o'er Rome
hath victory."
So much for the high comedy— the
satire. An upheaval throws the play out
of balance. One of its elements, which
is. or should be, merely illustrative or
instrumental, mutinies, as it were, and
draws to itself the mastery and head-
ship of the play. One of the monks in
this cloister is a parricide, who has al-
lowed an innocent man to be executed
in his place. The interest of his .remorse
and confession, though cheap beside that
of the satire, is insistent and overwhelm-
ing; Verhaeren himself is subject to its
deflecting force. There is in his own
eloquence a streaming quality, a quality
suggestive of flame in wind, to which
the appeal of convulsive terror and re-
morse is irresistible.
The other plays may be treated more
briefly. Edmond Rostand is captivating
in the one-act piece, "Les deux Pierrots,"
which means a gay and a sad Pierrot
who agree only as to the desirability of
Columbine. The smile and the tear have
each its gleam, and Rostand could catch
gleams anywhere. The one-act play "Le
Caprice" shows Alfred de Musset at
once in his most virtuous and his most
frivolous mood. Was virtue a levity for
Alfred de Musset? "Polypheme," in
two acts, by Albert Samain, is one of
those neo-classic pieces which give more
pleasure to Frenchmen than to Anglo-
Saxons. The climate of Versailles is
more auspicious for these things; in
Windsor Park or Central Park, the'
classic deities shiver.
The company is able. M. Liten's con-
trol of an exquisitely modulated voice
is absolute. Tone is fitted to feeling,
like word to meaning, like glove to hand.
An objector in an acrid moment might
grumble that the whole process resembled
a trying-on of gloves ; but even that pro-
cess has its witchery when the hand is
shapely and the glove delicate. The point
of the criticism would lie in the implica-
tion that M. Liten is a student of emo-
tions rather than of characters. So far
as I could judge (the pursuit of the
hurrying French tongue by the laggard
American ear is a race between hare and
tortoise) he was even better in the reci-
tation of lyrics than in the impersonation
of men. His Balthazar was an affair of
vivid culminations and passive intervals.
His Polypheme, strong in its look of
ravage and desolation, was almost too
mobile, in mind and voice, for a Cyclops.
Mile. Yvonne Garrick of the Comedie
Frangaise quite conquered me in two of
her three roles; she made laughter ex-
quisite in Pierrot, and her Galatea was
an embodied April. M. Andre Chotin's
portrayal of Dom Mark had the single-
ness and purity of a star.
M. Romain Coolus is a playwright who,
in "Une Femme passa," showed ability
and even conscience. In "Les Bleus de
I'Amour," a recent offering at the The-
atre Parisien, the conscience absents
itself, and the ability is— unobtrusive,
touched with unconcern. M. Coolus is
not testing his rivets ; he is not tighten-
ing his knots. Comic virtue is evident
in certain passages, and the wit is redo-
lent of Paris. It is an idle, shifting,
strolling life which the three acts repre-
sent, and the temper of M. Coolus is for
the moment in exact harmony with his
theme.
This assertion may seem questionable
in the light of the fact that the play
centres in a French countess who, child-
less herself, may be briefly classified aa
an amateur of eugenics. The family
must be continued; her niece must marry
her nephew; the marriage must be pro-
ductive. Sureties must be obtained be-
forehand for the fertility of a younj
man who is a rougher Hippolytus, de
lighting in the chase and ignorant ol
women. When this young man decline
to respond to various suggestions of hi:
aunt, the last of which is that he shal
seduce her own maid, she contrives i
plan for sending him to Paris under th
escort of an actress of doubtful reputa
tion, whom, in the furtherance of thes
amiable projects, she invites to her ow
lunch-table.
The American observer of Frenc
manners is prepared for much, but h
is unable to view, with perfect equf
nimity, this interest of highborn Frencl
women in what Mr. Chesterton one
pointedly called the "human stud,
There was a time when French coui
tesses were the exemplars of breeding i
another sense. These are grave depa
tures, and the only excuse for departur(
is — arrivals. One should go all the wa
The countess refuses to make prelim
nary tests of the fertility of her niec
I submit that a woman who sacrific
convention to science in the case of tl
male, but allows convention to super.se(
science in the more uncertain and ther
fore more important case of the femal
is neither a genuine French countess n
an honest stockbreeder. Taken serious!
the countess's plan becomes farcical;
M. Coolus, on the other hand, propoun
it as a mere joke, I am lucky or unlucl
in an ancestry and training which obli
me to take that joke rather serious
It is impossible for me to view it
a whimsicality among other whimsica
ties. I can not laugh at it between r
laugh at the rusticities of a provinc
hunter and my laugh at the polite acerl
ties of a submissively protesting stewa;
This matter is for me a strong liqu^
a sort of wood alcohol, which, if serv
(Continued on page 92)
January 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[91
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Two series of his plays have been brought out
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Attractive offerings are made during the Midivinter Book Season.
THE REVIEW
(Continued from page 90) ^
at all, can not be properly served on
the same tray with the lemonade and the
^"riiTeVresence of other material and the
light and tripping gait of the perform-
ance relieve these crudities m some de-
cree. The acting was generally satis-
factory M. Gustave Degreziane as
SiJIJd was happy in a smile tha
avowed and disavowed a thousand errors ,
M Andre Franky was a good woodsman;
and M. Robert Casadesus brought dex-
terity and moderation to the portrayal of
the crabbed steward. Bjgo^ne. ^^^^^^
Music
The Chicago Opera Season—
• 'Zaza' ' at the MetropoHtan
THE death of the distinguished man-
ager of the Chicago Opera Associ-
ation, Maestro Cleofonte Campanmi, will
not iA any way prevent the execution of
til Sans he had made. Under the man-
agement of Mr. Herbert Johnson an
American, and with the artistic aid of
Maestro Marinazzi, formerly of the
Scala, on Monday next the smgers
and musicians of the company will begin
another season at the Lexington-a sea-
son which, at least in some respects, bids
fair to be of quite unusual brilliancy.
For the first night we are to have a
ereat revival of Bellini's "Norma. In
days gone by this "Norma" was as pop-
Sir as "Carmen," "Faust," and "Lohen-
grin" were later. Those who imagine
that its former spell is gone may be as-
tonished (as I was one night in Venice,
a few years ago) to find that, rightly
sung, with such an artist as Raisa in the
title part, it can still thrill one. Few
singers have the qualities required for
the chief role in "Norma," which calls,
not for the graces and embellishments ot
the coloratura style, but for sustained
and lovely singing and great dignity.
Of the three novelties announced tor
the first crowded week at the Lexington,
one is the "Madame Chrysantheme of
Andr6 Messager. The story which Pierre
Loti told so cruelly forms the foundation
of the libretto. It was invented long
before the "Madama Butterfly" we love
80 well. And Messager was younger--
at his best, indeed— when he composed
his score. The part of the poor, touch-
ing little heroine, the forsaken Geisha
girl, will be interpreted, in the right
way, the Japanese way, by Tamaki
Hard on the heels of "Madame Chrys-
antheme" will come another long-
awaited work— "L'Heure Espagnole, of
which the translated title should be
"Spanish Time," of Ravel, best known
here by his popular concert works, and
more especially by his "Sheherazade"
°^A sad significance attaches to the
promise of the third novelty amiounced
for the first week, the "Rip Van Winkle
of the late Reginald de Koven. This
"Rip Van Winkle," like the operetta of
Lecocq, is said to take liberties with the
legend That may not matter much,
though, if the English words and Amer-
ican plot devised for the libretto by
Percy MacKaye prove to be suited to the
purposes of opera.
Besides all these new works we shall
have"Pelleaset Melisande." "Paghacci,
"L'Amore dei Tre Re" (with Mary Gar-
den, for the first time here as the ro-
mantic heroine), "Un Ballo m Mas-
chera," and "Madama Butterfly. The
Metropolitan will have to guard its lau-
rels if this programme is carried out.
Among the other works we may expect
in the succeeding month of opera at
the Lexington may or may not be Mon-
temezzi's latest effort (with d Annun-
zio's book) "La Nave," Camille dEr-
langer's "Aphrodite," Halevy s La
Juive " Meyerbeer's "L'Af ricaine, Mas-
senet's "Herodiade," "Le Jongleur." and
"Thais " Carpentier's ever-welcome
"Louise." Verdi's "Falstaff." Ambroise
Thomas's "Hamlet." Gounod's Faust
and "Romeo et Juliette," Bizet s Car-
men " Leroux's "Le Chemineau." Henri
Fevrier's "Monna Vanna" and two new
ballets by American composers, the "Bou-
dour" of the critic, Felix Borowski, and
"The Birthday of the Infanta" (after
Oscar Wilde) of John Alden Carpenter.
To interpret this startling and exact-
ing repertory the Chicago company will
bring us far-famed singers. Among
them will be those two admirable bari-
tones, Titta Ruffo, long a god of the
Italians, and Carlo Galeffi. who is said
to rival him; Edward Johnson, an Amer-
ican tenor who. under the stage name
of Giovanni, has become popular at the
Scala; that master of bel canto, Ales-
sandro Bonci, whom some have ranked
above the great Caruso; Mary Garden, m
her own field still unequalled; Rosa
Raisa, of the full and mighty tones;
Galli-Curci, the best coloratura soprano
living, and Alessandro Dolci, an enga-
ging tenor.
The most recent addition to the reper-
tory of the Metropolitan is the "Zaza'
of Leoncavallo (who, with no small skill,
adapted the libretto from the once well-
knovra play produced by Mr. Belasco).
This "Zaza," though it has no great im-
portance, will appeal to those who love
life and movement, wit and humor,
on the stage, varied by pathos and occa-
sional violent outbursts. The composer
has, in a humble way, made use of
music as a handmaid of drama and com-
edy on the "Falstaff" plan. In his first
act (which, by long odds, is the best) he
has the deftness which delights us in the
"Segreto di Susanna" of Wolf-Ferrari.
His second act is rather tame and color-
less The third and fourth acts both con-
tain effective episodes. But nowhere does
this work approach the level reached, at
times, in "Pagliacci."
The appeal of "Zaza" will be made here
by the play (for it is really a good play—
of a bad kind, maybe— set cleverly to
music). The plot is largely an unvar-
nished tale of harlotry. And in the cen-
tre of it stands the striking figure of
the painted "heroine." She is an "ar-
tist" of the vulgar music halls, a crea-
ture of whims, of passionate freaks and
impulses. As an exponent of this mere-
tricious drab (she is that or nothing)
Geraldine Farrar fairly took ones
breath away. She was as contenting
(or distressing) in her stormy moods as
in her courtesan coquetries (which lef
little to the imagination) . In the much
talked-of scene for Zaza and the chih
of Dufresne, her lover, she awoke need
less sympathy. Her attitudes and pose
were audacious— now and then, mdeec
too audacious for the opera boards. Am
when the chance occurred, she sang me
lifluously.
Charles Henry Meltzer
Reginald de Koven
THE sudden passing of Reginald (
Koven, a few days ago, came as
shock to those who liked him as a ma
and to a host whom he had pleased :
a composer of light songs and operas,
was my privilege in other days to sha
with him, as dramatic critic of t
World, the work of chronicling the d
ings of the stage. His field was mus
In later years I helped him in his fight
a long, hard fight— for the employme
of our English tongue in opera. Both
the theatre and in the press-room ' R<
gie" de Koven, as we called him, h
warm friends. .
Neither as critic nor as musician did
pretend to be a futurist, or even a m-
ernist. To him the Schoenbergs, J
Stravinskys, and the Regers of th
restless times were puzzling prob ei
To him good music meant above all '
thing— melody. , . . ,
It is chiefly as a writer of tunt
songs that most will think of him.
His most successful work was Ko
Hood " The production of that cha
ing comic opera, in 1890, did more t
vastly more ambitious efforts to impi
the public taste. By "Robin Hood, v
its old English flavor, he may live h
for some time to come; not by his i
terbury Pilgrims." his one claini
fame as a composer of "grand oper
Toward the end of his career. Keg
de Koven was a persistent advocat
the creation in this country of that m
(Continued on page 94)
January 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[98
"Winter's
for Books"
— The Review
"Winter evenings-
the world shut out—
with less of ceremony
the gentle Shake-
speare enters."
We think of Charles
Lamb as a man im-
mersed in books every
month of the year.
Yet winter was his
real time for reading,—
"the world shut out."
In warmer weather
he makes this note:
"Walked sixteen
miles yesterday. I
can't read much in
summer time."
EDWARD T. DEVINE
Associate Editor of the Survey
Will lecture on the following subjects:
THE THREE R'S
Reaction: Res'olution: Reconstruction
INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL UNREST
Remedies and Proposals
AMERICANIZATION
True and False
For dates and terms address Miss Brandt,
Room 1204, 112 E. Nineteenth St., New York
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94]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 37
(Continued from page 92)
needed institution, a National Conserv-
ator>'- For ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^'^ things we
owe him thanks.
Though he was not, in any sense, a
great musician, he had his place in the
wide field of music. His death, soon
after the production of his "Rip Van
Winkle" by the Chicago Opera Com-
pany, has left the world a little poorer
for his loss.
C. H. M.
Books and the News
The Theatre
IN the middle of the theatrical season it
may be pleasant to see some sugges-
tions for reading about the theatre —
criticism, general information, and rec-
ollections of the always golden past.
These books are mainly about the Amer-
ican stage.
To begin with memories of older days,
Mj^rj' C. Crawford's "The Romance of
the American Theatre" (Little, 1913)
will be found interesting, as will the
volumes by two veterans, J. R. Towse's
"Sixty Years of the Theatre; An Old
Critic's Memories" (Funk, 1916), and
William Winter's "The Wallet of Time"
(Moffat, 1913). The alliterative title
of "The Diary of a Daly Debutante"
(Duffield, 1910) ought to be attractive;
it is by Dora Knowlton Ranous. Those
to whom the names of William Warren
and Annie Clarke mean anything will be
glad to be reminded of Kate Ryan's "Old
Boston Museum Days" (Little, 1915).
For general criticism and comment
there is Richard Burton's "The New
American Drama" (Crowell, 1913), not
light reading; and, for contrast, George
J. Nathan's "Comedians AH" (Knopf,
1919), which may be named as a sample
of his books about the stage, in all of
which there is a little meat and a great
deal of tabasco sauce. Despite Mr. Na-
than, the leading American writers on
the technique of the drama are Brander
Matthews and George P. Baker. The
former's newest volume is "The Prin-
ciples of Playmaking" (Scribner, 1919).
Prof. Baker's "Dramatic Technique"
(Houghton) appeared last year. Gordon
Craig writes essays on all kinds of the-
atrical subjects in "The Theatre
Advancing" (Little, 1919). Another,
by Mr. Craig, "upon a special sub-
ject, is "On the Art of the Theatre"
(Browne's Bookstore). Walter Prich-
ard Eaton's "Plays and Players" (Stew-
art & Kidd, 1916) has some general
essays on the theatre, as well as com-
ments upon certain plays. Ludwig Lew-
isohn in "The Modem Drama; An Es-
say in Interpretation" (Huebsch, 1915),
Archibald Henderson in "The Changing
Drama" (Holt, 1914), A. B. Walkley in
"Drama and Life" (Brentano, 1908),
and Clayton Hamilton in "Problems of
the Playwright" (Holt, 1917) deal in
all manner of subjects about the theatre,
but chiefly in dramatic criticism. It is
hardly necessary to remind the read-
er of James Huneker's "Iconoclasts"
(Scribner, 1905), a book about great con-
temporary figures among dramatists.
Persons interested in special develop-
ments in the theatre will find these de-
scribed in Thomas H. Dickinson's "The
Insurgent Theatre" (Huebsch, 1917),
with its essays on the little theatres, the
"dramatic laboratories," etc., in Con-
stance Mackay's "The Little Theatre in
the United States" (Holt, 1917), Percy
Mackaye's "The Civic Theatre" (Kenner-
ley, 1912), Alice M. Herts's "The Chil-
dren's Educational Theatre" (Harper,
1911), and Huntley Carter's "The The-
atre of Max Reinhardt" (Palmer, 1914),
David Belasco's "The Theatre Througl
Its Stage Door" (Harper, 1909) is va^
ried and entertaining. Montrose J
Moses in "The American Dramatist'
(Little, 1911) has written a book of ref
erence that is also readable, with its
chapters on early playwriting in th(
United States and discussions of th(
work of the present.
Edmund Lester Pearson
IDEAL MID-WINTER READING
BRENTANO S recommend
Seldwyla Folks
By GOTTFRIED KELLER
A collection of three of the best tales of this famous
Swiss writer selected because of their idyllic charm and
literary distinction. Gottfried Keller, artist, scholar and
author, is renowned throughout Europe as the foremost
Swiss writer. Americans will welcome this opportunity to
become acquainted with him at first hand. $i.75-
Tales of a Cruel
Country
By GERALD CUMBERLAND
Author of "Set Down in Malice"
These are rugged tales of a rugged country. Mr. Cum-
berland knows his Greece, having lived there. He has instilled
into his stories the beauty of Ancient Athens and the mena-
cing ruthlessness of barren hills and jagged mountains. You
will find here naked life, wild and untamed, and dominated
by passion. A man's book. $1.75-
At all bookstores. Postage extra.
Publishers Brentano's
27th St. and
5th Ave , N.Y.
Richard Aldrich in "The New York Times"
"A charmingly easy and persuasive style ... his views
are consistently squared with high ideals . . . much of
. little known anecdote that is extremely entertaining . ._ .
complete, organically continuous, vivid and informing.
H. T. Finck in "The Post"
"Invaluable for reference . . . entertaining to all lovers
of opera."
W. J. Henderson in "The Sun"
"The mass of information in its opulent pages . . . its
clear, simple and merciless arraignment of the sinister
powers ... an array of incontrovertible facts."
J. G. Huneker in "The World"
"He mixes his facts with his lovable personality . . .
He knows opera in New York as no one else."
W. H. Chamberlain in "The Tribune"
"Rich in personal reminiscences and anecdotes ... a
monumental achievement"
KrehhieVs
More Chapters
of Opera
With 40 portraits, full repcri yrics and index,
xvi + 474 pp. Larcjc limo. $3-50.
Henry Holt & Co., new york
Attractive offerings are made during the Midwinter Book Season.
/
c^i,
THE REVIEW
Vol. 2, No. 38
New York, Saturday, January 31, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment
95
Editorial Articles:
Hoover 98
New York's "Town Meeting Hall" 99
Holland and the ex-Kaiser 100
Still Fumbling with Russia 101
A Glimmer of Hope for Ireland.- By
Herbert L. Stewart 102
Can Germany Recover? By Dr. Paul
Rohrbach 104
Correspondence 105
Cooperating with the Cooperatives.
By Jerome Landfield 107
Book Reviews:
Beneficent Results of a Wicked War 108
Kipling — First and Last Impressions 109
Folks and Folk 111
Beyond the Fields We Know 111
The Run of the Shelves 112
The New French President. By Othon
Guerlac 113
Einstein and the Man in the Street. By
Arthur Gordon Webster 114
Music :
The New York Opera War — Hints
to Librettists. By Charles Henry
Meltzer 115
Books and the News:
Spiritism. By Edmund Lester Pearson 118
jTN the public mind, as distinguished
*- from the schemes and combina-
tions of political managers, the two
'names that are far and away fore-
most in the Presidential field at this
time are those of General Wood and
Mr. Hoover. In this circumstance
;here is ground for genuine comfort,
iit a time when comfort in the con-
;emplation of our political state is a
/ery scarce article indeed. For, what-
ever else may be said about either of
hese candidacies, they both rest fun-
lamentally on great and rare achieve-
nent. It was General Wood's admi-
■able work in the regeneration of
Juba that was the basis of his subse-
Kuent career, as well as the primary
iause of his high place in public
fsteem. And his hold on that place
jvas signally confirmed by the invalu-
'ble part which his foresight, energy,
nd efficiency played in giving the
country some degree of preparedness
for its entry into the great war. Mr.
Hoover's emergence as a possible
candidate for the Presidency arises
still more distinctly from the exertion
of splendid administrative powers in
momentous work successfully accom-
plished. In contrast with the night-
mare of political impotence exhibited
by both parties at Washington, these
things shine out with special lustre,
and it must be a solace to all patriotic
Americans to think that they are ade-
quately appreciated by the nation.
That both the men were from the
outset staunch supporters of the
Allied cause in Europe is an addi-
tional reason for satisfaction, and one
by no means without importance in
its bearing upon the future.
"pETTER late than never is the
■'-' thought that comes uppermost
when one has read the sober, concise,
and straightforward statement made
by the Secretary of Labor on the sub-
ject of deportations of members of
the Communist Party of America. If
such a statement had been made by
Attorney General Palmer at the time
of the recent wholesale arrests, a
great deal of mischief would have
been averted. The worst of the raid-
ing business, when it is conducted in
a sensational way, is that nobody
knows where it is going to end. With
no definite indication of the legal
basis of the proceeding, and with
many outward signs of high-handed-
ness and lack of discrimination, it
encourages both the extremists who
favor a policy of ruthless repression
and the opposite kind of extremists
who acclaim it as proof of the accusa-
tion, which they have long been mak-
ing, that we are already guilty of
oppression that puts America into
the class of the Russia of the Tsars.
Secretary Wilson's statement shows
that the proceeding against the mem-
bers of the Communist party was
strictly in accordance with the law,
and it gives everyone the means of
knowing what he must do to avoid
coming into collision with the law.
Nevertheless, the question remains
whether the best judgment was exer-
cised in the application of the law,
and also to what extent, in the prose-
cution of the cases, administrative
discretion should temper its execu-
tion. No statute of this nature is in
practice carried out with literal ex-
actness. The matter is one of polit-
ical expediency quite as much as of
law. If enough is done to serve for
warning and prevention, the purpose
of the legislation is achieved.
CEVERAL weeks ago, we referred
^ to "definite and serious charges
of misconduct" made by Harvey's
Weekly against Norman Hapgood,
late Minister to Denmark. Shortly
after that, Mr. Hapgood replied to the
charges in a full and straightforward
statement of the facts in the case.
The rejoinder to this statement made
by Harvey's Weekly fails to sustain
the charges either by adducing any
substantial evidence of its own, or by
pointing out any untruthfulness in
Mr. Hapgood's statement. The sinis-
ter interpretation which it seeks to
put on the facts admitted by him we
see no reason whatever for accepting.
"T BELIEVE," says George Wash-
-*- ington, in a statement which ac-
companies an editorial in a New York
newspaper pouring forth its denunci-
ation of our "iniquitous treaty" for
many reasons that are vague, but one
that is explicitly stated ("because it
refused self-determination to peo-
ples"), "I believe it is the sincere
wish of United America to have noth-
ing to do with the political intrigues
or squabbles of European nations."
The credo, just as it is stated, is as
96]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 38
good to-day as on the day it was
uttered; but it does not seem to
occur to the newspaper in question
that if there is a single situation in
Europe which at the moment deserves
to be described as a squabble it is
precisely that Irish business into
which some more or less American
noses are so fond of obtruding them-
selves. On the other hand, it is absurd
to pretend that everything that hap-
pens in Europe is by definition "polit-
ical intrigues and squabbles" with
which we have no concern — the war
and its consequences, for example.
TF American statesmen knew Bol-
■*• shevik Russia as well as Bolshevik
statesmen know America, how simple
it would be to set everything to
rights ! Look at this admirable state-
ment, in a note sent by Commissar
for Foreign Affairs Chicherin to
President Wilson October 24, 1918:
In your country, Mr. President, the banks
and the industries are in the hands of such a
small group of capitahsts that, as your personal
friend. Colonel Robins, assured us, the arrest
of twenty heads of capitalistic cliques and the
transfer of control, which by characteristic
capitalistic methods they have come to possess,
into the hands of the masses of the world is
all that would be required to destroy the prin-
cipal source of new wars.
Just how much of the merit of this
wonderful summary of American eco-
nomic conditions is to be ascribed to
Chicherin and how much to Ray-
mond Robins, it is impossible to say.
The prosperity, not only of a jest,
but also of other interesting com-
munications, lies in the ear of him
who hears it. But while in this
instance the ear was a good one, it
is safe to say that the tongue did its
fair share. After breathing for a
year or two the stifling atmosphere
of America, Colonel Robins will
doubtless feel that it is impossible he
should ever have said anything like
what Chicherin states that he did;
but to appeal from Philip drunk to
Philip sober is not always a conclu-
sive way of arriving at the truth.
TJANS VORST, well known for his
"■ excellent contributions on Rus-
sian affairs to the Berliner Tageblatt,
has published in that paper extracts
from a letter written to him by a
professor in the University of Tomsk
who belongs to the party of the Men-
sheviki (i. c. Minority Socialists),
adherents of the so-called Plekhanov
group. This man's testimony to the
high character and patriotism of
Kolchak is worth quoting as, coming
from that side, it forms a strong
refutation of the slander of which
the Admiral has been the victim both
in Europe and this country. The
Siberian professor says:
The Government of Kolchak has rendered
extraordinary services to Russia, whatever the
revolutionaries and their hangers-on may say
of him. He had to work under the most try-
ing circumstances and absolute lack of money
and personnel. His Government has made no
few mistakes and often veered to the Right —
but on the whole it has steered the course of a
democratic government which wishes to re-
unite the divided parts of Russia and establish
law and order in the place of Bolshevist
tyranny. All the talk of the reactionary tend-
encies of Kolchak's Government is down-
right slander. Kolchak was perfectly loyal
and his Government recognized its chief duty
to be the reunion of Russia and the convocation
of the legislative assembly.
"WTE print in other columns cor-
" respondence from Berlin by
Dr. Paul Rohrbach, a well-knovni
writer on German politics and, before
the war, a prominent advocate of
Germany's economic and colonial ex-
pansion. We are glad to give him
this opportunity of stating his coun-
try's present case, which must afford
bitter reflection to a man who had
dreamed of quite a different future.
But we can not help feeling that his
appeal for material aid and mitiga-
tion of the peace terms would have
impressed us more if the writer
could have assured us that, even more
than by their physical sufferings, the
Germans are tormented by the con-
sciousness that, but for the crime
against civilization to which they
were parties, Germany and the rest
of Europe might now be enjoying the
continuance of old-time prosperity.
TT is difficult to define the full bear-
■■- ing of the Pyrrhic victory by
which M. Millerand obtained the
Chamber's vote of confidence in the
entire Cabinet. Leon Daudet's attack
on Jules Steeg, the new Minister of
the Interior, was obviously a prelimi-
nary skirmish by which the opposi-
tion meant to test the strength of the
new Government and, perhaps, to as-
certain on what auxiliary forces they
could reckon for the full onset that
is to follow. It is a very heterogene-
ous group by which the Millerand
Cabinet is challenged. There are first
of all the Socialist members whc
naturally will join any opposition
against a Government formed by the
Bloc National. By helping to defeat
it they would take revenge for theii
recent discomfiture at the polls. The
extreme Right, as whose spokesman
Leon Daudet led the attack, will not
be withheld from repeating the
assault by fear of playing into the
Socialists' hands. The latter are toe
few in number in the new Chamber
as compared with the representatior
of the Bloc, to derive any substantia'
gain from the overthrow of the
Cabinet. These two extremes are
strengthened by several deputies oj
the Bloc National, who owe the n^w
Premier a grudge for not having
offered them or their friends a place
in the Government.
'T'HE personal element has always
■'- been a strong factor in Frencl
politics, and now that the Germar
danger is past it reasserts itself wit!
fresh vigor. The Frenchman's in
terest in the contest of parties ii
stimulated by his realistic tendencj
to transpose the clash of abstraci
principles into a conflict betweer
ambitious politicians. The present
crisis is a case in point. Behind the
opposition looms the powerful figure
of Briand, who, if he succeeds ir
ousting Millerand, will be the chiel
gainer. It was Briand who manipu
lated the election of Paul Deschane
to the Presidency, and in the eveni
of the fall of the present Cabinet
Briand will be charged by the new
President with the formation of «
new one. It would, therefore, have
availed Millerand but little if he hac
waived insistence on M. Steeg's beinj
excluded from the vote of confidence
in the Government. The attack or
the Minister of the Interior was onlj
a means to an end, and the end is
the ousting of M. Millerand himself
The latter's position is the more pre
carious as he has no definite pro
gramme to offer on which a stronj
majority of the Chamber could h
brought to agree. The cement of th'
Bloc National is a negative formula
Jami.ary 31, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[97
There is no unity of design between
its various fractions as to the best
plan for the economic reconstruction
of the country. The financial policy
to be adopted will be the supreme
test of the Cabinet's vitality. The
new Minister of Finance, Frangois-
Marcel, has denounced the work of
his predecessor, M. Klotz, as "inco-
herent and altogether incapable of
meeting the present needs of France."
But he will soon find out the diificulty
of steering a course which must not
only meet the needs of France but
must also meet with the approval of
such an incoherent body as the Bloc
National.
nnHE Ohio State Bar Association, in
■'■ annual session at Dayton last
week, listened to a very vigorous dis-
cussion, by Hon. John A. McMahon,
of the attitude of labor organizations
towards what they are pleased to call
"government by injunction." The
speaker showed that the injunction
1 is an ancient familiar remedy, de-
! veloped as a means of enabling courts
of equity to protect citizens in their
legal rights. "Its area of jurisdiction
is as wide as that of human rights
invaded by unscrupulous men." It
has been a very common resort of
the poor and the weak against at-
tempts at ruthless encroachments by
I wealth and power. Only a small per-
centage of the cases of its use have
had anything to do with labor con-
j troversies. In no case has a court as-
' sumed the authority to enjoin strikers
simply as strikers, but only as partic-
I ular circumstances involved them in
the illegal infraction of the legal rights
of others. "There is no recorde^jj case
I where workingmen have been com-
pelled to return to work by the order
of any court." While admitting that
individual judges might err in the
discretion necessary to the use of
such a means, the speaker argued
very earnestly that the injunction is
a bulwark of human right and justice
which we can not afford to weaken.
In the Ohio campaign for the adop-
tion of a long series of amendments
to the state constitution, in 1912, a
Iproposition was submitted separately
which limited the use of the injunc-
tion, in cases involving the employ-
ment of labor, merely to the protec-
tion of physical property from vio-
lence. It was defeated by over six-
teen thousand votes in the State, and
through a campaign of education led
by Mr. McMahon it was beaten by
more than eleven thousand in the
counties containing the great manu-
facturing centres of the Miami
Valley.
'T'HE slogan "1919 has been the
-*- radicals' year, 1920 belongs to the
sane thinkers" may represent only
a pious hope, but it is a hope worth
holding up before men as one
that is at least possible of realiza-
tion. Some recent publicity of the
McGraw-Hill publications, appearing
under the above caption, suggests
large possibilities in the use of ad-
vertising space for the purpose of
teaching the fundamental economic
truths in a plain and forceful way.
The plain citizen may be pardoned if
he feels that in his economic diet he
must perforce choose between some
pretty raw east wind and a simoom
that may be heating but is not sus-
taining. Like plant foods in the
ground, economic truth exists in
abundance, but for most mortals it
is not in "available" form. In such
a possible campaign of education,
quite as important as explaining what
is true, would be the effective dem-
onstration of what is not true, or
is characterized by the possession of
a mere dangerous fraction of the
truth. Indeed, it is the things that
seem to be true that are the chief
source of danger. The things that
are palpably false will be seen
through, sooner or later, by even the
plainest citizen. But he needs to be
put on his guard against the mischief-
breeding half-truths and possible
falsehoods with which he is con-
stantly confronted.
THE plan for a general final exami-
nation of candidates for degrees
at Harvard is connected by President
Lowell, in his annual report, with the
feeling that the individual student,
rather than the individual course of
study, should be treated as the unit
in education. The general examina-
tion is to cover the field in which the
student has "concentrated," a tech-
nical term in Harvard which happily
avoids some of the suggestions of the
more common word "specialized," or
of the ill sounding "majored." The
system begins with the present Fresh-
man class, but is not obligatory on
any department against its will. All
departments except those of mathe-
matics and the natural sciences have
so far voted to make the experiment.
Perhaps the greatest advantage of
these examinations will be their in-
fluence in extending and systematiz-
ing the student's collateral reading,
which examinations in single courses
can not control, and which, with the
multiplicity of present-day college
distractions, is taken for granted far
oftener than done.
'T'HE suggested unionization of col-
•*• lege and university teachers is
discussed by President Lovejoy, of
the Association of University Profes-
sors, in his recently printed annual
message to the Association. He gives
three very forcible reasons for oppos-
ing the scheme. In the first place, it
is certain that a large part of the pro-
fession would refuse to join an organ-
ization affiliated with the American
Federation of Labor. Again, the trade-
union usually is, and is generally un-
derstood to be, preponderantly eco-
nomic in its aims and methods. It is
not wise that the professional organ-
ization of university teachers and in-
vestigators should exist, in fact or
in popular opinion, primarily for the
purpose of increasing the salaries of
its members, or that its characteris-
tic business should be the application
of economic pressure for such ends.
Rather, its first concern should be to
enable its members to discharge their
distinctive function in the economy
of modern society with the highest
possible degree of competency and
serviceableness. Finally, that part of
the profession which is engaged in
teaching the "social sciences" should
avoid, in the interest of a suitable de-
tachment, entangling alliances with
any of the purely economic groups
now struggling to retain or increase
their share of the "social dividend."
There is little ground to apprehend
much dissent from this reasoning.
98]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 38
Hoover
THE New York World's courageous
declaration in favor of Hoover
for President has awakened an enthu-
siastic response. It would be impos-
sible, we believe, to find any parallel
to the announcement, by a newspaper
generally acknowledged to be the
most powerful organ of its party in
the country, that it will support a
particular man whether he be nomi-
nated by the Democrats or by the
Republicans or by an independent
movement, provided only that the
platform on which he stands is sound
in its fundamental character. And
the applause that the World has
received has come from Democrats
even more than from Republicans,
though there has been a great deal
from both.
It is being widely asserted that the
Hoover boom, to which the World's
announcement has given so sudden
an impetus, has been industriously
fostered by strong political and other
interests. To attempt to determine
the facts as to this aspect of it would
be a futile undertaking. But what-
ever may be the truth as to the exist-
ence of any factor of this kind in the
case, there is no question at all as to
the existence of another factor so
powerful as of itself to account for
the spread of the Hoover idea — a
factor without which the machina-
tions of politicians and cliques would
have been impotent to produce it.
Without urging of any sort, the
thoughts of thousands of citizens
have turned to Hoover as the man
who possesses in a unique degree
qualifications singularly suited to the
needs of an extraordinary situation.
People turn to him after much the
same fashion as in other days repub-
lics in time of stress were wont to
turn to "the man on horseback" as
the only possible "savior of society."
A republic threatened with imme-
diate and possibly fatal convulsion is
prone to overlook all other considera-
tions in the presence of the overmas-
tering need of safety. In such a situ-
ation the one strong man whose name
is a synonym for safety — and he is very
apt to be "the man on horseback" —
outclasses all competitors. Our coun-
try is in no such plight. Neither the
evils with which we are already con-
tending, nor the evils that we appre-
hend, forebode any sudden convul-
sion or overturn. But they are of a
seriousness unexampled in our his-
tory; and nowhere is there any sign
that they will be vigorously and ef-
fectively grappled with. The pro-
found economic disturbance brought
on by the war enormously aggravated
all forms of social unrest ; and to-day,
fifteen months after the armistice,
our reasons for anxiety as to this sit-
uation are not less, but far greater,
than they were when the clash of
arms came to an end. To do what
can be done for the betterment of
these conditions is the one supreme
need of the moment; and it requires
nothing more to explain the underly-
ing cause of the Hoover boom. For
Hoover is the one man whose achieve-
ments and character mark- him out as
signally qualified to meet that need.
The great foundation for this belief
in his achievements and his character
is his work in the rescue of Belgium.
A private citizen, a man not thereto-
fore connected with any great philan-
thropic enterprise, he undertook a
task before which all the world
shrank appalled, and he achieved it.
Not only on the economic side, but on
its manifold human sides, he grap-
pled with all the difficulties of an
unexampled situation and overcame
them. To awaken his countrymen to
a duty of which they were slow to
appreciate the magnitude, to enlist
and to retain the devoted cooperation
of the ablest assistants, to institute
methods which brought to devastated
Belgium the maximum of assistance
with the minimum of pauperization —
these were the aspects of his work
which soon became apparent, and
which excited the admiration and
gratitude of all the world. It was
only later that we came to understand
by what combination of firmness and
tact, of vigilance and foresight, he
succeeded in maintaining livable rela-
tions with the German authorities,
while yielding nothing of the prin-
ciple that every ounce of the help that
he provided for the Belgians, and of
the self-help which he made possible
to them, was to count for their good
and not for that of their conquerors.
History records no more splendid
example of the consecration of great
powers to the service at once of
humanity and of liberty.
Mr. Hoover's work in Belgium was^
followed, when our country went into
the war, by administrative work on a
still greater scale, for which he was
chosen by President Wilson because
of the preeminent ability and energy
which he had exhibited. In the exe-
cution of these tasks he has mani-
fested the same quality of practical
insight combined with breath of vis-
ion, as well as that perfect command
of detail, and that genius for organi-
zation, which were essential to the
success of his work in Belgium. And
he has never lost sight of the human
elements without which even tha
highest organization is incapable of
achieving great ends. He did not
underestimate, as many men of the
merely engineering instinct might
have done, the immense potentialities
of voluntary cooperation at a time
when a whole people are deeply
stirred to a sense of patriotic duty.
Nor has he failed, at each of several
notable conjunctures, to say a ring-
ing word that has had conclusive
potency. Without in the least coun-
tenancing preposterous notions of the
punishment to be inflicted upon Ger-
many, such as were fomented by
Lloyd George in his electioneering
campaign after the armistice, he put
his foot down firmly when senti-
mental pleas for the relief of the
Germans were filling the air while
our undivided attention was required
for the rescue of populations that had
been crushed in the mire by the Ger-
man power; and when the downfall
of Bela Kun was followed by what
looked like a recrudescence of the
Hapsburg idea, a few forthright
words from Hoover gave what was
generally regarded as the coup de
grace to that unfortunate project.
Preeminently a man that "does
things," Mr. Hoover is not much of
a talker; but when he does speak he
hits the mark.
To a man of this type it is natural
that the country should turn when it
stands in crying need of relief from
evils in which the economic and the
January 31, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[99
human elements are equally involved.
We are not going to straighten out
the troubles between labor and capi-
tal either by an appeal to lofty gen-
eralities or by the application of
merely economic remedies. We are
not going to deal successfully with
the grievances that have arisen from
the enormous advance of prices by
exhorting men to be more high-
minded or unselfish, nor can we do
so by looking hither and thither for
means of artificial legal restraint
upon the processes of business. In
so far as anything can be done by
the Government for either of these
ends, its action must be animated by
just that combination of broad-mind-
edness and practicality which, in the
fields in which he has thus far been
engaged, Mr. Hoover has so signally
exhibited. Accordingly we believe it
to be true that his advocates will be
found in about equal proportions
among those who are adherents of
Mr. Wilson because of the loftiness
of his idealism, and among those
who oppose and condemn Mr. Wilson
because of the disastrous vagueness
of that same idealism. Men of the
latter class are ready to welcome with
profound relief a change from glam-
orous generalities to concrete help-
fulness; and we feel quite sure that
by this time even men of the former
class, whether they admit it to them-
selves or not, have had a surfeit of
rainbow-chasing.
So much for the case in favor of
Mr. Hoover as a possible President
of the United States. But strong as
it is, it is very far from being an
adequate case. Before we can as
sober citizens of a self-governing
nation declare that he is our man,
we must know much more about the
kind of President Mr. Hoover is likely
to make. It has been announced by
a friend of Mr. Hoover's that a state-
ment will soon be forthcoming, in
which he will lay down his views on
the issues of the time. This may go
far towards determining the inherent
merits of his candidacy, even if it
still leaves wide open the question of
his possible nomination by either
party. In the meanwhile, it is proper
to point out some of the vital consid-
erations, other than those involved !n
his personal ability and character,
which must be taken into account by
the nation.
The term of the next President will
begin not to-morrow, but more than
a year hence; it will end more than
five years hence. During these five
years great national concerns will be
affected, other than those which at
this moment are pressing so heavily
upon us. The ship of state is in
stormy waters, but, whoever is Pres-
ident, she will right herself. She is
not going on the rocks. It is ex-
tremely important that we should get
through with as little injury as pos-
sible, but we are not reduced to the
necessity of electing a merely emer-
gency President. In the main, the
salvation of the country from the
immediate evils in the contemplation
of which we are now absorbed must
come from the sound sense and the
fundamental virtues of the people
themselves. On the other hand, the
political and economic structure of
the country may undergo very great
changes, even in the course of a few
years, through the action of those
whom the people choose to carry on
their Government.
Even before the advent of Presi-
dent Wilson, the presidency had grad-
ually come to be a political force so
dominant as, in the hands of a strong
man, to overshadow all other factors.
Whatever other issues there may be
in the presidential campaign, one
issue is bound to run through it,
whether explicitly formulated or not.
We are either going to stand by the
fundamental principles of the Amer-
ican political and economic system, or
we are going to drift away from them.
It may or may not be that Mr. Hoover
has profound or well-defined convic-
tions on these principles; it may or
may not be that he realizes the essen-
tial importance of surrounding him-
self with men who are devoted to
them. We can not afford to be saved
by a wonder-worker, a superman.
We want to get the benefit that such
a man is capable of conferring on us
in a time of great and extraordinary
need, but we do not want to pur-
chase those benefits at the sacrifice
of the permanent character of our
institutions. In a word, we must
know what the election of Hoover
would mean politically, before we can
decide whether he is the man that
we ought to have for President.
New York's "Town
Meeting Hall"
npHE League for Political Education
•*■ was founded twenty-five years
ago by a little group of public-spirited
women, of whom the late Mrs. Henry
M. Sanders was the leader. Its
growth has been quiet, unobtrusive,
and steady. It is now to have a cen-
trally located building, of ample di-
mensions and suited to varied uses.
If the tributes paid to its past by men
of such diverse views as Bishop
Burch on the one hand and Rabbi
Wise on the other may be accepted as
a token of the future that lies before
it, the civic and social activities which
are to be centred in the new building
will in the years to come exercise an
important influence, which will be
felt not only in New York but
throughout the nation.
Not the least of the reasons for
such an anticipation is that feature
in its history and purposes which was
especially dwelt upon by Mr. Robert
Erskine Ely, to whose energy and
devotion as its administrator the
other speakers ascribed the chief
share in its success. It has relied for
its growth not upon the munificence
of a few individuals, but upon the
hearty cooperation of many hundreds,
each of whom gave his or her help
without the special urging of any-
thing like an organized "drive." By
way of emphasizing the point, Mr.
Ely declared that if the $1,250,000
needed for the new building, whose
corner-stone was laid last Saturday,
were to be offered to him in a single
check, he would feel obliged to de-
cline the gift. In the new career now
opening for the institution, it should,
and probably will — like the City
Club of New York — have imitators
throughout the country, and it is
important that these should be in-
spired by the same idea of self-help
and spontaneous cooperation.
Of the building the most conspicu-
ous feature will be what is formally
100]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 38
called the "Civic Auditorium," but
what is by preference referred to as
the "Town Meeting Hall." The
friends of the project love to think of
it as offering in some measure a
revival of the New England town
meeting. The town meeting, how-
ever, as everybody knows, can play
no such part in a world-city of six
million inhabitants of the utmost con-
ceivable heterogeneity as it did in
the New England town of six hun-
dred, or six thousand, transplanted
Englishmen. Indeed, as we under-
stand it, there are two quite distinct
objects for which the Civic Audito-
rium is to be established. The regu-
larly planned lectures and discussions,
under the auspices of the League for
Political Education, will there have
access to large audiences, instead of
the comparatively small ones which
they have hitherto reached; but dur-
ing the greater part of every week
the hall will be available for public
meetings of miscellaneous character.
The League will do well to keep
clearly in mind, and to keep clearly
before the public, the distinction be-
tween these two functions. The prin-
ciple of free speech has its bearing
on both, and the principle of intelli-
gent speech has its bearing on both.
But the emphasis on freedom and the
emphasis on intelligence should be
different in the two. It will be a
great thing to have a recognized
centre where opinions and sentiments
of almost every possible shade can
find vent without the sponsorship of
any organization; and accordingly
the League should be as sparing as
possible of any censorship of the pur-
poses for which its hall may be used
as a place of general assembly. On the
other hand, a League for Political
Education is bound by its very title
to see to it that the matter which is
presented under its own auspices shall
be educative. There is a superstition
of free speech, just as there is a
superstition of bigotry. It may be
right to let wild or ignorant people
talk nonsense, but it is silly to suppose
that such talking is educative, or
that it is sure to be harmless. The
views set forth by speakers for a
League of Political Education need
not be in accord with what the offi-
cers of the League think just or
desirable, but they must fulfill one
condition — that of being the result of
sober and competent thought. To be
a lecturer for such an association is
not a natural right, but an acquired
privilege. Undoubtedly, it has been
upon this principle that the League
has proceeded 'in the past; but once
it gets into the limelight in its larger
sphere of operations it will be likely
to meet with much sophomoric criti-
cism if it continues to adhere to it.
Another of the uses to which the
building is to be put appeals to us
perhaps even more strongly. It will
house a club for men and women, to
which admission will be easy, and of
which the annual membership fee is
to be only fifteen dollars. There ought
to be a score of such clubs in New
York, and every city should have one
or more of them. To a large class
of women especially it would supply
something the absence of which it is
pitiful to contemplate when one thinks
how easily it might be provided.
There are in New York tens of thou-
sands of women living solitary lives
of hard work, women of education
and refinement, whose life would be
transformed by the mere possibility
of such human contact as a club of
this kind would furnish. In many
cases the effect of this contact would
be to open opportunities for civic or
social usefulness which these women
would eagerly welcome, and from
that standpoint alone the existence of
the club would be more than justified.
But it is the benefit to the individuals
themselves — men as well as women,
but women most because they need it
most — to which we attach the highest
value. The civic or public side will
be peculiar to such a club as is to be
housed in the League's building; but
if this should prove a success, lesser
clubs, clubs of a neighborhood char-
acter, ought to find their cue in it.
Without any aspiration for larger re-
sults, such clubs would do their share
in filling a need not less acute than
that for social or political reform —
the need of a livable life for thousands
of individual men and women op-
pressed by the utter bareness and
unfriendliness of their social sur-
roundings.
Holland and the ex-
Kaiser
TN its note to the Netherlands Gov-
-*- ernment demanding the extradi-
tion of the ex-Kaiser, the Supreme
Council expressed the opinion that
"Holland would not fulfill her inter-
national duty if she refused to asso-
ciate herself with the Entente Powers,
within the limit of her ability, to
pursue, or at least not to impede, the
punishment of crimes committed."
The Council has thus, in anticipation,
condemned Queen Wilhelmina and
her Government as lacking in duty
to the rest of the world. It seems
open to doubt whether it is in accord-
ance with that high international
policy in whose name the demand for
extradition was made to force, by
the threat of a stigma, the Kingdom
into fulfilling its alleged duty. A com-
pliance with the request, since that
menace was made, would, whether
justly or not, have been explained as
due to Holland's fear of the conse-
quences of a refusal. Holland was
thus given only the choice between
fulfilling a new-sprung duty without
receiving credit for her moral sense
and satisfying her own conscience by
a strict adherence to the laws of the
kingdom and national tradition.
The decision, though thus facili-
tated for Holland by the threat of
the Powers, would not have fallen
out otherwise if they had simply
appealed to her "respect for law and
love of justice." It is on these very
principles that Queen Wilhelmina has
based her refusal ; respect, indeed, for
the laws of the kingdom and love of
that justice which is embodied in na-
tional tradition. Those two were the
only principles by which her Govern-
ment could let itself be guided, as no
international law exists on which the
demand of the Powers could be based.
There is greater force in that argu-
ment than in the plea, put forward
by French editors and politicians,
that the demand is founded on a new
moral law which, by its application
to the ex-Kaiser's case, would be
carried out of the sphere of theory
into that of international practice.
THe prestige of the International
Janiiaiy 31, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[101
Code of Law would suffer from this
novel mode of enactment, contrary to
the juristic principles of all civilized
countries. Taking this point of view,
which seems to us unimpeachable, the
Government of the Queen declared
that "if in the future there should be
instituted by the society of nations
an international jurisdiction, com-
petent to judge in case of war deeds,
qualified as crimes and submitted to
its jurisdiction by statute antedating
the acts committed, it would be fit for
Holland to associate herself with the
new regime."
The Dutch press seems to be unani-
mous in its approval of the Govern-
ment's attitude. We should wrong
the Hollanders if we ascribed their
satisfaction to any love for the exile
of Amerongen or to a wish to con-
done the many crimes committed in
his name. If they could, without
prejudice to their national honor, get
rid of the intruder, they would gladly
see the last of him. Those who re-
fuse the Kaiser's extradition would
be more glad of a justifiable reason
for delivering him than the Allied
Governments probably would be of
receiving him at their hands. The
Dutch reply must have brought a
sense of relief to the Cabinets in
Paris and London. The fear lest the
failure to enforce one provision of
the Treaty of Versailles should in-
validate others has small basis. It is
not the German Government which
raises the obstacle, but a Power which
can, and does, claim as a reason for
refusing the Council's demand that
it is not a party to that treaty.
The two parties chiefly concerned
have good cause, therefore, to thank
Queen Wilhelmina's Government for
its decision: the Entente Powers,
which are barred from the dubious
honor of establishing a new interna-
tional law which would set up the
accuser as judge in his own case, and
the Dutch nation, which has the satis-
faction of seeing its respect for law
and tradition prevail over its aversion
to the guest who, little to his honor,
abuses that feeling for his own safety.
It is only the ex-Kaiser himself who,
j if he were the man he has so long
pretended to be, should regret a con-
clusion which prevents him fro^-" ris-
ing out of his present obscurity into
the full glare of the world's stage,
to make his exit as a martyr.
Still Fumbling with
Russia
A NNOUNCEMENTS in recent offi-
-^ cial Soviet Government newspa-
pers, as well as from the Soviet
authorities themselves, confirm the
statement made in our last week's
issue that the Russian Cooperative
organizations were under control of
the Soviet Government, and that to
trade with the Cooperatives as pro-
posed in the announcement of the
Supreme Council is to deal with the
Soviet Government.
The real meaning and intent of the
announcement are still far from
clear. Three possible explanations
have been suggested. The first is that
Alexander Berkenheim, sometime rep-
resentative of the Central Union of
Consumers' Cooperatives, had taken
in the Supreme Council and led them
to believe that it was possible to deal
with the Russian people through the
Cooperatives independently of the
Soviet Government; in other words,
that it was possible "to go over the
heads of the Government to the peo-
ple." The cryptic remark in the an-
nouncement concerning "the report
of a committee appointed to consider
the reopening of certain trade rela-
tions with the Russian people" may
refer to Berkenheim and his assist-
ant, Krovopuskov. The latter has
now admitted that the Cooperatives
are completely controlled by the
Soviet Government. A second view
is that the announcement is a scarcely
veiled proposal to enter into negotia-
tions with and recognize the Soviet
Government. This, however, seems
unlikely in view of the categorical
statement that the arrangement im-
plies no change in the policies of the
Allied Governments toward the Soviet
Government, and also because the
proposal has been coldly received by
the Soviet authorities. A third sup-
position is that Lloyd George put
forth, for its political eifect upon the
radical labor element in England and
elsewhere, a proposal of which he
knew well that nothing would come
in practice, but for the failure of
which he could place the blame on
the Soviet Government itself.
In connection with this, it is in-
teresting to note that the pro-Bolshe-
vist press charges a British i51ot to
secure a favorable trade position, re-
gardless of what develops in Russia,
and to exclude America from similar
opportunities. Attention is called to
the fact that the action at Paris was
taken after America had burned her
bridges behind her by the deportation
of the Russian "Reds" and by the
publication of the State Department
memorandum on Bolshevism. Mean-
while the Allied policy toward Soviet
Russia is a mass of inconsistencies
and contradictions. Side by side with
the proposal to trade with the Rus-
sian people comes the recognition of
the independence of Georgia and
Azerbaijan and the promise of assist-
ance to Poland in her struggle against
the Bolsheviks. It must be reiterated
that the announced policy of placing
a "barbed-wire fence" around Bol-
shevik Russia is fraught with great
danger. Any proposal that threatens
the unity and integrity of Russia
tends to unite patriotic anti-Bolshevik
Russians under the Bolshevik banner
for the defense of the unity of their
country, and discourages those forces
which are making for revoljition from
within. Nothing could be more dis-
astrous to Europe than to have the
war against Bolshevism transformed
into a war against Russia.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Corporation
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Rodman Gilder, Business Manager
Subscription price, five dollars a year in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright, 1920, in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
102]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 38
A Glimmer of Hope for Ireland
TT would be premature to express
-'• more than a tentative judgment
upon the new proposals about Ire-
land until we have the full text of the
Government bill. So far we have only
an outline of its broad principle, and
there are immensely important mat-
ters of detail which one still eagerly
awaits. But some salient points at
least are clear.
Full recognition is to be granted to
the claim that Ulster, no less than the
rest of Ireland, shall "determine her-
self." Mr. Lloyd George insists that
no plan is admissible which does not
rest on general consent, though his
recommendations clearly imply that
this consent may be the outcome
rather than the prerequisite of a well-
conceived reform. He has in mind
Gladstone's central doctrine that pop-
ular sympathy must in the end be en-
listed by any constitution which is to
succeed, and he will not limit the
scope of this rule to one part of the
island only. Whatever the causes,
reasonable or unreasonable, which
divorce public feeling from the ad-
ministration, he realizes that these
must be considered, and, so far as
possible, removed. The obstacles
which have their root in reason will,
of covii-5c, be more manageable than
those which spring from unreason,
and Mr. Lloyd George's many
speeches on Home Rule bills in the
past leave us in no doubt that for him
"Ulster" has been the seat of the
more irrational obstinacy. But this,
too, he is anxious to meet and to rec-
oncile. The new scheme assumes
that it is the melancholy discord
among Irishmen themselves which
now stands in the way of settlement,
and that circumstances exclude the
hope of overcoming this conflict by
the mechanical imposition of a com-
mon legislative assembly. Hence it
is proposed to divide the country, at
least for a time, into two areas, giv-
ing to each a provincial legislature,
and setting up besides a federal
council to form, for certain carefully
defined purposes, a connecting link
between the two. The temporary
character of this arrangement is em-
phasized by the provision which the
bill is to include for bringing the two
provinces in the end more intimately
together. It is to be within the power
of the provincial legislatures them-
selves, ivithout further reference to
the Imperial Parliament, to decree
their own fusion into a single House.
Thus the bill makes room for the
simultaneous acceptance of two prin-
ciples hitherto deemed irreconcilable.
It removes all ground of complaint
on the part of "Ulster" that she is be-
ing coerced, and it entrusts to Irish-
men alone — uncontrolled by outsiders
— the next step to a complete na-
tional unity. No doubt the Ulster-
men will protest that their chief
weapon is to be forced from their
hands when they are deprived of the
power of appeal to English, Scottish,
and Welsh support. On the other
side the southern folk may feel
aggrieved that for the purpose of the
next negotiation, which can not be
far distant, thirty per cent, of voters
in the north is to be held equivalent
to seventy per cent, in the south.
But on the whole the plan seems a
remarkable feat of ingenuity.
The self-determination which is
here acknowledged is something very
different from that which to certain
dreamers seems to imply an inde-
pendent IrishRepublic. Constitutional
nationalists, like the writer of this
article, must welcome the unambigu-
ous terms in which Mr. Lloyd George
bids defiance to any such proposal.
That in this respect, if in no other,
they can join hands with even the
most inveterate Ulster opponent is
among the tokens, still too few, of a
possible reconciliation.
If Sir Edward Carson and his
friends acquiesce in the new policy,
they will have to abandon some
of their most cherished arguments.
They used to say, for example,
that they had comparatively little
fear for the interest of the "Planta-
tion Counties" under Home Rule, for
these would be well able to look after
themselves, and that their chief
anxiety was for their scattered
brethren so hopelessly outnumbered
in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught.
These last, to use the old Ulster
phrase, are to be "thrown to the
wolves." But the southern and west-
ern Unionists have, ever since the
1916 Convention, voluntarily aban-
doned their would-be protectors, and
have distressingly avowed that the
wolves have for them no terror at all !
Again, it used to be a Unionist con-
tention that "Ulster" means the
whole geographical entity of nine
counties — an idea obviously in the in-
terest of those who urged it, so long
as the northern province was ex-
pected to remain in parliamentary
union with Great Britain. Will this
view be retained when the fate of
the northern province is to be decided
by its own inhabitants alone? Will
Sir Edward Carson agree to have an
autonomous province which contains
some fifty per cent, of Home Rulers?
Or will he devise a new zigzag
boundary line, in utter neglect of that
geography about which we once heard
so much, and cutting out an irregular
but homogeneous area of his own
pledged supporters? Some humorist
has already suggested "Carsonshire"
as a name for the strange province
that would thus be created. But to
accept this would be to introduce a
permanent hindrance to the amalga-
mation that the bill contemplates. We
must wait to see how this very essen-
tial point is determined when the full
text of the measure is before us. On
the principle of division the Prime
Minister's introductory statement
was far from definite. He spoke of
tracing out "homogeneous areas,"
and there was more than a hint that
homogeneity was to be determined
by religion. But we must wait to see
whether he really meant so disas-
trous a scheme of cleavage.
Meantime we have much reason to
hail some features of unusually rich
promise in the plan as we have so far
been allowed to know it. First of all,
it is much to have resolutely faced
the problem of the Irish schism, how-
ever we may have to deplore its
existence, and with whatever san-
guine hope we may anticipate its ex-
tinction. Such extinction will be best
promoted by talking less of the
grounds of variance in the past, and
January 31, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[103
setting the discordant parties to work
together, even under some disagree-
able limits, in their own house with a
common responsibility for the pres-
ent. The late Mr. John Redmond
once declared in ever-memorable
words that almost any compromise
should be welcomed which did not
shut out the future chance of a really
united Ireland. He was willing to
accept even the plan of a local option
by counties for a period of six years,
after which the whole problem might
be reopened, though he well knew
that at least four counties were cer-
tain to separate themselves from the
rest. Things have moved fast and
far since that statesmanlike conces-
sion was defeated of its purpose. But
the granting to "Ulster" of a legisla-
tive exclusion, until such time as
Ulstermen shall themselves decide to
come in, is in exactly the same spirit
of far-sighted conciliation.
It is much, too, that the new bill
will withdraw the ultimate settlement
of Irish internal difference from the
corrupting influence of party politics
across the Channel. Perhaps the
deepest source of the long difficulty
has been the fact that Ireland has
been the obvious and habitual tool
for rival ambitions to exploit in in-
terests quite apart from her own.
Long before this her domestic feud
night have been composed if it had
lot served the turn of second-rate
ooliticians elsewhere to intensify it.
Jnder this bill she will be exposed
0 that risk no longer. And to those
vho fear that the first step of the
outhern province as now dominated
ly Sinn Fein would be to declare an
ndependent republic the simple reply
3 that the powers of the new legis-
itures will be defined by the statute
/hich creates them, and that a revo-
itionary move of this sort is as easily
rohibited as a corresponding move
f-if such were conceivable — by Gn-
jirio or Nova Scotia. To all, except
n the one hand the irreconcilable
inn Fein, and on the other the no
ss irreconcilable Ulster Covenant-
I's, Mr. Lloyd George's plan is full
'" fresh possibilities for good.
The smart critics say that previous
ills satisfied somebody, but that this
11 will satisfy nobody, and they take
for granted that herein lies its suffi-
cient condemnation. But is this a
defect ? Is it not rather a conspicuous
merit, without which one would doubt
that a settlement was in sight?
It is safe to guess that not one,
even among the sub-committee re-
sponsible for drawing up the provi-
sions, is satisfied with every clause
of them, and it is certain that Irish-
men of all parties both at home and
abroad can see much to justify their
own discontent. One can understand
how English critics hate to see self-
government inaugurated at a moment
of such intense passion between
classes, when the voice of moderate
men is drowned in clamor, and when
the apostles of violence hold so great
a part of Ireland in their grip. One
can appreciate, too, how all genuine
Irishmen revolt against an arrange-
ment which will even for a time
divide their kindred into hostile
camps, revive old memories that
should long since have been allowed
to die, and oflficially acknowledge the
wretched doctrine of "two nations."
Still deeper must be the disgust of
all who remember how needless and
artificial are these hindrances, how
political manoeuvering for place and
power has found its ready instrument
in envenoming a wound that had al-
most healed, how many chances were
m,issed for a settlement that promised
well, so that the only chance still
open is for a settlement that promises
indifferently. Speaking as an Irish-
man to my compatriots I would say
that if we are mere disputants,
wrangling about "who is to blame,"
we shall find it easy to dwell upon a
dozen grounds for discontent with
either this bill or any other bill that
the wit of man can now devise.
But we have something better to
do than to recapitulate our case
against the coercions and postpone-
ments, the stupid misunderstandings,
the wilful chicaneries, the Carsonism
that inspired Sinn Fein, and the Sinn
Fein that stooped to take its model
from Carsonism. These matters will
belong to history, and we leave it in
confidence to the historians to do
stern justice. It is for living Irish-
men to take their own decisions for
the future in the light of the present.
The cool-headed are always a small
group, but it would be idle to deny
that they are dissatisfied too. What
dissatisfies them is not, however, the
fault of the proposed bill, but the
lamentable circumstance that a better
bill is not, in the light of the whole
situation, at present practicable. We
must not blame the unfairness of
Ministers when the trouble lies in
the desperate nature of the business
they are trying to mend, and, even if
we believe that some of them have
themselves to thank for their diffi-
culties, let us give them the credit
of rising to a task which they have at
length, though slowly, come to appre-
ciate. Nothing is settled by invoking
"self-determination" until one has
defined the area that can be called a
national self.'
Mr. Lloyd George has come to un-
derstand the truth of that old saying
of Mirabeau that for men dealing
with a national crisis there must
often be a bold "swallowing of for-
mulas." But in the present proposal
about Ireland the formula of self-de-
termination is being sanely though
not slavishly kept in view.
Not by pleasing those who think
that they are not "self-determined"
until they have got all they either
asked or wished, not by deferring for-
ever to those who refuse to see the
need for a generous programme of
give and take, not by taking seriously
those who have sworn in advance a
"Covenant" about what "under no
circumstances" they will accept, will
this problem be guided to a solution.
What Ministers seem at last to real-
ize is that they have been led to the
present situation in part at least
through their long delays, their dex-
terous chopping and changing, in the
vain hope that extremists can be
cajoled into combining. The new
scheme is not for the complete satis-
fying of anyone, but for the estab-
lishment of an order with which all
reasonable men should, at least for
the time, be satisfied. If Mr. Lloyd
George will only preserve an impar-
tial courage towards all the violent
alike, whether they are his own elec-
toral friends or foes, there is a glim-
mering of hope.
Herbert L. Stewart
104]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 38
Can Germany Recover?
THE other day I received a number of
the Japan Financial and Economic
Monthly, a periodical edited by Japanese
but written in English. The editors had
asked several leading politicians and
strategists for their opinion as to the
future of Germany. The answers all
agreed in asserting that Germany's
power of economic recuperation is not
broken, and that she is destined to make
rapid progress in social developments by
which she will recover her former posi-
tion among the nations. These Japanese
prophets evinced a common tendency to
reckon on this expected revival of Ger-
many as a trump card which Japan can
play out against the Anglo-Saxon na-
tions. Dr. Misao Kanbe, a professor in
the University of Kyoto, expressed him-
self thus: "Germany is bound to create
a new civilization, which will compete
with the Anglo-Saxon world and its capi-
talistic system." The Marquis Okuma,
who was Prime Minister in the Cabinet
which declared war on Germany, is of
opinion that Germany, when peace has
been concluded, will doubtless resume
her economic life-and-death struggle
with all the nations of the world. Espe-
cially the English and Americans will
experience that."
Similar statements are made by Japa-
nese residing in Germany. They are not
to be shaken in their belief that the Ger-
man nation will recover its strength and
fix on a conscious policy for international
reconstruction. Every foreigner who
visits Germany is anxious to find out
what are the real political intentions of
Germanjf,_of the Government, and of the
leading personalities among the nation.
In the press of the Entente countries,
especially of France, there is a great
deal of talk about German plans and
purposes against which the Allies should
be on their guard. A French General in
the Baltic region recently said to a Swed-
ish interviewer that the refusal of the
German troops to evacuate the Baltic
Provinces had convinced him of the exist-
ence of a Russo-German conspiracy
against the peace of the world!
To those who know the actual condi-
tions in Germany, who have lived
through the Revolution and have
watched its further development, such
notions seem either bitter irony or, if
they are not, they afford an illustration
of the levity with which lack of knowl-
edge forms its opinions. Is it at all pos-
sible that Germany will again become an
economic force in the world? If the
Peace Terms of Versailles are not altered
in any way and Germany is left without
aid in her present state of distress, there
is no chance of her economic recovery.
In that case Germany's political bank-
ruptcy is inevitable, bringing in its
train private bankruptcy and a terrible
proletarisation of the whole nation.
It is impossible for the German nation
to maintain its life on the territory left
to it by the peace of Versailles. Before
the war about one-tenth of the necessary
bread-corn had to be imported, and a
similar proportion of meat had to come
from abroad.
It would seem as if, with increased
economy, the nation would be able to
live on the products of its own soil and
land. But the experience of the war has
shown that this is not possible. First
of all, the maximum produce of agricul-
ture, in spite of German kali, could not
be maintained without a large supply of
mineral manures from abroad. Manu-
factured inventions can only partly re-
place them, as there are no substitutes
for phosphates, only for nitrogen. In
the second place, agriculture needs a
large stock of cattle and horses for ma-
nuring and team-work. But our live
stock has been reduced by the war, and
the prevailing dearth of fodder precludes
its extension. Thirdly, German stock-
raising, before the war a flourishing
trade, depended largely on foodstuffs im-
ported from abroad, especially all kinds
of so-called "Kraftfutter," residues of
oil-refining and such like. With the ces-
sation of their import, the cattle dete-
riorated and produced less milk. With-
out this foreign food the stock can not
be maintained in sufficient numbers.
And lastly, Germany could only remain
self-supporting as long as the eastern
provinces produced more corn than they
consumed themselves. Of these gran-
aries Germany has lost two almost en-
tirely, Posen and West Prussia, and
large parts of Silesia and East Prussia
will also, probably, be taken from her.
The result, in the present and the fu-
ture, is such a large shortage of home-
produced foodstuffs that, even with the
utmost economy, Germany can not pos-
sibly subsist on her own output.
There are three possibilities left to
her: imports from abroad, emigration
of the population surplus for which no
food can be provided, and gradual reduc-
tion of the number of inhabitants by
hunger and suffering. By a fair esti-
mate, Germany, after the cession of the
territory required by the treaty, will
contain a little less than 60. million
people. Before the war this number was
67 millions, and, if peace had been main-
tained, it would now have risen to over
71 millions. It is difficult to make a guess
at the number which Germany, reduced
in size, will be able to maintain on her
own resources; probably no more than
40-45 millions. How will Germany pay
for the foodstuffs which must be im-
ported if the other 15 or 20 millions are
to be kept alive? She has no raw mate-
rials to export in return, except kali,
part of which comes from Alsace, now
ceded to France. Manufactures are the
only means of payment left to her. But
in order to engage in manufacture Ger-
many needs raw materials: wool and
cotton, metals, wood, caoutchouc, hides,
etc. Without these supplies, Germany's
economic life is paralyzed. The only
great industry which, in that case, could
still subsist is the steel industry; all
other industrial concerns would amount
to very little. And even the steel indus-
try will be doomed if the mines in
Silesia and Poland are to be ceded to
Poland.
It is clear, therefore, that Germany,
of her own power, is not able to recover
economically so as to keep the nation
from starving. First of all, raw mate-
rials must be obtained from abroad, so
that the industries can start afresh.
That can only be done on credit, as the
German mark has lost all purchasing
power. The scarcity of raw materials
for all industries, on the other hand,
forces prices to a fabulous height, and
the buyers of such scanty products of
manufacture as are on the market are
mostly not Germans, but foreigners, who,
in consequence of the abnormally high
purchasing power of the dollar, can buy
Germany empty at little expense. Half
a year ago the price of a beautiful China
dinner service was M. 1500, of a foun-
tain pen, M. 30; of a small electric cook-
ing apparatus, M. 50. To-day these prices
have gone up to M. 3800, M. 70, and
M. 120. When you inquire into the
cause of this rise, the salesman will tell
you that the material is growing scarce
and that the foreigners pay any price,
as at the present exchange rate the most
exorbitant charges seem still cheap to
them.
The general aversion to work which
came as a natural reaction after the
hardships and deprivations of the war,
and as a consequence of the new revolu-
tionary "Liberty," lasted for about eight
months. In the early autumn of 1919 the
will to work began to come back to the
people. To-day the majority are willing
to exert themselves; only a terroristic
minority opposes the return to labor,
wishing to continue the revolutionary
movement to the point of anarchy. But
how shall the people be set to work with-
out raw materials, and without sufficient
food to make the masses physically fit
for the task? The rich can afford to pay
five or six times the price they formerly
used to spend on the necessaries of life,
but the masses can only subsist if the
State, by paying the surplus on bread
and meat prices, keeps them down at a
normal level. How long will that last?
There is still a small reserve stock of
foodstuffs, especially of those suppliec
>>v America at a time when the Germai
January 31, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[105
mark had not yet abnormally depreciated.
But in March or April a severe crisis is
to be expected. The scarcity of milk is
the gravest calamity. Berlin, before the
war, consumed a million liters of milk
a day. At present it receives a daily
supply of only 150,000 liters, as a great
number of cows have had to be slaugh-
tered and the rest yield less milk than
before. American powdered milk is sold
at M. 10 a packet, a price which only
few people can pay. The children, the
sick, and the old people are the chief
sufferers. The Entente insists on the
j surrender by Germany of 140,000 more
i milch-cows, which means, at their pres-
ent abnormally low yield, a daily loss of
about one million liters.
Is it possible to organize the emigra-
tion of 15 million Germans within a suf-
ficiently short period to prevent a grave
crisis of unemployment and starvation in
the coming years? The question implies
its own denial. Germany is still in a
somewhat better condition than Austria.
There hunger scourges the country, and
people are dying in masses. The mor-
tality figures of last year in Vienna
reveal a terrible scene of suffering. The
death rate is twice what it was in peace
time, and child mortality has risen by
300 per cent. In the clinics at Vienna
new-born children are frozen to death,
as the hospitals can not be heated. The
price of firewood is prohibitive: two
pounds of wet wood, which does not even
burn, cost 154 to 2 kronen. Since the
beginning of the cold season 90 per cent,
of the Viennese population have not had
a coal or a log on the hearth. The few
pounds that can be procured are used for
cooking the dinner, if food can be found.
The people are shivering in their houses
until they can creep into bed. Jewelry,
furniture, etc., are sold to get money
for food. The birth of a child means
fresh terror. A sick child is a doomed
child. A well-known Viennese physician,
a well-to-do man, lost last winter three
children who all died of hunger-grippe;
i. e., they were so weakened by hunger
that their constitutions could not offer
any resistance to the disease. A fourth
child remained alive, thanks to a few
weeks' visit, in the preceding summer,
at the house of some kindly people in
Switzerland who let it eat its fill.
But even worse than in Vienna is the
sondition of the German districts of
Bohemia. The reporter of a Hamburg
paper, who, in an automobile of the
Hoover Commission, made a tour through
;he "German Hell," as the "Bohmisch-
sachsische Erzgebirge" is now called,
?ave the following description of his
ixperience: "I saw the interpreter of
he American Mission sob at the sight
lit the babies; I saw an American hos-
lital- nurse, whose nerves had been
lardened by a five years' lazaret service,
rop unconscious in the presence of the
starved skeleton of an old woman ; I saw
children of a year old who weighed less
than at their birth; and I visited some
large communities where 90 per cent, of
the children were rachitic and do not
learn to walk until they are three years
old." Conditions as bad as these are as
yet found only in a few parts of Ger-
many. But they are indications of what
will happen, if Germany is to be left
without raw materials for her industries
and the food supply from her own soil
remains insufficient to feed the nation.
The scarcity of both will have a paralyz-
ing effect on German initiative and Ger-
man hope.
It is, therefore, quite out of the ques-
tion that Germany could plan an active
economic campaign abroad, as without
foreign support she can not even avoid
a domestic catastrophe. That support
must be given in the form of an imme-
diate supply of raw materials and food-
stuffs, and by a mitigation of those terms
of the Peace of Versailles which, apart
from the present acute distress, tend to
paralyze the country's vitality. First
among these are the uncertainty as to
the amount which Germany will have to
pay, and the possibility that any Entente
Power which should remain lastingly
hostile to the German people may inter-
fere in Germany's economic life with
negative, obstructive, and confiscatory
measures in carrying out the provisions
of the treaty.
Bolshevism has little chance of thriv-
ing in Germany. It could only gain
ascendancy if distress and despair rose
to such a height as is unavoidable in the
event of national labor being left with-
out the means of recovery. The Gov-
ernment can remain in control of the
industrial masses only as long as it can
secure them employment and a living
wage, and if it possesses the means to
keep a sufficiently large military force.
German militarism is done for in con-
sequence of the experiences and hard-
ships of the war. The parties which are
trying to revive the monarchical military
aspirations of former days are actuated
by the hope that such bitter need and
unrest may develop as to cause the
people, in their despair, to wish for a
return of the old order. Neither is there
any truth in the rumor that the Govern-
ment is planning an alliance with Russia
and a common Russo-German policy
against western Europe. Such suspi-
cions overestimate the energy and capac-
ities of the men who are now at the head
of the Government. The armed forces
which Germany needs — and she needs
more than the Entente will allow her —
are wanted as a safeguard against inter-
nal anarchical crises, which are unavoid-
able if aid from abroad and mitigation of
the peace terms are refused.
Dr. Paul Rohrbach
Berlin, December 23, 1919
Correspondence
"Two-thirds of Both
Houses"
To the Editors of The Review:
In your issue of the 17th inst. under
the caption of "Two-Thirds of Both
Houses," you well say with reference to
the vote upon the so-called Eighteenth
Amendment :
The objection thus raised rests on no fine-
spun or metaphysical view ; it is simply a ques-
tion of fact. It was not "two-thirds of both
houses," but only two-thirds of the members
voting, that placed the Eighteenth Amendment
before the Legislatures for ratification. The
Supreme Court, when the case is brought
before it, will have to pass upon the question
whether two-thirds of the members voting are
to be regarded as two-thirds of the House.
But this question has been before the
United States Supreme Court. It is true
it has not been before it with reference
to the requisites to initiating a proposed
constitutional amendment, but in con-
nection with the provision relative to
the passage of a bill over the presidential
veto, which is:
If after such reconsideration two-thirds of
that house (i. e., the place of origin) shall
agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent together
with the objections to the other house, by
which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if
approved by two-thirds of that house, it shall
become a law.
The opinion in Missouri Pacific Ry.
Co. V. Kansas, 248 U. S. 276, involving
the so-called Webb-Kenyon Law with
respect to inter-state traffic in liquor,
handed down January 7, 1919, by the
Court (with the same personnel as at
present) interpreted this provision.
In ruling against the contc«t!on that
"two-thirds" as thus used means two-
thirds of the entire membership, the
Court prefaced its decision with the fol-
lowing language (p. 279) :
In view, however, of the importance of the
subject, and with the purpose not to leave
unnoticed the grave misconceptions involved
in the arguments by which the proposition
relied upon is sought to be supported, we come
briefly to dispose of the subject,
and supported its conclusions by analogy
to the practice on constitutional amend-
ments, saying (p. 281) :
The identity between the provision of
Article V of the Constitution giving the power
by a two-thirds vote to submit amendments
and the requirement we are considering as to
the two-thirds vote necessary to override a
veto make the practice as to the one applicable
to the other.
As regards that practice. Chief Justice
White said (p. 283) :
The settled rule, however, was so clearly and
aptly stated by the Speaker, Mr. Reed, in the
House, on the passage in 1898 of the amend-
ment to the Constitution providing for the
election of Senators by vote of the people,
that we quote it . . . "The question
is one that has been so often decided that it
seems hardly necessary to dwell upon it. The
106]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 38
provision of the Constitution says 'two-thirds
of both houses.' What constitutes a House?
A quorum of the membership, a majority, one-
half and one more. That is all that is neces-
sar>- to constitute a House to do all the busi-
ness that comes before the House."
Now that somewhat similar language
of the Constitution is before the Supreme
Court for construction, it is necessary,
if we are to reach a different result, to
overcome the dictum of that tribunal in
the course of its reasoning to sustain the
validity of the Webb-Kenyon Act. More-
over, the ruling of Speaker Reed has to
be disapproved, and — what then is to
come of the constitutional change with
respect to the popular election of sena-
tors?
The difficulty seems to have arisen
from the fact that there is some uncer-
tainty as to how many of the Congress
voted in favor of the first ten amend-
ments to the Constitution — The Bill of
Rights — a most important feature of that
instrument, itself appealed to for the
overthrow of the Eighteenth Amendment,
as violative of due process of law and the
reserved rights of the States and those
of the peoples of the States. These
amendments were passed by the vote of
two-thirds of those present — non constat,
however, but that this vote was equiva-
lent to two-thirds of the entire member-
ship of both houses.
The question first arose when the
Twelfth Amendment, providing for a
change in the method of electing the
President and Vice-President, was under
consideration. In the House the Fed-
eralists objected to it as unconstitutional
because instead of two-thirds the vote of
the entire Senate, it had obtained the
vote of only two-thirds of those present;
but the S^neaker ruled against the objec-
tion on the precedent set in the case of
the first ten amendments (Ames, pp. 79,
295). The question arose next in 1861
when the so-called Corwin amendment,
which sought to temporize with slavery,
came up in the Senate, and the Chair's
ruling that two-thirds of those present
was sufficient was sustained by that
body (Ames, p. 295). It did not arise in
Congress again until the amendment
which is the subject of the obiter
remarks of the Supreme Court in the
case of Missouri Pacific Ry. Co. v.
Kansas, which has been previously
referred to.
Here then are two structural features
of our Constitution initiated admittedly
by less than a two-thirds vote of the
membership of both houses, though of
course by not less than two-thirds of
those present — so that the decision of
the validity of the Eighteenth Amend-
ment may involve the present method of
choosing the President, the Vice-Presi-
dent and the Senate.
Benjamin Tuska
NcJ York, January 22
Col. Lynch' s Catholicism
To the Editors of The Review:
I wonder if you have good authority
for saying that Col. Arthur Lynch is a
Roman Catholic. Such is not the impres-
sion that I get from a striking chapter
in his book, viz., "Priests in Politics." I
spoke with him on Saturday night at the
Economic Club of Portland, Me., and we
both hammered the priests in the pres-
ence of the Roman Catholic Bishop of
Portland, Dr. Walsh.
I feel very strongly that you are mis-
taken.
George L. Fox
New Haven, Conn., January 11
[There have been good Roman Catho-
lics in all ages who were not afraid of
hammering the priests. Colonel Lynch's
hostility to priestcraft is no disproof of
our statement, which was based on words
spoken by Colonel Lynch himself in the
course of the address we referred to:
"Remember," he said, "I am not a Prot-
estant, but it must be borne in mind that
some of the most glorious leaders of
Irish freedom have been Protestants."
It seems to us that if Colonel Lynch was
a Jew or an atheist he would not have
used the negative phrase, which sug-
gests Catholicism as its alternative.
—Eds. The Review.]
An English University for
New Jersey
To the Editors of The Review:
At New Brunswick, New Jersey, a
great educational transformation is now
under way and the foundation is being
laid of what, in a few years, is destined
to be one of the largest and most bril-
liant of our Eastern university centres.
The humanities are well intrenched at
New Brunswick in that venerable insti-
tution, Rutgers College, whose birth oc-
curred ten years before the American
Revolution, whose history has been wor-
thy of the best of those fine old Colonial
colleges, and whose present activities are
so admirably directed by Dr. Demarest.
Schools of civil, electrical, and mechan-
ical engineering represent creditably the
scientific side of learning. Agriculture
is well looked after by the State Experi-
ment Station and Agricultural College,
with Dr. Jacob G. Lipman of Cornell at
their head. The new woman is not for-
gotten, for there is a very successful
State College for Women, with Mrs.
Douglass, of Barnard College, as dean,
and there is even a long-established
Theological Seminary with an admirable
library, under the able management of
Dr. John C. VanDyke.
The movement to coordinate these
more or less separate schools and to bind
them together as a university runs the
risk of repeating in New Jersey the same
mistake that was made in Massachu-
setts and in Connecticut, when two mod-
est colleges were made to do duty for a
great university organization, and what
should have been called, and really made.
New Haven University and Cambridge
University, leaving Harvard and Yale
Colleges parts of a larger whole, had to
cope with a situation they were never in-
tended to meet.
What will make this course all the
more inexcusable if it is finally entered
upon at New Brunswick, springs from
the fact that Rutgers College, which
some would expand into Rutgers Univer-
sity, is not the original name of the in-
stitution. For half a century it bore
that of Queen's College, in honor of the
consort of George III, who granted
the first charter, and continued to be
known as such down to 1825, notwith-
standing our two wars with England.
Nor is this sentimental reason alone
opposed to the proposed course. Ever
since the Civil War the Rutgers trustees
have been coquetting with the Legisla-
ture at Trenton, until the college has
been officially pronounced both the State
College and the State University. It is,
therefore, fully in the power of the board
to develop a university on the lines it
sees fit, without returning to Trenton
for authority.
If there ever was a form of university
more suited to our genius and our
ways, it is precisely that of Oxford
and Cambridge, the only system known
to John Harvard, Elihu Yale, Theodore
Frelinghuysen, and the other promoters
and founders of the early Colonial col-
leges, who, I feel sure, would be the first
to protest against the abortive fashion in
which their creations were treated to-
wards the end of the second third of the
nineteenth century. And now we see the
authorities of Rutgers hesitating and
groping, and perhaps about to let slip
the almost unique occasion of giving us
in America at least one institution of
superior culture moving on the fine old
English lines laid down by Oxford and
Cambridge, where a group of rich and
independent colleges and halls, each with
its own governing body, its buildings,
its library, its teachers, and its students,
come together through their heads, and
form the university which meets the out-
side world with united front, but which,
within its own academic circle, never in-
terferes with the entity of each of its
component parts. How much more
American is this plan than our present
doubly autocratic form of university
government, with its board of business
men trustees and its all-powerful presi-
dent, which has so often belittled and
even disgraced our educational world!
Theodore Stanton
New Brunsivick, N. J.,
December 29, 1919
January 31, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[107
Cooperating with the
Cooperatives
A LITTLE knowledge is a dangerous
thing — especially when formulating
foreign policy. The truth of this must
have been borne in on Mr. Lloyd George
by the developments of the week follow-
ing the announcement of the Supreme
Council at Paris with reference to the
Russian blockade. To be sure, those
who are wont to attribute to the Premier
a Machiavellian subtlety of design will
see in these developments the working
out of a deep-laid plan to manoeuvre the
Allies into the position of recognizing
the Soviet Government, for the purpose
of satisfying the desires of radical labor
and of meeting the insistent demands of
British commercial interests. But when
one recalls his Bryanic gaffes in recent
speeches, such as confusing Novgorod
(in western Russia) and Nizhni Nov-
gorod (on the Volga) and his allusion
to General "Kharkov" (a large city in
south Russia), one is forced to the con-
clusion that his opportunist policy is
due, not to knowledge of Russia, but to
the lack of it. Indeed, the latest news
indicates that Alexander Berkenheim,
sometime foreign representative of the
Central Union of Consumers' Coopera-
tives, was successful in imposing on
him an utterly false view of the present
status of these Cooperatives in Russia, a
view which he grasped as a straw when
faced with the necessity of meeting the
crisis at Paris presented by the Bolshe-
vik military danger.
Mr. Lloyd George is not alone in his
confusion of mind concerning the Coop-
erative movement in Russia. The public
generally has but a vague idea of the
social and economic significance of this
development. The tendency indeed has
been to draw unjustifiable generaliza-
tions from insufficient data.
First, it must be understood that there
are three distinct kinds of Cooperative
societies in Russia, each with its own
origin and course of development. In
recent years these have tended to draw
together, and the great Cooperative con-
gresses have brought about a certain
unity and community of action, but in
some vital features they remain differ-
ent and separate. These three classes
are the Producers' Cooperatives, the So-
cieties of Mutual Credit, and the Con-
sumers' Cooperatives.
The Producers' Cooperatives are a
peculiarly Russian institution, having
originated in the artel, or primitive
guild, which dates back to the Middle
Ages. In the artel a group of work-
men— fishermen, woodworkers, weavers,
; blacksmiths, or other artisans — would
band themselves together for a particu-
lar task or for a special industrial under-
taking, select their own foreman, carry
on their work, and then divide the pro-
ceeds of their labor. They might work
for themselves or on a contract. They
might even borrow capital. Naturally,
under serfdom this institution did not
have much opportunity to develop on a
large scale; still, it persisted. But in
1865, Mr. Nicholas Vereshchagin, a
brother of the famous artist, who had
devoted his life to agriculture and espe-
cially to the development of the dairy
industry, established on his estate a
small cooperative creamery, a sort of
model artel. This may be said to be the
beginning of the modern Producers'
Cooperatives. The idea did not meet
with rapid success, but it was kept alive,
and a generation later suddenly took a
fresh start and made tremendous strides.
The present century has seen it grow in
the province of Vologda and in western
Siberia until now it constitutes an enor-
mous undertaking. To-day, the Union
of Siberian Creamery Associations oper-
ates some 2,380 cooperative creameries,
conducts more than 2,000 stores, ware-
houses, repair-shops, etc., produces over
50,000 tons of butter a year, and handles
millions of dollars' worth of other prod-
uce for its members. These latter num-
ber over 3,000,000. Hundreds of other
Producers' Cooperatives sprang up, in-
cluding flax-growers, tar-producers, poul-
try-raisers, and numerous craftsmen's
organizations. Slightly different, yet in
harmony with the movement and based
upon the same folk institution, were
agricultural cooperative societies which
started in the late sixties, and which
began to receive special government
encouragement at the end of the last
century. The Consumers' Cooperatives
had two strong points in their favor. In
the first place they were not an artificial
creation, but grew out of a natural Rus-
sian institution. In the second place
they had in general good management,
since they were usually run by men who
had been developed from the ranks, and
who were therefore men of practical expe-
rience. This to a large extent accounts
for their stability and substantial success.
Credit Cooperation may be dealt with
very briefly, despite its importance. The
idea of mutual associations of small cred-
it came from Germany, and was first
introduced into Russia in the sixties. Its
purpose was the encouragement of peas-
ant agriculture, and its first task was
the education of the people to an under-
standing of the benefits of cooperation
in credit. Later the Government, which
was in general suspicious of all such
movements, recognized its value and
issued laws establishing model charters
and bringing to its assistance the sup-
port of the State Bank. Out of the
mutual credit movement grew the organ-
ization in 1912 of the Moscow Narodny
(People's) Bank, which became the cen-
tral institution for financing all cooper-
ative undertakings.
The Consumers' Cooperative movement
followed the other two. While it was
based on the principles of the Rochdale
system, there were two conditions par-
ticularly favorable to its spread in Rus-
sia. The first was the tendency towards
cooperation in production as mentioned
above. The second was the extreme sim-
plicity of the peasants' wants, which
limited the stocks required in coopera-
tive stores to comparatively few articles.
The demand for increasing facilities for
distribution, especially after the famine
of 1891, gave great impetus to the ex-
pansion of the Consumers' Cooperatives,
and in 1897 the Government issued a
model constitution and by-laws for the
organization of these cooperative so-
cieties. In 1898, as a result of the first
congress of consumers' societies, held at
Nizhni Novgorod, there was founded the
Moscow Union of Consumers' Societies,
and this in turn was, in 1916, reorgan-
ized into the Central Union of Consum-
ers' Societies, familiarly termed the
"Centrosoyuz."
Up to the time of the war, the develop-
ment of these societies had been normal
and steady, but with the breakdown of
private means of distribution under the
strain of war conditions and in the pres-
ence of the eager demand for manufac-
tured goods of all kinds, the Consumers'
Cooperatives took a sudden spurt for-
ward and increased by thousands. This
growth was abnormal, and with it came
many irregularities and abuses. Two of
these are noteworthy, the lack of expe-
rienced and competent management, and
the use of some of these cooperative
societies for purposes of speculation and
profiteering by the men who eained con-
trol of them. So, for example, manu-
facturers who had patriotically taken
measures to prevent profiteering in the
products of their factories and who, for
this reason, sold almost their whole out-
put to the Cooperatives, began to find
that the managers of the latter were
frequently turning over invoices of goods
directly to speculators at 50 per cent, to
100 per cent, profit. In the hands of
clever and unscrupulous manipulators,
these Cooperatives had departed far
from the principles of mutual cooperation
for the benefit of all their members.
When the Bolsheviki came into power,
they were confronted with the fact that
these Cooperatives represented a mem-
bership running into millions, and they
hesitated at first to take steps, in accord-
ance with their programme, calculated to
antagonize them. It must be borne in
mind that the peasant population of Rus-
sia is not at all Socialistic and that
the Cooperative movement was based
on a purely capitalistic foundation,
its object being merely to eliminate the
middleman between the producer and
108]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 38
consumer. After the Bolsheviki had con-
solidated their authority and acquired a
military force to carry out their will,
they attempted to put into effect their
programme of the nationalization of
trade. In the cities, the Soviet stores
took the place of the Cooperatives, but
in the country their attempted organiza-
tion fell down, and they were obliged to
come back to the Cooperatives. They
did not do so, however, without taking
steps to turn these organizations to their
own purposes, or at least to exercise a
careful supervision over them. In De-
cember, 1918, they seized the Moscow
Narodny Bank and made it a division of
their State Bank. Fresh decrees were
issued with reference to membership in
the Cooperatives, and gradually, although
the Cooperatives in the country districts
continued to do everything possible to
supply local needs and. keep up the past
traditions of the movement, they fell
more and more under the direction of
Commissars, until, a couple of months
ago, the official Bolshevik press an-
nounced with satisfaction that the Coop-
eratives were entirely in Bolshevik hands
and had become a Bolshevik institution.
Considerable mystery surrounds the
mission of Alexander Berkenheim, one
of the officials of the Centrosoyuz, who
was suddenly released from a Bolshevik
prison in Moscow last year and permitted
to go abroad as a representative of the
Centrosoyuz. In this country he made
overtures both to the Government and
to business men, proposing to ship in
goods to be distributed by the Coop-
eratives independently of the Soviet
Government. He was unable to give any
guarantees that such goods would not be
taken over by the Soviet Government
and used fSr its own purposes to the det-
riment of the civilian population, and the
State Department refused to grant him
permits for shipments to Bolshevik Rus-
sia. In many circles there was a strong
suspicion that he had an understanding
of some sort with the Soviet authorities,
who saw in his proposal a strong lever
with which to force the lifting of the
blockade.
Later he went to England, where now
he seems to. have had more success. It
looks as if his interviews with Mr. Lloyd
George and with English business men,
greedy for Russian trade, had resulted
in bringing about the announcement of
the Supreme Council at Paris. The most
remarkable feature of this is that, within
a week after this announcement was
issued, Berkenheim and his assistant,
Krovopuskov, were constrained to admit
the falsity of their earlier claims that
it was possible to do business with the
Cooperatives independently of the Soviet
Government. It is impossible to say
what the result will be. To be sure, the
final paragraph of the announcement of
the Supreme Council states definitely
that no change in policy towards the
Soviet Government is implied, but the
hopes held out for the opening of Russia
to trade have so whetted the appetite of
businessmen that the announcement may
prove but the opening wedge to recog-
nition of the Bolshevik regime. In this
connection, it must be pointed out that
the statement issued by the authorities
at Moscow places the Supreme Council
between the horns of a serious dilemma.
To Russians, even those who are most
strongly anti-Bolshevik, it displays a
dignity and assurance that appeals to
their national pride at a time when they
are smarting under the contemptuous
and even insulting treatment accorded to
them by the Allies. They believe that
England and France are both interested
in dismembering and weakening Russia,
and they see in the despatch of British
war ships to the Black Sea a plan to
destroy the remainder of the Russian
fleet under cover of the excuse of war
with the Bolshevik forces. Two years
of Allied diplomatic blundering have led
to a menacing impasse, and it would
seem that only some startling change
within Russia itself could serve to avert
a catastrophe.
Jerome Landfield
Book Reviews
Beneficent Results of a
Wicked War
After the Whirlwind. By Charles Edward
Russell. New York : George H. Doran
Company.
THE behavior of the Socialists of the
world during the great war was in
some respects surprising and disap-
pointing to themselves and to those who
trusted in them, although it was not very
different from what their wiser leaders
had expected, and their keener critics had
often predicted. For years they had done
lip-service to internationalism, but when
the storm burst this superstructure
went by the board and they were carried
along with their compatriots upon the
tide of nationalism toward the rocks and
shoals which they had detected so cleverly
and charted with so much care. The
German Socialists were especially disap-
pointing, because they were so numerous
— more than forty per cent, of the pop-
ulation, according to some estimates —
and because of their loud professions of
pacifism and their fervent appeals to the
solidarity of the proletariat in all coun-
tries. Yet they voted for the extraordi-
nary war credit of April, 1913; and in
July and August, 1914, instead of declar-
ing a general strike, they were almost, if
not quite, as keen for war as the ignorant
masses who made no pretensions to
pacifism. Only a few fanatics, like Karl
Liebknecht, tried to oppose the gen-
eral movement and prophesied disaster,
no matter whether Germany lost or won
the war.
Oddly enough, socialism was taken
more seriously in other countries, and it
almost looks as though it had been a part
of German propaganda — a disease more
virulent abroad than in the country of
its origin. However that may be, many
Socialists in the Allied countries opposed
the war, and if their advice had been
taken, Germany would have dominated
the world, with a faint hope of social
revolution as the only consolation of
those who still believed in liberty and
democracy. Certainly, Socialists in Italy
came near delivering that country into
the hands of the Austrians; Russian
Socialists dealt a staggering blow to the
Allies; and if the majority of American
Socialists had had their way, the United
States would not have entered the war,
or, after going in, would have carried
it on in a half-hearted way.
Needless to say, Charles Edward Rus-
sell was not of the majority faction
in the Socialist Party. Together with
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Eng-
lish Walling, William L. Stoddard, Upton
Sinclair, William J. Ghent, J. G. Phelps
Stokes, and others, he signed a protest
against the official action of the Socialist
Party with respect to war and national
defense, which was published in the New
York Call on March 24, 1917. This docu-
ment stated that Socialists do not con-
demn defensive war, but realize that, as
Hillquit says, it would be foolish and
futile to preach complete disarmament to
any nation while its neighbors and rivals
are armed, and that each nation must be
prepared to defend its integrity and inde-
pendence against the rest of the world.
Here are a few of the sentences of this
fine manifesto:
We feel that the present opposition of the
Socialist Party to national defence is contrary
to the interests of democracy and contrary to
the hitherto accepted views of the interna-
tional Socialist movement. We are for peace,
but not at any cost; and believe that the sacri-
fice of integrity and of general public and
private self-respect is too high a price to pay
for it. Although as a nation we are politically
free, yet we are but a part of the social world,
and as such we are glad that the isolation of
our country is past. To refuse to resist in-
ternational crime is to be unworthy of the
name of Socialist. It is our present duty to
the cause of Internationalism to support our
Government in any sacrifice it requires in de-
fence of those principles of international law
and order which are essential alike to Social-
ism and to civilization.
Apparently, the minority Socialists of
the United States and the majority of
German Socialists were in the same boat
January 31, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[109
in that they temporarily abandoned their
internationalism. But if, as Mr. Russell
believes, the German Socialists, deluded by
their masters, were waging an unright-
eous war, while the Socialists of America
were defending the liberties of the world,
the latter were the true champions of
internationalism, and the former had de-
nied the faith. Yet Mr. Russell does not
blame them very much for their betrayal
of democracy; nor does he blame the
German people as a whole for blindly fol-
lowing their unscrupulous leaders, but
he does affirm that the German Govern-
ment was the real culprit, and that it
did not represent the German people. It
is, of course, quite "unscientific" to
blame anybody, but Mr. Russell does not
pose as a "scientific" Socialist and does
not say much about economic determin-
ism. Yet he injects a little of that into
his explanation of the war in that he
mentions the enormous growth of Ger-
many's population since 1870, her need
of colonies as sources of raw materials,
her desire for seaports on the Atlantic,
and the tendency toward expansion of
the Empire in Europe by the annexation
of the small neighboring states. He ven-
tures, too, upon a sweeping generaliza-
tion in saying that the theory of Ger-
man supremacy was no more than the
logical ultimate of the theory of compe-
tition endorsed and practised by all
nations.
There were, then, according to Mr.
Russell, at least two villains in the play —
the mediaeval monarchy of Germany,
with its aristocracy and its militarism,
and the competitive economic system
that served to choke the spiritual life
and exalt the material — the former play-
ing a conspicuous and magnificent role,
the latter skulking in the background as
the evil genius, suggesting, if not con-
trolling, the whole performance. A third
influence, subsidiary but not less potent,
was the military success of Germany in
'66 and '70, which gave the whole Ger-
man people a feeling of superiority, a
desire for power, and a belief in manifest
destiny that could find complete satisfac-
tion in nothing less than world dominion.
:The very character of the people seems
jto have changed; they acquiesced grimly
Iwhile their Government prepared relent-
lessly for the Day; and when the time
was ripe a pretext was found and the
dance of death began.
It is not easy to follow Mr. Russell's
argument because of his florid style and
his frequent digressions and exhorta-
pons, but such appears to be his concep-
ion of the tangled skein of world affairs,
which now, after the whirlwind, proceeds
;o untangle itself in miraculous fashion.
Germany has been defeated, and now,
;hastened and subdued, her people have
•enounced their vain ambitions, thrown
iff their evil institutions, reformed their
deals, and the world has nothing more
to fear from them. No republic is a men-
ace to the world's peace, nor could be, for
secret plottings are impossible when the
people rule. Of course, some remnants
of capitalism are still there, but these will
presently pass away in Germany and in
all other countries. In France, Great
Britain, and the United States, the Gov-
ernments took control of the railways in
order to win the war, managed them with
marvelous efficiency and economy, and
will never restore them to private own-
ership. The income tax in various coun-
tries is such a heavy charge on great
incomes that private enterprise is dis-
couraged and the Governments will have
to take up the burden of saving and
investment which capitalists are laying
down. The laborers, who have played so
noble a part in the war, will not relin-
quish their power, nor will they patiently
accept a lower standard of living. The
shop-steward movement in Great Britain
is an omen of a new day for labor in all
countries, when labor will be consulted
on all matters, and even be represented
on the directorate of every industrial
corporation. If the Federal Reserve
Board can supply part of our banking
needs, it can supply them all, and if the
Government can lend to farmers, it can
lend to merchants, manufacturers, and
wage-earners. The remarkable success of
the American Government in the conduct
of the war gives reason to think that it
can carry on all important industries far
better than private owners, and when
this is fully realized "the industrial sys-
tem that has cursed mankind and
blighted so many millions of lives will
pass away with the other anomalies of
the dead old Night."
Mr. Russell must wish that he had
been more cautious in his prophecies ; for
already some of his predictions have been
refuted by the logic of events, and others
appear to have but slight foundation of
fact. His thesis that most of the ills
that flesh is heir to are to be attributed
to capitalism must seem strange to the
historian who finds evidence of human
misery long before the advent of Cap-
italism, and knows that the most
wretched people in the world to-day are
not those who live in the most civilized
or capitalistic countries. Similarly, Mr.
Russell's glorification of governmental
efficiency must surprise himself as he
considers his own observation and expe-
rience of enormous waste incurred dur-
ing the war — a waste which was probably
justified by the absolute necessity of win-
ning the war at any cost of life or prop-
erty, but which would bring speedy ruin
to industrial enterprise in time of peace.
Efficiency, as has been often pointed
out, is not to be defined in terms of
service only, but as the rendering of
a maximum of service at a minimum
of cost.
J. E. Le Rossignol
Kipling— First and Last
Impressions
RuDYARD Kipling's Verse, Inclusive Edition,
1885-1919. New York: Doubleday, Page
and Company.
ABOUT thirty years ago a young
Anglo-Indian poet surprised the
English-speaking world with a new
brand of lyric energy. In power he had
often been matched and overmatched,
but in sheer force it was hard to name
his equal. Men had to brace or arm
themselves to listen; he aroused a con-
sternation which turned into delight or
recoil according to the stoutness of the
temper which received the impact of his
blows. That he was a poet it seemed
hard to question. His subjects might
disquiet; his diction might amaze; but
lyricism is the heart of poetry, and speed
is almost the heart of lyricism, and lyric
speed was the essence and distinction of
Mr. Kipling's verse. His knowledge was
great, it was practical and technical to
an extraordinary and disconcerting de-
gree ; and the weight of his knowledge in
relation to the energy of his movement
made a powerful locomotive drawing a
heavy goods train seem the precise and
lively image of his genius. "This knowl-
edge had its novel and special field; his
filiation to England by race, to India by
birth, gave him a divided loyalty which
he could solidify only by making himself
a citizen and votary of the British
Empire.
There are several first impressions of
Mr. Kipling which later experience
wholly or partly confutes. First of all
comes the idea that he is a poet of things.
Now Mr. Kipling is the poet of humanity
in the gripe of things, but tht thing
by itself and for itself harcflj' figures
in his verse. At most, you will find a
bell-buoy or a coastwise light taking
form as an active — almost a living — part
of the wardership and stewardship of
the earth-belting British Empire. Go
with him into the engine-room of a
steamship in the famous "McAndrew's
Hymn." He knows the apparatus like
a mechanic, and his sole aim at first is
apparently to deafen and dizzy you with
the uproar of his technicalities; but this
is appearance only; he is not studying
that engine, he is dredging the soul of
its engineer. The British Empire itself
is valuable to him chiefly as a whetstone
for British human nature.
The second partly misleading thing in
Mr. Kipling is the seeming imperiousness
which consorts so well at the first glance
with the task of the lyrist of empire.
The word "peremptory" comprehends
much of the surface man. The call to
verse was peremptory, the nature of that
verse is peremptory, its themes are
peremptory necessities, and the gospel
it enforces is peremptory in a superla-
tive degree. But all this is half illusion.
110]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 38
No man seems freer from the littleness
of dictatorship. This imperiousness is
sometimes associated with a high and
proud humility of which the august
"Recessional" is the deathless witness
and example. But his disposition is
evinced most clearly in his choice of a
protagonist for his verse. That choice
fixed itself, not on royalty or premier-
ship or martial fame or domination in
any form, but on Tommy Atkins, private,
butt, drudge, and underling, shoved from
land to land, till the enemy's ball and the
friend's spade insure him an abiding
rest. To this humility the high-mettled
Kipling bows himself. Energy, in God's
name, but energy in obedience — not
Prometheus defying Jove, but Hercules
serving Eurystheus in mighty labors —
is the ideal of the singer of the "White
Man's Burden."
A third possible impression — and this
time an entirely mistaken impression —
in regard to Mr. Kipling is that he is an
egotist. The literary evidence points to
the conclusion that no man living is
more self-forgetful. Lyrics, among all
forms of literature, are the occasion, the
excuse, almost the justification, of ego-
tism. Yet here is a man who has written
seven hundred and seventy pages of
lyrics in which it is actually rather diffi-
cult to find a poem which is strictly per-
sonal or individual in its theme. It is
always the -other man's feeling, or the
feeling that he shares with the other
man, that provides the inspiration and
incentive for his verse. Mr. Kipling
loved and married in America; we can
well believe that "never man sighed truer
breath." Yet who can point out the
pioem in which that experience has
shaped or tinged the verse? At long
intervals, iKi some literary context most
commonly, a dedication or an ode "To
the True Romance," an allusion to him-
self or a personal note sparingly reveals
itself. After all, why not? In his broad
outlook upon the English race through-
out the "Seven Seas," even Rudyard Kip-
ling deserves a passing glance.
The fourth possible impression in re-
gard to Mr. Kipling is that his view of
life is blithe and heartening. He writes
poems of adventure, and adventure sets
our hearts aglow. He writes military
verse, and military verse takes its key-
note from the bugle. Yet if we discrimi-
nate Mr. Kipling's words from his voice,
I think we shall find that the voice alone
is cheerful ; the words are sad. What is
the most buoyant of his volumes, the
volume that one would instinctively select
if one sought to enliven a programme or
a party? "Barrack-Room Ballads," un-
doubtedly. What is the first of "Bar-
rack-Room Ballads?" "Danny Deever" —
the story of a heart-chilling hanging.
What is the best of them? "Gunga Din"
— the story of an Indian water-carrier,
reviled by those he loyally serves, shot
finally upon the battlefield. What is an-
other of the best ? "Tommy" — a picture
of British ingratitude and injustice to
the private soldier. The "Song of the
Banjo" should be a cheerful poem; it
has a line that sears itself into the
memory: "And the thoughts that burn
like iron if you think." In the picture
of army life, the facts are black, unless
you presuppose the heroic temper in the
spectator. Mr. Kipling treats them with
a certain blitheness only because his
temper is heroic. His philosophy is sup-
posed to be superficial. In some respects
the charge is just, but it remains true
that Mr. Kipling from his earliest youth
had grasped a basic principle of life and
conduct which many people do not learn
until middle or old age and which many
more die without learning. That truth
may be phrased thus: Life as datum, as
mere material, is hard and raw, and the
only means of extracting from it such
happiness as it is capable of yielding is to
relate ourselves to that hardness and
rawness in some efficient, counteractive
way. Pessimism plus heroism equals op-
timism— that is the formula for Mr. Kip-
ling, if you concede that he is optimistic
at all. It is this that removes the boyish-
ness from his notion of empire. Empire
is not booty; empire is debt. Possession
is the call to toil and sacrifice.
The last of the possible mistakes in re-
lation to Mr. Kipling is a mistake that
has almost ceased to be possible; I have
in mind the notion that he is immoral.
At first sight, the breakneck pace had
every appearance of a runaway; a little
time showed that the driver kept his seat
and his self-possession. In "Depart-
mental Ditties," he reveled in cynicism.
In early days Mr. LeGallienne deplored
his militancy. The Nation called his
"Truce of the Bear" his "retrocessional."
When his soldier in "Mandalay" cried
out: "Ship me somewhere east of Suez,
where the best is like the worst," we
forgot that the dropped scruples in the
poem might pertain to Mr. Kipling as
little as its dropped h's. The poet doubt-
less errs in particular moral judgments
like the rest of us, but in spirit he is the
most moral of beings, since the subordi-
nation of desires to necessities is not
only his doctrine but his instinct. The
cynicism was passing and partial; his
calmness in the face of certain sexual
misdemeanors was simply a part of that
English good sense which views the in-
evitable— anywhere — with calmness. In
his political opinions he may be some-
times partial and narrow, vehement and
extreme; that will affect the soundness
of his teaching, but will not threaten his
place as the prophet and singer of re-
sponsibility. Mr. Kipling is effectually
west of Suez, and the call of Mandalay
finds no response in the steadfastness of
his maturity.
Three things have made Mr. Kipling.
The first is that simple, primal force,
that Viking or Berserker energy, which
made the man and all his words projec-
tiles. The second was the consecration
which this half-barbaric force received
from its combination with sympathies
and aspirations, which, if earthy in their
content, were beautiful in their disinter-
estedness. The third was the circum-
stance— almost the accident — which sup-
plied a novel field for the exercise of
these capacities. That circumstance was
Mr. Kipling's birth, the division of loy-
alty between England and India with its
resulting concentration of loyalty on the
union and conflux of these powers in the
British Empire.
The collected edition of Mr. Kipling's
verse will do nothing to dispel the pre-
valent impression that his power as poet
has materially abated. After 1893, the
fertility shrinks, the range contracts,
and the force dwindles. The descent has
almost the gradation and regularity of a
terrace. I know of no body of verse in
which a date comes so close to being an
estimate as the poetry of Mr. Kipling
after the "Seven Seas." There is tactics
— possibly there is tact — in an editorial
arrangement which throws poems of all
dates indiscriminately into one recep-
tacle. One is reminded of those early
formations in the late war in which
Americans, supposedly weak, were set
side by side with tried French and
British troops who might cover and sus-
tain their inadequacy. The Americans
hardly needed that defense; some pro-
tection, some convoy or escort, is un-
doubtedly needed for the later poems of
Mr. Kipling. Of course the inferiority
is only comparative. Mr. Kipling to-day
does not write like a dull man; he writes
like other bright men. It is so much
easier to be bright than to be Kipling.
I do not understand this falling-off
quite so clearly as I like to understand
things, but one or two conjectures may
be risked. Mr. Kipling is humanist, not
materialist; yet the forms of humanity
which appeal to him find their settings
and promptings in a world of ardent
physical endeavor. Now it is easier to
write about Thor and Vulcan at twenty-
five than at fifty. Again, his helpless-
ness in the hands of Nature, which gave
his earlier works almost the validity of
a natural force, took from him all ca-
pacity to adapt, to modify, to re-create
himself. He uttered nothing but finali-
ties; that was his strength; but it in-
volved the disadvantage that these finali-
ties for other people were ultimata for
himself. He had spoken out with rare
freedom and abundance in his marvelous
youth; and in later years, no new India,
no new Tommy, appeared to replenish
the declining store of his incentives. But
the main point is always the sum of
worth in his entire product, not the dis-
tribution of that value through the sue-
Januan' 31, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[111
cessive periods of his life. If one feels
age in the newer verses, the youth of
the elder ones is unimpaired. I can not
but feel that there is much in this volume
which will lastingly interest our time,
and that there are parts of it which the
centuries will treasure.
0. W. Firkins
Folks and Folk
Dust of New York. By Konrad Bercovici.
New York : Boni and Liveright.
Their Son : The Necklace. By Eduardo
Zamacois. Translated by George Allan
England. New York : Boni and Liveright.
Lo, AND Behold Ye! By Seumas MacManus.
New York : Frederick A. Stokes Company.
Seldwyla Folks ; Three Singular Tales.
By Gottfried Keller. Translations by
Wolf Von Schierbrand, Ph.D.
IN "Dust of New York," by Konrad
Bercovici, we are aware of an ex-
traordinary "saturation" in the color and
atmosphere of polyglot New York. In
its topography he is especially learned.
"The map of Europe is reproduced in
New York by the different nationalities
living there; each nationality having as
neighbor the same that it has in Europe.
Thus, the Greeks, Turks, Syrians, and
Italians are close neighbors in Europe,
and also here. The same thing applies to
the Russians, who are neighbors with
the Rumanians, the Poles, the Austrians,
and the Germans. And one must not
think," pursues our commentator, "that
love attracts them. They hate one an-
other as whole-heartedly as only neigh-
bors can hate one another. Perhaps this
mutual hatred attracts them: Hatred is
not as bad as we have been taught to
think. One can, and generally does, love
lower than himself, but no one hates
lower than himself." These, after all,
are surface facts, from which we pass
to subtler matters of racial contact and
admixture:
Walk through Grand Street from Third
Avenue to Clinton Street, which is not a long
distance, and you have the types of the whole
world before you. They are not in concen-
trated form; they are diluted. But if you
analyze, even hurriedly, you will soon be able
to know the components of each one of them.
... A remote Tartar ancestor of one of the
push-cart peddlers is plainly seen in the small
sunken black eyes. In another the straight
line of the back of the head tells you that liis
mother, or his grandmother, had lived once
in Hungary. In another one the Slav type,
the flat fleshy nose, is mixed with the Wal-
lachian strong chin. Some Teuton blood calls
out through the heavy cast of an otherwise
typical Austrian Jew. A Spanish grandee, as
if come out from a page of Cervantes, is sell-
ing shoe laces and cuff buttons. And a Moroc-
I can prince, ill at ease in European garb, is
1 offering to the passerby some new Burbankian
fig-plum-orange combination.
Out of such materials the tales in this
book are wrought. The striking and
somewhat pathetic thing about them is
that they are wrought over-cleverly ac-
cording to the current fashion of the
American "short story."' Strange portent
of that literary melting-pot, the Ameri-
can magazine, when names like Achmed
Abdullah and Konrad Bercovici stand
among the most skilful practitioners of
the "0. Henry" method! Here are the
snappy introductions and the punchy
endings of that great original, the but-
tonholing manner and the sentimental-
cynical philosophy. Unluckily for the
present teller of tales, something in him
scorns the facile "happy ending" of
Anglo-American prescription; and we
have the anomaly of a Saturday Eve-
ning Post style and a Continental pre-
occupation with fact and with type at
the expense of situations and endings
as such.
With two tales by Eduardo Zamacois,
still another leader of the new Spanish
literary movement is introduced to Eng-
lish readers, a fresh prophet of the
resurgimiento for us to put alongside
Blasco-Ibanez and Baroja and Benavente.
"This man," says the translator, "is a
human dynamo, a revitalizing force in
Spanish life and letters, an artist who
is more than a mere artist; he is a man
with a message, a philosophy and a
vision." Rather oddly, we hear in the
next breath that to his present in-
terpreter, "Zamacois seems a Spanish
Guy de Maupassant." In these exhibits,
certainly, one finds more of the detached
irony of the French story-teller than of
philosophy or vision. "Their Son" and
"The Necklace" are vivid and sardonic
studies in minor tragedy, the overthrow
of simple goodness or youthfiil idealism
by the malice of fate. That goodness
and idealism may be their own ultimate
justification, and reward is not, at least,
denied.
We may step back with frank relief,
however, into the safe and comfortable
zone of the folk-tale as rendered by Mr.
MacManus. The author of "Ballads of
a Country Boy" has had his honorable
place in the poetic renascence of Ireland.
But his most distinctive work is the
series of volumes of folk-stories, of which
"Lo, and Behold Ye!" is the latest. There
we breathe clear of the somewhat musky
symbolism which has so often hung about
the "Neo-Celtic" muse, and are at home
with the quaint and hearty humor of the
Irish peasant who lives in the present
without forgetting the past. Here once
more is the chronicle, Hibernically fla-
vored, of those deathless matters with
which folk-fancy has always busied it-
self; the triumph of cunning, the tri-
umph of brawn, the triumph of young
love and of clean blood, the overthrow of
witches and dragons and giants and cruel
kings; the fulfillment of prophecies and
the voidance of unholy maledictions. But
as the story-teller brings them to us
fresh from his own sources, we forget
their hoary age, or dimly welcome it as
a sign of old beloved intimacy; and taste
again with relish the dish with which
our literary feast long since began. I
have just read these tales to a boy of
eight years, and don't know which of
us enjoyed them most.
Something of the same quality, though
in more sophisticated form, belongs to
the "Seldwyla Folks" of Gottfried Keller.
"The Three Decent Combmakers" may
be recognized as the story of the clever
apprentice who outwits his fellows and
marries the heiress; and "Dietegen" as
the tale of the foundling who after many
vicissitudes becomes master in the
strange place of his adoption. "Romeo
and Juliet of the Village," with its (in
the conventional sense) unhappy ending,
is upon less stable ground — the least
effective of the three tales, as it happens,
tedious in structure and relatively crude
at least in its English form. Keller's
work appears belatedly in English. He
was a German-Swiss poet and story-
teller born in 1819 and educated in Ger-
many; author of several didactic novels,
much verse, and "Die Leute von Seld-
wyla," a series in two volumes of whimsi-
cal studies of Swiss life from which the
three stories here translated are taken.
They belong to their century. If the
deliberate and demure humor of "The
Three Decent Combmakers" seems
vaguely familiar, it is perhaps because
of a certain kinship with our own liter-
ary humor of that period — the humor,
say, of the Sleepy Hollow Irving and the
Tanglewood Tales Hawthorne. The trans-
lator rather goes out of his way to insist
that Keller was a Swiss and not a Ger-
man writer. But though we may take it
on his word that there is a strong Helve-
tian twist to the original text, its genius
is clearly Teutonic, as was ty^ 'oreeding
of the author. He is, at air' events, a
writer who should be known to readers
who are extending rapidly, thanks to the
new enterprise of our publishers, their
hitherto provincial or purely racial
knowledge of the world's treasures of
imaginative fiction.
H. W. BOYNTON
Beyond the Fields We Know
Tales of Three Hemispheres. By Lord Dun-
sany. Boston : John W. Luce & Company.
IN the two hemispheres we know more
or less about. Lord Dunsany pretends
now and then to set his story. But Lis
heart is in the Third Hemisphere — the
Hemisphere at the Back of the Map,
which lies beyond the Fields We Know.
And, indeed, even when we think for a
moment that we are in the high wolds
beyond Wiltshire, or looking out on the
Tuileries gardens, or checked short for
a peep at the cloud-capped tower of the
Woolworth Building, we are pretty sure
to be in, before long, for a meeting with
the Old Gods, the gods whom Time has
put to sleep. It is as well for the world
112]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 38
to maintain an ambassador to these
courts; the old gods wake up now and
then.
Most assuredly Lord Dunsany gets an
effect ; and an effect quite different from
that wrought upon us by realms longer
familiar that yet seem to brighten, dim
and distant, on the horizons which he
casts about us. Sindibad sailed here-
abouts, but did not quite venture to
touch on these shores. Somewhere be-
tween here and there lies the land of the
Prester John. Was it — sometimes we
think it was — amid the desolate walls of
Balclutha that we heard that note be-
fore? Or was it struck from the dul-
cimer by the narrow fingers of an Abys-
sinian maid, when our hearts were hun-
gry for Mount Abora? Certainly, some-
thing very like it was a bit away to the
left when we took the Thirty-Mile Ride
to the brushwood pile— thetimeThey were
after us, you remember? When we ven-
tured into the Hall of Eblis by the side
of young Vathek, or were with Shibli
Bagarag when he shaved Shagpat, the
son of Shimpoor, the son of Shoolpi, the
son of ShuUum, as it is written by one
who, for all he said he was making an
Arabian Entertainment, had surely been
aforetime a mabinog to one of his own
Welsh bards —
But it is useless to attempt a defini-
tion of the Land of Dreams. You slip
into it as into an habitual garment, or
not at all. "It was evident," says Lord
Dunsany, "that he had been drinking
bak." Quite obvious, indeed. It could not
have seemed a bit more natural if we had
been assured that he had been drinking
Woldery wine itself. We should have
known it anyway, without being told.
Driftinp-^fcjAn the Yann, drinking on
occasion Uie captain's yellow wine "which
he kept apart among his sacred things,"
listening to the prayers of the sailors and
to their pleasant talk about fair Belzoond
and the little neighboring cities of Durl
and Duz, touching at Mandaroon, Per-
dondaris (here you may read, in addi-
tion, of the destruction of Perdondarls
and how it was avenged), and so to Bar-
wul-Yann, the Gate of Yann, one does
not need, reading this, to have drifted
in the flesh down the Irrawaddy, stum-
bling upon jungle fowl among the ruins
of Amarapura, viewing the spacious tem-
ples of Pagan and the twin towns of
Minbu and Magwe, in order to cry, "Yea,
even so it all is." To say that the Yann
is not the Irrawaddy is to be somewhat
on the way toward saying what it is.
Whoso does not already move about
in this world of dreams with certain
step and welcoming eye will not find his
way thither for all Lord Dunsany's tell-
ing. Whoso makes too much of a little
matter of allegorical grit will not rightly
enjoy his dish of strawberries and
cream. Of such, the cat who dwells
on the other side of Go-by Street may
well ask: "What does he know about
anything?" and answer, after a little
pause, "Nothing." Very likely the cat
will say that in either case. But one
who cares not at all for these things,
let him go fetch down high prices, or
find out the truth about Russia, or catch
a falling star, as he chooses— and can.
The Run of the Shelves
THE cover of Donald Hankey's little
book, the "Cross" (Dutton), is a very
pretty, but a pale, almost a pallid, blue.
It is sky-color attenuated. That phrase
is exactly descriptive of the quality of
the contents of the book. The best words
it contains, the only words that come
home to us, are the following on a fly-
leaf: Donald Hankey, Born at Brighton,
1884, Enlisted August, 1914. Killed in
Action October 12, 1916. However, let
no one suppose that there is anything
wrong or silly or even positively weak
in the book. It is serene and humane;
it is sound after a fashion; its sincerity
is incontestable. But its soundness does
not make it strong. Its sincerity does
not make it strong. The ratification of
that sincerity by its author's gallant
death in battle does not make it strong.
It is a book that will comfort and sustain
the predisposed, but the problem of the
world, which it attempts to solve, arises
very largely out of the increasing rarity
of the predisposition. The book which
is very, very short, urges its readers to
follow the self-sacrificing example of a
man who, among other instances of self-
forgetfulness, preached to his fellow-
Galileans for nothing. The book itself
costs seventy-five cents.
"The Book of a Naturalist," a pot-
pourri of articles, some carefully, some
casually written, and many years apart,
adds little to Mr. W. H. Hudson's lit-
erary fame and detracts considerably
from our estimate of him as a naturalist.
The themes vary from cheap, bourgeois
anecdotes, such as "The Heron as a
Table-bird," to the exquisite essay on
the "Serpent in Literature." We revel
in the diction of his chapters on snakes,
but we lament the logic of his explana-
tion of the forked tongue, which he
claims renders its owner visible to ap-
proaching enemies, and invisible to the
prey which the snake is stalking.
The fifty-odd pages of uncompromising
attack on the domestic dog is likely to
invite attention. Hudson writes, "The
dog's affection for his master . . .
is in reality a very small and a very low
thing," and again elsewhere, "I have a
friendly feeling toward pigs generally,
and consider them the most intelligent
of beasts, not excepting the elephant and
the anthropoid ape — the dog is not to be
mentioned in this connection." Sentiment
entirely aside, these are not the words
of a sincere naturalist, but a statement
of false psychology. Judged as an un-
corrected assemblage of various news-
paper and magazine articles it is far in-
ferior to similar volumes by Ray Lan-
cester, Arthur Thompson, and Harting.
Hudson describes in inimitable lan-
guage the museum something that was
a snake; that "spiral-shaped, rigid, cylin-
drical piece of clay-colored gutta-percha,
no longer capable of exciting strange
emotions in us— the unsightly dropped
coil of a spirit that was fiery and cold."
And then the living serpent, "not seen
distinctly as in a museum or laboratory,
dead on a table, but in an atmosphere
and surroundings that take something
from and add something to it; seen at
first as a chance disposition of dead
leaves or twigs or pebbles on the
ground— a handful of Nature's mottled
riffraff blown or thrown fortuitously to-
gether so as to form a peculiar pattern;
all at once, as by a flash, it is seen to be no
dead leaves or twigs or grass, but a liv-
ing, active coil, a serpent lifting its flat
arrowy head, vibrating a glistening
forked tongue, hissing with dangerous
fury ; and in another moment it has van-
ished into the thicket, and is nothing
but a memory — merely a thread of bril-
liant color woven into the ever-changing
varicolored embroidery of Nature's
mantle, seen vividly for an instant, then
changing to dull grey and fading from
sight." This is magnificent, but no man
has a right to belittle the plodding scien-
tist and exalt the field naturalist who has
not submitted every ward to the censor-
ship of their mutual goddess. No poetry
of Maeterlinck or phrase of Fabre was
ever the worse for truth.
The man who can not laugh more than
once in reading Oliver Herford's "This
Giddy World" (Doran), and who doesn't
chuckle all the time that he isn't laugh-
ing, is fit for treason, spoils, and strata-
gems. He does not deserve to be reck-
oned a member of "the most moral and
patriotic people in the world, [whose]
army is second to none in bravery, and
won the World War." As a work on
geography it is as accurate and authen-
tic as it is amusing. The only error
we discover is a reference to Lief
Ericsen. We seem to recall a verse in
which that hardy navigator (Ericson, by
the way) protests that he'd
Just as lief you called it Leif.
With this trifling reservation the treat-
ise can be heartily recommended.
"The Burgess Bird Book for Children,"
by Thornton W. Burgess (Little, Brown),
is a very clever, delicately executed book
of birds. The author has encased a re-
markable amount of nutritious funda-
mental fact in a sugar-coating of hu-
manized wood-folk, which ought to give
January 31, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[113
pleasure to hosts of children. Brer Rab-
bit—here alias Peter Rabbit— is the
chief character, who by his love of gossip
and his friendship and interest in all
the birds of the field and the woods is
made to serve as a most engaging inter-
preter or interlocutor. One reads easily
through page after page of amusing dia-
logue between Peter and Jennie Wren,
or Winsome Bluebird, or Creaker Grackle,
or Butcher Shrike, or Plunger Osprey,
without realizing that there is being con-
veyed a host of facts which deal with mi-
gration, molt, food, nesting, song, color-
ing, and instincts which, if presented
as bare facts, would only repel childish
readers. It is certain that many an older
person will read this book on the sly, for
it has not a little of the charm of "The
Wind in the Willows" and the "Jungle
Books," and higher praise could not be
paid. There is a wealth of colored illus-
trations by Mr. Fuertes, and a fair index
with scientific names for accurate identi-
fication.
"Un Soldat de France" (Paris: Plon-
Nourrit) is composed of the letters writ-
ten from the front by a young French
surgeon, and is interesting as another
example of the intellectual superiority of
the youth of France, one of the few
agreeable revelations of the recent war.
Most of these letters are addressed to the
father of the writer and perhaps the most
remarkable of them, as it is surely the
most touching, is the one in which this
young man, not yet twenty-three, offers
his friendship to his father, a curious
example of a psychological and mental
state that only such a war as this last one
could produce; and all this goes to prove
once more that Professor Rollo Walter
Brown in his "How the French Boy
Learns to Write" is quite within the
truth in his general conclusion that the
French lad's pen is facile princeps when
compared with that of his American
comrade.
Captain Ernest Peixotto, one of the
official artists of the A. E. F., was close
to the fighting at Chateau-Thierry, St.
Mihiel, and the Argonne, and observed
also our occupation of the middle Rhine.
His diary and sketches constitute a
sober personal record which is perpetu-
ited in a well-made book, "At the
American Front" (Scribners). There
are thrilling touches, and even a thrill-
ing chapter— that which describes the
spectacular assault on the Montfaucon,
but in general the narrative, and the
illustrations as well, singularly repeat
the quiet and not too colorful method of
Mr. Peixotto's well-known sketches of
travel. We have the accurate and re-
strained observations of a veteran trav-
eler, and should be grateful for so
much. For the romantic flavor of our
military effort, one must look elsewhere.
The Society for Pure English, which
was just getting under way when the
war broke out, has now resumed its
activities. Its membership includes
some of the most distinguished British
men and women of letters and students
of literature. Among them are enough
philologists of standing, like Henry
Bradley, W. A. Craigie, Sir James Mur-
ray, H. C. K. Wyld, and Joseph Wright,
to give color to the hope that the
Society's tracts, which will be published
by the Oxford University Press, will not
be wholly dedicated to enthusiasms like
those of Sir Robert Bridges or pedant-
ries like those of the Fowlers. Indeed,
the aims of the Society, as set forth in
the prospectus, are modest and sensible.
Such matters as the naturalization of
foreign words, native word-coinage, the
"regeneration" of neglected elements in
the vocabulary, the protection of tradi-
tional speech-cadences from the assaults
of ignorant pedantry, are among those
to which it will give attention. No doubt
the pamphlets issued by the Society will
be of unequal value, but eventually its
work, if it is carried on in the spirit sug-
gested by the prospectus, should grow
into very great usefulness. Applications
for membership may be sent to the Hon-
orary Secretary, Mr. L. Pearsall Smith,
11 St. Leonards Terrace, London, S. W. 3.
Anyone who buys for his children a
copy of Jean Henri Fabre's "Field, Forest
and Farm" (Century) is likely to be first
disappointed and then greatly puzzled.
He will be disappointed at finding its
vocabulary far beyond the reading of
any child to whom the form would be
acceptable, and he will be puzzled to
guess for whom it is intended. Like
others of the series, it represents "Uncle
Paul" imparting to his nephews informa-
tion about nature and its processes. But
of what age are the nephews to whom
he delivers such observations as this on
sap: . . . "It is not yet a nutri-
tive fluid for the plant; it becomes so
in the foliage by a double process. First,
on being distributed to the leaves, which
furnish a vast surface for evaporation,
it exhales its superabundant water in
the form of vapor and thus concentrates
its usable ingredients?" If this repre-
sents their working vocabulary, they are
too old to be lured by a form of dialogue
as palpably didactic as anything in
"Sandford and Merton" or the Rollo
books. If in French the book is accept-
able to children, as it comes to us it is
only half translated, for no one could
read it to a child without ransacking his
mind, and his dictionaries, for intelligible
circumlocutions for fully half the words
and phrases in it. If he is wise he will
keep it as a source of information for
himself to deal out to the children in
the presence of the facts and the actual
questions.
The New French
President
SOME twenty-five years ago, when M.
Poincare was still writing in the
newspapers, besides being a lawyer and
a Cabinet Minister, he said of M. Paul
Deschanel that he was a man about
whom one might prophesy not that he
would some day become a minister, but
that he surely would be elected to the
French Academy. This prophecy was
verified a long time ago. M. Deschanel
has never been in any cabinet, but he has
been a member of the French Academy
for the last twenty years, and now he suc-
ceeds M. Poincare as President of the
Republic, a circumstance, by the way,
that M. Poincare did not and could not
foresee.
The reason of M. Poincare's emphasis
on the French Academy is because of M.
Deschanel's literary accomplishments,
his singularly elegant oratory, the finish
of his style and, taken all in all, the tone
of distinction and refinement that char-
acterizes all his parliamentary manifes-
tations since the first time he entered
the Chamber of Deputies, some thirty-
five years since.
His political enemies used to make fun
of this dandy of politics who dressed his
person as well as he dressed his speeches
and whose eloquence seemed to attract
to the galleries of the Palais Bourbon all
the pretty ladies of Paris. They called
him the "Delaunay of the Chamber of
Deputies," Delaunay being at that date
the popular matinee idol of the Theatre
Frangais. They accused him of fastidi-
ousness in the preparation of Mf> orations,
which they found a bit R,l polished.
They prophesied that he could not keep
on repeating the oratorical successes
which he scored every time he took the
floor. They were mistaken. M. Descha-
nel repeated them often, or at least as
often as he chose to speak. He spoke
only when he had something important
to say, and that was about once or twice
a year. And each one of his orations
was notable for its power and literary
charm. The training he received from
his father, one of the distinguished writ-
ers on literature of the 19th century, his
association with the Journal des Debats,
one of the most scholarly and distin-
guished French newspapers, and his nat-
ural talent and taste for good style gave
him immediately a prominence univer-
sally acknowledged as one of the leading
men of the French Parliament.
In the early part of his career, be-
tween 1885 and the nineties, he was sat-
isfied with discussing on the floor ques-
tions of a nature that could not rouse
party passions. His maiden speech on
June 28, 1886, is still remembered by
old parliament-' rians. it dealt with the
114]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 38
tariff. The fanners wanted a tax of 6
francs on wheat, and he treated this
arid topic with such imagination and
brilliancy that he left the Chamber both
delighted and surprised. A year later
we find him, with the same success,
treating the Naval appropriations and
the problems of France's protectorate
over the Christians in Syria.
Gradually, however, he approached
questions of a more contentious nature.
After the moderate party had been de-
prived of its great leaders, Gambetta,
Jules Ferrj', and also M. Ribot, tempo-
rarily out of Parliament, the younger
men had to take their place and carry
on the fight against radicalism, which
was growing stronger every day, and
Socialism, which was just then making
its entrance into Parliament with Paul
Lafargue, Jules Guesde, and Vaillant,
soon joined by Jaures, Viviani, and Mil-
lerand. Among these young men the
most prominent were Jonnart, Barthou,
Poincare, and Deschanel. While the
first three accepted cabinet positions in
various ministries, Deschanel, for rea-
sons best known to himself, remained in
the ranks to fight the battles of the mod-
erate party.
He resented the injustice and the un-
fairness of the extreme left, led by Clem-
enceau and Pelletan, against the great
leaders of his party; so he decided to
give radicalism a little bit of its own
medicine in the form of aggressive criti-
cisms and virulent denunciations.
Three times, in November, 1895, in
April, 1896, and again in November of
the same year, under the Bourgeois and
Meline ministries, he attacked the radi-
cal party with a sharp, incisive, and pet-
ulant or<itc.ry, very different from his
earlie v^raife academic style, and one
which was quite as much of a revelation
as his first manner.
His talent had matured. His knowl-
edge of political and economic science
had been increased by continuous study,
wide curiosity, and even a trip to the
United States, from which he brought
many observations often used in his
speeches. He was one of the best-
equipped members of the House, and to
many of his colleagues whose knowledge
hardly extends beyond local issues, his
orations were as good as a university
course in political science. Hence when
he had to carry on controversies with
the Socialists, he could not be satisfied
with feeble platitudes and old-fashioned
arguments. He had to argue against
scholarly and well-informed Marxists
like Paul Lafargue and Jules Guesde,
crafty parliamentarians, powerful and
passionate orators like Jaures, and clever
debaters like Millerand, Viviani, and a
half dozen others.
Nothing has shovra more strikingly
the openness of mind of that opportunist
and conservative spokesman than the way
in which he had not merely grasped the
abstruse metaphysics of Karl Marx's
"Capital" and the rest of modern Social-
istic literature, but also accepted some
of their legitimate claims, while fighting
their doctrines in a spirit of fairness
and, sometimes, of sympathy, that many
of them readily acknowledged.
His colleagues had come to look upon
him as a man of keen intelligence, with
a broad mind and a heart open to any
appeal. That is why he shared the
Speakership of the House with only one
man during the first years of this cen-
tury. When Henry Brisson died, Descha-
nel was the only possible candidate. He
has filled his position with tact, impar-
tiality, and common sense. In a House
that is often unruly and still oftener
intolerant, he has stood for freedom of
speech and for fair treatment of all.
When a House has finished its career, no
one knows better than Deschanel how
to praise its accomplishments; and like-
wise when the House reconvenes, he
knows, without offending his colleagues,
how to give them sound advice. His
very duties as a president of the House
have prepared him and made him more
fit for his part as President of the
Republic.
The restricted body by which the
President is chosen has one advantage:
it knows exactly what is needed in the
position to be filled and who best fits
the requirements. The presidency is
never given as a reward for services to
a man who, whatever his other merits,
has neither the temperament nor the
special equipment required to perform
its duties. A soldier without political
experience or elementary knowledge of
public affairs, a public man who has been
all his life a fighter and a polemist, would
be equally out of place in the presiden-
tial position.
The President in France must forget
that he was once the man of a party ; he
must become an impartial arbiter of all
parties. That will be easy for Deschanel,
who was elected by men of all groups
and supported especially by those men
whose doctrines are furthest from his
own, the Socialists and the radicals.
Since the President has many social and
diplomatic duties, it is as well that he
should be a man of pleasing presence, of
distinction and charm of manner, of
impeccable speech and sound views.
M. Deschanel will have the distinction
of being perhaps the best-looking of the
French Presidents.
Although elected as a conservative Re-
publican, M. Deschanel is a staunch and
almost fanatic Republican. He has no
patience with those who speak ill of the
parliamentary regime. He knows and
has often said that with all its defects
it is the only guarantee of popular lib-
erties. He rebukes the idle and foolish
critics who always slander the Assem-
blies that they elect. During the war, in
particular, he has rendered frequent and
just homage to the work of supervision
of the committees and their delegates at
the front. To this man, whose father
was an exile for his republican faith, the
French Republic is something more than
a form of government, it is almost a
religion. He worships his country and
he worships the republic.
After the proclamation of the vote
that made him President, some one said
that this election shows the continuity
of the French Republic and the conti-
nuity of the ideals for which this war
was fought. No other member of either
House would have been more worthy
than Paul Deschanel, not only to sym-
bolize but to assure the continuity of
the best traditions of the Third Republic.
Othon Guerlac
Einstein and the Man
in the Street
WHEN I was asked to write an article
explaining the principle of rela-
tivity to the man in the street I felt very
much like quoting the words of Faust :
So soil ich denn mit sauerem Schweiss
Euch lehren was ich selbst nicht weiss?
I do not entirely understand the principle
of relativity and it is impossible for the
man in the street to understand it. The
explanations that I have seen in the daily
papers do not in the least explain why
rays of light should be bent by gravita-
tional attraction, and yet I am disposed
to make the attempt to throw a little
light upon it without any mathematics
and even without any diagrams. This
is certainly no light task.
Everybody knows that light takes a
certain length of time to travel, like
sound or waves on the surface of still
water, and whereas sound travels only
about 1,100 feet per second, light is
known to travel with a velocity of about
186,000 miles per second. Thus the delay
caused in the case of a luminous signal
of any sort, between its time of starting
from any point and of arriving at an-
other, is noticeable only when the dis-
tances concerned are very great, such
as are celestial distances. In order to
explain the finite delay in the arrival
of light the notion of the luminiferous
ether was invented to denote the medium
in which the light existed between
the time of its emission at the source
and its reception by the eye. The
late Lord Salisbury wittily said that
the noun "ether" was invented to be the
subject to the verb "to undulate." If we
drop a stone upon the surface of a pond
we see a system of waves spreading out
in the form of a circle of ever increasing
diameter. If we fire a pistol we similarly
have a wave of sound which spreads out
Januaiy 31, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[115
in the form of a sphere of continually
increasing diameter and nobody hears
the sound until this sphere has grown
large enough to reach his ear. Similarly
with light. The light spreads out in the
form of a spherical wave and nobody sees
the light until the sphere has reached
the eye. The case of the wave on water
is simpler insofar as a plane contains
only two dimensions, length and breath,
so that the position of a point is deter-
mined by giving its distances, say north
and south from a given parallel and east
and west from a given meridian. With
the sound and light wave, however, the
spreading is in three-dimensional space,
and we require to fix the position of a
point not two of these so-called coordi-
nate distances but three, the third being
the distance above or below some horizon-
tal floor plane. I think it is pretty evi-
dent that if we consider a circular cone
with its axis vertical and cause it to rise
through the level surface of the water,
if its point rises with uniform velocity
it will intersect the surface of the water
in a circle, the radius of which increases
with a uniform velocity, thus constitut-
ing a circular wave. The height of the
vertex of the cone above the floor plane
of the water is then a measure of the
time; so that if we were dealing with
space of only two dimensions the time
would be the third dimension for that
space, as far as wave motions were con-
sidered. Beings living in the plane would
have the same diflJiculty in imagining a
third dimension that we do for a fourth.
Now it is somewhat more difficult when
we are dealing with three-dimensional
space to think of time as a fourth. But
by a certain extension of the imagina-
tion we are able to do it. In this sense
the time is measured by the increase of
radius of a spherical light or sound wave
proceeding from a point. I do not say
that this is all there is to the question of
time as the fourth dimension, but it is
sufficient for our purpose here.
Let us now come to some of the physi-
cal consequences of the notion of the
ether as a substance which bears the
light waves. It is, I think, very evident
that if waves of sound go along with
respect to the still air at a speed of 1,100
feet per second, then, if the air is moving
forward in the form of a wind, the waves
are carried along so much faster by the
amount of the velocity of the wind. If
one is in a train moving towards a sound-
ing whistle the waves proceeding from
the whistle are encountered faster than
if one were standing still and the pitch
of the whistle accordingly rises. The
same thing would be true if we were
standing still and the whistle together
with the air were coming towards us
with a velocity of their own. I may in
this case leave the whistle out of account
and simply speak of the waves that are
borne along by the air.
Now the earth is going along through
space at a great rate, moving in its or-
bit around the sun with an average veloc-
ity of about 19 miles per second, which,
to be sure, is only about one ten-thou-
sandth of the velocity of light, but still
is very fast compared with ordinary
speeds. If, then, ether acts like air and
stands still in space, we shall have the
effect of a sort of ether wind blowing
against us with a speed of 19 miles per
second. Such an effect was looked for
about 30 years ago by the American
physicists Michelson and Morley; the
former, who is now Professor of Physics
at the University of Chicago, has since
obtained the Nobel Prize for this and
his other optical researches. The result
of the experiment was negative; that is
to say, the ether did not appear to be
in motion with respect to the earth. This
was the beginning of the whole trouble
and eventually led up to the invention
of the principle of relativity in 1905 by
Einstein, a young Swiss mathematical
physicist who is now situated in Berlin,
belonging to that talented race that is
responsible for so much of our troubles,
intellectual and other.
Suppose again that we are moving
along above the surface of still water and
at a certain time we drop a stone into
it giving rise to a circular wave as be-
fore, only that now we move ahead. It
is very obvious that at any subsequent
time we are nearer to that part of the
wave front that is ahead of us and which
we are trying to catch up with than the
part that is behind us which we are mov-
ing away from. Thus the velocity of the
wave with respect to us is not the same
in all directions.
The first question raised by Einstein
is that of a criterion for the simultaneity
of two events. If these events take place
at the same place there is no difficulty.
The clock must tell the same time for
each of them. But suppose they take
place in places a long way apart. The
only way that an observer situated where
one of these events takes place can tell
when the other takes place is by the
reception of some sort of signal, which
must travel with the velocity of light.
In order to set two clocks so that they
shall correctly indicate the time we may
suppose that a signal is given when the
first clock shows twelve o'clock, and if
the second clock is, we will say, 186,000
miles away, when the signal reaches there
the clock must show twelve o'clock plus
one second, and if the signal is then re-
flected back it must arrive at the first
clock when that clock marks twelve
o'clock and two seconds. If, then, the
second clock shows a time which is half-
way between those shown by the first
clock on the departure of the signal and
the reception of the reflected signal, the
clocks are correctly set. But if the clocks
are in motion, this will not be the case,
because, as we have just shown, the ve-
locity of the wave that is catching up will
be different from that of the wave which
is coming back. Consequently clocks in
motion have a different criterion for
simultaneity from what they would have
if at rest.
Now, Einstein's first postulate is, say-
ing nothing about the ether, which we
need henceforth not mention, that the
velocity of light is the same in all direc-
tions, irrespective of the velocity with
which the source of light is moving. The
principle of relativity may then be stated
by saying that it is impossible by the
observation of any natural phenomenon
to determine anything more than the
relative velocity of two points, the abso-
lute velocity being entirely unknown. It
is well known that this is true in me-
chanics. For instance, it is quite im-
possible to tell in a sleeping car which
way the car is traveling as long as the
velocity is unchanged, despite the fancies
of particular passengers who wish their
berths made up with the head facing for-
wards or back. This is well shown in
the case of persons passing through the
Broad Street station in Philadelphia in
the night who come out facing the other
way without any knowledge of it. It is
when the speed of the train is changing
or is experiencing an acceleration that
we are able to tell the direction of the
change by means of the pressures be-
ween ourselves and other objects.
Now, although this dynamical principle
of relativity has been known since the
days of Newton, it was not supposed that
phenomena such as the propagation of
light or of electrical disturbances would
be similarly independent of absolute ve-
locity. Yet this is what Einstein pro-
poses. '*/
In order to explain the Michelson-
Morley result Professor Lorentz, the cele-
brated Dutch physicist, following a sug-
gestion thrown out by FitzGerald in Ire-
land, suggested that all bodies in motion
experienced a shortening in the direction
parallel to that of the motion, and thus
that the light traveling in the direction
of the motion of the earth in Michelson's
and Morley's apparatus had a different
distance to go from that going in a direc-
tion at right angles to the motion of the
earth. Thus the result was satisfactorily
explained. But this result was carried
much farther by Einstein, who assumes
that there is a fundamental relation be-
tween time and space, such that, to put
it simply, no one can tell what time it
is until he knows where he is and he can
not tell where he is until he knows when
he is. The difficulty of measuring the
length of an object such as a bar in mo-
tion will be seen to arise from the fact
that both ends must be compared with
the ends of a fixed bar at the same time;
for if we measure the coincidence of one
end at one time and of the other at an-
116]
THE llEA^EW
[Vol. 2, No. 38
other, obviously we do not get the same
length as if both were measured at once.
Consequently, the question of length is
seen to be connected with the question of
time.
These considerations were thus intro-
duced by Einstein in 1905. As will be
easily seen, they say nothing whatever
about gravitation, and since then the
whole theory has been remodeled. Ein-
stein now introduces a new postulate hav-
ing to do with accelerated motion, which
I may illustrate by the motion of an ele-
vator. If we stand in an elevator which
starts up or goes upwards faster and
faster, our feet press harder upon the
floor and we should weigh more upon a
pair of scales. It is obviously impos-
sible to distinguish the effect of a sud-
den increase in the pull due to the attrac-
tion of the earth from the acceleration of
the elevator, our so-called frame of ref-
erence. Einstein's new postulate, then,
is that it is impossible to distinguish the
effect of a gravitational field or region
where attraction takes place from an
acceleration of our frame of reference.
But this is not all.
A set of waves possesses energy; that
is, the power to do work. We know that
waves of the sea may knock down a
breakwater or cut away a cliff. Waves
of sound may cause a phonograph needle
to dig up wax. Waves of light were pre-
dicted by Maxwell fifty years ago to
exert pressure, which was experimentally
demonstrated in this country by Nichols
and Hull and in Russia by Lebedeff. But
how can transverse waves, where the
motion is at right angles to the direction
of propagation, as is supposed to be the
case with light, exert a pressure in the
directifliipf propagation? Lord Ray-
leir' >f^3 this by an analogy. Sup-
pose that we have a ring sliding on a
violin string which is vibrating trans-
versely. In order to prevent the ring
from being pushed along by the vibra-
tions it will be necessary to hold it still,
so that the transverse vibrations push
the ring along endwise. In order to stop
a set of waves and reflect them back,
then, it is necessary to oppose a force,
exactly as it would be to stop a ball, or
make it reflect back. The waves act,
then, as if they had inertia. In other
words, a beam of light acts on a mirror
just as a stream of bullets from a ma-
chine gun acts on a target. We are ac-
cordingly led to the notion that a beam
of light possesses mass, using that term
in the sense of inertia. But all ordinary
mass has weight; that is to say, is pulled
by gravitational forces that have their
origin in other mass.
Einstein now makes the further as-
sumption that everything that has mass
or inertia has gravitational mass, and
that therefore a beam of light is acted
upon by gravitation. He is thus able to
show that a beam of light passing near
the sun or other celestial body would be
bent. This is a very extraordinary pre-
diction. The amount of bending even
in the case of such a strongly attracting
body as the sun is very small. A beam of
light that just grazes the sun would be
bent by a very small amount, one and
three-quarters seconds, of angle, and such
an observation can be made only at the
time of a total solar eclipse when the
light of a star can be seen passing close
to the edge of the sun when the sun is
dark. In the eclipse that took place last
spring such observations were actually
made. On photographing the light of
the same stars at the moment of the
eclipse and at another time when the sun
was not there, a displacement was ob-
served of the order of that predicted by
Einstein. This was hailed by the Eng-
lish astronomers and physicists, includ-
ing Sir Joseph Thomson, the President
of the London Royal Society, as an ex-
traordinary confirmation of the principle
of relativity. When observed, the effect
is extremely small. If we look at a let-
ter an inch in height at a distance of
about three miles from our eye, it sub-
tends an angle of one second. Obviously,
a powerful telescope must be used, and
when the effect is so very small one may
be pardoned a certain skepticism if one
refuses to overturn one's preconceived
ideas of the independence of t'me and
space. Nevertheless, other phenomena,
both celestial and terrestrial, have seemed
to point in the same direction. It may
be asked whether the ray of light is not
bent by ordinary refraction in passing
through the attenuated gases of the solar
corona which we know extends to sev-
eral diameters beyond the sun's disk. Un-
doubtedly the English astronomers have
taken care of this.
Whether we believe it or not, the more
closely we examine the principle of rela-
tivity the more we must believe that it
is a very wonderful conception, incapable
of being appreciated in its consequences
without profound mathematical appa-
ratus, and involving at least four assump-
tions which I have in a very rough way
attempted to describe : First, that of the
constancy of the velocity of light with
respect to all directions and to any sys-
tem moving with any velocity whatever
with respect to any other system ; second,
a relation between time and distance such
that either of two bodies seems shortened
in the direction of their relative motion
by an observer attached to the other;
third, that it is impossible to distinguish
a gravitational field from the accelera-
tion of the frame of reference; and
fourth, that everything that has mass, as
determined by inertia, has mass of the
sort determined by weight or attracta-
bility.
This is the best that I am able to do
for the man in the street.
Arthur Gordon Webster
Music
The New York Opera War —
Hints to Librettists
AGAIN we are in the throes of an
opera war. Managers are pitted
against managers, millions against mil-
lions, and singers against singers. The
crowd, night after night, packs two
vast opera houses. "The excitement
of the fight is far more evident at
the Lexington than at the Metropolitan,
which affects unconsciousness of its Mid-
Western rivals.
The more such wars we see, the more
we like them. If they could last five
months, and not five little weeks, we
should not grumble. For, if competition
is the soul of trade, in emulation lies the
spur to art. The Metropolitan needs
many spurs. Left to itself it sticks in
ruts — and sleeps.
And while the larger houses strive and
strain, the struggle at the Park goes on.
The fight there is, however, strictly
limited. Its aim is to build up a per-
manent home for opera of the light and
lyric kinds, sung, not by foreigners, in
foreign tongues, but by Americans in
their own English idiom.
If they had done no more than that this
year and last, the American singers at
the Park would have accomplished a good
deal for art by proving that the English
tongue in opera may be plain and musi-
cal. But, incidentally, they have done
something more. They have shown what
good librettos mean in opera. Not in
the obsolescent kind of opera, which was
merely a vehicle for the display of virtu-
osity, but in those modern works which
are really plays with music.
The demonstration I refer to has been
made by the revival, at the Park, of
Gilbert and Sullivan's delightful comic
operas. Week after week large audiences
have filled the theatre, not only to hear
Sullivan's airs and glees, but, just as
surely, to enjoy the quips and quirks of
Gilbert's text. We have been told, by
those who disbelieve in English as an
operatic medium, that the success of the
joint authors of "The Mikado," "Pa-
tience," "The Pirates," "Pinafore," and
"Ruddigore" was a phenomenon unique
and unrepeatable. But, both before and
since the partnership of Gilbert and Sul-
livan, there have been other unions,
possibly as fortunate.
Of these the most remarkable was that
which long linked Offenbach with Henri
Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy, all three
imbued with the same spirit of mad
levity. In Italy, again, for years the
triumphs of the operatic "Veritists" were
chiefly due to the great skill of two
^Continued on page 118)
Januaiy 31, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[117
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118]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 38
(Continued from page 116)
librettists — the romantic dramatist,
Giuseppe Giacosa, and Luigi Illica. An-
other even more apparent proof of what
librettos mean in opera is found in what
Arrigo BoTto did for Verdi. And, to
come nearer to our day, I might quote
Maeterlinck, who inspired Dukas and
Debussy with his dream plays.
Some years ago, before the production
of "Francesca da Rimini," in Paris, I
asked the late Maestro Campanini what
he thought of Zandonai's latest work. "I
have no opinion on the subject yet,"
said the conductor; "I have not read the
libretto."
The success or failure of the new
works now being sung at the Lexington
Opera House will, to a large extent
(much larger than some think), depend
on whether their composers had, or had
not, good librettos. If "L'Heure Espag-
nole," to name one work, should not be
liked, Laparra, the composer of the score,
will have himself to blame. For, like
Charpentier, Wolf-Ferrari, and Dukas,
he now insists on writing his own words
in opera. The example was set long
ago by Wagner. As time runs on, it
may be widely followed.
For those born librettists who inspire
great lyric dramas grow rarer and rarer.
And in some places they are sadly
scorned. I do not speak now of the
Broadway hacks, who grind out dull
rubbish by the yard for "comic" operas,
but of the few and well-intentioned men
and women who have tried their hands
here at the invention of ambitious opera
"books." Among them, I may mention
Bryan Hooker, who devised the words for
"Mona," and Percy MacKaye, who twice
collaborated with Reginald de Koven.
Both did their best, but from the same
wrong standpoint, and in the instances
of "Mona" and of "The Canterbury
Pilgrims," both good reading plays, both
failed, and why? Because the method
each preferred was purely '"literary,"
appealing chiefly to the brain and eye,
but disdaining the much more important
ear, which must be courted by the man
who writes for opera.
All good — all great — librettists know
that truth. Boito, Gilbert, Meilhac,
Halevy, and, to add three to the exclu-
sive list, Barber and Carre, who assisted
Gounod, and Henri Cain, who has signed
many opera books, respected it relig-
iously. So, though at times their verses
may seem trite or tame, what they in-
vented was at least quite clear. The
most absurdly intricate of Gilbert's pat-
ter songs is understandable, provided it
is sung by well-trained singers. While
when, forsaking "light for serious art,
Meilhac and Halevy made a libretto out
of Merimee's "Carmen," they gave us
what still seems a little masterpiece,
melodic, graceful, vivid, full of life,
poetic, humorous, tragic — always sing-
able. Boito rivaled them in his "Fal-
stafT" libretto, and now and then in his
arrangement of "Othello." Here we
have models.
Charles Henry Meltzer
Books and the News
Spiritism
THE word "Spiritism" seems almost
to have displaced the older one,
"Spiritualism," but if it ordinarily indi-
cates bias either towards or against the
belief, it is not so used here. Persons
who work in libraries and book-shops
can not doubt the extraordinary interest
in the subject, and the lectures of M.
Maeterlinck and Sir Oliver Lodge are
increasing that interest.
Books about it are mostly written by
convinced believers, who seem, to skep-
tics or agnostics, pathetically credulous;
or by disbelievers, whose skepticism ap-
pears to the convert to be a resolute
refusal to open their minds to the truth.
If there is in the world a person abso-
lutely without prejudice upon this sub-
ject, he will seek long to discover any
book reflecting his state of mind. The
most determined opponents are those
who find the belief disturbing to ortho-
dox religion.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a believer,
says that as a course of reading "for
an intelligent agnostic who knew noth-
ing about psychic science," he would sug-
gest the writings of J. Arthur Hill. Two
of these are "Spiritualism; its History,
Phenomena and Doctrine" (Doran, 1919)
and "Psychical Investigations" (Cassell,
1917). Sir A. C. Doyle's own writings
are: "The New Revelation" and "The
Vital Message" (Doran, 1918-19). It is
hardly necessary to name Sir Oliver
Lodge's "Raymond" (Doran, 1916) and
"The Survival of Man" (Moffat, 1909).
James H. Hyslop's "Contact with the
Other World" (Century) is a compila-
tion from his years of experience, his
studies and conclusions. Hereward Car-
rington's "Modern Psychical Phenom-
ena" (Dodd, 1919) is one of many books
by this author; its evidence about "spirit
photography" must be overwhelming if
it convinces any who have known the
mischances of the amateur photographer
and the surprises of the developing room.
Basil King's "Abolishing of Death"
(Cosmopolitan Book Corp., 1919) and
Sir W. T. Barrett's "On the Threshold
of the Unseen" (Dutton, 1917) are
friendly to the investigations.
Two important studies from, it is said,
a scientific point of view, are W. J. Craw-
ford's "The Reality of Psychic Phe-
nomena" (Watkins, 1916) and his "Ex-
periments in Psychical Science" (Dut-
ton, 1919). An extensive and extremely
interesting historical work is Frank
Podmore's "Modem Spiritualism ; a His-
tory and a Criticism" (2 vols., Scribner,
1902). Theodore Flournoy's "Spiritism
and Psychology" (Harper, 1911), Emile
Boirac's "The Psychology of the Future"
(Stokes, 1918), Hamlin Garland's "The
Shadow World" (Harper, 1908), and
Samuel McComb's "The Future Life in
the Light of Modern Inquiry" (Dodd,
1919) offer a variety of treatments of
the topic.
Johan Liljencrants in "Spiritism and
Religion" (Devin, 1918) and D. I. Lans-
lots in "Spiritism Unveiled" (Herder,
1913) pay the compliments of the Church
of Rome to the whole subject, while J.
G. Raupert's "The New Black Magic"
(Devin), from much the same point of
view, admits the manifestations and
seems to class them with devil-worship.
"Some Revelations as to 'Raymond' "
(Dutton, 1918), by "A Plain Citizen,"
is discriminating and by no means en-
tirely hostile. It should be read with Sir
Oliver Lodge's "Raymond." For an out-
and-out opponent of spiritism, try Ed-
ward Clodd's "The Question" (Richards,
1917).
Edmund Lester Pearson
Books Received
ESSAYS AND CRITICISM
Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour.
Edited by Percy Simpson. Oxford University
Press.
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
Fort, Charles. The Book of the Damned.
Boni & Liveright.
Living Waters or Messages of Joy. Intro-
duction by Dwight Goddard. Brentano's.
$1.50 net.
Randall, J. H. The Spirit of the New Phil-
osophy. Brentano's. $1.75.
BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
Beamish, R. J., and March, F. A. America's
Part in the World War. Introduction by Gen.
John J. Pershing. Winston. $3.00 net.
Goddard, Dwight, and Borel, Henri. Lao-
tze's Tao and Wu Wei. Brentano's. $1.25.
Simonds, F. H. History of the World War,
in five volumes. Volume IV — America and
Russia. Doubleday, Page.
GOVERNMENT AND ECONOMICS
Bullard, Arthur. The Russian Pendulum.
Macmillan. $2.00.
Cheng, Sih-Gung Modern China : A Polit-
ical Study. Oxford University Press.
Drake, P. H. Democracy Made Safe. Bos-
ton: Four Seas. $1.25 net.
Gompers, Samuel. Labor and the Common
Welfare. Edited by Hayes Robbins. Dutton.
Harrison, Marie. The Stolen Lands : A
Study in Alsace-Lorraine. Dutton. $2.00 net.
Hillis, N. D. Rebuilding Europe in the Face
of World-Wide Bolshevism. Revell. $1.50 net.
Huang, Feng-Hua. Public Debts in China.
Columbia University Studies. Longmans,
Green.
McKenzie, F. A, Korea's Fight for Free-
dom. Revell. $2.00.
Thomas, H. C. The Return of the Demo-
cratic Party to Power in 1884. Columbia Uni-
versity Studies. Longmans, Green.
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION
Marcosson, I. F. Adventures in Interview-
ing. Lane. $4.00 net.
Mills, E. A. The Adventures of a Nature
Guide. Doubleday, Page.
THE REVIEW
Vol. 2, No. 39
New York, Saturday, February 7, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment 119
Editoriat Articles:
The Issues in the Fight at Albany 121
America and the Plight of Europe 123
Mr. Gompers vs. the Bolshevists 124
What Are Colleges For? 125
Abolishing the Political State. By
W. J. Ghent 126
The Human Cost of Living. By David
Harold Colcord 127
The Lady of the Violets. By Mary C.
Francis 129
Correspondence 130
Book Reviews:
France and Her Colonies 131
The Old and the New 132
On Our Way 132
New Psychic Faculties 133
The Run of the Shelves 134
Music :
Four Operas New to New York. By
Charles Henry Meltzer 136
Drama :
The "Power of Darkness" at the
Garrick. By O. W. Firkins 137
Books and the News:
Boys' Books. By Edmimd Lester
Pearson 138
YISCOUNT GREY'S letter to the
' London Times on America's posi-
tion in relation to the treaty recalls
vividly to mind the impression made
by the British White Book published
in the opening weeks of the great
war. The same lucidity, the same fair-
ness, the same grasp of the actual
needs of a crucial situation, which
' marked his communications and
statements as Foreign Minister, char-
acterize his analysis of the present
difficulty. It is not too much to say
that the convincingness of the case
presented in the White Book was a
decisive factor in shaping American
opinion and sentiment in 1914, and
j was thus in a perfectly true sense
one of the most powerful elements in
, the winning of the war against Ger-
j many. While of course no such com-
manding importance can be attached
to this plain though most weighty
I utterance, it has the same kind of
merit, and bids fair to produce, in
its degree, an equally wholesome
effect.
'T'HE signal importance of Lord
■*• Grey's letter lies not in its argu-
ments or explanations, admirable as
these are, but in the peculiarly timely
aid it brings to the prospects of rati-
fication. It had begun to seem as
though nothing could be injected into
the situation which would have po-
tency to break the spell of inaction.
The time for effective argument with-
in the Senate had passed months ago.
The possibilities of negotiation based
on mutual good will seemed likewise
exhausted. Now comes this new force,
directed not to the dicussion of minu-
tiae, but to the allaying of controversy
and to the impressive assertion at once
of the supreme need and the entire
practicability of an immediate settle-
ment. There is every reason to be-
lieve that Lord Grey's communication
has the sanction of the British Gov-
ernment, although of course he was
careful to say that it represented only
his own personal opinion as a private
individual. But viewed even in this
latter light it would, apart from its
inherent merit, carry extraordinary
weight. For it must not be forgotten
that Lord Grey was one of the earliest
and one of the most ardent advocates
of a genuine League of Nations as the
only hope of the world after the close
of the great war. Coming from such
a source, the conviction expressed by
him that without America the League
would be a failure, and that with
America in it, in spite of the limita-
tions set by the reservations, it holds
out the promise of achieving its great
ends, must go far towards settling
the doubts of fairminded men.
TLLUMINATING as Lord Grey's
■■- analysis must be to most Europeans
and to many Americans, it does no
more than set forth in admirable
form what has long been recognized
by thinking people in this country
who have not been blinded by partisan
prejudice, or by the intensity of their
devotion to President Wilson. Some
of these latter are now urging that
Lord Grey was precluded from saying
what he really thought about the
motives that lay behind the opposi-
tion to unreserved acceptance of the
Covenant, because to offend the Re-
publican leaders would be to defeat
the object of his letter. But these
same people made no such allowance
when they pointed the finger of scorn
at every American protester as flying
in the face of the laudation of Presi-
dent Wilson and his programme
which European statesmen were
uttering last Spring. Surely those
men were under much heavier bonds
to keep well with Mr. Wilson than
Lord Grey is to keep well with Sena-
tor Lodge.
"DEPUBLICAN leaders must bear
■*-*■ the responsibility for the failure
of Congress to carrry out Secretary
Glass's well-considered recommenda-
tion for the relief of starving popu-
lations in Austria, Armenia, Poland,
and other countries. Guilt would be
a better word than responsibility, for
we can not regard it as other than a
crime to fail in such a duty. Mr.
Glass has abundantly shown that he
is no sentimentalist in such matters.
His recommendation, and the state-
ment made by Assistant Secretary
Davis before the House Ways and
Means Committee, went carefully
into particulars both as to the des-
perate need and as to the means by
which relief could be safely and
properly applied. President Wilson
has written an urgent and moving
letter in support of Mr. Glass's
recommendation. No decent reason
has been given for not providing
through the United States Grain
Corporation the $150,000,000 credit
proposed. It now appears that $50,-
000,000 is the utmost that Congress
120]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 39
will sanction, and the Republican
Steering Committee in the House
sought to prevent the giving of any
aid at all. It is a spectacle of which
our country, overflowing with abun-
dance while millions in other lands
are suffering the agonies of famine
in the depth of winter, has reason
to be profoundly ashamed.
WE can go far enough with the
New Republic and The Nation
to agree that the way to combat Bol-
shevism and other dangerous teach-
ings is to let them say their worst,
and refute it by convincing argument
on the other side. Of course their
statement of the method implies their
own intention to use it, and we await
with unbounded eagerness the forth-
coming of the argument which we
assume that the editors of these pa-
pers are busily preparing. If its
solidity and lucidity, reach and grasp,
comprehensiveness and impermeabil-
ity, shall prove at all commensurate
with the length of its period of in-
cubation, it will certainly be one of
the most effective logical assaults on
error of all history. But life is short,
and hope deferred maketh the heart
sick. Feeling so sure of the effect
of this impending attack, we are all
the more distressed to be so unsure
of the time when the signal to advance
is to be sounded.
IN the dispute over the Rev. Percy
Stickney Grant, which has at-
tracted nation-wide attention, it is
essential to distinguish between two
entirely different points. How meet-
ings should be conducted within the
walls of an Episcopal church — and,
for that matter, whether meetings
for controversial discussion or polit-
ical propaganda should be held there
at all — is a matter of church policy,
of no special importance to the gen-
eral public, unless the thing assumes
a character that makes it something
like a public scandal. This may have
been true of Dr. Grant's "forum" in
the Church of the Ascension at New
York; at all events, the matter ap-
pears now to have been settled by an
arrangement accepted by him and by
his bishop. But when we referred to
the case of Dr. Grant, in a recent
issue, as bearing on the principle of
free speech, we were not in the least
referring, either expressly or by im-
plication, to the doings in his forum,
but solely to his own expression of
his own opinions. We are glad to
observe that nothing whatever has
come of this part of the charges
against him; and we trust that the
reason they were not pressed is that,
when time was given for sober second
thought, it was recognized that to
suppress the opinions of a clergyman,
or to discipline him for uttering them,
is utterly wrong from the standpoint
of policy as well as from that of
principle.
SENSATION mongers are extract-
ing a wholly unwarranted amount
of gloom out of the answer^ to a ques-
tionnaire recently distributed among
farmers by some officer of the Post
Office Department. No one will be
frightened, however, who knows
something of farmers and also some-
thing of the tricky habits, tendencies,
and temperament of the "question-
naire," as a means of collecting mis-
leading information. Of course the
farmers are finding it hard to get
laborers, and still harder to get them
to labor. Of course they are dissatis-
fied with the gap between the selling
price of their products to the city
consumer and the amount that comes
back to the farm. Of course it nettles
them when ill-informed critics throw
the blame for exorbitant food prices
wholly upon them. Of course a cer-
tain proportion of them grow weary
of the struggle with these difficulties
and feel inclined to give it up, even
though they may be making a good
living. All these complaints mean
something about actual conditions,
for which farmers themselves, as well
as others, are seeking and will con-
tinue to seek suitable remedies. But
the last thing in the world that they
mean is that we are suddenly to be
faced with a wholesale forsaking of
the soil, and a disastrous slump in
food production.
pARTY leaders at Washington will
■*- make a most serious mistake if
they fail to favor a fairly liberal pro-
vision for the development of the Air
Service. Aviation is in its infancy,
and it is intolerable that America
should be hopelessly handicapped in
the effort to have her share in the
enormous advances which air naviga-
tion is certain to record during the
next few years. Because of the delay
and uncertainty in Congress, many
of the very best men in the service
are leaving it for other occupations,
and only long training will fit others
to take their places. Apparently there
are too many men in Congress who
have not yet learned that real econ-
omy does not consist merely in par-
ing down the total of appropria-
tions.
TN dealing with various revolution-
■*- ary movements, the New Republic
has frequently drawn comparisons
between the "Red Terror" and the
"White Terror." For the former it
has great sympathy; for the latter
it can find no excuse. In its own
words, "revolution releases the hot
passions of the young, counter-revo-
lution the cold hatred of the old."
Of course, no attention is paid to the
fact that the Red Terror is the over-
turn of all law and order and the
venting of the passions of the mob
and the criminal elements; or that
the so-called White Terror, however
wrong and deplorable, springs pri-
marily from the impulse to punish
those guilty of the crimes.
In putting forward its emotional
appeal along this line in a recent
issue, the New Republic assumes that
the "Lasko" mentioned in the press
despatches as among those recently
sentenced to death by the present
Hungarian Government, is Latzko,
the author of "Men in War," and
presumes that the reason for his ex-
ecution was his exposure of the rot-
tenness of the Austrian military
command and the shameless profit-
eering and exploitation at home by
the Austrian bureaucracy. The New
Republic asks: "Must he be slain
now because certain senile Hungarian
bureaucrats tremble overmuch for
their privileges and property?"
As a matter of fact, the "Lasko"
mentioned is almost certainly Laszlo,
who, when Bolshevism broke out in
Hungary, gave the order that all the
February 7, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[121
imprisoned criminals should be re-
leased. As political Commissar of all
the revolutionary tribunals, he was
responsible for these so-called courts
of justice, and he was condemned to
death for having deliberately insti-
gated the murder of Dr. Joseph
Stenczel and his companions on the
ground that they were counter-revo-
lutionists. What is interesting is the
slant of mind that leads to such con-
clusions as the one here noted.
npHE mere threat at this time of a
■■■ strike by the stationary heating-
plant operators is so surpassingly
ghoulish (even ghouls do not them-
selves destroy the unfortunates on
whom they fatten) that a community
in which such a thing is possible can
not afford to lose a day in taking
stock of its resources to meet it. If
it is impossible for the plain citizens
of a city like New York to mine
their own coal and produce their own
vegetables and milk, it is not impos-
sible for them to fire their own boil-
ers and generate the heat without
which life at this juncture would be
intolerable. Modern society has been
a bit heedless in allowing the speciali-
zation of industry to reach the point
where the men engaged in almost any
branch of it can under certain condi-
tions presume to regard their services
as indispensable. Here is an oppor-
! tunity to demonstrate, by means of a
little good will and a little organiza-
tion on the part of the public, that
there is a sharp difference between
the indispensability of an industry
and the indispensability of the par-
ticular individuals who engage in it.
It would not be long before threats
of such indescribable savagery as
that which has recently been held
over us would become a thing of the
past. Meanwhile, the public may have
been put in a position to discern a
little more clearly the issues that are
joined between closed shop and open
shop.
''C'EW cities of Europe have suffered
as much during the war as has
the once prosperous city of Lille. Of
every hundred men mobilized from
Lille in 1914, only forty-three re-
turned home to find their native place
a scene of desolation. Out of 157 fac-
tories in operation in Lille in 1914,
only seven or eight are now working,
the plants of the other mills having
either been carried off to Germany or
struck down, mangled, and ruined
where they stood. The agricultural
districts round about have been laid
waste, and will not be able, for years
to come, to yield any harvest to speak
of. Food and milk are, consequently,
scarce in Lille. Nine out of ten chil-
dren show signs of consumption, ac-
cording to Colonel Mygatt of the Red
Cross. The hospitals of the city are
crowded with them, and the funds are
lacking for proper attention to their
needs. The Abbe Ernest Dimnet, a
well-known French scholar and es-
sayist, has come to this country to
make an appeal on behalf of the suf-
fering population of Lille. He asks
for $100,000, necessary to help the
two Children's Hospitals, Saint An-
toine and Saint Anne. Five hundred
dollars pays for a bed, fifty for the
medicine daily required in the clinics,
one dollar keeps a child in the hospital
for two days. Gifts sent to the Abbe
Ernest Dimnet, in care of the Review,
will be forwarded to him.
TT is not entirely clear whether the
-■- prize of 100,000 francs is offered
by the French Academy of Sciences
for the best plan of communicating
with another planet or for the actual
achievement of inter-planetary con-
versation. On the latter supposition
it is probable that the prize money,
if put out at interest, will amount to
a goodly sum before it can be
awarded. Most of what we hear con-
cerning the planet which we happen
to inhabit tends to confirm a belief
that any other planet that values its
self-respect and peace of mind will
refuse either to initiate or to respond
to any efforts to establish a more inti-
mate acquaintance with us. As a
rather bright little planet with a
faithful moon at heel, we dare say this
world holds a respectable position
among its fellows in the firmament,
but for our part we love the rest of
the universe too much to subject it to
the disenchantment which a diminu-
tion of distance would inevitably
produce.
The Issues in the
Fight at Albany
jVrOTHING that has been disclosed,
■^* or that can be disclosed, in the
hearings at Albany concerning the
Socialist Assemblymen can make the
proceedings against them right. If
we have reached a point at which the
method of procedure in such a case
is a matter of indifference to us, we
have already gone a long way towards
the repudiation of our political insti-
tutions. The masterly presentation
of the case in the brief prepared by
a committee of the Bar Association of
the City of New York leaves nothing
to be desired in point of overwhelm-
ing convincingness. We can think of
no better service to public education
in the fundamentals of representative
government than would be furnished
by the printing of a million copies of
that brief and their broadcast distri-
bution among the people.
The central point made in that
brief — and amply buttressed by argu-
ments and citations which we can
not attempt to reproduce — is that,
whether or not the five Socialist
Assemblymen might, upon investiga-
tion, be found to be subject to expul-
sion, there was absolutely no warrant
for their suspension. It is a mistake,
and a very grave one, to imagine that
this is a mere technicality. The qual-
ifications for membership in the Leg-
islature are specifically laid down in
the Constitution of the State, and the
Assembly has no power to add to
them. It is the sole judge of the
question whether those Constitutional
qualifications have been fulfilled, but
if they have, the person elected is
entitled to his seat. In spite of his
having been seated, he may be ex-
pelled for cause; but when so ex-
pelled, his seat becomes vacant and
his constituency thus has a fresh
chance to fill it. A suspension, on
the other hand, operates during the
entire time of its continuance not
only to deprive the member of his
seat, but to deprive his constituency
of representation ; and in the present
instance all this was done at a mo-
ment's notice and without the faintest
pretense at any establishment of the
122]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 39
charge. The only way to undo that
wrong would have been to rescind the
suspension as soon as its true charac-
ter had been exposed. The members
of the Assembly who endeavored to
accomplish this in spite of their hasty
vote in the first instance are deserv-
ing of unstinted commendation.
Important as this point is, we
must turn away from it and consider
the issues that have actually been
brought out, as though bearing on the
expulsion of the Socialist members.
In the confused mass of facts, asser-
tions, and accusations that have been
brought before the Judiciary Com-
mittee three distinct threads are dis-
cernible. The case against the So-
cialist members rests in part upon
obligations alleged to have been as-
sumed by them, as members of the
Socialist party, that were inconsistent
with their oath of office. It rests in
part upon inferences drawn from
declarations of that party and its
members, and from declarations by
other parties or bodies with which
that party is alleged to be virtually
identified. And finally it rests upon
utterances of opinion or purpose
by the accused members themselves.
Of these three elements, as pre-
sented, the first has most force. Yet
even here the burden of proof on the
prosecution to show the substantial
character of the alleged obligations,
and their inconsistency with the possi-
bility of a faithful discharge of duty
by the accused, is very great; and,
so far as we can judge, it has not by
any means been met. For instance,
the mere existence in the Constitution
of the Socialist party of a requirement
that the members elected shall sign
in advance a form of resignation of
their office to be used when the party
thinks fit, is certainly no ground for
expulsion if the members in question
have not actually signed it ; and even
if they have, it is very doubtful
whether anything more could be re-
quired of them than a revocation of
that signature. It may be very wrong
— and indeed it is very wrong — for
any man to sign such a paper ; but it
is not a crime, it does not argue moral
turpitude, and its existence in the
past can hardly be regarded as a dis-
qualification for the future.
What on the face of it looks more
serious is a clause in the Socialist
party Constitution which binds all
members elected to office to vote
against all appropriations for mili-
tary purposes. Yet upon a moment's
consideration it will be clear that this,
taken in itself, is even less a disquali-
fication than the provision that we
have just been discussing; for clearly
it would be absurd to exclude from all
legislative bodies any person who is
on principle opposed to war, and who
will accordingly vcte against every
appropriation designed to make war
possible. Whenever a majority of
the people of the country are of this
mind they have a right to have their
way. The one thing that does give
a substantial basis to this count in
the indictment is the circumstance
that the State Constitution requires
the State to maintain a militia of at
least 10,000 men. It may fairly be
argued that the anti-militarist pro-
vision in the Socialist party Consti-
tution is thus in express conflict with
the Constitution of the State; but it
would surely be a grossly strained
view which should regard a member
of the Legislature as liable to expul-
sion because some one of a multitude
of provisions in his party's platform
or Constitution runs counter to some
one point in the State Constitution.
Would it not have been absurd, in the
days before the Civil War, to expel
from Northern Legislatures every
person who was avowedly opposed to
the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave
Law, or of the provision of the
United States Constitution upon
which it was based? Would it not
be absurd to expel from every State
Legislature to-day every man who
might be avowedly opposed to the
enactment of any State law enforcing
the Eighteenth Amendment to the
United States Constitution?
We come now to the general atti-
tude of the Socialist party, and espe-
cially to its more or less direct asso-
ciation with the attitude of Commu-
nist parties in our own country, and
of the Russian Bolshevists. Nothing
is more certain than that within the
Socialist party, as within every other,
there exist all shades of conviction,
opinion, and purpose. It is perfectly
easy to point to extreme expressions
in party declarations even within the
Socialist party itself, and it is true
that some of these imply great sym-
pathy with the purposes of Commu-
nist parties and of the Bolshevist
regime in Russia. But to hold any
one individual responsible for every-
thing even in his party's platform,
not to speak of less authoritative dec-
larations, would be monstrous. To
what excess this sort of thing has
gone in the line of attack pursued by
the prosecution, is sufficiently shown
in this deliberate statement by Mr.
Stanchfield :
My argument runs along this line: that
every declaration, every speech, every state-
ment of every man who is affiliated or belongs
to that party, is bound by the speeches, the
sentiments, the writings, the books, the publi-
cations of every other man affiliated with that
association, whether they were present at the
time when it was uttered or whether they were
absent.
In its bearing on the decision of
the Assembly, the third element of
the case — the utterances of the ac-
cused men themselves — is likely to
play less of a part than the other two ;
but from a broader point of view it
is of the greatest interest of all. No
speech or other expression of any of
the five Socialist Assemblymen has
been put in evidence that constitutes
anything like direct advocacy of vio-
lent or lawless methods of bringing
about the political and social revolu-
tion which the programme of the
Socialist party undoubtedly contem-
plates. Stray expressions, of which
the language is violent or extreme,
have indeed been cited, but to these
no sensible person attaches any great
importance. What is regarded as im-
portant is the evidence of sympathy
with Bolshevism, either Russian or
other, and expressions of opinion to
the general effect that unless a radical
change is brought about peacefully it
will some day or other be brought
about by force. These things are
very offensive to all of us who are
attached to the existing institutions
of the country, who take pride in its
past, and who look forward to a fu-
ture that shall be a worthy continu-
ance of that past. But it is every
man's right in a free country to de-|
clare that he is dissatisfied with its
institutions, and that he proposes to
February 7, 1920}
THE REVIEW
[128
do his utmost by lawful means to
change or even to abolish them. Nor
can he, without violation of the fun-
damental principles of free speech, be
debarred from expressing his sym-
pathy with people in other countries
who resort to lawless or bloody means
to accomplish objects which, as ob-
jects, he holds to be desirable.
Thousands of patriotic, loyal, and
law-abiding Americans regarded as-
sassination and bomb-throwing as
justifiable means of attempting the de-
struction of the Czarist despotism in
Russia, throughout the long period of
revolutionary agitation in that coun-
try. It is true that sympathy with
the Russian Bolshevists tends to en-
courage Bolshevist plotting in this
country ; but it is also true that sym-
pathy with Russian revolutionaries in
the Nineteenth Century tended to en-
courage such assassinations as those
of President Garfield and President
McKinley.
If we are to preserve freedom of
opinion, we must be prepared to
maintain it in spite of its drawbacks.
. We must not erect it into a supersti-
tion; there is an essential difference
between the free utterance of opinion
and two other things which are often
confounded with it — freedom to in-
cite to lawless actions, and freedom
to disseminate opinions in ways that
are in themselves disorderly or inde-
cent. Nothing of this kind is even
alleged against the accused Assembly-
men. If they really do sympathize
with Lenin and Trotsky, surely no
one can feel a greater abhorrence for
their position than does the Review.
But we have not reached the point
where, for the sake of preserving our
traditions of freedom and law, we are
prepared to sacrifice one of the great-
est of those traditions themselves.
Americans are familiar with the fact
that the most splendid intellects in
the British Parliament at the time of
our Revolution were undaunted cham-
pions of the American cause; but it
would be well if at this time they re-
called the fact that one of the fore-
most of them championed also the
cause of the French Revolution. His
advocacy of it caused a tragic sever-
ance of friendship between him and
his great intellectual leader; but his-
tory does not record that Edmund
Burke's profound abhorrence of
Jacobinism led him to entertain any
notion that Charles James Fox ought
to be expelled from the House of
Commons. It would be sad indeed if
the America of the Twentieth Cen-
tury should show itself more intol-
erant than the England of George the
Third.
America and the Plight
of Europe
OECRETARY GLASS, like Mr.
^ Hoover, regards the European
situation from an austere and logical
standpoint. In his letter of January
28 to the Chamber of Commerce of
the United States he sets forth the
fundamentals which must guide the
world if it is to resume the paths of
economic blessedness. While admit-
ting the logic in both the Glass and
the Hoover statements, the average
man can not fail to have some reser-
vation on the point of their generosity
and sympathy towards Europe. A
carping critic might even question
the good taste involved in lecturing
our Allies at a time when they are
confronted by heavy responsibilities
as a result of their long fight to pre-
serve the civilization of the world.
It may be true that the people of
Europe are indulging in widespread
extravagance; it may be that their
statesmen are not imposing taxation
as heavily as we think they should.
But still one may be permitted to
ask if it is our place to assert and
declare ? Would not the limit of good
taste be reached were our statesmen
courteously to suggest?
Much has been written on the pres-
ent disorganization of the exchanges.
It requires no reiteration to bring
home the dangers of this situation:
exports from the United States valued
at nearly eight billion dollars during
the calendar year 1919, against cor-
responding imports valued at just
under four billion dollars, leav-
ing a balance due us for the year
of approximately four billion dollars
which our debtors can not promptly
pay either in gold or goods. All this
is very simple. It is easy to declaim
about it. But we must not forget that
the unprecedented disorganization of
the world's economic machinery in-
volves readjustments which can not
be made at once.
The fundamental considerations re-
lating to the problem are absolutely
simple; the trouble lies in the intri-
cacy of the practical application of
those fundamentals. There is and
can be only one solution of the pres-
ent international financial difficulties,
namely, an increase in production and
an increase in saving on the part of
the people of every country of the
world. This necessity can not be
obviated by any economic scheme
which human ingenuity can de-
vise. In proportion as the world
shall work and save, just in that pro-
portion can budgets be equalized and
inflation reduced. This remedy is
simple and unspectacular; but the
world will not believe in it promptly,
nor set about practising it with vigor
and persistence until many hard days
have come upon us. Offer a man a
spectacular stock and paint a picture
of affluence — his face lights up and
you have his attention, and perhaps
his money. Tell him to tighten his
belt and get down to work, ten hours,
twelve hours a day for an emergency
period — he will turn away from your
gloomy counsel and seek pleasanter
pastures.
However, it is clear that the Ameri-
can business public are getting much
education in the more practical fea-
tures of foreign finance. We are de-
veloping some real international
bankers. We may still be able to take
up our share of the foreign trade
which we shall be so eager for in the
days to come. The cost of living in
America may be lowered temporarily
by a decline in exports from the
United States at this time; but we
shall do well to look forward to the
time when the foreign countries
which are now calling to us because
of their necessities of reconstruction
will be the object of our earnest solici-
tation as a necessary outlet for our
important exportable surplus. These
markets may not always be friendly
if we do not cultivate them now.
There is more to foreign trade than
mere facts and figures.
The letter of Secretary Glass, to-
124]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 39
gether with the pages on interna-
tional finance in his last Annual Re-
port, the letter of Mr. Hoover, and
the memorial recently submitted to
the Government and to the Chamber
of Commerce of the United States
suggesting an international financial
conference, form part of the common
law on the new international situa-
tion. Their conclusions may be over-
ruled by later experience; they may
be confirmed by subsequent develop-
ments. But the main thing required
is continued clear thinking and a
minimum of dogmatism. Even the
greatest minds can afford to be
humble in the presence of debts
measured in units of scores of bil-
lions.
What the future holds no one can
say. It may be that private credit
resources can be mobilized to meet
the needs of European reconstruc-
tion. This does not mean bank credits ;
for the banks must keep their assets
liquid to pay their depositors on de-
mand. Does private action involve
the sale of bonds to private investors?
Will they buy? Is it sound to ask
them to buy ? Will they come forward
with sufficient funds without positive
governmental sanction? Can the
large investor be expected to respond
under our present system of super-
taxes on large incomes? Should the
American people, who have a stake
in the foreign situation represented
by Government loans of nearly ten
billion dollars, and private loans to
foreign Governments and municipali-
ties of a billion and a half, and com-
mercial credits of two billions more,
lend more to make safe the great
sums already advanced? Has the
Government a direct obligation of
leadership in this situation?
In answering these questions, there
is no room for self-assurance and
finality. Admittedly, the only remedy
is the remedy of work and thrift.
Debts must ultimately be paid with
earned money, not promised money.
If we will have patience a little longer
we may see whether or not this fun-
damental moral as well as economic
principle is going to prevail. Such
emergency measures as may be
needed meanwhile can at best be but
temporary. With patience and co-
operation, with the return of peace
and a working understanding among
the great nations of the world, we
shall make progress.
Meanwhile millions will starve who
could be saved from starvation if the
tone of the Treasury letter is adopted
by the people of America. It is very
easy to carry over an aggressively
asserted policy of governmental
laissez-faire into a do-nothing private
policy. America still has a heart,
despite the more preponderant men-
tality of some of its public men. And
if there ever were human facts to
touch the heart of America, they exist
to-day in the starving areas of
Europe. Nor is it clear that our
part in the work of rescue should
be confined to the alleviation of im-
mediate suffering.
And so we come back to our start-
ing point. A world situation of ter-
rible complexity confronts us. The
strongest men in America are study-
ing it from day to day, here and
abroad. The answer is not clear.
There never will be one all-inclusive
answer. Meanwhile let us keep work-
ing at this — and at other things —
with a good courage; and let us be-
ware of those who talk to us in tones
of mastery and full knowledge of a
problem which passes the understand-
ing of any single human mind.
Mr. Gompers vs. the
Bolshevists
"D Y judgment and temperament, Mr.
-'-' Gompers belongs with the group
of conservative labor leaders repre-
sented at its best by the late John
Mitchell. At heart a good American,
devoted to American institutions, he
realizes that no class would lose more
by their subversion than that of the
man who must make his living by the
work of his own hands. The men
over whom he has presided as head
of the American Federation of Labor
have both their extremist and their
conservative elements, just as have
other classes. While Mr. Gompers'
record is by no means perfect as to
his attitude toward lawless tenden-
cies in labor organizations, he has
given ample evidence of essential
soundness on questions clearly involv-
ing the fundamentals of American
institutions.
Fresh proof of this is furnished by
his emphatic utterances of the past
week in the editorial columns of the
American Federationist. "We know
about Russia," he says. "We know
about Bolshevism. We know the pit-
eous story of cruelty and intolerance,
and we know the autocratic concept
that underlies the minority dictator-
ship which is hailed to the world by
its dupes and advocates as the most
perfect state of society yet devised.
We know about it, and we condemn
it, completely, finally, and for all
time." There is no mental confusion
in those words. Not often is con-
demnation of a great wrong more
lucidly and forcibly uttered.
Mr. Gompers is aware of the propa-
ganda streaming in from Russia, but
he regards the danger from that
source as comparatively limited. The
greater peril is from sources not dis-
credited by known or presumptive
connection with the Russian pay-rolls.
"It is doubtful," he says, "whether
those publications issued more or less
directly by Russian Bolshevist agents
have as great an effect in America as
those publications which style them-
selves liberal, and which like to be
known as journals of opinion, such
as the Nation, the Dial, and the New
Republic. In the same class with
these are a number of newspaper and
magazine writers who within the last
two years have become more or less
known as writers on the Bolshevist
question." In these journals and
writers of the "parlor Bolshevist"
group, men and women who habitu-
ally preface their apologies for Bol-
shevists with a denial of personal be-
lief in Bolshevism, Mr. Gompers
finds "an air of tolerance, under the
guise of which, however, support of
the Bolshevist experiment has been
at least generous." He can not ac-
cept the claim of these journals of
opinion that we are not yet suffi-
ciently informed as to what is going
on in Russia, and should suspend our
judgment on Bolshevism for the pres-
ent, awaiting further information.
This plea, in his view, "is a last des-
perate attempt to win favor from the !
February 7, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[125
American people for a system of gov-
ernment which, by the confession of
its own advocates and defenders, is
foreign to every concept of the Amer-
ican Republic."
Mr. Gompers is under severe pres-
sure at the hands of revolutionary
agitators who care nothing for Amer-
ican labor, but much for a possible
opportunity to use the enormous
power of the American Federation of
Labor for destructive purposes. "Bor-
ing from within" has been no mere
newspaper phrase for him, but a very
real and painful process, not simply
undermining his influence with the
Federation, about which he is old
enough not to feel much personal con-
cern, but endangering the vital wel-
fare of the American laborer. His
fight against this insidious influence
is no sudden impulse, but springs
from a clear conception of the dan-
ger that threatens and a firm deter-
mination to meet it with all the re-
sources and energy at his command.
To free organized labor from its revo-
lutionary parasites would be the
greatest possible service that he could
render.
It will be unfortunate for the em-
ployers of labor, unfortunate for the
consumers of the products of labor,
unfortunate for sober-minded citizens
of whatever class, if they do not real-
ize that in this struggle the enemies
of Samuel Gompers are their enemies.
J Whether he has always been right
i in the past is not now an important
j question. His victory over the revo-
' lutionary forces seeking to work
his destruction will do more than any
other one thing now attainable to
keep the pathway open to a sane and
just settlement of labor problems.
No right-minded employer of labor,
at such a crisis, should put ammuni-
tion into the hands of the enemy by
refusing or delaying any practicable
and reasonable adjustment of griev-
ances pending in his own portion of
the labor field. The employer who in
a time like this shows himself deaf
or arrogant towards reasonable de-
mands for amelioration does the one
thing which is needed, in the mind of
the laborer, to give the falsehoods of
Bolshevism a dangerous semblance of
truth.
What Are Colleges
For?
'T'HERE has been some fear lest the
-*• war should result in an unfor-
tunate narrowing of the educational
aims of our colleges and universities.
The work of the scientific specialist
in war service was so brilliant in it-
self, and lent itself so readily to news-
paper publicity, that education along
the lines of narrowly applied science
seemed to many about the only thing
worth while. The annual report of
the President of Columbia, noticed in
these columns a week or two ago,
proved that no such idea is dominant
there. And the trend of the Harvard
report, by President Lowell, now be-
fore us, shows that Harvard, too, has
passed the point of danger.
President Lowell takes direct issue
with the view that the education of
our young men should be "in the
immediate problems of the day." It
is not the problems of to-day, but of
the future, with which the college
student of to-day will have to deal,
"and these are as little known and
foreseen by us," he says, "as the
questions now pressing were by our
fathers, or theirs by an earlier gen-
eration." To give the youth of to-day
the ability to deal wisely with the un-
foreseen problems of the future, Pres-
ident Lowell is not afraid to say, as
Harvard presidents of generations
long gone were wont to say, that "we
must lay a foundation large and solid.
We must train our students to think
clearly." They must learn breadth
and tolerance from the study of past
experience, and profundity from
communion with the thoughts of
great men, thereby enabling them-
selves to distinguish the superficial
or ephemeral from the fundamental
and enduring. This, he holds, is the
true meaning of the humanities, the
study of what man has thought and
done, not excluding what he is now
thinking and doing, but not keeping
the eye so closely upon the latter as
to lose sight of the whole.
President Lowell does not regard
the obligation of a college to its
undergraduates as limited "to offer-
ing them an opportunity for self-
improvement which they make take,
neglect, or use in any way they
please." The responsibility of the col-
lege is fulfilled only by positively
encouraging the student to take ad-
vantage of his opportunity, and to
develop his capacity for a useful and
fruitful life. It is this feeling that
has led to a system of distribution
and concentration of studies in the
student's individual course, under
rules which place a very material re-
striction upon the freedom of "elec-
tion" previously existing in Harvard.
And to the same principle of college
responsibility for the student's proper
development. President Lowell refers
the Harvard plan of requiring all
freshmen to reside in the college dor-
mitories. In this way, he thinks, can
be established a consciousness among
the students that they are bound
together by common ties, and have
common sentiments, aspirations, and
interests. In the esprit de corps thus
attained he hopes to find a line of
practical approach for the moral
influence which the undergraduate
needs. While unwilling to make dor-
mitory residence a positive require-
ment beyond the freshman year, he
would be glad to see college dormi-
tories so equipped and managed as to
attract all students. Against the pri-
vately owned dormitory he raises the
objection that it inevitably aims to
gather those who can pay well, and
thus tends to segregate the students
on the basis of wealth.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Cokpokatiom
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklik. President
Harold db Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars a /ear in
advance. Fifteen cents a copjr. Foreign peat-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be aent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Son», Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London. W. C. 2, England.
Copyriffkt, 1920, in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Avres O. W. Firkins
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson
Jerome Landfielo
126]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 39
Abolishing the Political State
BOLSHEVISM, however detestable,
■'-' has taught us much that it is
needful to know — much that will be
of incomputable value in our task of
remaking the world. It has brought
vividly to our forgetful minds the
eternal proneness of a part of man-
kind, under the impulse of a fanatical
creed or ideal, to inflict upon others
the most savage cruelty. It has given
us an illuminating example of the
reflexes of that cruelty upon the
minds and temperaments of other
fanatics in other lands — particularly
this land of ours. It has shown us
again — what our optimism or our
complacency has caused us to ignore
— that Jesuitry and hypocrisy are
monopolized by no age or sect; that
they flourish now and here as they
did in Victorian England or mediaeval
Rome or ancient Egypt ; and that the
self-righteous may still vociferously
proffer, in the name of democracy,
liberty, and justice, unctuous excuses
for tyranny, repression, and robbery.
Its lessons are many, and all of them
useful. One lesson, not the least in
importance, may be drawn from the
contrast between the industrial Gov-
ernment of revolutionary theory and
the industrial Government of revo-
lutionary fact.
The term "industrial Government"
is used in two very different senses.
It may mean either a Government
the functions of which are predomi-
nantly industrial (if there is such
a thing) or a Government which,
whether predominantly industrial or
political, is in the hands of the work-
ing class. It is the former meaning
with which I am here concerned ; and
the question comes, "Is there such a
thing as this industrial Government
— Government which within consti-
tutional limits is sovereign and yet
which deals only or mainly with in-
dustrial questions?" The first So-
cialists of the Marxian school said
that there would be such a thing with
the triumph of Socialism. The capi-
talist state of a half-century ago they
regarded as wholly political, even
though it had already begun to enact
social legislation. This state, they
said, would pass away; and in its
place would come something they re-
fused to call a state, but a corporate
entity concerned only with the ad-
ministration of industrial affairs.
Frederick Engels, the lifelong com-
panion and disciple of Marx, in his
answer to Eugen Duhring, wrote as
follows: "As soon as there is no
longer any class in society to be held
in subjection, there is nothing more
to repress, nothing requiring a spe-
cial repressing power, the state." In
another place he wrote to the effect
that with the triumph of Socialism
the government of human beings
would end and the. administration of
things would begin.
August Bebel, in his book on
"Woman," has the following :
"As the relations of master and
servant disappear with the abolition
of the present system of property,
the political expression of the rela-
tionship ceases to have any meaning.
The state expires with the expiration
of the ruling class."
This concept of the disappearance
of the political state and its succession
by a power administering industrial
affairs solely (because there would
be no other affairs) was for a con-
siderable time a commonplace in So-
cialist and ultra-radical thought. But
it failed to convince many, even
among those who accepted it. It had
its origin in Germany; and it came
to be regarded by the moderates as
merely an expression of the bitter
reaction against the Prussianism of a
half-century ago. As the great na-
tions developed their policy of social
legislation the moderates came to a
new concept. It was seen that the
state was not necessarily wholly polit-
ical, not necessarily capitalistic ; that
it could change with changing times,
and that though it could fit itself so
admirably to Prussian autocracy it
might also fit itself to democracy and
Socialism. As much as fifteen years
ago Marxian Socialists in the United
States were writing and speaking of
the Socialist state. Socialists gener-
ally, both in this country and in Eu-
rope, had reached the position that
the state was not to be abolished but
to be transformed; and this concept
steadily gained ground, at least until
the Socialist party became tinctured
with Bolshevism. Socialism would
conquer the capitalist power at the
ballot box, take over the state, con-
tinue those of its functions which
were socially useful and add new
functions. If by political functions
are meant, in the main, those in
which individuals are dealt with as
citizens, and by industrial functions
those in which individuals are dealt
with as producers and consumers,
there was nothing to show that the
Socialist state would be any less polit-
ical than the capitalist state. The
fundamental relationship between
individual and state was political, and
no matter how far the state went in
directing the control of industry, the
primacy of the political relationship
would be unaffected.
But the ultra-radicals would have
none of all this. With communist
anarchists, I. W. W.'s, S. L. P.'s, Bol-
sheviks, as well as with a strong
minority of doctrinaires in the regu-
lar Socialist movement, the Engels
concept and formula persisted. In the
years just before the war it found
expression in a rebellious movement
in the American party, and in a simi-
lar movement in the German Social
Democracy, led by Anton Pannekoek,
which advocated direct action, and
which, fashioning a phrase, "the
cretinism of parliaments," rejected
representative Government as use-
less to the working class and pro-
posed the "industrialization of soci-
ety." It has also powerfully affected
the speculative divagations of an ex-
ceedingly highbrow school, copiously
represented in some of our "journals
of opinion," which proffers a system
so far unnamed, but which may fit-
tingly be called the "Federationism
of Experimental Allegiances."
Perhaps even an I. W. W. or an
F. E. A. would admit that any work-
ing-class administration supreme in
authority would have to deal with
such problems as sanitation, schools,
parks, and playgrounds, nationaliza-
tion, the franchise, elections, and re-
lations with other nations or societies.
He might also admit, especially since
February 7, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[127
Lenin has said that the main business
of a proletarian regime is to crush
out opposition, that such an adminis-
tration would have to deal with the
problems of penal codes, prisons,
police, detectives, and the conscrip-
tion of armies. It is hard for the
ordinary person to see how the mere
calling of these problems by the term
"industrial" would alter their char-
acter— equally hard to see how in any
order of society they would be other
than the same sort of problems that
they are to-day. More difficult yet is
to imagine them vanishing, or settling
themselves automatically, through the
mere transformation of capitalism
into organized cooperation.
Argument, however, is unneces-
sary ; for in Soviet Russia we have a
striking test of the theory. From the
Bolsheviki one might reasonably ex-
pect some approaches to this type of
Government. They have the power,
backed by the bayonet and the food
decree, to enforce compliance. They
have formally and bitterly repudiated
modern Socialism, and they claim
direct inheritance from Marx and
Engels, with a doctrine uncorrupted
by compromises with bourgeois
thought. In Sovdepia therefore, if
anywhere, should the observant look
for the wiping out of political Gov-
ernment.
But he will look in vain. Soviet
Russia has become the most rigorous
political Government on earth. The
"administration of things" has brok-
en down at a thousand points, but
the "government of human beings"
has been extended and intensified to
a degree heretofore inconceivable.
The latest refugees are unani-
mous in their testimony that not a
day passes without the issue of new
decrees. There must be the registra-
tion of this, the surrender of that,
payments must be made so and so,
information must be given at such a
place, in this or that manner, and
with a stated frequency. On top of
the denial or manipulation of the
franchise and the suppression of
speech, press, and assemblage, there
is thus laid on the citizen the further
tyranny of guidance by decree. Every
movement of the individual is under
executive direction ; and not to know
the prohibitions, or knowing, to vio-
late the least of them, is to land one-
self in jail,
"The state expires with the expira-
tion of the ruling class," wrote Rebel.
"As soon as there is no longer any
class in society to be held in subjec-
tion— there is nothing more to re-
press, nothing requiring a special re-
pressing power, the state." Well, it
would appear that the bourgeoisie as
a ruling class has expired. But the
rest of the formula does not follow.
The state, instead of expiring, waxes
constantly more autocratic; it re-
presses, with a brutal hand, those
who disagree with it; and this re-
pression is not of a class, but of
dissident individuals of the same
class (or mixture of classes) as that
of the rulers. The bourgeoisie has
indeed suffered; but the greater
weight of Bolshevik brutality has
fallen upon the Social Democrats and
the Socialist Revolutionists. The
abolition of the bourgeoisie has not
abolished the political state; it baa
resulted in a political tyranny which
would be impossible under capitalism.
All dogmas are to be viewed with
suspicion. This one, the dogma of
the disappearance of the political
state by reason of the expropriation
of capital, never had the slightest
logical basis; it was an assumption
arising out of a hatred of Bismarck-
ism ; it was sweeping, audacious, and
"revolutionary," and it captivated
thousands of zealots who took it as
an expression of prophetic wisdom.
More reasonable beings sought to
show its fallaciousness, but the
zealots refused to listen. At the first
touch of reality it has exploded and
left not a wrack behind.
W. J. Ghent
The Human Cost of Living
/^UR industries kill and maim over
^-^ 1,600 persons daily — half as
many as were killed on the Union
side at Gettysburg. Every six months
our industrial casualty list exceeds the
fatalities of the United States in the
Great War. In fact, it has been esti-
mated that the hazards of modern
industry are equal to those that were
found in the trenches on the Western
Front. The only difference lies in
the manner in which we sense the
carnage: bunch the list to represent
the human sacrifice necessary to gain
an objective in battle or to record the
effect of a great catastrophe and we
are horrified ; scatter it among ten
thousand manufacturing plants over
a period of six months and it scarcely
causes a ripple on the surface of one's
interest.
When one thinks of an industrial
hazard, it is of the engineer on the
Twentieth Century Limited swaying
in his engine, plowing into the night
at seventy miles an hour. One doesn't
think of the marble-cutter at the
corner shop unromantically hammer-
ing hour by hour at the dusty stone —
inhaling a powder that brings prema-
ture death.
The tremendous facts of experience
are accepted and commonplace. We
dress, shave, eat, walk, ride, work,
play, and write checks to discharge
our obligations. They are ours if we
pay for them. But is there any
medium of exchange and measure of
value that pays for the human risks
that are assumed in constructing the
accepted things of our lives? Will a
dollar pay for the steel of a jack-
knife which was forged from a heat
that burned alive three laborers when
the ladle tilted and spilled? The
human cost of living in civilized
society !
Let us follow John Brown, of
Detroit, as he is about to turn
in, and see what a debt to his
brethren of industry he is accumulat-
ing. What is the human cost of John
Brown's right to live?
John starts to go to bed at 10 P. M.
He snaps out the light. John, fifty
years ago, would have blown out a
chimney-smoked lamp or snuffed a
candle. It isn't necessary to dwell on
the comparative comforts of oil lamps
and a system of indirect lighting —
John has never known the inconven-
ience of the former, neither has he
realized the value of the latter; he
accepts the electric light as his herit-
128]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 39
age, paying for it at so much per
kilowatt-hour. It might interest
John to know that Edison, Westing-
house, and Tesla devoted a major por-
tion of their lives to perfecting his
lights. Hundreds of experimenters
and testers were killed from electric
shock before the alternating current
was made safe. To-day, the testing
of generators, motors, transformers,
and switchboards is a dangerous oc-
cupation. Central station operation
takes its toll in lives every year.
Even John knows of at least one line-
man who has met death repairing a
live wire. Electricity to-day is com-
paratively safe, but it has taken forty
years of human sacrifice to make it
safe enough so that John may snap
out his light and go to bed without a
twinge of conscience. Seventy per
cent, of all the fatal accidents in 1917
were caused by electric shock, John.
Just a moment, John, before you go
to bed ! It takes coal or water power
to generate electric current. Coal
mining is highly dangerous. Perhaps
the current you burned in the last
hour was generated from coal dug
from the bowels of a Pennsylvania
mountain that recently caved in,
burying ten miners alive. Of course,
they didn't risk their lives for you —
they were after the tonnage — but
whether they realized it or not, they
were serving you, John, as faithfully
and as courageously as your brother
did in the trenches.
The coal that generated the steam
that turned the turbine that sped the
armature that created the 1600 volts
that were stepped down to 110 volts
that entered your house through a
safety switch and insulated wire that
burned in a filament enclosed in a
vacuum globe — that coal has another
story. It was carried out of the mine
on electric cars. Sometimes sparks
from the wire ignited methane gas
in the mine and blew the miner to
fragments. It is loaded on cars and
hauled to Detroit. Think of the men
that have been killed and injured in
the steam-railroad service getting
coal from Pittsburgh to Detroit!
Think of George Westinghouse and
forty-five years of tireless devotion
to the air brake that has made freight
trains a mile in length safe! The
coal was fed into the furnaces at the
central station by automatic stokers
— they are made of iron and steel.
Need I tell that story? Need I tell
the story of the thousands of girls
that sit, day in and day out, winding
the coils for the generators, or the
story of the men with fingers gone
and feet crushed that have built the
transformers? John, you couldn't
pay for one kilowatt-hour of your
current even though you were the
richest man in Detroit.
Go on to bed and sleep — while the
globe of the electric light cools and
the carbon filament becomes gray. If
you thought of the hours of life that
were taken from the men that blew
the glass for the small bulbs of your
lights — in the intense heat of the
glass oven — you could not sleep.
John, when your house was built,
the men who did the work assumed a
risk for you. Climbing round on lad-
ders and scaffolding isn't the safest
occupation in the world. Ladder
casualties cost Ohio in compensation
last year $49,574. If all of the metal
products that went into your house
came from Pennsylvania in 1918, you
can figure that you, with all other
customers who bought the metal,
were responsible for 6,218 burns and
scalds. In fact, the total number of
burns and scalds in all Pennsylvania
industries in 1918 was 12,394. Burns
and scalds are not confined to any
particular class of accidents, but
cover every phase of industrial effort.
Modern industrial practice has pro-
moted the traveling crane to first
place as a mechanical conveyor, with
an increasing danger to the working-
man. Parts weaken with rough usage
and constant impact, gears become
worn, outside cranes are subject to
pressure under high winds, foot-
walks beneath the cranes are danger-
ous, flying hooks strike workingmen,
chains part, castings break loose and
fall, operators inadvertently throw
switches and start cranes with a re-
pairman on the track, heat from
spilled metal below cooks operators,
and dynamic brakes fail to function.
It costs in human life, John, to move
the material that goes into your
house.
We have followed John Brown of
Detroit from the electric-light switch
to his bed. Already we find an in-
dictment of John's indifference that
is staggering. We have selected one
of the simplest devices that contribute
to John's comfort and find that thou-
sands of lives have been sacrificed to
achieve this sole modern convenience,
the electric light. To continue to
follow John on the morrow about his
home, on the city street, in the office
building, at the hotel, on the surface
car and in the theatre, measuring the
"human cost" en route would drive
John mad.
The whole conception is depressing
in one sense, but in another highly
stimulating. For it makes one feel
that the drudgery and monotony of
our day's work is not in vain, that
the mite that we can do before we
die to pay our debt to the civilization
of yesterday is all too small. It is a
dominant thread in the warp and
woof of industrial relationship that
relieves us of the pressure of crass
materialism. After all, those who
have contributed most to even our
material comfort and well-being are
very real heroes. The service of the
men who have worked in the pit and
the mine, in the machine-shop and on
the wharves, in our offices and places
of tremendous responsibility — ^the
captains and privates of industry —
these are heroes indeed.
And yet, industries kill and maim
1,600 persons daily! In a sense one
can understand why our employees
are crying aloud for a new industrial
relationship — this carnage must be
stopped ! But I doubt if it is humanly
possible to do more than our great
industrial organizations like the
United States Steel Corporation, the
General Electric Company, the East-
man Kodak Company, or any one of
a hundred others are doing to-day.
The fight that the National Safety
Council, the National Electric Light
Association, and a score of safety-
device companies, like the Square D
Company of Detroit, are making to |
protect human life is bearing fruit. ;
They are dealing with "things as they I
are." '
Even so, our industrial accident
rate is disgraceful. Undoubtedly it '
provides great ammunition for the
February 7, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[129
Reds, the I. W. W.'s, and Bolsheviks,
and it takes a rather comprehensive
understanding of the tremendous dif-
ficulties of our accident problem to
make one discount their ranting. To
condemn the present economic order
that has endured for centuries, and
has at any rate worked, because its
present complexity has so hidden
the elements that we see only the
driftwood of its progress, is super-
ficial and unjust.
Theoretically, the alternative — the
nightmare— the Soviet Government
— is a very beautifully conceived plan.
I think there are no industrial acci-
dents in Soviet industry.
David Hakold Colcord
The Lady of the Violets
AFTER all, the East Side begins at
Fifth Avenue, and somewhere be-
tween the cool green-bordered spaces of
the Park and the somewhat leaden
waters of the East River there dwells
a fair proportion of the two per cent,
of the population which is said to own
sixty per cent, of the country's wealth,
and a rather large proportion of the
remaining percentages of wealth and
population. Wealth, it may be observed
in passing, is somewhat more in evidence
on the Avenue of Palaces, and population
on the cluttered sidewalks and crowded
fire-escapes nearer the river.
Eastward one goes — Madison, severely
i correct and a trifle depressing; Park,
magnificent duplex apartments towering
heavenward at dizzying rates; Lexington,
a respectable shadow of former greatness.
Lexington is the social Rubicon. Beyond
. lies the proletariat. But as the mantle
^ of equal franchise has now fallen upon
all alike, one may encounter the mistress
of a palace on the Avenue presiding over
a drawing-room discussion of politics,
and within the hour run into a little
woman on Avenue A, her big dark eyes
glowing under a shawl, also discussing
I politics, and both are voters.
j Voters both. For the Lady of the
I Violets has voted, many of her, and will
do so again in increasing numbers in
this Presidential year, quite unmindful
of the threat reiterated in two exhilarat-
ing suffrage campaigns— "I don't care
if you do force it on us, I will never,
never vote," and later modified to "Oh,
now Pve got to vote whether I want to
or not. What ! Well, of course I don't
have to, but you don't suppose we're
going to let you run everything, do
you?"
And vote they did, and not only that,
but campaigned vigorously and with well- '
defined partisan adherence, which indi-
cated at least certain inherited proclivi-
ties. And it is a fact that many poten-
tial executive types lurk behind the
fronts of the palaces, waiting only the
Ignition spark to leap into new but con-
genial activities. No wonder that one
candidate addressed his drawing-room
audiences as "my only hope," and, judg-
ing by the fact that he was elected, there
may have been something in it. Of
course one has a suspicion— just a tiny
little suspicion— that some of the Violet
Lady's enthusiasm was due chiefly to
the fact that certain candidates were
practically "favorite sons" of the Ave-
nue, as indicated by the fair citizen who
triumphantly declared that she had
voted for that dear Mr. Blank, and
hadn't put another solitary mark on her
ballot! But only a mere carper would
carp at such a trifle; rather one notes
the whirlwind of interest, the Belgian
King and Queen to be entertained, a
battalion of the all-important debutantes,
and politics; and politics ran a dead heat
with the other two and landed in front
of the field on election day.
Gone indeed are the dear dead classic
days of the hetaerae, whose intellectual
and political companionship consoled
their patrician friends beyond the nar-
row confines of domesticity. Politics has
landed plump in the bosom of the family.
Voter Pere, Voter Mere, sons and daugh-
ters, and incautious males are likely to be
confronted by a buxom mother, of the
politically overnourished type, oozing
"welfare" bills at every pore, a number
of said bills being doomed to be passed
at one session of the Assembly only to
be repudiated by their sponsors before
the next at stormy club meetings that
almost wreck the organization.
Naturally, one observes a few trifling
elisions amid all this fervor. For ex-
ample, an examination of the primary
lists with a high-powered magnifying
glass reveals scarcely more than a trace
of that soulful devotion known chiefly
to the hard-boiled "regulars" who vote
at the primaries even if they have to be
carried there. Primaries are a trifle
tiresome, don't you think, and, anyhow,
nobody is ever really elected at them.
But the onward movement now flows
freely along the Avenue and its lesser
satellites, and it is a matter of steadily
increasing record that the Lady of the
Violets, inspired perhaps by what Mrs.
Siddons called a "desperate tranquillity"
that always came to her before her
greatest efforts, glides lightly through
the ordeal, and is acclaimed to a waiting
world in the morning press as having
"voted like veterans."
But, with democracy itself in the melt
ing pot, there are strange digressions
beyond party lines. Take, for example, a
section of a city, "communityized" be-
yond all resemblance to Jeffersonian de-
mocracy, and functioning as a "unit"
vaguely but disturbingly suggesting cer-
tain familiar features of the Soviet, not
the least insistent of which is the frank
acknowledgment that the ultimate mis-
sion of the "unit" is political control.
Somehow all roads seem to lead to the
ballot box sooner or later. Thus it is
that while all the older, well-known lead-
ers and the great majority of the rank
and file of women citizens are taking
their politics straight, many others on
the hither side of the Rubicon are sip-
ping daintily, with a little near-Bolshe-
vism on the side. Anything, so it isn't
regular Plymouth-Rock-Pilgrim-Father-
and-Mother stuff. For imagine the polit-
ical darkness of one who has never had
a block head worker— no, that should be
head block worker— a head block worker
call and ask more questions than the
income tax commissioner and the census
man put together, to the end that the
Chairman of the Central Advisory Coun-
cil may tell you how to do all the things
you have always known how to do all
your life. The most terrifying part is
that you are airily informed that we
know all about you anyway! A false
dawn of liberty indeed, a mockery of the
decent privacies that protect the initia-
tive of individuality in the organized
channels of government.
Yet the sinister propaganda goes on
in myriad forms, questionable publica-
tions financed, dubious doctrines mur-
mured softly, now and then a multi-
millionaire pledging the support of his
fortune to ultra-radicalism as lightly as
a Roman noble flung priceless pearls into
a flagon of wine— and we are only deport-
ing aliens ! Fortunately, clear voices are
raised in the strident chaos. Some of
them are women's voices. It seems some-
thing more than a mere chance that next
June in the city of Madrid, old Madrid,
erstwhile citadel of mediaevalism, there
will meet in conference the International
Suffrage Alliance, delegates from our
own seventeen millions of enfranchised
women leading the representation of one
hundred millions of women who are func-
tioning politically, at least to some extent,
in their respective countries. And there
is an unmistakable unity of design be-
hind it. It means that the spirit of the
Middle Ages, mellowed by the interven-
ing centuries, has met with the advanc-
ing, conquering spirit of the Anglo-
Saxon, firmly establishing the rights of
men and women in constitutional govern-
ment. And the Lady of the Violets will
be there, a champion of law and order.
The Red army can not make permanent
headway against the massed sanity of
the world.
Mary C. Francis
130]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 39
Correspondence
Radical or Conservative— a
Perverse Dilemma
To the Editors of The Review:
In these days of social, economic, and
political unrest, our estimate of social
forces, tendencies, and aspirations readily
becomes confused with extraneous and
often wholly irrelevant considerations.
Thus we observe that the concepts, radi-
calism and conservatism, are well on the
way toward replacing most other con-
cepts involving social attitudes. Now,
radicalism and conservatism, when looked
at from the standpoint of their relation
to civilization and to society, represent
two inherent and equally basic charac-
teristics of the social organism. Con-
servatism, the guardian of the old and
established, is of the very essence of
civilization ; were it not for conservatism,
the fluidity of civilization would result
in inevitable self-annihilation. Radical-
ism, on the other hand, is but the limit-
ing concept which includes all that stands
for change, for progress, for reform, for
creativeness. The conservative and the
radical thus representing functions in-
herent in the very nature of society, have
both their legitimate places, but the very
legitimacy of these activities imposes
upon their representatives the duty and
the burden of knowing whereof they-
speak, of a thorough and searching
familiarity with that society of which
they constitute themselves the guardians
and the directors.
On the other hand, it is ignorance,
narrow-mindedness, snobbishness, and a
selfish detachment from the vital prob-
lems of the hour which transform the
conservative into a reactionary, who is
a menace and a nuisance, a burden and a
drag upon society. The same is true of
the radical. It is ignorance, crudeness
of attitude, superficiality of concrete
background, lack of social experience,
hazy idealism, which transform him
into that "red" and dangerous individual
whose intentions, idealistic though they
may be, are shattered on the rock of
incompetence and fanaticism. Knowledge
about society, saturation with the values
of civilization, from which alone can
spring a deep-rooted humanitarianism
and an idealism steeped in the realities
of life, these are the prerequisites which
the conservative and radical stand equally
in need of. It is, therefore, best fitting
that at this time, when reconstruction
of the very foundations of our civiliza-
tion is at hand, a body of scholars,
idealists and humanitarians, should find
themselves united in the common pur-
pose of making society and civilization
the object of their study, their discus-
sions, and their teachings. Such is the
source from which springs The New
School for Social Research.
From the standpoint represented at
the New School, radicalism and con-
servatism are but two among many con-
cepts applicable to tendencies of indi-
viduals as well as groups in society.
Neither of these concepts can claim to
describe in any adequate way the aims,
ideals, or methods of the New School.
What it aspires to is to know and under-
stand, and to impart to others the knowl-
edge and understanding of the static and
dynamic factors which hold and move
that intricate fabric of actions, motives,
ideas, and emotions which is our civiliza-
tion. It seems thus both inaccurate and
unjust to estimate, as has often been
done, the significance of this new enter-
prise in terms of what is but a perverse
dilemma — radicalism and conservatism.
The School is neifjer radical nor con-
servative; but it wants to help the radical
to guide and inspire social change rather
than to fulminate and destroy, and it
wants to teach the conservative wisely
to safeguard the stability of essential
principles and basic structures rather
than stubbornly to hang on to antiquated
ideas and institutions whose usefulness
is no longer actual.
A. A. GOLDENWEISER
The Neiv School for Social Research,
New York, Janiuiry 22
"Life or Death for the
Railroads?"
To the Editors of The Review:
I have been charmed by the interesting
experiment Mr. Woodlock attempts in
last week's Review in discussing the
railroads. In one column, to discredit
government operation, he declares that
the Government took over "a solvent sys-
tem in reasonably good physical condi-
tion." In the adjoining column, when
another purpose was in his mind, he as-
serts that when the Government took
over the railroads they were a "carcass,"
from which the Government "was grad-
ually but surely starving the last sparks
of life."
I believe the public is disposed to deal
justly with the railroads, being fair-
minded and having recovered from the
entirely natural but disastrous reaction
from the period when railroads con-
trolled politics and grossly abused their
control. But its state of mind will hardly
be improved when its friends get their
wires crossed so badly as Mr. Woodlock
allowed his to become.
Stillman H, Bingham
Dvluth, Minn., January 14
[The first of the sentences to which our
correspondent refers was:
As things stand at present it is not in the
least degree an exaggeration to say that the
Government, which took over at the end of
1917 a solvent system of railroads in reason-
ably good physical condition, is handing it
back to owners in a state of physical deteriora-
tion and financial insolvency.
The second was :
The Esch bill may be summed up in a word
as the perpetuation of the miserable system of
control of railroads which in 1914, when the
war broke out, was gradually but surely starv-
ing the last sparks of life from the carcass.
There is no real contradiction between
the two statements, though the pictur-
esque emphasis of the language in the
second may be open to objection. The
"life" that Mr. Woodlock had in mind,
and of which the "sparks" were being
"gradually but surely" extinguished, was
the life of enterprise, that kind of life
which means the attraction of new cap-
ital and the continuation of progress.
Such a process of injury may go on for
a long time without bringing about
"financial insolvency," and without re-
ducing the "physical condition" of the
roads below the point where it may still
be described as "reasonably good." — Eds.
The Review.]
Confiscation by Amendment
To the Editors of The Review :
At a public meeting in Yonkers on the
evening of January 11, Professor Scott
Nearing, a well-known Socialist, who had
been advocating the nationalization of
private property, was asked by one of
his audience: "How do you propose to
take property away from its owners?"
His answer was: "In the same way that
the property of the brewers and distil-
lers was taken, by constitutional amend-
ment. The prohibitionists have shown
us the way by which property can be
taken for public purposes without com-
pensation to the owners."
This frank admission that the Social-
ists purpose amending the Constitution
of the United States so as to enable them
to confiscate private property without
compensation, should arouse the Amer-
ican people to a realization of the mo-
mentous issues involved in the question
of the validity of the Eighteenth Amend-
ment, soon to be argued before the Su-
preme Court of the United States. As
is clearly shown in the pleadings filed
in the test suit brought by us, if the
Eighteenth Amendment is held to be
valid it will be in the power of 180 mem-
bers of Congress, 86 less than a majority
of both Houses, to submit radical and
revolutionary amendments to the State
Legislatures. These amendments can be
ratified by a bare majority of a quorum
of the members of 36 Legislatures, less
than 2,800 members being necessary to
ratify. Thus less than 3,000 men can
amend the Constitution so as to confis-
cate the entire property interests of the
country, even though the subjects of the
February 7, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[181
amendments were never submitted to the
people of the several States.
Article 5 of the Federal Constitution
provides that private property shall not
be taken for a public purpose without
just compensation. If the Supreme Court
decides that an amendment destroying
property values of $1,000,000,000 is
valid, an amendment confiscating the
railroads or steel industries would be
equally valid.
The American people should know that
a decision sustaining the validity of the
Eighteenth Amendment opens the way
for Socialism, Communism, or Syndical-
ism to abolish the right to private prop-
erty, the basis of all civilized society, by
the action of less than 3,000 persons.
E. J. SHRrVER
Chairman Executive Committee, The
Vigilance League
New York, January 19
Public Schools and the
Colleges
To the Editors of The Review:
I have read with great interest the
comment in your issue of December 27
on the good showing made at the colleges
by boys from the public schools as com-
pared with boys from the private schools.
You rightly observe that this does not
mean better training at public than at
private schools, but it is because of the
process of "sharp selection" on account
of "natural ability" and "inclination to
study." The boys at the private schools
lack this incentive, feeling that they will
get to college anyhow.
There is something fundamentally
wrong with such a situation, and in
order to make our colleges a more vital
factor in American life, some attempt
should be made to improve conditions.
Theoretically, the colleges should be a
part of our system of free public educa-
tion, and as it would be desirable to have
only a comparatively small percentage of
our youths sent to college, those who do
go should be chosen by reason of their
"natural ability" and "inclination to
study," and not because of the financial
standing of their parents.
In the words of C. R. Mann, Chairman
of the Advisory Board of the Committee
on Education and Special Training of the
War Department, when speaking of the
methods of selection being put into prac-
tice in the college S. A. T. C. units
towards the close of the war, "As these
methods come more and more into gen-
eral use and as they are perfected, the
schools will gradually achieve a system
in which ability, rather than financial
competency, will be the entrance require-
ments for higher education."
Unfortunately, political conditions at
present preclude the idea of having our
colleges managed by the State, but still
a start could be made by properly di-
rected effort. Why not point out to
public benefactors the chance to form
and endow an educational foundation to
assist in the matter? Such a body need
not undertake to establish colleges, but
having made arrangements with certain
colleges in various parts of the country,
it could then provide free scholarships
in such colleges to those worthy of them ;
that is to say, to those who qualify by
passing the required tests.
Here, indeed, would be real equality of
opportunity in education which at the
present time does not exist.
Walter H. Buck
Baltimore, Md., January 5
jThe "Cahiers de
Quinzaine"
la
[The author of the following letter, a young
French officer, is the eldest son of the poet
and essayist, Charles Peguy, who was killed at
the battle of the Marne, and who edited dur-
ing a long term of years what was known as
"Cahiers de la Quinzaine," a series of pam-
phlets and volumes, which appeared from 1900
to the breaking out of the war, forming a col-
lection of about 230 separate publications, from
writers known and unknown.]
To the Editors of The Review:
I have only just been discharged from
the army. Demobilization has been very
slow here in France on account of the bad
temper shown by the Germans in carry-
ing out the disarmament clauses of the
treaty. All my spare time from military
duties was devoted to trying to complete
a set or two of the "Cahiers," not an
easy task, as none of my father's friends
are disposed to sell their sets, even at a
high price. The fact is that only some of
his very oldest friends really have com-
plete sets, most of them lacking the first
and second series, which appeared during
1900 and 1901, and embraced contribu-
tions from Romain Rolland, Jerome and
Jean Tharaud, and other writers who
have since become known. These two
series were printed in a very limited edi-
tion, and it is now almost impossible to
find copies of some of the issues. I have
succeeded, however, in discovering iso-
lated copies in out of the way places in
France and have bought them at a high
price, so that I have finally brought to-
gether two complete sets of the "Ca-
hiers." But unless I can soon find a pur-
chaser, I shall be obliged to sell them at
a loss, the high exchange just now being
the only way in which I can make any
profit out of the bargain. In this affair
I have used up all the money I saved on
my army pay, and if I can not find a
buyer in America, I shall have to sell
them at a loss so as to get money to go
on with my studies.
Marcel Peguy
18 rue Flatters, Paris, December 20
Book Reviews
France and Her Colonies
Notre Force Future. Par Jean Dybowsld,
Inspecteur General de I'Agriculture Colo-
niale. Paris: Payot & Cie. New York:
Brentano. 1919.
FEW Americans are more than dimly
aware of the fact that France con-
trols a colonial territory of about ten
times her oven area, and inhabited by
native races surpassing her own popula-
tion by one-third. Indeed, the author
of this volume insists that even French-
men themselves are not wide-awake to
the fact and its present significance. It
is the purpose of his pages to show what
this significance is, and how its rich
possibilities may be realized. In brief,
his thesis is that the colonies of France
are admirably adapted, by conditions of
soil and climate, to render just the com-
plementary aid to home production which
is needed to lift the country out of the
troubles brought on by the war and en-
sure a prosperous future. He sees, of
course, that France is in no position to
send out colonies en masse. But the na-
tive population already on the ground
renders this unnecessary. France has
already demonstrated her ability to get
the confidence of the native, and start
him on the upward path in many fields
of productive efficiency. The effective
presence on the battle front of hundreds
of thousands of her colonial troops left
no room for doubt on that point. To their
successful use in the development of colo-
nial agriculture, on a large and remu-
nerative scale, two things are fundamen-
tally essential, and these are simply
humane treatment and intelligent direc-
tion.
For the too-well-known method of com-
mercial exploitation of colonial territory
by the virtual enslavement of the native,
he has nothing but unmitigated condem-
nation. No possible temporary financial
gain can counterbalance the probability
of disaster towards which that path
leads, under modern conditions of world-
wide public sentiment. The native must
not be forced, but must be led to labor
by the assurance that he shall have his
share in the fruits of that labor, and
that his life shall thus be made happier
and more secure. Very careful attention
is given to the necessity of intelligent
direction, if colonial possibilities are to
be realized. Conditions in the colonies
are widely different from those of France
itself, and the successful farmer of the
homeland is still in need of special
knowledge and adaptability in order to
repeat that success in Madagascar, Cam-
bodia, or along the valley of the Niger.
A system of special education for such
work had already been inaugurated be-
fore the war, and M. Dybowski insists
132]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, Xo. 39
that this must be greatly developed and
strengthened as rapidly as possible. He
also gives warning to the people of
France that if the colonial source of aid
in time of need is to be made available,
it must not be hampered by home jeal-
ousy of colonial competition. If the coco
palms of the provinces can make a cheap
and healthful addition to the expensive
and insufficient butter supply of France,
her legislators must not put a handicap
on it through fear of the vote of the
French dairyman.
M. Dybowski writes from a point of
view attained by a thorough scientific
study of agriculture, in both theory and
practice, and by many years of official
connection with its application to the
French colonies, all of which he has stud-
ied in detail on the ground. The book
should have a wide and deep influence in
France, and is well worth the attention
of American readers especially con-
cerned with the intelligent development
of agriculture.
The Old and the New
The Life and Letters of Lady Dorothy
Nevill. By her Son, Ralph Nevill. New
York : E. P. Button & Co.
IF you took a cross section, so to speak,
of the high-stepping eighteenth cen-
tury and set it down in the sober circle
of the nineteenth, you would have some-
thing comparable to the life of this
descendant of the Walpoles and friend
of all the great Victorian families. Lady
Dorothy's relations to the world were
already pretty well known from her own
memoirs, but this biography by her son
tells things about her which naturally
she he.-self would not say, and it adds
to the piquancy of the setting by show-
ing the social relics of a past age as they
appeared to one coming upon the scene
still a generation later. Mr. Nevill, we
may hint, is not much of a writer : he Is
not always clear when it comes to trac-
ing the vast family ramifications which
no doubt seem simple enough to him but
to the outside barbarian are about as
complicated as Kant's categories; he has
an imperfect sense of order and construc-
tion, but as a compensation he knew and
understood his mother, and he is familiar
with her world with all its scandals and
eccentricities and humors and decorums
and magnanimities and condescensions,
and he makes it real and vivid to the
reader — which is no small part of author-
ship, after all.
As for reviewing such a work, made up
as it is of patches and pieces, there is
nothing to do but gather together a few
samples; it is a case where the house
may be known from its bricks. Coming
to the book as this reviewer does with
a strong predilection for the oddities and
originals of Horace Walpole's gallery, he
confesses that he has been particularly
delighted by the portrait of such a mon-
ster of egotism as the Lord Clanricarde,
whom Lady Dorothy used to meet at
Christie's and found highly to her taste
— or to one of her tastes. In his youth
this scion of the nobility had been poor,
and while an attache to Sir John Hudson
at Turin saved money by arranging with
the custodian of an arch to sleep in the
small chamber where the pails and
brooms were kept. He did his own tailor-
ing, it was said; and still in his old age
you could detect his handiwork by the
rough stitching which held together a
yawning coat or a battered hat. For
release from poverty only left him a
miser. At home his greatest gastronomic
extravagance was a couple of eggs, about
the size of which he was very particular,
keeping in the kitchen an old hard-boiled
egg to show his servant the minimum he
would accept. As a smoker his habits
were incredible. A cigar, he thought,
was never at its best until the third time
of smoking. To indulge in this refine-
ment of luxury he would cut off the end
when about an inch had gone and put the
remainder away; at the second time of
smoking he would cut off another inch,
and keep the stump as a bonne bouche
for some special occasion.
Yet with all his stinginess and slovenli-
ness Clanricarde had his touches of mag-
nificence, even of coquetry. Though his
tie might be secured about his neck by
a piece of old tape, you would see in it
a family jewel of great price. A favorite
scarf-pin was a large diamond, at the
back of which he would insert bits of
paper colored by himself from a child's
paint-box so as to obtain various eifects.
Though, too, his manners in general were
almost brutal — it might almost have been
said of him, as it was actually said
of one of his tribe, that he made it a
rule to decline to be introduced to people
he did not already know — yet withal he
was unmistakably a gentleman by the
secret signs, and could at will be very
gracious. His talk was a repository of
all dead and living scandals, but he spoke
with the accent of a philosopher. He
lives imbedded in Mr. Nevill's pages;
imagine, if you dare, how he would have
tricked himself out in the letters of the
present biographer's ancestral cousin,
Horace Walpole!
We do not forget that we are review-
ing the life of Lady Dorothy Nevill,
and not that of Lord Clanricarde; but
such, in part, was the atmosphere in
which she lived — the eighteenth century,
still refusing to die, was all about her.
Nor would we have it supposed that this
Whiggish society was entirely eccentric
or egotistic; prouder names still resound
through these pages — Chesterfields and
Churchills and all the rest of the clan —
some of them still doing large things,
some of them courtly in their lives, some
of them serving the state with a true
and noble devotion; better men and
women than the Clanricardes, though not
necessarily so amusing to read about.
And by the side of these inheritors
of renown and — as some would say, but
never this reviewer — of infamy, Lady
Dorothy lived much in the pulsing life
of her own century and its needs and
achievements. The Darwins and Tenny-
sons and Chamberlains, half the famous
names in science, poetry, art, statesman-
ship, are sprinkled over these pages ; and
the bearers of them came to their hostess
to consult her about the newest things
that were stirring in the world. This
contrast of the new and the old is one
of the charms of the record, and these
divided, but never conflicting, interests
were what made Lady Dorothy so signi-
ficant and so loved a figure in the society
that has just passed away.
Mr. Nevill's work is not perfect or im-
portant; but it is entertaining, and it
has some meaning for those whose out-
look is wider than the circle of this
weltering twentieth century.
On Our Way
Youth Goes Seeking. By Oscar Graeve. New
York: Dodd, Mead and Company.
The World of Wonderful Reality. By E.
Temple Thurston. New York: D. Apple-
ton and Company.
A Woman's Man. By Marjorie Patterson.
New York: George H. Doran Company.
LIFE as a quest, we are always saying,
is the root theme of all serious fic-
tion; and the favorite story the world
over is that of youth which goeth seek-
ing. What it seeks, and how, remain
questions which the story-tellers are free
to answer in a thousand ways. Salva-
tion, service, happiness, fame — any or
all of these are among the common
objects of adventure. But an adventure
it must be. If we except the merely
acquisitive industrious apprentices and
Rockefellers of all ages and grades, youth
does not choose to climb from surety to
surety. Its primary impulse is less to
build upon known good than to escape
from known discomfort or tedium.
Therefore, the romance of youth invari-
ably begins with a violent dash of escape
from dullness and smugness and routine,
and fares on to the heroic-pathetic at-
tempt at blazing an altogether new path
to the stars, or at least to the given
stripling's own private star. We must
find the outlet first of all, whether to
physical adventure, or the adventure of
getting on, or the adventure of art, or
the adventure of free relations, social
and sexual and (as it were) intellectual.
Bohemia! However age may laugh at
it, or even deny it altogether, youth
knows better. A poor thing, but youth's
own. Riddled with conventions and
shams? They are at least the conven-
tions and shams youth itself has chosen
February 7, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[183
for its make-believe. If liberty and license
are not the same thing, we have only Age's
word for it: Let's see for ourselves! . . .
So reasons the Henry Baker of "Youth
Goes Seeking": a complete type of the
essentially decent young fellow who longs
passionately to be something more than
a cog in the wooden machine of respecta-
bility and success. He lives with an
uncle in Brooklyn, that dull and dominat-
ing elderly codger who in current fiction
still represents the "Victorian" attitude.
He has a "fat sonorous voice" ; he bullies
and blusters; he is grossly thick of wit
and sympathy. Henry's schooling means
something to Henry, and he wants to go
to college. Not if the uncle knows it.
Henry is to come into business with
him, and, if he is good, to succeed him
some day. Poor Henry is not interested
in the manufacture of leather belting;
but he knocks under. He shows some
ability in the business. Unluckily, he
has brought to it certain modern notions
about the relation of employer and
laborer — "unsettled ideas — dangerous
ideas," cries the fusty old uncle. Henry
is strong enough to have some of these
ideas tried out — with small success. At
twenty-five he is disillusioned of his
roles as industrious apprentice and be-
nevolent employer, and quite ready to
cut loose and "see life." This means
throwing up his job and flitting across
the river to the purlieus of Greenwich
Village. There he shares a satisfactorily
shabby room with his boy-friend Bert,
now a proudly Bohemian newspaperman ;
and is presently engaged in those serio-
comic feasts and love-feasts which are
known to be the staples of life in all
Bohemians. Ann Corcoran, the special
partner of his freedom, is a well-drawn
portrait of the modern virgin who, after
much display of independence, sells her
cold beauty to an old rich man. Henry
has not failed to make modern youth's
impassioned appeal to her: "I shall not
interfere with your work," he pleads.
"Marry me and things will go on just
as they are — just as they are. You will
retain your freedom — all of it. I shall
only ask that I may creep up the back
stairs to you once in a great while and
offer you my love, dear — my heart to
do with it as you will — to send it back
empty if you wish, but happy with the
glimpse of you — the look of you." Now
Ann is properly touched by this worm-
like devotion, but foresees that his view
of the future is probably not so clear as
it might be: he will be asking something
more of her some day. There ensue
certain emotional incidents which, ap-
parently, reveal to Ann that she loves
Henry and to Henry that he does not
love Ann ; and Ann goes off with her old
rich man, leaving Henry to marry the
Sadie whom he has taken off the streets,
and whom in due season the now
chastened and enlightened uncle and aunt
are to take to their bosoms and their
Brooklyn mansion as Henry's fitting
mate! Thus confusedly and ardently
youth in the person of the author in-
terprets or reflects the muddle of youth.
"The World of Wonderful Reality"
culminates in an analogous situation —
the hero being disillusioned of his senti-
ment for the damsel of higher degree
who, for her part, is revolted by the actu-
alities of his Bohemian existence and
not unwillingly obeys the mandate of
her father. (The father is a close run-
ning-mate for Henry's uncle in his un-
regenerate state.) And we leave him,
our more or less hero, on the way to a
permanent and satisfactory relation with
a former mistress — a virtuous semi-pro-
fessional pretty lady whom we are by
no means to look down on because she
chances to have served her fellow-men
somewhat indiscriminately before "the
right man" turned up. Far from us are
the days when women might conveniently
be classified as the good and the bad, the
upright and the fallen. Now that we
recognize them as the bond and the free
or, in our weaker moments, as the ador-
able and the tiresome, there is no marvel
in our cheerful acceptance of heroines
from all regions of the half-world and
the nether world, ranging from the
professionally expert pretty ladies of
Messrs. Bennett and Cannan to the
Sadies and Ambers and Sylvia Scarletts
who are capable of deviating into virtue
on occasion for the sake of the "right
man. . . ." "The World of Wonderful
Reality" is a sort of sequel to that "City
of Beautiful Nonsense" which won a
large sentimental public some ten years
ago. Perhaps Mr. Thurston has been
clever in estimating the swift change
that has come about since then in senti-
mental fashions; so that the Ambers
may now safely be set in the foreground
at the expense of the too-virtuous Jills
whom, a decade since, we adored without
shame.
"A Woman's Man" may therefore be
held a reactionary document since,
though the good woman of the tale re-
mains throughout her life the victim of
the "fallen" or semi-professional one,
virtue does in the end receive its post-
humous reward. Mr. Thurston's Jill is
made morally shabby and even ridicu-
lous, with all her technical purity; while
the socially frail Amber triumphs
through her essential virtue, in the
larger sense of the word. But the "wom-
an's man" who has spent so many of his
years philandering and worse, casting
away his work and his true love and his
peace of mind for a Parisian vampire,
does come at last to realize that all that
has been good in his work as well as in
his life, has sprung from the quiet un-
felt influence of the wife who is now
dead. This is a novel of much higher
type and quality than the two with
which it is here rather ineptly brack-
eted. Upon a theme which might be
rated as among the most hackneyed in
fiction, and which is certainly among the
most precarious, the author haa built a
story of surprising dignity, both in sub-
stance and in form.
H. W. BOYNTON
New Psychic Faculties
The Mystery of Space. By Robert T.
Browne. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
THE sub-title of this book informB
the reader that: "It is a study of
the hyper-space movement in the light
of the evolution of new psychic faculties
and an inquiry into the genesis and es-
sential nature of space." This is a large
programme and, because of the wide-
spread interest in psychic phenomena
and the endeavor to materialize the spirit
by giving it a domicile in a hyper-space
of four dimensions, it is expedient to
examine the author's thesis with some
care.
It is excessively irritating that writers
on this subject either choose or are
forced to employ a vocabulary and a
style which are repellent to the reader,
and to mix the significant and insignifi-
cant into an almost inextricable tangle.
Careful and prolonged searching brings
forth the fact that Mr. Browne has a
definite and interesting thesis. The
guiding forces of man are the intellect
and the intuition, which correspond to
the mind and the spirit. The intellect
receives its information from the senses
and is cognizant of space phenomena in
three dimensions; in this realm of the
tangible there is "but one true divining
rod and that is mathematics. By day
and by night it points unerringly, so
long as it leads through materiality; but
falteringly, blindly, fatally, when that
way veers into the territory of vitality
and spirituality." Because the Euclid-
ean geometry of three dimensions is
not comprehensive enough to include the
territory of the spirit, it must be incom-
plete, and so there has slowly and
gropingly grown up the geometry of
hyper-space, which has no counterpart in
reality and can not be appreciated by the
senses.
The writer first reviews the growth of
non-Euclidean geometry and concludes
truly that attempts to connect it with
reality are impossible and even absurd.
But, because we can develop logically
unreal conclusions from unreal postu-
lates, Mr. Browne assumes that there
is a supersensible faculty dormant in
man which can appreciate new kinds of
phenomena that require hyper-space for
their setting. This faculty is the intui-
tion of the spirit, and mathematics will
not answer the needs of its expression.
We must, of course, next bring in
evolution. During the long ages of the
134]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 39
past the soul of man became entangled
in corporeality; so far as spirituality is
concerned, this process was an involu-
tion; the spirit became progressively
enwrapped in layers of thought until it
was almost smothered by the evolution
of the material world. We have now
reached the state of evolution of materi-
ality when the spirit, guided by intuition,
is slowly evolving and shedding its wrap-
pings. The historical record of this
process began with Geminos of Rhodes
(B. C. 70), who first expressed a doubt
as to the finality of Euclid. And the
history of the evolution of the spirit
coincides with the development of the
non-Euclidean geometry of hyper-space.
Mr. Browne, in this review, is quite sane
and evidently agrees with Carus, whom
he quotes as saying: "Metageometri-
cians are a hot-headed race and display
sometimes all the characteristics of sec-
tarian fanatics." But, although mathe-
matics fails when it attempts to express
the intangible, the fact that mathe-
matics can develop logically dream-
universes which exist only in the mind
of the mathematician, induces the author
to agree with Professor Keyser, the high
priest of the worship of Mathesis, who
says: "Certainly there is naught of
absurdity in supposing that under suit-
able stimulation the human mind may,
in the course of time, speedily develop
a spatial intuition of four or more
dimensions."
This stimulation of the human mind
is to come from the clairvoyant, and Mr.
Browne has himself been able to range
pretty freely in this spirit world of
hyper-space. He surmises that, as the
heart dominates the body, so the pineal
gland and the pituitary body are the
seat of the spirit: "Those gifted with
the inner vision can observe the 'pulsat-
ing aura' in each [of these bodies], a
movement which is not unlike the pulsa-
tions of the heart and which never ceases
throughout life. In the development of
clairvoyance it is known that this mo-
tion becomes intensified, the auric vibra-
tions becoming stronger and more pro-
nounced." As this supposed excitation
of the pituitary body is accompanied by
deep breathing, the simple-minded may
suppose that this psychic and pulsating
aura is merely the sensation of floating
produced by super-oxydation of the
blood. Thus, deep breathing will evolve
a new and a better man and as a conse-
quence "a new heaven and a new earth."
So much for the argument. But why
should an author go out of his way to fill
a book with barbarous words, unnatural
derivations, and hsrper-logomania? As
an example, consider this statement
(p. 213) : "Monopyknons are the qui-
escent, unawakened, though potential
and archetypal principles peculiar to the
monopyknotic period of space-genesis,
which are ultimately to become, on the
physical plane, singularities of life of
whatsoever kind." It is some drain on
the intellectual mind to go through a
long book bristling with the following
diet, however nutritive it may be to the
intuitional spirit: "As soon as he can
resolve the nebulosity of his conscious-
ness into the conceptual 'star-forms' of
definite ideas and notions, he sits down
to the feast which he finds provided by
super-foetated hypotheses fabricated in
the deeps of mind and logical actualities
unperturbed and unmindful of the weal
of perceptual space in its homogeneity
of form and dimensionality." Apparently
these choice spirits, accustomed to the
psychical, expand and revel in such misti-
ness that it fills them with lovely illu-
sions; but there are other simple souls
who surmise that if there were any real
message from the psychic world, they
could ascertain it without descending, on
the one hand, to crude rappings and in-
fantile babblings, and without soaring,
on the other, into regions of esoteric
verbalism.
Louis T. More
The Run of the Shelves
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, in
the "Vital Message" (Doran), makes
much of the "etheric body." A second
body is clearly a first need of spiritual-
ism. The hardship of that cult has been
the reconciling of its own craving for
manifestations with the unruly fact that
the source of those manifestations, the
body, had been sealed up in a coffer
underground or turned to ash and vapor
in a crematory. Body was out of reach,
and soul, however willing to speak, was
a Helen Kellar before education. A sec-
ondary body is remedial on both points.
It allows the grave or the urn its vails,
yet it leaves an invaluable bodily residue
which can be seen, heard, and even — so
cunning is our epoch — photographed.
What is this second body? Ether per-
vades the primary body much as, we may
suppose, air pervades water. The second
body, apparently, is a print of the normal
body in ether. Inside a body, ether is
known as "bound ether." One might
surmise that on its release from the
human frame at death this ether would
disperse, like the unbound copy of Sir
Arthur's book, already disintegrating,
which his publishers have forwarded to
the Review. One might go on, and para-
phrase the "Merchant of Venice" in a
tiny catechism for Sir Arthur. Hath
an etheric body eyes?- Hath it "hands,
organs, dimensions, senses, affections,
passions ? Fed with the same food, hurt
with the same weapons, subject to the
same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter
and summer, as a Christian is?" To
these questions Sir Arthur's answers are
inadequate and curious. In the "Coming
World" there are games and sports,
which point to active, not merely phan-
tasmic, muscles; there is no birth, but
growth to maturity; there are no acts
of sex, but there is sublimated marriage ;
there is no food and drink "in the grosser
sense," but there "seem to be pleasures
of taste" (page 96) ; there is even a very
meagre supply of inoffensive alcohol and
tobacco (page 91). Indeed the whole
future world is singularly inoffensive;
it is Paradise for the maiden aunt.
Many men in our time believe that
Christ raised Lazarus from the dead;
many men believe that Christianity has
"broken down": the man who believes
in both these propositions is a rarity, and
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is that man.
The reason is that both beliefs are profit-
able to spiritualism in a way, the one
by confirming its possibility, the other
by enduing it with a vocation, the curing
of a stricken world, which grows worse
and worse, as he thinks, under the senile
leechcraft of institutional Christianity.
His book is very curious in another point.
In his spiritualism the "ism" seems often
to have expelled the "spirit," as if the
etheric body had made superfluities of
the old body and the old soul alike. Yet
in his first chapter on the "Two Needful
Readjustments," he writes of the present
world with a moral incisiveness and
courageous fervor which make us
tolerate even his tolerance for "exuda-
tions," and forgive him a picture of the
blessed dead which seems almost modeled
on the order, the quietness, and the
tameness of a cemetery.
The new "Memoirs of the American
Academy at Rome" (New York: Uni-
versity Press Association) should be
welcomed by many who will never rise
to the height of reading these erudite
disquisitions. The fine folios are made
by the Institute Grafico, at Bergamo,
and compare advantageously in appear-
ance with the Prussian and Austrian
Jahrbiicher. It is possible really to study
from such large cuts as these. The pub-
lication marks a step forward in Ameri-
can scholarship. Libraries must, of
course, have it, and bibliophiles who are
innocent of archaeology ought to welcome
it to their shelves. It will help give char-
acter to any Ibrary. The first volume,
though bearing the imprint 1918, is is-
sued as of 1915-1916. The leading paper
is a most ingenious, but not wholly con-
vincing reconstruction of the Reorganiza-
tion of the Roman Priesthoods, by late
Director Carter. He endeavors to un-
ravel the odd discrepancies between pres-
tige and actual power as possessed by
the Roman magistracy and priesthood.
E. K. Rand and George Howe make a
most exhaustive study of the Vatican
Livy and the Script of Tours. The Livy
was a hurry-up job and well organized,
February 7, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[135
the folios being distributed to many-
scribes whose names are endorsed on the
sheets. The peculiarities of these scriv-
eners are carefully analyzed, and beauti-
ful sheets of their handwriting are repro-
duced. Handwriting has sadly run down
since the ninth century. To study the
Aqua Triana and the Mills on the Ja-
niculum, Messrs. A. W. van Buren and
G. K. Stevens had merely to go down
in the cellar in the Villa Aurelia, the
Academy's home. The aqueduct of Tra-
jan passes through the site, and the mill
emplacements and sluices were uncovered
during building. G. Dinsmore Curtis
makes a very minute study of Ancient
Granulated Jewelry of the VII Century
and Earlier — naturally B.C. The method
of applying small granules of gold remains
a bit mysterious, but the results are
charming, and are illustrated by rare
pieces chosen from many museums. Bar-
tolomeo Caporali, a Perugian painter of
the end of the 15th century, is the theme
of Mr. Stanley Lothrop, who has just
been translated to the directorship of the
Louis Tiffany Art Foundation. The ar-
ticle is cautious and clean cut. The
plates, many of slightly known pictures,
are welcome to investigators in the Um-
brian field.
Capita Desecta and Marble Coiffures is
a topic that might interest both the great
' Casaubon and Mme. de Pompadour. Mr.
John R. Crawford treats it discretely and
with great thoroughness. Heads in two
sections, generally with a removable
crown, have been explained by Gauckler
as signifying a Syrian rite of internal
anointment. Headachy people might
wish such salving the brain possible.
Mr. Crawford, for excellent reasons, re-
jects the religious explanation and finds
that a sectioned head is merely one started
on too small a block and finished from
another piece. Thus American common-
sense rebuts German mysticism. Marble
coiffures explain themselves, at least, to
any woman archaeologist. It is an ob-
vious means of keeping a portrait statue
up to date. No Flavian lady could bear
to have her bust behind the times. The
concluding article, and one of the most
generally interesting, is by Eugene S.
McCartney on The Military Indebtedness
of Early Rome to Etruria. He finds that
all the effective weapons of offense and
defense, even the famous short-sword,
were taken from the Etruscans, has ob-
servations on Roman mounted infantry
which are novel, and substantiates his
case with many cuts. Not merely a clas-
sicist but any fighting man with a linger-
ing memory of his school Latin could
page over the article with pleasure.
These papers by the American School of
Classical Studies, for some years feder-
ated with the Academy, are the work
of professors and fellows who plainly are
making good use of their exceptional
opportunities.
Mr. Oliver M. Sayler went to Russia
in the fall of 1917 to study the latest
developments in the Russian theatre and
found himself in the midst of the larger
drama of Revolution. He spent some
four months in Moscow, paid a short
visit to Petrograd, and returned via
Siberia. On his return he has proceeded
to waste some three hundred pages of
print on a banal account of his personal
experiences, "Russia White or Red,"
(Little, Brown) , varied by political obser-
vations that are not only superficial but
often viciously misleading and false. He
came into close contact with the Czecho-
slovaks as they were making their way
across Siberia, and had every opportunity
to learn the details of the agreement be-
tween Masaryk and Trotsky whereby
they were guaranteed a safe and un-
molested passage. Yet he repeats the
Bolshevik slander against them that they
allowed themselves to be used for the
purpose of bringing about intervention,
the slander which is employed in the
attempt to justify Trotsky's treachery in
attacking them unawares. Similarly, he
circulates the lies about Kolchak that at
one time were current among the Bol-
shevik sympathizers in Vladivostok and
which were used in this country to under-
mine the Russian national movement in
Siberia. In the chaos in Russia he sees
only a struggle between Capitalism and
Socialism. Some at least of his ideas he
seems to have picked up from association
with the I. W. W., Wilfrid Humphries,
a Y. M. C. A. man in Russia who after-
wards came to America to carry on Bol-
shevik propaganda.
There is something piquant, tantaliz-
ing, fetching, in the thought of a great
dog, with vagrant habits and very mas-
culine tastes, made free of the society
of a girls' college; and of this Miss
Katharine Lee Bates has taken advantage
in her story of "Sigurd, our Golden Col-
lie" (Button). The author is a professor
at Wellesley, a scholar, a poet of parts
(all which we knew before), and a lover
of dogs (which we did not know). And
there is this mingling of traits in her
present book: you never can tell when
some waggish drollery or some naughty
escapade of her four-footed friend will
set her off in search of quaint literary
allusions or cause her to protest from
the sedate stronghold of her profession.
And indeed we like her writing best
when it is most bookish. That is its
note. We have other books on our
shelves aplenty in which the canine hero
plays a more tragic or pathetic or even
humorous role, but none in which he is
more humanly literate than Miss Bates's
Sigurd of the golden fleece. And this
pleases us; for we know, as only a re-
viewer can know, the capacity of the
animal for letters. Once we ourselves
owned a young collie who was not only
learned but critical. This is our secret
never before divulged. If a parcel of
books sent for review was left overnight
on the floor, this discerning friend would
infallibly rend and gnaw the worthless
volumes and leave the worthy untouched
for our consideration, thereby saving us
much labor of reading. We wish Sigurd
might have been tried by such a test.
Mr. Isaac M. Marcosson's "Adventures
in Interviewing" (John Lane) is a book
of many limitations. This sentence be-
gins a chapter: "The great war, which
was invested with an unparalleled in-
human interest by the enemy, was at the
same time rich with an almost incompa-
rable human interest." The sinking of
the Lusitania lies outside of human in-
terest. He has this to say about silent
generals: "Their silence is in strange
contrast witTi the mighty din of battle
they let loose." Generals are illogical in
not roaring with their own cannon. Mr.
Marcosson would clearly be surprised to
discover a fisherman whose wit was dry,
an aviator whose manner was not flut-
tered, and a vagabond whose conversa-
tion was not rambling.
Mr. Marcosson has evolved a substitute
for English with which his own satis-
faction appears to be complete. His mix-
ture of metaphors surprises people who
thought that the sins of their contem-
poraries in that particular had hardened
them against surprise. The mind of
David Graham Phillips was an "un-
plumbed field." To "launch his flow of
talk" is another phrase, a feat before
which literature and seamanship stand
agape. Mr. Marcosson is not even an
observer, he sees only the most obvious
features in a man's face and the most
conspicuous qualities in his mind. His
acquaintance with great men is unlimited,
and his knowledge of them straightened
to the last degree.
Nevertheless Mr. Marcosson's book is
interesting, and the fact that a book
so reduced and mulcted should be in-
teresting is more interesting than its
contents. He sees little, but he sees
clearly; and, again, he writes barba-
rously, but he writes clearly. His self-
. confidence is unconquerable, and there is
a youthful happiness in his work and
himself which mollifies the justly dis-
contented reader. Little as he gets from
the conferences, he feels and conveys the
dramatic excitement of wresting the in-
terview from its protesting and retreating
subject. Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson,
Sir Douglas Haig, Marshal Foch, Lord
NorthclifFe, General Pershing, Sir James
Barrie, the list expands indefinitely. He
has outmanoeuvred all the statesmen ; he
has outgeneraled all the commanders-in-
chief. Where the great men have all
succumbed, the reader is hardly proof
against the subtle self-flattery of includ-
ing himself in the general capitulation.
136]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 39
Music
Four Operas New to New
York
IT would be very hard, if not impos-
sible, to find a precedent for last
week's wild activities in our rival opera
houses. Within six days we heard four
works, unknown here. Nor was this all.
For of the works performed, two were by
Americans.
The offerings of the visiting Chicago
Company at the Lexington were widely
varied, including as they did the "Ma-
dame Chrysantheme" of Andr6 Messager,
the "Rip Van Winkle" of Reginald de
Koven, and the "L'Heure Espagnole" of
Maurice Ravel (of which last week, by
a slip of mine, the invention was attrib-
uted to Laparra).
At the Metropolitan we had one nov-
elty, an important one, the "Cleopatra's
Night" of Henry Hadley.
Before going into all these works in
detail, let me record the brilliant opening
of the Chicago artists' season — not with
the promised "Norma" revival, which was
postponed in consequence of Rosa Raisa's
illness, but with a really wonderful and
memorable performance of "L'Amore dei
Tre Re." "The work of Montemezzi has
been heard often at the Metropolitan,
where the four most prominent figures in
the poignant story of Sem Benelli were
originally interpreted by Lucrezia Bori
(Flora), Amato (Manfredo), Ferrari-
Fontana (Avito), and Didur (Archi-
baldo) . At the Lexington the Flora was
Mary Garden, who gave us a new reading
of the part — not quite in keeping, if you
will, with the intentions of Sem Benelli,
who had conceived his heroine as a girl
wife, racked with passion, but far more
tragical, and (with submission to some
oversensitive critics) neither outrageous
and indecent, nor "impossible." Once
only in her long and bright career, when
she "created" Melisande (for she really
aided Maeterlinck theatrically in the cre-
ation of that character), had Miss Garden
reached such heights as in the second act
of Montemezzi's opera. Her struggle
with her husband's blind old father, as
he strangles her, her dying spasms, the
limp swaying of her arms as Archibaldo
bore her away filled one with terror, but
they, quite as much, amazed by their
stark realism.
Almost as fine in their contrasted
styles were the Avito of the new Amer-
ican tenor, Edward Johnson, a singing-
actor with a good lyric voice and ro-
mantic qualities; the Manfredo of Bak-
lanoff, picturesque and histrionically ad-
mirable; and the Archibaldo of Lazzari,
which did justice to a grim and psy-
chologically enigmatical character. Of
equal if not even more importance was
the successful first appearance, as con-
ductor, of Maestro Marinuzzi, who,
though handicapped by a too strident
orchestra in the second act — with its
Wagnerian sweep and breadth and tonal
eloquence — deserved all the applause
with which the audience saw fit to honor
him.
"Madame Chrysantheme" (which ante-
dates "Madama Butterfly") is an operatic
setting of Pierre Loti's cruel tale. If,
like the book, it lacks dramatic force,
the fault is due rather to the librettist
than to the composer. The story could
(and should) have been compressed into
three acts. As it stands, it is in four
acts, with a prologue and an epilogue.
Much time is spent on suggesting local
"atmosphere," on the portrayal of quaint
Nippon types and customs. Pierre Loti
deals more lightly than the librettists of
Puccini's opera with the marriage of a
beguiling little Geisha and her desertion
later on by her sailor "husband." And,
in his treatment of the tale, the com-
poser rarely hints at deeper things than
pathos. The heroine doubtless knew that,
though a bride, she was so only in a
vague, Pickwickian sense. Her anguish
when her lieutenant sails away, while
touching, is not tragical. Her emotions,
like the love of her French husband,
seem somewhat shallow.
To illustrate the plot and express the
characters in this frankly cynical ro-
mance of life in Nippon, Andre Mes-
sager has invented gracious music. He
has a dainty touch, which suits his frag-
ile theme. He has charm and sentiment.
And while, at times, he reminds one
slightly of Massenet, he does not pla-
giarize.
Three episodes in "Madame Chrysan-
theme" delighted me : the long narrative,
or soliloquy, of the lieutenant ("Oui, c'est
bien lui, c'est bien le pays"), and the
Breton Serenade in honor of the bride
(both in the second act), and the en-
chanting ballet in the following act, a
ballet planned as the chief feature of a
festival, which seems informed with
genuine Oriental poetry. The score,
from end to end, is very delicate. And
if it now and then does grow a bit mo-
notonous, blame the librettist. Tamaki
Miura's thin and brittle voice failed to
express the varied music of Chrysan-
theme. But, on the other hand, the
tenor, Charles Fontaine, and the baritone,
our old favorite. Hector Dufranne, were
wholly satisfying.
From this ruthless idyl, with its ten-
der glow and charm, we passed next day
to that brilliant epigram in music,
"L'Heure Espagnole," an ironic com-
ment by a most gifted artist on the old
theme of what, in some countries, is
called love. Technically, there is no par-
allel to Ravel's score. But "L'Heure
Espagnole," despite its sparkle and its
wit — ^yes, musical wit — ^will probably be
cavir.re to the general run of opera-
goers.
1 should be glad if I could say that in
"Rip Van Winkle" the late Reginald de
Koven and his librettist, Percy Mac-
Kaye, had turned out an effective lyric
opera. It may seem ungracious, and it is
surely unpleasant to have to speak
rather unkindly of this work. But truth
is truth, and it would do no good to pre-
tend that, in this "American folk opera"
(so called), Reginald de Koven and his
associate had done good service to their
respective arts. The libretto is far-
fetched beyond belief, though the story
as related is sweet and pretty. The addi-
tion of the village maiden, Peterkee, to
the characters we had met already in the
legend has its dramatic value. But the
words which Mr. MacKaye has given
his characters are for singing purposes
so preposterous that they provoke one to
derision. To express the fancies and
emotions of Dutch rustics in the Cats-
kills the librettist employs jargon of
his own. He takes liberties with com-
mon sense and English. His choruses
and songs are sometimes unsingable. It
would be easy, even if it might be
tedious, to sustain these statements by
voluminous quotation. I will content
myself with two extracts. Imagine, if
you can, a group of Dutchmen, smoking
and drinking, as they sing such stuff as
this:
Puff of cloud from pipe of clay,
Drone of song from drowsy fountain,
All we dream on fades away
Far upon the summer mountain.
Imagine this, sung by a group of villa-
gers:
Up spoke Nancy, spanking Nancy,
Says, "My feet are far too dancy,
Dancy, O !"
Imagine, if you please, old Hendrik's
crew employing the slang of Broadway.
And this at the instigation of an "intel-
lectual." There are passages, a few, in
which the librettist more or less redeems
himself, as, for example, in the closing
chorus and, chiefly, in a romantic ballad
sung by Peterkee ("Wait, wait, my own,
till our ship comes in"). But, good or
bad — and some were pathetically bad —
not fifty of the words at most were
heard. The composer, though for years
he had been an advocate of the use of
English speech in opera, had seen to
that. He had killed his own melodies,
which, when not "reminiscent," were
curiously uninspired, and he had drowned
the voices in orchestration of the most
turbulent kind. What he had not done
to destroy his songs was supplied by the
conductor, Mr. Smallens. And even had
the composer shown more discretion in
his accompaniments to the trite cho-
ruses and airs and dances which suc-
ceeded one another with inadequate
pauses, the singers in the cast, with the
exceptions of Hector Dufranne (the
February 7, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[137
Hendrik Hudson) and, at moments,
Baklanoff (the Rip Van Winkle), both
foreigners, would have been unintelli-
gible. For they had not been taught the
art of enunciation. The repeated waltz-
rhythms in "Rip Van Winkle" seemed
rather incongruous. The music here and
there recalled Puccini. The most tuneful
songs (there were some in the third act)
harked back to "Robin Hood," by which,
I think, Reginald de Koven will be best
remembered.
In the "Cleopatra's Night," of Henry
Hadley, inspired by a libretto of Alice
Leal Pollock (founded, of course, on
Theophile Gautier's admirable short
story, "Une Nuit de Cleopatre"), the
Metropolitan last week produced what I
believe to be the most nearly successful,
the most workmanlike, the most tech-
nically skillful effort by an American to
create a real "grand" opera. The work
is in two long and dramatic scenes, or
acts, abounding in interest, well put
together, and uncommonly effective. The
first act shows how the bold hunter,
Mei'amoun, courts Cleopatra, and, as the
Queen of Egypt waits for Antony, makes
offer of his life for one night of love.
In the second act, which is innocuous, we
get hints— no more than hints — of what
came later. The opera ends with Meia-
moun's suicide, and, as the curtain falls,
Cleopatra halts awhile to take leave of
her dead lover, ere she moves on to meet
her living Roman lover.
Here we have all the required ele-
ments of a short, striking, and impress-
ive lyric drama. Miss Pollock's words
are, in the main, well chosen; while in
setting them to music Mr. Hadley has
convinced us that he knows everything
his forerunners had invented. The one
thing he has not shown is his ability
to create new music. For, though tech-
nically excellent at most points, neither
in his melody nor in his harmony is he
original. There are episodes in this
opera which Saint-Saens might not dis-
own. There are others of which Richard
Strauss might be the author. There are
more, again, for which Wagner might
stand godfather. And once, at least, we
are reminded of a lighter work.
But, as a whole, this opera charms and
holds the attention. It is an opera,
though so sadly unoriginal. Mr. Hadley
has now proved that it is possible for
an American to master the secrets of
the art of composing operas. He was
greatly helped in the interpretation of
his work by Orville Harrold's clear, dra-
matic, and flawless rendering of Miss
Pollock's words. Frances Alda also sang
her part clearly and, if not quite Egyp-
tian, was alluring. The stage settings
of the work, by the young American,
Norman Bel-Geddes, were distractingly
beautiful, even if they were not wholly
jjlausible.
Charles Henry Meltzer
Drama
The
Tower of Darkness" at
the Garrick
THE "Power of Darkness," that
scourge which the later and harsher
Tolstoi devised for humanity, is offered
to New York by the Theatre Guild. The
acting was competent, but generally
featureless, and of the excellent settings
I have only one thing to say, that they
showed a skill which the actors, and the
author himself, if alive, might have
copied with profit, in conveying the effect
of the intolerable or the repulsive by
symbols which were themselves tolerable
or attractive. One of the great secrets
of art in this kind is to enlighten and
to lighten simultaneously.
From this chronicle of blood and lusts
among Russian peasants I select two
points which may exemplify its quality.
A wife poisons her husband that she
may enjoy his property with the com-
panion of her adulterous love. This lover,
who becomes her husband, strangles and
buries in the cellar the new-born child
of his unhallowed commerce with a sec-
ond woman. The blackness of these
crimes of passion and interest looks
white beside the dispassionate — and in
a sense disinterested — savagery of the
mature woman who is the prompter of
the first crime and the abettor, if not
the inspirer, of the second. To this
moral abasement Toltoi has added the
brutish in intellect, the raw in manners.
It was curious that a theme which was
the almost unexampled combination of
the low in morals, in brains, and in
manners should have found in its author
an almost unexampled combination of
the highest things in conscience, in intel-
lect, and in social station. Let us be
clear on two points. To that power of
brain, that depth of conscience, which
called itself Tolstoi, no latitude of theme
must be denied. But the obligation is
equally clear; the pain which he bids us
suffer must be instrumental to our plea-
sure or our good.
In the "Power of Darkness," is the
darkness powerful? Is the crime im-
pressive? There is crime enough, the
spectator may observe. Precisely : there
is more than enough. Art has two ways
of handling crime: it may magnify or
multiply. Shakespeare has tried both
methods in "Macbeth," with the instruc-
tive result that our horror of crime is
much more vivid in the second act after
the enlargement of the Duncan case than
at the conclusion of the play when, by
an accumulation of horrors, our possets
have been drugged. Crime is powerful
in the unit: to augment cases is to re-
duce the unit and to acknowledge its
inadequacy. In the "Power of Dark-
ness," the effect of massing crimes and
loosely grouping them with less impor-
tant things is to diminish, to confound,
to slur.
There is another infirmity in the
Tolstoian portrayal. We, the spectators,
might possibly succeed in imagining our-
selves as bad as the people on the stage,
possibly as imbecile, possibly as coarse;
but to do what Tolstoi asks, to imagine
ourselves to be all three at once, is to
overtax our imagination and our humil-
ity. What follows? The thing is not
taken in; it remains foreign, aloof, spec-
tacular—true perhaps in Mars, in
Saturn, in Russia, that nearing and re-
ceding Russia, of our time always closer
in its impact and remoter in its quality.
To us the life is strange, and it is a
life so limited, so abject, that every oc-
currence, birth, death, betrothal, mar-
riage, combat, loses stature and meaning
in its narrowing vicinity. Crime shrinks
with the rest. The horror of murder is
proportioned to the largeness and the
dignity of human life, and a social condi-
tion which is destructive of that large-
ness and inimical to that dignity must
result in the diminution of the horror.
The less there is to ravage, the less
terror in devastation. The "Power of
Darkness" is so far from erring on the
side of poignancy that it errs on the
opposite side. I felt no laceration; my
mind was divided between two quite
different feelings, wrath at the attempted
butchery of my feelings, and shame at
my own callousness. It was wicked, it
was impious, to sit before those horrors
and to be conscious mainly of a mild
weariness to which the high points of
atrocity supplied a mild relief. To all
appearances, the audience felt as I did.
So much for the appeal of the "Power
of Darkness" to the imagination. What
is its appeal to the reason ? Every crime
has a place in an individual experience
and a place in a social order. A drama
may instruct us by showing either its
fitness in that individual experience or
its dependence on that social order. The
success of the "Power of Darkness" in
the first of these tasks is respectable
without being in the least distinguished.
Nothing happens in the play that we
peremptorily decline to believe. The
downward limit for human possibility
is very low and very dim, and we see
nothing that absolutely contravenes our
notion of this limit. Still, as a justifica-
tion of conduct by motive, it is not com-
parable with other products of the same
hand, with "Anna Karenina," for ex-
ample. Take the last great fact of
Nikita's remorse and confession, which
comes to auditors of this drama like the
sight of day to imprisoned miners. Our
faith in this change is simply part of our
vague general faith in the possibility of
moral overturn ; it is independent of any-
thing that Tolstoi has told us of Nikita.
138]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 39
The truth is that a profound and minute
psychologist like Tolstoi puts himself
under a grave twofold disadvantage,
when, in choosing a form like drama
where speech is omnipotent, he chooses
at the same time characters that are
semi-articulate.
Let us turn to the second possibility.
Tolstoi might have performed a high
social service by showing in a debased
society conditions not themselves crimi-
nal which are procreative of crime. In
this point the "Power of Darkness" is a
blank. Not the slightest attempt is made
to explain why this particular community,
to which labor, religion, and marriage
have supplied the normal defenses,
should have left the normal community
far behind in the rankness of its butch-
ery and fornication. With somewhat
different tasks, Hauptmann did far better
in the "Weavers," Brieux far better in
the "Red Robe." In one place, indeed,
an allusion is made by Mitritch (success-
fully acted by Mr. Erskine Sanford) to
the failure to provide education for
women. But the allusion is pointless on
the side of women, since the chief active
malefactor in the play is a man, Nikita,
and pointless on the side of education,
since the embodiment of moral perfec-
tion in the drama, the peasant, Akim, is
a person so unschooled that even when
he talks wisdom he talks drivel.
I regard the "Power of Darkness" as
a weak play and a weak tract. With a
series of events with which even in-
competence could have done something,
genius has failed to do much. I have
strong doubts whether the exposition of
the cloaca in human nature is justifiable
except in so far as it fortifies the indi-
vidual conscience or arms society with
prophylactics. The "Power of Darkness"
accomplishes neither of these ends. For
the redemption of human nature, if re-
demption be practicable, two things are
necessary, faith and knowledge; and the
thing that prevents, or postpones, that
deliverance is the separation of these two
requirements, a separation that keeps
faith ignorant and knowledge cynical.
Books that sap our faith more effectually
than they recruit our knowledge destroy
faster than they upbuild. I do not forget
Akim or Nikita's final conversion when
I say that if the representations in the
"Power of Darkness" are truths, they
are truths which it is recreancy to be-
lieve and treason to utter.
0. W. Firkins
Books and the News
Boys' Books
WILL the boys of to-day read the
books which their fathers and
uncles read, twenty-five, thirty, or forty
years ago? Some of the publishers
believe they will — as when Scribners
issue "The Last of the Mohicans," with
its fine colored illustrations by Mr.
Wyeth. If they will read that, they will
read others of a later epoch: the books
themselves will please the boys, and the
pursuit of them will bring joy to the
fathers and uncles. Recently I delighted
in arousing envy in a group of venerable
persons (forty years old, plus or minus),
by producing a "Tom Sav^yer," with
the old illustrations, which I had just
bought.
"That's the very blue cover that mine
had! Say, where did you get it?"
So when you introduce the Boy Scout
of 1920 to "Tom Sawyer," to "Huckle-
berry Finn," and to that dramatic and
thrilling story, "The Prince and the
Pauper," try to get copies with the old
pictures. You must haunt second-hand
dealers a little; but do not insist on first
editions, unless you wish to pajf fancy
prices. With these goes Aldrich's "The
Story of a Bad Boy," and this has been
adorned by A. B. Frost's drawings.
Another writer who entertained boys
when Grover Cleveland was in his first
term, is Frank Stockton. I know a se-
nile gentleman — about the age of the
group mentioned above — who chuckled
all day, recently, when he picked up a
copy of "The Floating Prince," by Stock-
ton. "There's the picture," said he, "of
the Reformed Pirate knitting tidies
that I used to see in St. Nicholas, or
somewhere." But "The Floating Prince"
is for boys under ten — or over thirty-
nine — the ones in between may not like
it. "A Jolly Fellowship" is another of
Stockton's inimitable books.
"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"
and its sister-volume, "Through the Look-
ing-Glass," go without saying; but not as
many as should, know Charles E. Carryl's
"Davy and the Goblin," despite a few of
its persistent advocates. Jules Verne's
"The Mysterious Island" has also been
illustrated by Mr. Wyeth; a boy will
enjoy it more if he has already read
"Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the
Sea." My impression that Louisa Al-
cott's "Jack and Jill" is an amusing tale,
which a boy will not scorn, is based upon
a recollection which has not been re-
freshed for at least twenty-five years.
"If this don't fetch the kids," wrote
Stevenson of "Treasure Island," "why,
they have gone rotten since my day."
And his remark I would echo about
Mayne Reid's "Rifle Rangers" and
"Scalp Hunters" — but they may not be
easy to find. However, this article is
intended to furnish good sport for book-
hunting elders. They certainly can find
J. T. Trowbridge's two Civil War stories :
"The Three Scouts" and "Cudjo's Cave."
As for Stevenson himself, I would pass
over the ones so often recommended,
and suggest "St. Ives" and "The
Wrecker" — even if a boy has to skip all
chapters of the latter to Chapter XXII.
We grown-ups are apt to insist upon a
literary finish, to which boys are usually
insensible. So we smugly inform them
that they miist like "Kim" and "The
Jungle Book," when, perhaps, the straight
adventure of Kipling's "The Naulahka"
will please them better. My enjoyment
of Dickens was deferred for five years,
because it was proclaimed to me that I
must begin with "Oliver Twist." Now,
I would experiment with "A Tale of
Two Cities" and see how it worked. If
the boy seemed bored, there are the two
excellent historical novels by Conan
Doyle: "Micah Clarke" and "The White
Company." If he remained torpid, I
would administer " King Solomon's
Mines," and see him wake up, or myself
give up. How I hated the superior per-
sons who said that Rider Haggard had
"no literary merit" — how I still hate
them! For two other stories of adven-
ture, Janvier's "In the Sargasso Sea"
and Clark Russell's "List, Ye Lands-
men !" For humor, Lucretia Hale's "Pe-
terkin Papers." For American history,
Roosevelt and Lodge's "Hero Tales From
American History." For a book telling
how to make a hundred un-useful and
delightful things: "The American Boy's
Handy Book," by Dan Beard. I some-
times see the author on the street, and
long to stop him and tell him how much
string, and gunpowder, and glue, and
buckshot, and how many fishhooks and
eels' ears and other things I employed in
trying to follow his recipes — and what
a good time I had.
Edmund Lester Pearson
Books Received
FICTION
Dillon, Mary. The Farmer of Roaring Run.
Century.
Greenberg, D. S. The Cockpit of Santiago
Key. Boni and Liveright. $1.50 net
Kelland, C, B. Catty Atkins. Harper.
$1.60 net.
La Varre, W. J. Up the Mazaruni for Dia-
monds. Marshall, Jones. $1.50 net.
Locke, Wm. J. The House of Baltazar.
Lane. $1.90 net.
Oldmeadow, Ernest. Coggin. Century.
Short Stories from the Balkans. Transl. by
Edna W. Underwood. Marshall Jones. $1.60
net.
(^Continued on page 140)
EDWARD T. DEVINE
Associate Editor of the Survey
Will lecture on the following subjects:
THE THREE R'S
Reaction: Revolution: Reconstruction
INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL UNREST
Remedies and Proposals
AMERICANIZATION
True and False
For dates and terms address Miss Brandt,
Room 1204, 112 E. Nineteenth St., New York
I
February 7, 1920]
THE REVIEW
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Here is first-hand knowledge of the
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THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 39
(Continued from page 138)
Cobb, Irvin S. From Place to Place. Poran.
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i
THE REVIEW
rol. 2, No. 40
New York, Saturday, February 14, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
5rief Comment
141
Editorial Articles:
Article X 143
A B C of the Exchange Question 145
Labor in Politics 146
America and the English Tradition 147
President Wilson's Japan. By Charles
Hodges 149
The "New Republic's" Exhilaration.
By Jerome Landfield 150
Correspondence 151
How the Soviet Came to a Russian
Village 153
The Unreconstructed Professor. By
Philo M. Buck, Jr. 154
Book Reviews:
A Carthaginian Peace? 155
Education in a Democracy 157
Between Worlds 158
The Art of the Greek Ceramists 159
The Run of the Shelves 159
Drama:
Jacinto Benavente: Theatre and
Library. By O. W. Firkins 161
Music:
Mary Garden and "Louise" — The
Concert Season. By Charles Henry
Meltzer 162
Books and the News:
Health. By Edmund Lester Pearson 164
T AM willing to be a candidate, pro-
I •■■ vided I can do so honestly — this
' sums up the spirit of Mr. Hoover's
statement. But it contains other mat-
ter, and very pertinent matter. It dis-
poses unmistakably of the idea of
an independent candidacy. It takes
ground clearly against "any form of
socialism, whether it be nationaliza-
tion of industry or other destruction
of individual initiative." The mean-
ing of its protest against any en-
deavor "to set aside our Constitu-
tional guarantees for free speech or
free representation" must be plain to
the most careless of wayfaring men in
these days of Speaker Sweet at Al-
bany and wild sedition bills at Wash-
ington. It does not define "those
constructive economic policies that
will get us down from the unsound
economic practices which of necessity
grew out of the war," but Mr. Hoov-
er's record is ample guarantee that
in making reference to them he
pledges himself, far more distinctly
than most men could by elaborately
specific promises, to substantial
achievement in case he gets the chance
for it. To our mind, the statement
is far from colorless. It does not go
into details, but it furnishes just that
assurance as to fundamentals which
liberal conservatives in either party
require.
!
■pjISAPPOINTMENT has been ex-
-■^ pressed in some quarters over
Mr. Hoover's failure to lay out a
definite programme — ^to write, so to
say, the platform upon which he is
willing to stand. At the bottom of this
disappointment lies the feeling that
if Mr. Hoover is to be regarded as
a Presidential possibility, he ought
to supply the leadership which, it
must be admitted, is at present pain-
fully lacking in both parties. But
that is not at all Mr. Hoover's role.
He shows eminent good sense in
standing aside until the issues de-
velop themselves, within the recog-
nized party councils, to a far greater
extent than they have done as yet.
To attempt to lay them down, of his
own motion, would be to overstep
the bounds of his claim, great as it is,
upon public attention and regard.
The consequence of this restraint may
be either to help or to hurt his
chances of nomination, but that is not
his primary concern. Let him be
himself — neither more nor less — and
let the situation develop. In any case,
the chance of his nomination by the
Democrats rests on the slimness of
their chances with any other candi-
date. And the chance of his nomina-
tion by the Republicans — pretty near
zero at present, owing to the advanced
state of organization of some other
booms — seems to rest entirely on its
affording the best solution of a
quite possible deadlock at the Repub-
lican Convention.
npHE Legal Adviser of the American
Peace Commission, Mr. David
Hunter Miller, has made a charge
against Mr. John Maynard Keynes's
discussion of the Treaty of Versailles
which, if well founded, would go far
to destroy its standing. The charge
is nothing less than that "in Mr.
Keynes's chief point of attack he has
completely misinterpreted the terms
of the treaty." Specifically, what Mr.
Miller asserts is
that instead of an indemnity of $40,000,000,000
laid upon Germany, as claimed by Mr. Keynes,
with annual payments of nearly $4,000,000,000,
the indemnity of the treaty amounts to ap-
proximately $14,000,000,000; that this sum can-
not be added to except by a unanimous deter-
mination of the Reparation Commission (com-
posed of representatives of the United States,
Great Britain, France, Italy and Belgium),
that Germany is in equity able to pay more,
and that before any such determination, evi-
dence and argument on behalf of Germany
must be heard. (The italics are Mr. Miller's.)
But Mr. Miller goes on to explain that
he means by "the indemnity" not the
total obligation assessed against Ger-
many for reparations, but only so
much of that obligation as is covered
by payments specifically called for in
the treaty. In other words, Mr. Miller
does not deny that the big indebted-
ness spoken of by Mr. Keynes will
actually hang over Germany until
such time as it is either paid, or re-
mitted by the Reparation Commis-
sion; he only points out that actual
payment of that full amount, or of
anything beyond the smaller figure
he mentions, can not be demanded
except by unanimous action of the
Reparation Commission. Such action
Mr. Miller regards as so unlikely
that he declares again and again,
in one form of words and another,
that "the debt, so far as it is not to be
paid, either principal or interest, is a
figment of the imagination; it is the
payment that matters, and nothing
else." But whether this be a correct
opinion or not, it is, after all, nothing
but an opinion; and to charge Mr.
Keynes with having "completely mis-
142]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 40
interpreted the terms of the treaty"
because he does not share Mr. Miller's
opinion as to the unimportance of one
of the most conspicuous of those
terms is a flagrant injustice.
■W/"E ourselves are far from shar-
" ing Mr. Keynes's view of the
enormities of the treaty. His book
bears many marks of extreme bias,
and of being the work of a bril-
liant and not too scrupulous special
pleader. But he commits neither the
error charged by Mr. Miller, nor, so
far as we have been able to discover,
is he guilty of misstatements of such
gross character upon any point. As
to the particular point in question, he
recognizes quite as clearly as Mr.
Miller the distinction between the
theoretical indebtedness and the
actual payments. The difference be-
tween Mr. Miller's view and Mr. Key-
nes's is that, while Miller regards the
theoretical indebtedness as virtually
non-existent because payment will not
be demanded, Keynes regards it as an
incubus upon Germany because pay-
ment may be demanded. It is all a
question of opinion, or rather of em-
phasis. The one thing certain, to
our mind, is that, whether the incu-
bus be real or imaginary, it is a thing
which the people upon whom it
presses can not fail to regard as a
terrible grievance, and therefore that
the sooner it is removed the better.
rpHE oft-repeated conflict between
■'• mob violence and law broke out
again the other day, at Lexington,
Kentucky, and the law won. A negro
had already been tried for murder
and found guilty, within less than a
week after commission of the crime.
Almost at the moment when sentence
of death was being pronounced, a mob
assailed the Court House and at-
tempted to wrest the prisoner from
the hands of the law. In contempt
of due warning the mob pressed on,
and a moment later four of its mem-
bers lay dead before the Court House
door, with seventeen others wounded.
Lawless violence had had its fitting
answer. The mob fell back, aware
for once that the majesty of the law
had the facilities and the spirit neces-
sary to defend itself. There were
threats of a larger mob from sur-
rounding districts, but Governor
Morrow promptly called for troops
from Camp Taylor in suflticient num-
bers to repel any possible assault.
In thus protecting a man already sen-
tenced to death, the Kentucky authori-
ties were protecting law itself, a cause
far more vital to progress in civiliza-
tion than the life of any man. There
will be not merely fewer lynchings
in Kentucky because of Monday's
lesson at Lexington, but less indul-
gence in all forms of lawless violence.
It is not likely that any other com-
munity in Kentucky will soon feel
disposed to invite a repetition of the
lesson. The men who make up a mob
may have no regard for the life of a
mere prisoner, but they do have some
concern for their own.
MR. MUNSEY had an opportunity to make
the Herald a recorder of all currents of
opinion, to build up a great clientele by an
unassailable reputation for scrupulous accu-
racy and fair-play, by presenting the liberal
and radical point of view as well as the con-
servative, by printing sober facts in clear-cut,
honest, and intelligent fashion. — The Nation,
Feb. 7, 1920, p. 166.
The arbitrary arrests of individuals on
trumped-up charges, the breaking ui or sur-
veillance of public meetings, the censorship
of mail and of the press, the maintenance of
an army of Government spies and secret agents,
the ousting from office of persons duly elected
according to law because of membership in
a political party which the Government has
put under the ban, the torturing of prisoners,
and the wresting of justice by administrative
officials and the courts, have reached a point
where little more is needed to precipitate a
rcvplution. — The Nation, Feb. 7, 1920, p. 164.
The italics are ours; beyond this,
we refrain from painting the lily.
PREMIER NITTI, in addressing
•*- the Chamber of Deputies on
Saturday, declared that if Italy is
to emerge successfully from her
present troubles her press and politi-
cians must assume a more friendly
and respectful attitude towards
the outside world, and must not
leave the interests of international
peace out of consideration in their
eagerness for the realization of
Italian aspirations. He challenged
the position of "nationalists" who in-
sist that Italy has gained nothing
from the war unless its entire later
Adriatic programme is conceded.
"We must remember," he said, "that
almost all Italians who desired war
asked only for Trent and Trieste. It
is therefore a mistake to say that
nothing was obtained, when these
terms are more than satisfied." The
Premier pointed out clearly that the
financial aid which Italy so sorely
needs from without will not come un-
less her people assume a friendly atti-
tude, give up the things that militate
against peace and a broader humanity
in foreign relations, and convince
possible investors that the money de-
sired is to be spent in reconstruction.
TN case the Adriatic settlement
■*• should revert to the terms of the
Compact of London, which would re-
quire the abandonment of the Italian
claim to Fiume, he made it plain that
he would consider himself in honor
bound to secure the evacuation of the
city by d'Annunzio, "even by force if
necessary." He emphasized, however,
his earnest desire to come to a
friendly agreement with the Jugo-
slavs, and rebuked as criminal those
who arouse antagonism by referring
to the Adriatic as "an Italian lake."
Press reports indicate that Premier
Nitti had been subjected to a severe
fire of newspaper criticism for some
days before this speech, and that his
enemies were rather gleefully expect-
ing to demand a vote on his foreign
policy and secure his downfall. His
plea for an attitude of moderation,
however, in the interest of peace and
material reconstruction, had so visi-
bly favorable an eff'ect on the Chamber
that no opponent dared to risk defeat
by asking a vote.
fyHE fact that the Central Union of
■*- Cooperatives of Russia has come
entirely under control of the Soviet
Government and is now but a branch
of their system of nationalized distri-
bution, was made clear in the col-
umns of the Review a fortnight ago.
The Supreme Council of Paris has
just ascertained this with apparent
surprise, and finds that the proposal
contained in its earlier announce-
ment concerning the blockade is nul-
lified by the necessity of dealing with
the Soviet Government. This raises
the question whether, in ignorance of
what was patent to other observers,
they were taken in by Alexander
Berkenheim and his associates, claim-
February 14, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[148
ing to represent the Cooperatives, or
whether the policy that was recently
announced had a less ingenuous origin
and motive.
SIR VINCENT MEREDITH, BART.,
President of the Bank of Mon-
treal, advised a liberal immigration
policy in his recent address at the an-
nual meeting of the shareholders of
the Bank. He has no fear of another
war in this generation, and there-
fore sees no necessity that the comb-
ing of applicants be made too fine.
With a good influx of farmers, do-
mestic servants, artisans, and laborers
he foresees substantial improvement
in economic conditions as afl'ected by
the war. The western provinces, he
thinks, will draw many farmers from
the United States, "attracted by the
superior productivity of the soil and
its comparative cheapness." The Al-
lied nations of Europe, and the Scan-
dinavian countries, will add mate-
rially to the number. But to immi-
gration must be added harder work,
greater efficiency, increased produc-
tion and thrift, if the desired results
are to come. He gives emphatic warn-
ing that unless Canada shall speedily
reduce or abandon penalizing taxes on
what are called excess business profits,
she will not be able to meet trade com-
-petition not similarly encumbered. He
favors government assistance in ar-
ranging long-term credits for export
sales, but would not throw the whole
burden upon the public. The export-
ers who reap the profits must as a
matter of course assume a due pro-
portion of the risks.
CIR VINCENT closed his address
*--^ with a handsome tribute to the
Prince of Wales, whose visit to
Canada had "rendered a great and
memorable service to the Empire in
strengthening the Throne in the af-
fection and confidence of the people,
and by drawing still closer the ties
which bind the commonwealth of na-
tions over which he is destined to
reign." There is food in this sen-
tence for a class of Americans who
can not understand why the British
people do not cast royalty out of their
Constitution altogether and substi-
tute an executive head elected by the
people. The fact that any close ap-
proximation to democratic freedom
is now secure anywhere is largely due
to those ties of affection and confi-
dence which bind together the "com-
monwealth of nations" (note care-
fully Sir Vincent's term) over which
the Prince of Wales is destined one
day to "reign," not as a monarch,
with vast powers of possible oppres-
sion in his hand, but more than any-
thing else as just that connecting tie
which made the great "common-
wealth of nations" called the British
Empire a whole-hearted unit against
German ambitions inimical to world
freedom.
pRAWLING about among drifts
^^ that leave the snows of yesteryear
simply nowhere, one must perforce
content oneself by scanning the pa-
pers for what assurances there may
be that spring is not far behind. In
the vocal forests of newsprint — haunt,
once, of the breezes and the nesting
bird — is there no stir, no hint of
promise? Yes, here it is. "Baseball
practice at Columbia begins this
week." All this, and even more:
"Baseball magnates assemble at Chi-
cago." But what is there that over-
casts the fair face of hope? More
repression? More prohibition ? "Freak
pitching must go. The spitball, the
emery ball, the shine ball, the licorice
ball — pitchers who are addicted to
their use must be registered and may
be granted a year to taper off — no
longer — while those who are not offi-
cially recognized 'addicts' will be sub-
jected to a thumping penalty for the
first offense." Must it always be
so? Has the pitcher always "got"
a little something more than the
batter can manage ? Our throwers of
the intellectual spitball, our heavers
of the economic emery ball, our toss-
ers of the artistic shine ball, isn't the
poor old world at bat capable of
knocking them over the fence and out
of the box? A plague on these har-
nessing restraints, imposed with a
view to fattening the poor old world's
intellectual batting average! What
the world needs is better batting
ability at the intellectual plate. When
that comes about it will be spring
indeed.
Article X
'pHE question of Article X has
■*- been central throughout all these
months of dreary controversy. Many
weeks ago it seemed as though noth-
ing further that could be said about
it was capable of being either inter-
esting or instructive to the public.
But within the last week or two, as
the struggle over the Treaty has
seemed again to be approaching a
possible decision, the subject has ac-
quired renewed interest for a peculiar
reason. The merits of the various
proposed reservations relating to Ar-
ticle X have all along turned partly
on the question of language and tone,
and partly on the question of sub-
stance; the new development has
been a tendency on the part of the
President's supporters to take the
view that language and tone are the
only thing involved, the substance
being practically negligible. Nothing
could be more gratifying than this to
the Review, in so far as it indicates
willingness to come to a practicable
agreement ; nevertheless, in the inter-
est of truth and clear thinking, it
seems desirable at this juncture to
point out the degree in which such a
view is true and in which it is false.
The view we refer to may be found
stated in its most extreme form in
the New York Evening Post of Feb-
ruary 7:
We have read the article and the Lodge
reservation and the numerous proposed sub-
stitutes, and the differences between the origi-
nal text and all the proposed modifications
are differences in language and manners, and
not in the essential meaning. The Lodge res-
ervation cannot knife the heart of Article X.
Under the League of Nations this country is
bound to be interested in territorial changes
in Europe. When such changes shock the
conscience of this country it will take the
matter under advisement. When Congress
finds there is sufficient cause for active inter-
vention, it will so vote. President Wilson
meant this in the original article, and Lodge
means this in his reservation, and the substi-
tute proposals mean this. The difference is
that Mr. Wilson phrased his meaning gen-
erously and Lodge prefers to be surly and
spiteful.
If this were a correct statement of the
case, it would be even more shocking
than it is to think of the prolonged
delay which has kept the settlement
in abeyance while all the world has
been suffering for want of it. But
the difference between the unreserved
acceptance of Article X and its ac-
144]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 40
ceptance with the Lodge reservation
is much more than a difference "in
language and manners." Between
the Lodge reservation and that pro-
posed many months ago by the Re-
publican "mild reservationists" the
difference is indeed only one "in lan-
guage and manners." Even this dif-
ference, to be sure, is important. It
is a thousand pities that that reserva-
tion was not accepted at the time by
the President and his party, for there
is good reason to believe that such
acceptance would have resulted, while
the interest of the public was fresh,
in speedy ratification. There was
nothing bad about the "language and
manners" of that proposed reserva-
tion ; and if no question of substance
enters into the matter at all, it is dif-
ficult to see any respectable excuse
for the Democrats' failure to agree
to it. But there is a question of sub-
stance; whichever side was right or
wrong, it is at least true of both par-
ties to the contest that they were fight-
ing over something and not over
nothing.
In point of fact, there are two quite
distinct purposes served by the
reservation relating to Article X,
whether worded in the objectionable
way which Senator Lodge has pre-
ferred, or in the excellent form pro-
posed by the mild reservationists. It
has become fashionable of late to
speak of it as merely drawing pointed
attention to the dual character of our
Government, the separation of legis-
lative and executive powers. This in
itself is a substantial thing; for,
though it might be said to be what
everyone might easily infer for him-
self from a knowledge of the United
States Constitution, the express state-
ment of it constitutes a caveat which
our associates in the treaty could not
be expected to take into adequate ac-
count by such mere inference. But
there is much more to the matter
than this.
What the reservation does, above all
else, is to place the moral obligation
of the engagement in Article X upon
a different footing. When Mr. Wil-
son declared that the reservation "cut
the heart out of the Covenant" he
doubtless meant that it destroyed the
moral obligation of Article X. In
his colloquy at the White House with
the Foreign Relations Committee, he
endeavored to make the most of the
difference between a legal obligation
and a moral obligation, but he did not
attempt to deny the binding force of
the obligation as a moral one. Now
the very thing which honest advocates
of the reservation, of all shades, sin-
cerely desire is to lessen the force of
the moral obligation. They believe
that the duty which Article X in its
terms imposes upon the country is one
that ought not to be accepted without
qualification. They want to make it
impossible for our country to be
charged with bad faith in case it
refuses to do, in any given instance,
what Article X contemplates shall be
done for the preservation of the "ter-
ritorial integrity and existing politi-
cal independence of all members of
the League." So far from making no
substantial difference, it transforms
what on its face is an unqualified ob-
ligation into what on its face is no
obligation ; for an engagement which
does not come into force in any given
case until, or unless, Congress de-
cides that it is one that the country
desires to assume is not, in any ordi-
nary sense of the word, an engage-
ment at all.
In spite of all this, however, the
reservation is not to be regarded as
wiping out the moral obligation alto-
gether. If we wished to do that, the
only honest course would be to reject
Article X outright, or at least that
part of it which involves the possi-
bility of war. What remains of the
obligation, under the reservation, is
difficult to define ; but something does
remain. We continue to be a party
to the arrangement, and therefore
may justly be regarded as intending
to carry out its essential purpose. In
any case which may arise, there will
be a strong presumption that we
ought to do our share with the rest.
The burden of proof will be upon
those who oppose such action. If
the League of Nations becomes an
effective reality, our membership in
it will come to imply more and more
strongly the assuming of any duties
or burdens it calls for, unless fair
and convincing reasons can be ad-
duced against our doing so. In a
word, Article X, as qualified by the
reservation, will leave Congress a
free agent — ^that is, not only free to
exercise its Constitutional powers,
which is a matter of course, but free
in a moral sense — and yet will com-
mit the nation to the carrying out of
the Article's purpose unless a sound
case to the contrary can be estab-
lished.
The nature of this effect of the res-
ervation may perhaps be best brought
out by a comparison with the situ-
ation of other Governments. In re-
gard to the character of an obliga-
tion like that of Article X, no such
absolute difference exists between our
country and others as is frequently
asserted. Whatever may be true in
regard to a declaration of war, the
power to carry on war is dependent
in any parliamentary country upon
the voting of supplies by the parlia-
ment. But if the British House of
Commons, for example, were to re-
fuse to vote supplies in pursuance of
the obligation of a treaty, it would
be guilty of a breach of faith and a
violation of the national honor. If
Britain desired to retain the same
degree of freedom in regard to Ar-
ticle X as the reservation contem-
plates for this country, she would
have to make a reservation of similar
character. America, in making it,
differentiates herself from the other
countries not merely to the extent
necessary under her Constitution, but
to the extent she thinks justified by
her wholly different position in the
world — her wholly different relation
to European complexities — and by
the character of her national tradi-
tion. We believe that it is wise for
her to do so. The most weighty con-
sideration which in the early days of
the controversy was urged against
such a course has been removed.
There is no longer any practical
doubt that our ratification of the
treaty, with the reservation, will be
accepted without remonstrance by the
other Powers. To accomplish thai
ratification speedily — ^with the lan-
guage of the reservation improved ill
possible, but with its substance prej
served — is now more clearly thai'
ever the thing supremely to be dej
sired.
I
I
February 14, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[145
ABC of the Exchange
Question
nnHE violent fall in sterling ex-
■'■ change has not only produced a
profound effect in Wall Street but
has intensely stirred the interest of
the public at large. The question of
why this particular fall took place
and why it took place at this particu-
lar time involves a thousand com-
plexities and doubts. But on the
essential character of the situation
there is no reason why the general
public should not have a fairly clear
understanding, and indeed it is of
great importance that the vital ele-
ments of it be clearly grasped by all
intelligent persons.
The first thing to be apprehended
is that there is not in the nature of
things any reason why, under exist-
ing conditions, the value of the pound
sterling — what may be called its
normal value, the value it may be
expected to have in the absence of any
particular condition as regards ex-
ports and imports, debits and credits
— should be anything like the par
value of the pound as it stood before
the war. The name pound sterling
means to-day a totally different thing
from what it did then. It then signi-
fied either a gold coin containing 4.86
times as much gold as is contained in
a United States gold dollar, or paper
currency exchangeable on demand at
London for that amount of gold. It
now means simply paper money to
which the old name continues to be
attached, but which has no present
relation to any specified quantity of
gold. If the inflation of the British
currency, and of banking credits
which serve to swell the British
monetary medium, had gone to a suffi-
ciently high point, the command which
a unit of that currency possessed over
gold, or over any commodity, would
have gone down to as low a point as
you may choose to name. The differ-
ence between the depreciation of the
pound sterling and the depreciation
of the mark is a difference only in
degree, not in kind. ^
Obvious as this is, it is necessary
to insist upon it in order to clear up
misapprehensions which are widely
current, even in some very important
quarters. That an increase of ex-
ports from, or a diminution of im-
ports into, a country against which
exchange is far below what is called
par has a tendency to raise that ex-
change is true enough; but it is a
mistake to suppose that this process
has any power to restore that S0|-
called par, when the currency in ques-
tion is paper not redeemable in gold.
There is not in any true sense any
assignable par of exchange between
the present so-called pound sterling
and the United States dollar. When
the pound and the dollar each meant
a certain definite amount of gold, the
ratio between these two amounts was
a true par of exchange between them.
Fluctuations in the rate of exchange
on the market were caused by the
immediate demand for the one or the
other being greater or less than the
immediate supply on the market. If
payments due from New York to
London exceeded those due from Lon-
don to New York, the pound stood
above par ; in the reverse case it stood
below par. The reason for this was
that these opposing credits and debits
could be exchanged against each
other here in New York so far as
the lesser of the two quantities went,
but to cover the remainder an actual
shipment of gold was, on the face of
things, required, and this involved an
appreciable amount of expense and
delay. The difference necessary, how-
ever, to cover this disadvantage was
small, and accordingly the deviation
from par never went beyond a small
margin one way or the other. The
extreme quotations thus normally
possible were known as the gold-ex-
port and gold-import points. When,
either through the transfer of gold
or through the export or import of
commodities or securities, a sufficient
readjustment had taken place, ex-
change was restored to par.
In existing conditions it continues
true that an increase of current obli-
gations due from America to Eng-
land, or a diminution of current obli-
gations due from England to America,
tends to raise sterling exchange, and
vice versa. But the point of equili-
brium is no longer 4.86. There is
no reason why it should be. Nor is
there any definite figure that takes
the place of the old par. There is,
however, a ratio between the paper
pound and the dollar which, although
it can not be definitely evaluated,
should be regarded as representing
in fact a point of equilibrium or
parity. The simplicity of the old com-
parison— so many grains of gold in
the pound, so many grains of gold in
the dollar — is gone ; but comparisons
of a substantial, though irregular, na-
ture are still possible. The index-
number, recording as it does the
average price-level of a large number
of representative commodities, might
be supposed to be a satisfactory way
of making this comparison. If it
were, something like the old sim-
plicity would be reintroduced into the
question. But unfortunately it is not.
Apart from any question of the
trustworthiness of the index-number
as a measure of the general purchas-
ing power of the currency unit in a
given country, another consideration,
far more important, interferes with
its application to the present purpose.
It is only those commodities which
are capable of playing an important
part in international trade that enter
effectively into the determination of
the relative values of the monetary
unit of two different countries. Iron,
or copper, or zinc, or wool, or cotton,
and manufactures of many kinds
can play a part in that determination
roughly similar to that which gold
itself plays when both the countries
are on the gold standard. Obviously,
however, no clear rule can be given
for merging the prices of these things
into a single figure which would take
the place of the gold unit. Some kind
of index-number might be constructed
out of them, but in doing so account
would have to be taken of highly
complex considerations in regard to
freights, tariffs, and other circum-
stances; and at best it would be a
very uncertain guide.
In spite of all this, however, the
currency units of any two countries,
for example the pound and the dollar,
do each of them represent a certain
amount of purchasing power over
commodities that can be exported and
imported on a large scale. And the
ratio of these two amounts of pur-
146]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 40
chasing power (allowance made for
freiorhts, tariffs, etc.) should be re-
garded as constituting a theoretical
par of exchange between them. The
figure is indeterminable, and, indeed,
in a great measure indefinite. Yet in
a substantial sense it exists; and it
tends to be realized in practice in the
same manner, though infinitely less
accurately and effectively, as does the
regular par of exchange between cur-
rencies both embodying the gold
standard. Deviations from it tend
to be corrected by exports and im-
ports of commodities — much more
slowly and irregularly and uncer-
tainly, yet in principle after the same
fashion as deviations from the regu-
lar par of exchange are corrected by
the export or import of gold. It is
possible, for example, that the pound
sterling to-day has, roughly speaking,
in this way the same purchasing
power as three and a half dollars ; if
so, 3.50 should be regarded as the
theoretical par of exchange to-day,
and any deviation from it, up or
down, as a fluctuation, though the
fluctuations may be very wide and
be a long time in getting corrected.
In a word, and waiving all complexi-
ties, the point is that if the fall in
sterling exchange is greater than is
justified by the fall in the purchasing
power of the pound, as compared with
that of the dollar, over commodities
of international importance, this will
stimulate exports from England, or
restrict exports from the United
States, and thus tend to restore equi-
librium at the theoretical ratio. Any-
body can see that if pig-iron could be
bought in England at a price which,
with freight and tariff added, would
make it cost here five pounds sterling
a ton, and if the American price was
twenty-five dollars a ton, this state of
things could not long continue with
sterling exchange at 3.30.
In a country in which there is an
open market for gold, as there is now
at London, one might be tempted to
dispose of the question by referring
simply to the premium on gold
— or, what is the same thing,
the discount on paper — as the true
determinant of the par of exchange.
But this would be, essentially, to mis-
take effect for cause. The premium
on gold, though to some extent
affected by other factors, is in the
main determined by the state of for-
eign exchange, and not vice versa.
Obviously, it would be impossible,
except by way of temporary fluctua-
tion, that a paper pound should be
worth much more or much less gold
in London than in New York at any
given time, provided there is a free
market for gold at London; and the
gold it is worth in New York is only
another name for the rate of ex-
change.
We must content ourselves with
just one more remark on these ele-
mentary matters. Nothing is more
common than to hear it said that a
low rate of exchange on a given coun-
try stimulates exports. Understood
as it usually is, the statement is ex-
tremely misleading. It is not the
absolute level of exchange, but its
relative level as compared with
the effective level of prices (of which
we have been speaking above) that
operates upon exports either as a
stimulus or as a check. Exchange on
Germany, for example, is depressed
far more than prices in Germany
have risen ; and so long as this con-
tinues to be the case, it operates as a
great stimulus to exports. But the
mere fact that mark exchange is
vastly below what mark exchange
used to be when the mark meant a
certain amount of gold has nothing
whatever to do with the case. In that
sense, mark exchange might continue
low for a hundred years without
affecting exports or imports in the
slightest degree. If the level of prices
in Germany were as high as the rate
of exchange was low, her international
trade would go on exactly the same
as though there had never been any
monetary disturbance — exactly the
same, that is, except for the damaging
effect that uncertainty and fluctua-
tions always exert upon trade, which
effect, however, is just as likely to
cut one way as the other.
We have made no attempt to touch
upon the question of remedies, a ques-
tion which will long exercise the high-
est powers of the best minds in this
country and in Europe. The one re-
mark upon which we shall venture
in this direction is that, while every
possible stress should be laid upon the
need of increased production and
frugality, it would be mere blindness
to imagine that these, of themselves,
are capable of restoring normal con-
ditions in the currencies of the world.
The gold standard has ceased to exist
in all the leading countries of Europe.
In some of them — most important of
all, Germany — the departure has
been so great that return by any
normal process is impossible. But
even in the countries whose condition
in this regard is best, restoration will
be possible only through the firm and
consistent direction of governmental
and banking policy toward that end.
Deflation is not only a painful, but
unfortunately also a dangerous pro-
cess. But it has to be effected;
perhaps very slowly, yet certainly
through the pursuance of a definite
public policy, over and above any
efforts that may be made by indi-
viduals. That this fact is becoming
more and more thoroughly recognized
is the one encouraging feature of the
situation.
Labor in Politics
'T'HE policy of organized labor in
-*■ the United States has hitherto
been steadily opposed to the forma-
tion of a distinct labor party. In this
it has stood in sharp contrast with
that of organized labor in England.
For this difference thoughtful Amer-
icans have generally felt that there
was a fundamental reason. The
American workingman, the typical
American workingman, does not ha-
bitually think of himself as a mem-
ber of a distinctly separate class in
the community. That there are class
distinctions in our country, it would
be idle to deny ; but the psychology of
them is radically different from that
of class distinctions in the Old World.
Not only has democracy been so real
and pervasive an element in Amer-
ican life and American ways of
thinking as to preclude a deep-rooted
class feeling, but the actual advance
of thousands from the ranks of the
manual tpilers to positions of impor-
tance or affluence has been so familiar
a phenomenon as to make the possi-
bility a real thing in every man's
February 14, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[147
thoughts. Accordingly, it has not
been merely a calculation of expe-
diency, but the operation of instinc-
tive and habitual feelings, that has
militated against the segregation of
American workingmen into a class
party.
The proclamation issued this week
by the American Federation of Labor
does not ostensibly abandon this po-
sition. It does not abandon it at all
so far as the form of organization is
concerned. Not only does it not pro-
pose the formation of a labor party,
or the adhesion of the Federation to
any labor party already formed, but
it maps out a course irreconcilable
with any such programme. Never-
theless, if the proclamation means all
that it seems to portend, it marks a
departure in the direction of class
segregation quite as radical, and quite
as momentous, as would be the cre-
ation of a new party. If the pro-
gramme it lays down is to be sys-
tematically and consistently carried
out, that great body of workingmen
which constitutes the Federation of
Labor will henceforth play, in Amer-
ican politics, the part not of individ-
ual American citizens, but of a con-
solidated class.
That programme is tersely summed
up in this sentence in the proclama-
tion:
The American Federation of Labor an-
nounces its determination to apply every legit-
imate means and all of the power at its com-
mand to accomplish the defeat of labor's ene-
mies who aspire for public office, whether
they be candidates for President, for Con-
gress, for State Legislatures or any other
office.
"Every legitimate means" may, to be
sure, signify little or much; but, in-
terpreted in the light of other state-
ments in the proclamation, it has an
ominous sound. It is at least con-
ceivable that what the Federation
leaders have in mind is to take a leaf
out of the Anti-Saloon League's book.
The systematic blacklisting which
was the heart of that organization's
activities sufficed to give the League
the balance of power in a sufficient
number of Legislative and Congres-
sional districts to bring about its
astonishing and revolutionary vic-
tory. And it is to balance of power
that the Federation's proclamation
explicitly points. Whether it will be
able, or even whether it desires, to
wield the possible voting power of
the Federation's members in the
ruthless and effective way which the
Anti-Saloon League found so success-
ful, it may be premature to discuss.
But that this possibility has to be
considered is evident. The absence of
any such determined effort in the
past, and the failure of such efforts
as have been made in this direction,
throw little light upon the possibili-
ties that lie before us now.
It is none too early to warn both
the public and the labor people of the
profound and far-reaching conse-
quences which the adoption of such
a policy would entail. It would mean
a class situation not less serious, but
far more serious, than that which
would be brought about by the mar-
shaling of organized labor into a
separate political party. With a sepa-
rate party, unfortunate as might be
its identification with a class, the
other parties could reckon on fair
and manly terms. It would be a ques-
tion of matching one set of forces,
one aggregation of citizens, against
another. But the balance-of-power
programme, in its fulness, means sys-
tematic intimidation. It means, un-
less counteracted by a corresponding
combination of opposing purpose,
that no man in either of the great
parties could call his soul his own
except at the risk of political anni-
hilation.
This condition of things would be
intolerable ; and although it would
undoubtedly lead to the adoption of a
remedy, the remedy would be almost
as bad as the disease. If the Federa-
tion's announcement means the worst
that it is apparently capable of mean-
ing, we are about to enter upon one
of the most sinister chapters of our
political history. Let us hope that,
whatever may be at present in the
minds of the Federation's officers, the
true significance of any programme
of organized intimidation by a class
— the disaster which it portends, in
the first instance to us all, but finally
and most heavily to the very class
that undertakes it — will be brought
home to the labor leaders in time to
prevent the launching of any such
rash and ill-omened enterprise.
America and the
English Tradition
'T'HE recently established chair in
-*■ the history, literature, and insti-
tutions of the United States which is
to be shared among the several uni-
versities of Great Britain, is quite
different from the exchange profes-
sorships of sometimes unhappy mem-
ory. It is not at all the idea to carry
over one of our professors each year
and indoctrinate him with the true
culture at its source. The occupant
of the chair will be, if the announced
intention is carried out, quite as often
British as American, and quite as
likely a public man as a professor.
The chief object is to bring to Eng-
land a better knowledge of the United
States, and a purpose more laudable
can scarcely be imagined. Peace and
prosperity will endure in the world
in some very precise relation to the
extent to which England succeeds in
understanding us.
It is not an illusion to suppose that
our understanding of the British is on
the whole better than theirs of us.
The British Empire is a large and
comparatively simple fact, now con-
spicuously before the world for a long
time. The United States was, in
British eyes, until recently, a compar-
atively insignificant fact, yet vastly
more complicated than they imag-
ined. Each, of course, perfectly knew
the faults of the other, assessed with
an unerring cousinly eye. The Amer-
ican bragged in a nasal whine, the
Briton patronized in a throaty burble.
Whoever among the struggling na-
tions of the world might win, Eng-
land saw to it that she never lost;
your Yankee was content with the
more ignoble triumphs of merchan-
dising, willing to cheapen life if he
could only add to his dollars. But
the excellence of English political in-
stitutions and methods, the charm of
English life, the tremendous power of
the Empire for promoting freedom
and civilization in the world, these
are things which Americans have
long recognized and in a way under-
stood. Anything like an equivalent
British appreciation of America in
the large seems confined to a very
148]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, Xo. 40
few honorable exceptions among
them. Admiration for Niagara,
which is half British anyway, or en-
thusiasm for the "Wild West"—
your better-class Englishman always
thrills to the frontier — is no step
at all toward rightly appreciating
America.
To no inconsiderable extent this is
America's own fault. She does not
present to the world a record that is
easily read. It is obvious, for in-
stance— and so obvious that it is not
often enough stated — that America
has and will continue to have a fun-
damentally English civilization. Eng-
lish law is the basis of her law. Eng-
lish speech is her speech, and if with
a difference, it is a difference that the
philologist, all things considered,
finds amazingly small. English lit-
erature is her literature — Chaucer
and Shakespeare hers because her
blood then coursed indistinguishably
through the English heart they knew
so well; Milton, Dryden, and the
Queen Anne men hers, because she
was still a part of England ; the later
men hers by virtue of affectionate ac-
quaintanceship and a generous and
not inconsiderable rivalry. English
history, in short, is her history. The
struggles of the thirteenth century
through which law and parliament
came into being, the struggles of the
seventeenth century through which
law and parliament came to rule, are
America's struggles upon which she
can look back with the satisfaction
that some things that have been done
in the world need never be undone or
done over again, whatever the room
for improvement may still be. Ameri-
cans, no less than British, recognize
that independence was largely an ac-
cidental result of a war which sprang
out of a false theory of economics,
but whose conclusion carried with it
a lesson in the management of empire
which subsequent history shows the
British to have learned thoroughly
and for the benefit of all concerned.
American independence, however,
once established, pointed a way to
democratic freedom which England
hastened to follow. This we know.
And yet —
And yet we allow these obvious and
fundamental considerations to be-
come marvellously obscured. We al-
low England's failure to solve an in-
soluble Irish problem to arouse in us
an attitude of mind possibly excus-
able in some Irishmen, but wholly in-
excusable in any American. We allow
a sentimental regard for some immi-
grant from Eastern Europe, who
comes to us with a philosophy born of
conditions that in English-speaking
lands ceased to be centuries ago, to
make us pretend to see in him the true
expression of America's traditional
ideals. We allow ourselves to be far
too easy with the phrase, "He is not
pro-German, he is merely anti-Brit-
ish." Why are they anti-British ? Why
should they be permitted to make it
falsely appear that recognition of the
English basis of America involves ap-
proval of everything that England in
her long history may or may not have
done ? Why should they be allowed to
pretend that disapproval of some par-
ticular act of England justifies repu-
diation of most of the things by vir-
tue of which we are what we are?
America from the first has been part
of the great English experiment —
great because it is capable of learning
from experience.
The world has put a big investment
in blood and treasure, and all that
they imply, into the education of
England. It is satisfied — the world's
response to Germany's insolent chal-
lenge is the proof of it — that its pains
have been well bestowed. England
is more nearly fit than any other na-
tion to wield the power that is hers.
That is not to deny the peculiar vir-
tues of other nations; indeed, these
virtues have largely contributed to
the result. Italy has educated her;
France has educated her; we have
done something; and Germany. In
result, she is not perfect — the Eng-
lish would perhaps least of all assert
that — but she has learned a great
deal and held herself steady while she
learned it. It is a bigger job than the
world cares to undertake to teach any
other nation so much. Nor would it
be at all likely to succeed so well. For
what England has to offer the world
in return is not simply her institu-
tions ; it is not merely a formula for
the effective discharge of police duty
throughout the world ; it is the Eng-
lish freeman, whether he hail from
Canada, Australia, Africa, or the ut-
termost isles of the sea.
A most adaptable fellow, this free-
man, doing all sorts of work every-
where, and with tremendous powers
of assimilation. Consider him in his
origins. He began by assimilating
fully his own weight in Danes, while
remaining an English freeman. He
then perforce accepted a Norman
king, as he had accepted a Danish
one, hoping, as always, that the king
would not trouble him too much. But
when Norman William, who was very
ill-informed about the breed, killed
off most of his natural leaders and
harried the rest into villeiny, how did
he manage in a small matter of two
hundred years or so to make an Eng-
lish gentleman not only of himself but
of all the rag-tag of adventurers who
had come over with William and since ?
How did he contrive, out of a band of
exiles fleeing from an Egypt of eccle-
siastical tyranny, broken younger
sons, artisans out of a job, specula-
tors, bondmen, Swedes, Dutchmen,
and what not, to make America? Is
he one likely to lose his bearings when
in his America the age-old problem
again heaves in view? This is a job
he has been working at pretty suc-
cessfully for more than a thousand
years. Grant him a moment to real-
ize himself afresh in the face of it.
Don't expect him to stop and give a
coherent explanation of what he is
doing. He wouldn't be the true son
of the English tradition that he is
if he could do that. Perhaps the
occupants of the new chair can do
something of the sort for him.
THE REVIEW
A weekly jaurnal tf political and
general discussion
Published by
Thb National Weekly Cokforation
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fasian Fsanklin, President
Harold dk Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription^ price, five dollars a year in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2. England.
Copyright, 1920, in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Ayres O. W. Firkins
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson
Jerque Landfikld
Febrtuary 14, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[149
President Wilson's Japan
JAPANESE statesmen, on the many
occasions when the purpose of the
Mikado's land is under scrutiny, are
fond of declaring : "So desu ka!" — to
the accompaniment of that succulent
intake of the breath we all know —
"Our country is so misunderstood."
With Mr. Wilson's pax Japonica
now well under way, one can not but
wonder what President Wilson's
Japan really was when the triumvi-
rate at Paris underwrote a Japanese
primacy in the East. Mr. Wilson
would, doubtless, agree with me that,
now that he is finally grappling with
the situation in the Pacific, the State
Department, his Minister at Peking,
even the Ambassador in Tokio, are
showing an irritating blindness to the
picture he has so carefully drawn for
himself.
His decision at Paris was not at
bottom dictated by those disconcert-
ing secret agreements made between
Japan and the Allies in 1917 for the
purpose, as the President remarked
several times, of bringing that East-
ern Power into the European strug-
gle— Japan having as a matter of fact
quite voluntarily declared war on
Germany August 23, 1914. It was
not prompted by a desire to abet an
injustice to China. Even the pressure
of Fiume was but a contributing in-
cident. If the President had not
visualized a Japan through the kindly
light furnished by the suave Marquis
Saionji, the candid Viscount Chinda,
and colored by the pleasant memories
at Washington of Ambassador Ishii,
the thing could not possibly have
happened. In the settlement of the
Far Eastern imbroglio, he moved
with a sureness which so baffled many
of us that we never grasped the main
consideration in the case: just what
kind of Japan President Wilson's
was.
Behind all President Wilson's
idealism lies a curtain of Calvinistic
doctrine against which he projects
his every act. To international rela-
tions he brings the relentless austerity
of the Covenanter. For him the state
is an aggregation of individuals actu-
ated by a sifting of good and evil, and
predestined to be convinced in the
end by an appeal to their virtuous
instincts. The President sought in
the legalities of the Covenant a deity
who should hold up before the na-
tions a vivid picture of the Judgment
Day. And, as a picture, it is not with-
out inspiration for the high-minded.
Practical European statesmen, how-
ever, looked to the League of Nations
mainly for a way in which to settle
in chancery international difficulties;
and it was they who really held the
scales.
During President Wilson's first ad-
ministration, I had a long, frank talk
with his newly appointed Ambas-
sador to Japan, in which I seemed to
be hearing the President himself lay
down the why and the wherefore of
his Far Eastern purposes. Ambas-
sador Morris, like the President,
knew little about the intricacies of
the situation; but that seemed of
slight importance. The Ambassador
was a personal emissary of the White
House, one felt, a missionary of the
new diplomacy. He was the ex-
ponent of a formula which would re-
solve the tangled skein of Sino-
Japanese relations just as readily as
harmonize our purposes on the Pa-
cific, or open the closing door in China,
or settle difficulties with Mexico. It
had the fascination which benevolent
intentions in foreign fields always
possess for Americans. On our side,
it was a plan of action which
eschewed suspicion of the other
party. It freely imputed to all sin-
cerity of purpose. It reflected an
abiding faith in the necessity of dem-
onstrating our own disinterested-
ness at any cost. Japan — if she
had ever infringed our interests, or
contemplated such a thing — would
turn over a new leaf if we took no
stand which could alienate her
friendship.
Many things have happened since
then. Ambassador Morris, one takes
it after seeing him in Tokio, is no
longer under any illusions as to the
prevailing tendency of the real Japan
in China or in Siberia. But the force
of these initial convictions remains
with the White House. The Presi-
dent's Japan is a nation whose eyes
have been opened to the futility of
military challenge and which there-
fore has magnanimously abandoned
a vision of empire in the East ; not a
Japan reaching for the trappings of
world-power on the continent of East
Asia by devious roads, covering,
under their properly worded phrases,
the same old rail-and-iron policies.
Yet there was that Paul Page Whit-
ham report on the neutralization of
China's railways — I was in Peking
when it was being prepared — which
the Senate Foreign Relations Com-
mittee could not see, showing another
Japan; a Japan which needed only
"the economic rights" in Shantung
awarded her at the Peace Conference
to menace the security of China, as this
expert survey pointed out. It must
also have pointed out to the Presi-
dent, by word, by picture, and by
maps, that his Consortium scheme
should include the communications
Japan held so jealously in North
China if this great plan of coopera-
tive action to eliminate international
competition and preserve China's in-
tegrity is to have a chance of suc-
cess.
Then, there was a masterly memo-
randum of the American Minister to
China, remarkable for its lucid
brevity, the most penetrating exposi-
tion of the Far Eastern crisis which
has been written. With great skill,
it is understood, President Wilson's
own spokesman in China bared for
him the structure of Japan's pur-
poses, laid down the lines of effective
settlement, and measured the danger
impending from the wrong solution
of the difficulties. Yet another report
which the President ought to have
seen was an intimate investigation
of Japan as she really conducted her-
self from the beginning of her occu-
pation of Shantung. From an unim-
peachable source, it, too, was a picture
not appropriate to the President's
Japan; hence it fared badly in the
Presidential councils when in due
time it came against the phantasma-
goric Japan with which the White
House preferred to deal. These are over
and above the deluge of illuminating
dispatches and reports of the same
150]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 40
tenor coming in as department rout-
ine— from our shrewd representative
at Tsingtao, the Peking Legation, our
intelligence services. Indeed, one
wonders if there does not exist a kind
of censorship among the officials
closest to the President, whose con-
cern it is to see that he is not antag-
onized by the obtruding realities so
counter to his own views of the sit-
uation.
In any case, Viscount Ishii's state-
ments of what his Government hoped
to do impressed the President more
than the State Department reports of
what Japan was doing. He preferred
to build up his policy on the Hara
Ministry's professions of liberalism
rather than confront Japan's actual
government of minority rule and
star-chamber politics — attempts to
enfranchise more than 5 per cent, of
the population thwarted by the polit-
ical interests; the popular house of
the Diet a chamber of protest having
no effectual control over the purse;
the House of Peers packed in the
interest of the old regime ; the main-
spring of administration vested in an
irresponsible Cabinet designated by
the Mikado, behind which stands an
extra-legal council of advisors hold-
ing the final decisions of Japan and
really exercising the imperial pre-
rogatives. Admittedly, in Japan there
is the fabric of a true liberalism, as
Premier Hara and his fellow Minis-
ters have taken care to impress upon
President Wilson, but events have
shown that the White House has
come face to face with only the vested
interests which are dictating Japan's
moves.
It was President Wilson's misfor-
tune to come to the Paris Conference
with his own Japan in mind. It was
by such a picture that he was actu-
ated when he talked over Japan's
terms of settlement with Saionji and
his associates ; and, for reasons which
need not be gone into here, the Japa-
nese delegation did not disillusion
him. Even the Consortium so ably
broached in Peking by the American
Minister — at the time of the armistice
Japan was quite willing to come in —
was already settled as to principle in
those May days of last year. But, to-
day, the White House policy has
failed — failed because President Wil-
son's Japan was a wraith. The Con-
sortium, which was to have pooled
the international danger points in
China's development, equitably pro-
tecting the legitimate interests of
every Power, has been deadlocked by
the firm hand of the controlling ele-
ments in Japan; it has been vetoed
by the forces that brought Japan the
prestige of the Chinese War in 1894,
the diplomatic assaults on China since
1915, the undermining of her allies
in Siberia to-day. The real Japan has
contemptuously called a halt to the
merry game its marionettes played at
the Peace Conference when they as-
sented to the Consortium scheme to
facilitate the President's approval of
the Shantung settlement.
The test of President Wilson's
Japan was not the Peace Conference,
but the aftermath. The actual mak-
ers of Japan's master-policy are far-
sighted military leaders who see
things as they are, calculating states-
men of the old order, and the heads
of the great business enterprises
which came to have a vested interest
in the governance of Japan since the
Meiji restoration. There is nothing
visionary about them; they have
merely weighed the new diplomacy
of President Wilson and found it
wanting. The rejection of the Con-
sortium was the first manifestation
of their conviction that the old di-
plomacy might still dominate the
world — at all events in the East.
Charles Hodges
The "New Republic's" Exhilaration
THE New Republic feels that the an-
nouncement of the Supreme Economic
Council concerning the blockade of Soviet
Russia is the most exhilarating piece of
news which has come out of Europe
since the signing of the armistice.
Judging by the article in its columns
inspired by this news, it may be con-
ceded that the degree of exhilaration was
unlimited. Exhilaration indeed has car-
ried the New Republic far beyond the
bounds of reality and fact.
So, for example, under the influence of
this exhilaration, the New Republic con-
siders the blockade an atrocity, "the last
abominable remnant of the policy of eco-
nomic terrorism, with which the Allied
Governments have made the peoples of
Eastern Europe pay in hunger, sickness,
depression, and actual starvation for the
sins of their rulers." According to the
pious hope of the Neiv Republic, the dis-
tracted souls of the democratic nations
can now "resume contact with the spirit-
ual impulses of genuine democracy."
One need not be a defender of the ex-
pediency or effectiveness of the Russian
blockade as a military measure of de-
fense, at a time when the German-led
hordes of the Red armies threatened to
engulf the new states of Eastern Europe,
in order to point out that the blockade did
not starve Russia. Russia is one of the
greatest food-producing countries in the
world, and its isolation during the war
tended to accumulate rather than dis-
perse food supplies. Furthermore, the
blockade in reality affected only a small
corner of Russia, namely, the region oi'
Petrograd.
In order to reveal the entire fal-
sity of the assumption made above, it is
worth while to reiterate the causes of the
starvation which is decimating the larger
Russian cities and industrial centres.
The main and all-inclusive cause is the
incompetence of the Bolshevik authori-
ties— their stupidly impractical pro-
gramme, their terrorism and graft, and
their inability to organize production.
In the first place, as a political dodge,
they told the peasants to seize the land.
Next, they proceeded to socialize the land
and attempted to tell the peasant that
he was merely a tenant of the state, and
that anything he produced above a lim-
ited amount for his own consumption
belonged to the state. In this way, they
successfully alienated the peasant popu-
lation and cut down food production.
Then, they attempted to make the peas-
ant accept worthless paper money in pay-
ment for food, and this failed. Had
they been able to produce any of the
simple articles of which the peasant stood
in need, he would have gladly furnished
food in exchange, but instead they sent
detachments of Red Guards into the
country districts to requisition grain by
force. This not only did not succeed, but
it aroused a hatred so great that to-day
a Commissar or a Red Guard dare not go
among the peasants without military pro-
tection. Transportation was, of course,
in a bad state as a result of war condi-
tions, but instead of improving it and
making the necessary repairs, the Bol-
sheviks completed its disorganization
and ruin. The life of the cities depends
upon transportation, and they could not
be supplied even if food were forthcom-
ing from the country districts. All this
is not due to the blockade. To be sure,
the Bolsheviks, in return for stolen gold
and confiscated property, might have ob-
tained a certain amount of machinery,
February 14, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[161
tools, and manufactured goods if there
had been no blockade; but these would
have been of little use, as they were un-
able to employ what they already had or
to utilize their own abundant resources
for repairing or creating equipment.
Thus, the charge that the blockade was
an atrocity whereby the Russian people
were starved falls to the ground as the
baseless falsehood of Bolshevist sym-
pathizers. The real blockade of Petro-
grad was Bolshevik incompetence, Bol-
shevik food control, and Bolshevik
graft.
When the New Republic turns to a con-
sideration of the political aspects of the
Russian Revolution, it proceeds on still
weaker hypotheses. It parades before
us again the old theory that all would
have been well if the Allies had satisfied
the "Revolutionary democracy" by a
joint definition of war aims as a neces-
sary preliminary condition of a general
settlement. There is no question that
the Russian people were terribly war-
weary, and above all things wished peace.
It was the promise of making peace,
more than anything else, that gave the
Bolsheviks their victory. But to talk
about the interest of the Russians in
"war aims" is the merest drivel. A few
thousand of the revolutionary intelli-
gentsia in Petrograd and Moscow
talked about war aims and split into a
dozen parties in their discussion. But
99 per cent, of the Russian people knew
nothing whatever of the subject. To the
few of them that caught up the slogan
"no annexations and no indemnities,"
its words signified anneksia i kontribut-
sia, which they believed to be two prov-
inces that France and Germany were
fighting over. When the agitators told
the crowds that Miliukov was striving
for the Straits (Prolivi), they were led
to believe that this was a demand to pour
out {prolivat) their blood! The idea
that the failure of the Allies to an-
nounce their war aims had any effect
on Russian public opinion and its support
of the war, assumes that the inchoate
millions of Russian peasants had a pub-
lic opinion or that it could be informed
on these points.
The article in question is so replete
with misstatements and false insinua-
tions that space does not suffice to take
them up in detail, but some of them are
so glaring that they ought not to be
overlooked even in this period of loose
assertion and glib generalization. Here
is an example: "As a consequence of
their [the Allies'] persistent hostility to
the needs, the scruples, the interests and
the feelings of the Russian people, they
finally convinced the Revolutionary de-
mocracy that its safety depended on the
seizure of all power by the Soviets."
We have heard many explanations of the
Bolsheviks' rise to power, and we know
something of the methods employed by
Lenin and Trotsky and their collabora-
tors, but this is a new one. Considering
the struggle which the Mensheviks and
the Socialist Revolutionaries carried on,
and are still carrying on, against the Bol-
shevik autocracy, this explanation seems
far-fetched, even for the Revolutionary
democracy of the New Republic.
The New Republic is surprised that,
because the Soviet Government signed
the peace of Brest-Litovsk, the Allies
subsequently treated Soviet Russia as
the military associate of Germany. Ap-
parently, the fact that from this time
von Mirbach played a predominant part
in the Bolshevik policies, and that Ger-
man officers organized and led the Red
forces, is overlooked as of no importance.
Cunningly devised is the following dis-
tortion of seeming fact: "They contin-
ued to propagate the myth that the vast
mass of the Russian people were op-
posed to peace, and would welcome the
intervention of a rescuing Japanese or
American army." Of course, the vast
mass of the Russian people were not op-
posed to peace, but on the other hand
the abortive risings against the Bol-
shevik tyranny, and the piteous calls for
help, showed clearly enough how welcome
active assistance would have been in their
struggle against their oppressors. When
that help did not come, or came only in
driblets, the people lost faith in the
promises of their rescuers. The terrible
fate of Yaroslavl, whose inhabitants,
having trusted in promises, rose en
masse when they heard of the landing
at Archangel, was enough to blast the
hopes which the Russian people placed in
their allies.
Here is another gem of sinuous mis-
statement : "The Omsk Government was
established under protection of the Czecho-
slovaks and the Allied army, and in the
south of Russia Denikin organized with a
larger measure of native Russian assist-
ance another center of anti-Bolshevist
military and political power." The Omsk
Government under Admiral Kolchak was
established, not under the protection of
the Czecho-Slovaks, but as a means of
saving Siberia from the Bolsheviks at
the very moment when the Czecho-Slo-
vaks, learning of the armistice, decided
to withdraw. This is merely another of
the persistent lies concerning the Czecho-
slovaks which have from time to time
received publicity. As a r.:atter of fact,
the revolution which placed Kolchak in
power took place on November 18, 1918,
and from the 1st of December, no Cze-
cho-Slovaks took part in the fighting
against the Bolsheviks. As for Denikin,
his organization of the Volunteer Army
in South Russia took place entirely with-
out Allied aid, and assistance was given
him only after he had won through to
the Black Sea subsequent to the armis-
tice. In neither case was there the
slightest basis for the assertion made by
the New Republic that these movements
implied the "dictatorship of their former
rulers." But if the New Republic really
believed this, how could it view with ap-
proval the proposal that would have per-
mitted these anti-Bolshevik factions to
keep control of "practically the whole of
Siberia and a large part of Southern
Russia?" The fact is that no proposal
of any kind could be so hateful to the
Russian people as one that would mean
the dismemberment of Russia in this
way. The slanders against Kolchak and
Denikin would seem to have been suffl-
ciently exposed already to prevent, at
this late date, such a statement as that
"they were unable with the weapons of
terrorism and starvation to crush out the
invincible refusal of the Russian people
to take back their former rulers at the
bidding of foreign statesmen." The real
tragedy of all this mass of falsehood and
twaddle is that self-styled "liberals"
should have exerted their great efforts,
in the name of self-determination, in be-
half of a system that is crushing all
democracy out of the Russian people and
which they are helpless to resist, and that
these "liberals" are thereby promoting re-
action in its most tyrannical form.
Jerome Landfield
Correspondence
Government by Subterfuge
To the Editors of The Review:
Occasionally a Federal judge speaks the
truth in such direct and forcible lan-
guage that it ought to reach others than
these who read the reports. An instance
in point is the opinion of Judge George
M. Bourquin (United States District
Judge, District of Montana) in United
States v. Parsons, 261 Fed. 223, a de-
cision rendered on October 16, 1919.
Referring to the "Harrison Drug Act"
(38 Stat., 785) he said:
The act is ostensibly a revenue measure,
and within limits the courts must recognize
it as such. At the same time any one with
sense enough to be at large without a keeper
knows the revenue feature, which possibly
returns cents for dollars spent in administra-
tion, is but a fiction and device to enable Con-
gress, otherwise disabled, to suppress opium
traffic and use, to hinder and obstruct such
traffic and use so far as may be done incidental
to exercise of revenue power. It is one of
many like and regrettable devices to evade
constitutional limitations, to impose duties of
the States upon the United States, and to vest
the latter with non-delegated and reserved
police power of the former.
To the writer, the foregoing seems
sound and encouraging. Either the peo-
ple desire that the police power shall be
exercised by the Federal Government or
they do not; if they do, there should be
no difficulty in obtaining a Constitutional
amendment to that effect.
H. T. Newcomb
Neiv York, February 3
152]
THE RE VIE ^V
[Vol. 2, No. 40
Freedom of Opinion
To the Editors of The Review:
I am glad that you will not let the
New Republic have the last word on
Freedom of Opinion. But I regret that
the fashion in journals of opinion seems
to encourage length rather than con-
ciseness in discussing such a capital
matter. Yet on such a topic, a careful
Bummary worthy of good old-fashioned
italics might be worth more, possibly,
than even your brilliant lengthiness. I
modestly propose this :
Expression of opinion in America is
and should be free in criticism and sug-
gestion up to the point of remarks
(which includes propaganda) subver-
sive of our national idea of government
and our constituted form of government.
Americans have always recognized
that our Government is an experiment.
We are dedicated to an idea, which is
hedged about with the majesty of the
law and the courts, and articulated by
the machinery of a truly representative
government. Opinions amounting to de-
structive criticism of evils grown up
within it, or to constructive fashioning
of it to meet new conditions, are wanted ;
they are a sign of health in the body
politic. Mr. Palmer, at one extreme, de-
vises poorly when he would legislate to
ostracize the critic of a law; without
criticism how can laws be bettered ? The
New Republic and the Nation at the
other extreme seem to divorce a man,
while expressing opinion, from any sense
of loyalty to the Government, or even to
its fundamental idea. They may be dedi-
cated solely to the truth, and very good
if they are, but being by the Govern-
ment protected physically, mentally, and
morally (I can hear them hoot at that)
they ought to see that loyalty, not to
every detail but to the fundamentals of
our Government must be preliminary to
expressing their free opinion. That is
all we ask of the citizen who earns his
living in business. A devoted follower
of their pages recently told me that
nothing in our form of government was
worth preserving. I do not blame either
journal for that opinion. But to my
mind that is treasonable utterance — am
I benighted to think so? And that is
just where, in any social organism, opin-
ion need not expect freedom to circulate
in print or get a license to hold meetings.
Merrill F. Clarke
New York City, January 9
More and Better Reading
To the Editors of The Review:
I have just been informed by a repre-
sentative of the Review of the publisher's
campaign to encourage, through their
"Mid-Winter Book Season," more and
better reading. May I express my
hearty approval?
Never has our country more needed to
remember the warning of the Chinese
sage that to read without thinking is
futile, but to think without reading is
dangerous. To encourage reading and
thinking is a task in which editors, pub-
lishers, and librarians may well work
together, and the American Library As-
sociation, at present engaged in a cam-
paign to promote the use of libraries
and to encourage thoughtful reading, is
delighted that you, too, are contributing
to the same end.
Carl H. Milam
Director American Library Association
New York, December 26, 1919
Germans in Disguise
To the Editors of The Review:
We see much in certain publications
in reference to the alleged growth of
"liberal sentiment" in this country. The
reelection of Victor Berger, after his
conviction for violation of our sedition
laws, is often spoken of as showing the
growth of "liberal" views. It does not
seem to be generally known that the dis-
trict that cast 24,000 votes for Berger is
largely German in its population, and
that rampant pro-Germanism was only
held in check there during the war by
the well-known determination of both
State and National authorities to sup-
press treason at all costs.
James Mann, who appears to be Ber-
ger's best friend in the House, also comes
from a district where the Germans are
very numerous. Nearly every member
of the House that voted to seat Berger
comes from a district where Germans,
still unreconciled to the participation of
this country in the war, are numerous.
I am fully aware that a large propor-
tion of the German population of the
United States was loyal during the war,
and many of them active in war work.
These proved themselves real Ameri-
cans, and to them is due our heartiest
approval for the manner in which they
stood by their adopted country. But, in
certain sections, there were and are large
numbers of Germans who have used
every means possible (without endanger-
ing their carcasses) to work against
American institutions, since the country
failed to respond to the German demand
for an embargo on arms and munitions
to the Allies. To this origin may be
traced their support of any and all sorts
of radical and socialistic movements, and
activities of other sorts.
Men who were known to have not the
smallest sympathy for socialistic ideas
until this country seemed likely to war
with Germany, have lately supported the
Socialist and Communist parties. It was
the same way with the growth of the
pacifist movement. The most active and
aggressive pacifists the writer came in
contact with during the war were men
who had no leaning toward such ideas
prior to the talk of America going into
the war. Not a few of them have quickly
forgotten their abhorrence of all war
within the last fifteen months, and would
willingly have this country go to war
with Japan or England over some tech-
nicality that could be handled much bet-
ter by diplomatic negotiations. Were
they pacifists, or unprincipled fakers?
Where do our so-called intellectual pub-
lications, which are now so violently con-
demning every effort to rid our country
of radical plotters and alleged workers
who never work, get their supporters?
One can now see them at news-
stands in certain North Chicago districts
where hardly a copy was displayed prior
to about three years ago. Wherever you
see them you may look for numerous
German patrons. I have been observing
this for more than a year. Many of the
buyers are among the wealthy classes
who have no sympathy with socialism or
radicalism, except as they may serve the
purpose of trouble-makers for the coun-
try of their adoption.
Edw. Gorman
Secretary St. Paul Typothetae
St. Paul, Minn., Jantuiry 31
Intangible Advantages
To the Editors of The Review:
Your "Defense of Property" in the
issue of January 3 is a fine statement
of truth, and an aid to clear thinking.
The intangible advantages of various
arrangements are often too little con-
sidered. I hope you will continue the
discussion of such, and carry it into
somewhat narrower fields, also. To cite
but one instance, you might discuss the
intangible advantages, if there be any,
of public or private ownership and opera-
tion of road services, including those of
pipes and wires. It seems certain that
continued competition is impracticable
there — in gas and telephones to say the
least. Maybe we should obtain a greater
aggregate of adventure, of responsibility,
of self-reliance, and of education by the
consequences of our own mistakes, by
conducting telephones and gas plants
through our Governments than by hav-
ing regulated corporations as scapegoats
for real or imaginary faults. Maybe the
election of governments to conduct these
services is the nearest available counter-
part, in the field of monopoly, of the
citizen's private choice in the field ol
competition — his choice of his own car-
penter, grocer, and shoe manufacturer
I am not arguing for immediate, or evei
ultimate, public ownership and opera
tion, I am only suggesting a question fo:
your able pen.
J. De L. Verplanck
Walbrook, Md., Janiuiry 23
I
February 14, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[158
How the Soviet Came to a Russian Village
ALTHOUGH the story of the origin
of the Soviet in Russia as a govern-
mental institution has been frequently-
set forth, there still remains considerable
confusion in America in regard to it. In
some quarters, especially in those which
have swallowed without question the
tales of Col. Raymond Robins and other
purveyors of misinformation, there still
persists the false idea that the Soviet
is a natural Russian political institution
that had its origin in the peasant com-
mune. Upon this baseless assumption
there has been built up the whole fiction
of the Soviet system as a democratic rep-
resentative form of government, for the
time being in possession of the Bolshe-
viki, a political party.
So many false conclusions with refer-
ence to the Russian problems have been
drawn from this erroneous assumption
that it is important to make clear, first,
that the Soviet, in the present use of
the term, originated in 1905 in the self-
appointed workingmen's committees that
ran the affairs of Petrograd and Mos-
cow during the short period of prole-
tariat control; secondly, that following
this example, in the Revolution of March,
1917, Soviets were again instituted by
the workingmen and similarly by the sol-
diers, but that these were not regarded
at that time as governing bodies but as
councils to protect the interests of their
clients before the Provisional Govern-
ment; and thirdly, that the Soviets were
later extended to the peasants, who had
never before known of such an institu-
tion.
Kerensky and his Government fostered
this extension of the Soviet system
among the peasants to a certain extent
as a means of "deepening the Revolution,"
that is, with the idea of preventing coun-
ter-revolution, and also for the purpose
of creating through the peasants a coun-
terpoise to the workingmen's and sol-
diers' Soviets. But the manner in which
the Bolsheviks completed this work of
bringing the Soviets to the peasant vil-
lages throws still greater light upon the
character of this institution and its rela-
tion to Russian life. A view of this is
sufficient to show how unjustifiable is
the assumption that the Soviet is a nat-
ural democratic peasant institution, the
assumption from which so many false
conclusions have been drawn. An eye-
witness account of a typical example of
the institution of a Soviet in a Russian
village will give a clearer picture of
conditions in Russia than volumes of
discussion based upon the so-called Soviet
Constitution and the tales of Bolshevist
apologists. The following is such an au-
thentic description with reference to a
village in the Province of Perm :
The village of Karagai is situated in the
Okliansk district of the Province of Perm.
Like most North Russian villages, Karagai
consists of a few very wide streets, unpaved,
and never cleaned, frightfully muddy in wet
weather and horribly dusty in dry weather.
It consists of 140 such homesteads, besides a
few shops, a smithy, a carpenter's workshop,
a church, a school, and a little hospital that
served a tract of country nearly as big as
Wales.
In the middle of June, 1918, a company of
about 150 of the Workmen's and Peasants'
Red Army came to this village. The com-
pany was composed of Russians, Moldavians,
Austrians, and Chinamen ; in its ranks were
sailors and soldiers who, after attempting to
"fraternize" with the Germans, had sought
safety in flight ; prisoners-of-war who did not
wish to return to their native countries ; work-
ingmen who had found looting more to their
taste than working, and foreign adventurers
who had joined in hopes of getting something
for nothing. Every man was armed with
rifle, bayonet, revolver, and bombs ; some car-
ried swords in addition, and the company
possessed a machine-gun.
This motley company streamed into the vil-
lage in requisitioned country carts or mounted
upon requisitioned peasants' horses, and bil-
leted themselves upon the inhabitants.
They then sent out into all the neighboring
hamlets a verbal notice to all adult males to
attend a mass-meeting at Karagai on the fol-
lowing day, after which they ate and drank —
especially the latter — most liberally at the ex-
pense of the villagers; and, having posted
sentries, went to sleep.
Early the next morning they set up their
machine-gun on a bit of rising ground that
dominated the village green, and posted them-
selves round the green, in the middle of which
was a modest little monument commemorating
the liberation of the serfs by the Emperor
Alexander II. This they demolished. When
the men of the village and surrounding hamlets
had assembled to the number of 1,000 or per-
haps 1,500, the meeting was opened. The three
Commissars, who were the leaders of this com-
pany of the Workmen's and Peasants' Red
Army, made speeches. These were followed by
others of the company, each of whom repeated
what his predecessor had said, though he used
the high-sounding and stereotyped phrases in
a different order, or laid more emphasis than
another had done upon some particular catch-
word. If any of the peasants attempted to
speak, he was promptly cautioned to hold his
tongue, to listen and learn.
As soon as these speeches were ended, vot-
ing was ordered. Every free citizen of the
"Russian Federated Soviet Republic" was to
record his vote, whether he wished to or not.
A line of soldiers was formed across the vil-
lage green. The peasants were told that to
go to this side of the line was to vote for Bol-
shevism, while to go to that side of it was to
vote against Bolshevism.
Two peasants promptly moved to that side
of the line, declaring they would not vote for
those who denied them the right of expressing
their opinions.
At this a halt was called, and these two men
were at once arrested as enemies of the People
and shot. Their yet quivering bodies were
tumbled into a hastily-dug shallow hole, and
then "voting" was resumed, with the result
that the whole adult male population of the
district recorded a unanimous vote for the
Bolshevists, as was some time later duly
made known in Bolshevist newspapers, both
in the capital of that province and in Petro-
grad.
Bolshevist rule and authority having been
established at Karagai in such tragic manner,
the now thoroughly cowed peasants were or-
dered to elect certain committees for the
proper control of all local affairs. The elec-
tions took place under the supervision of the
Provincial Committee, as the three Commis-
sars called themselves, and under the rifles of
the rabble that supported it. There was no
pretense of anything like free expression of
opinion nor of ballot.
In moody silence the peasants cast their
votes for whoever seemed to find most favor
in the eyes of the gang of armed ruffians who
stood around them on the village green, where
the two luckless anti-Bolshevists had been so
summarily shot and buried.
If the Bolshevists disapproved of a candi-
date they simply disallowed his candidature.
If any elected man failed to meet with their
approbation they cancelled his return and or-
dered a new "election." In this way was
secured a return of the most disreputable and
unprincipled men of the neighborhood.
The committees thus elected were many in
number and various in function. There was
the Committee of War, the Committee of
Public Education, the Committee of Sanita-
tion and Public Health, the Committee of the
Poor, the Committee of Land, the Committee
of Forests and Natural Resources, and many
others. Their name was legion, so to speak,
and wherever one turned or whatever one
wished to do one was confronted by some
committee.
Supreme power was vested in the Executive
Committee, or "Ispolkom," whose business it
was to examine the decisions of all other com-
mittees and to allow or disallow their meas-
ures. The "Ispolkom" was vested with the
power of life and death over all persons re-
siding within, or traveling through, its dis-
trict. Its powers were boundless within its
district, and, as the result showed, were most
arbitrarily wielded. Its members always went
about armed.
If at any time a committeeman became ob-
noxious to the "Ispolkom," he was at once
removed and another man was appointed in
his place. Thus in the course of a few weeks
all these committees became highly paid tools
in the hands of the "Ispolkom." The money
for the salaries was raised by "contributions."
Committeemen, who were perfectly illit-
erate, received 250 and 300 rubles a month.
The village postmaster, who had formerly
been an elementary school teacher, became
president and secretary of several committees
and drew no less than 3,000 rubles per month.
The president of the Committee of Public
■ Education was utterly illiterate, unacquainted
even with the letters of the alphabet Com-
mitteemen received, in addition to salary, a
monthly allowance for traveling expenses.
This allowance they pocketed, with the knowl-
edge and approval of the "Ispolkom," and
compelled those of their fellow-villagers who
were not members of the committee to drive
them about the country free of charge.
As soon as all these committees had been
elected and their powers and duties explained
to them a local Soviet, consisting of represent-
atives of all the committees, was formed.
From this it will be readily seen why
the mass of the Russian peasants hate
and detest Bolshevik rule, while at the
same time they are unable to throw it ofif.
Hundreds of insurrections have taken
place all over Russia, only to end in ruth-
less repression and fearful torture and
bloodshed. It is under this tyranny that
the Russian people are still crouching
and it is no wonder that there has re-
sulted an animosity between the country
districts and cities.
154]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 40
The Unreconstructed
Professor
A GREAT deal has been said and writ-
ten of late on the professor, not a
little of it professor-contributed. We
read of his meagre salary in these days
of luxurious spenders, of labor barons,
and factory ritters. We read of ice-
wagon drivers in Chicago who purchase
sables and diamonds, and contrast with
them the sad fate of those whose sole
traflftc is in learning. So far has this
plea for financial justice to the professor
gone that many who once gloried in the
robe of dignity of the learned profession
which sent out no monthly statements
now feel that it is no more than a shred
upon which the veriest of muckraking
journalists may wipe their pens.
And not a little, too, has been said and
written concerning the duty of the pro-
fessor in the present crisis to inculcate
in his classes the proper tenets of "Amer-
icanism," whatever that term may de-
note; to promote "patriotism," though it
would be difficult to find fifty senators
who could give fewer than fifty answers
as to the demands patriotism now makes
upon us; and to combat the threatened
orgies of militant Soviets, though, here
again, just what form this danger is
now assuming is not a little matter of
doubt — at least to some college profes-
sors.
Indeed and of a truth the college pro-
fessor, like the dog, has his day; and it
has come to him in the press, in the
forum, and even on the street. He is
pitied for his unpretentious income, he
is exhorted to play the man right val-
iantly, for upon him, he is assured, rests
the future of the country. But all this
unaccustomed publicity has made him
nervous and self-conscious; for the first
time in his life he is playing in the spot-
light, and like an unschooled girl he
shrinks from the glare.
There is something paradoxical in the
position of the average college professor.
The new position in which he is finding
himself causes not a little searching of
soul. He envies his colleague in the
technical and professional schools, whose
work is so clearly cut out for him that
a wayfaring man, though a fool, can not
err therein. The efficiency of a profes-
sor of surgery may be gauged to a nicety
by even a layman by the skill with which
his students amputate a limb or perform
a delicate laparotomy; the professor of
engineering can be judged at a glance
by the bridges or aqueducts of his
classes; even a professor of law may be
seen winning immortality for himself by
the successful pleading of his horde of
young lawyers. "By their fruits shall
ye know them," for here the sequence of
seed and fruit is close and unmistakable.
But how shall we judge the efficiency of
a professor of Ancient Languages or of
History? People are demanding that the
graduates of our colleges be trained for
their less easily gauged efficiency as citi-
zens; and the professor of Latin and the
public, too, are asking. What connection is
there between a mastery of the classics
and "one hundred per cent. American-
ism," or how can a careful study of
Mediaeval History so bulwark the coun-
try that in these days of peace and dur-
ing the next war the eyes of the Govern-
ment will not need the club of the act
restraining malcontents and Red Radi-
cals or the spectacles of an Espionage
Act ? There is a pertinency in these ques-
tions; but this very pertinency does not
make the college professor any the more
confident or his state of mind any less
paradoxical.
Nor is his confidence in himself or
his profession restored by the blare of
drums and trumpets now accompanying
the "drives" the country over to raise
millions of dollars to cushion the hard
academic chairs. The fact that the public
is gladly contributing to the cause is to
him an argument, either that people still
blindly trust in the efficacy of an aca-
demic training to citizenship, or that
they have so acquired the "drive" habit
that they would pour out their money for
any cause from simplified spelling to
starched linen for the South Sea Island-
ers. While on general principles he be-
lieves that his salary should enable him
to buy an automobile, like his brick-lay-
ing or coal-mining neighbor, he yet won-
ders if, like his neighbor, he has an ade-
quate and tangible quid pro quo to offer
in exchange.
Nor is he helped in the hours of his
agonized musings by the attitude of his
classes toward him or toward his work.
It might have been expected, after
the nervous tension of the war and the
cry of increasing efficiency, that young
collegians would take up the cry and
apply their hearts with more energy to
acquiring wisdom. Even the professor
of Greek would not have been disap-
pointed if his class had at least discov-
ered a positive content in Xenophon or
Plato and have agonized a little over the
Greek aorist. But as a whole. the col-
legian still remains much as he was
before war was declared. There is the
same whole-souled abandon to athletics
and the social amenities of "college life,"
and a tacit understanding, in which the
professor has almost come to participate,
that studies, at least of an untechnical
kind, are more or less an irrelevant rea-
son for bringing so many congenial
young souls together. They take up
some time, are a source of occasional an-
noyances, to be sure, but parents and
public must be propitiated by a small
sacrifice on the altar of learning.
For the young of our colleges are only
to the slightest degree moved by the
forces that are aroused to-day. It is a
curious phenomenon that in democratic
America the young men and young
women of our colleges and universities
should be the last to feel the potency of
the influences that so charge our social
and political atmosphere. Though in
Europe the ideas that are threatening a
general revolution, that have accom-
plished more than one revolution, origi-
nated with the youth of the universities ;
here it is the very youth of the univer-
sities who are practically immune to the
contagion. They at least accept life as
it was, or as it is, confident and un-
thinking, optimists without a philosoph-
ical creed. How can a college professor
take his work seriously when even his
classes can not regard his work except
as an irrelevant eddy on life's swiftly
moving stream?
It might seem to serve to restore the
slipping confidence of college professors,
to quote for them Milton's famous son-
net, "They also serve who only stand and
wait." But it is a little paradoxical to
be told to wait, and in the same breath
to have added that the nation looks to
these same professors for a new race
of citizens "one hundred per cent. Amer-
ican."
******
The old ideals of learning perhaps
were never more succinctly worded than
by Ben Jonson — "learning, well used,
can instruct to good life, inform man-
ners, and no less persuade and lead men."
And this he wrote in times not so dif-
ferent from our own, a day of recon-
struction, when political and religious i
radicalism and anarchy were threaten-
ing the foundations of established so-
ciety. Then, as now, there was alternate
trust in and revolt from the established
universities; witness Milton's effort to
start a practical school wherein every-
thing was to be taught from Syriac to
horsemanship and farming, in order that
all graduates might have "an universal
insight into things." It is curious that
then, as now, the chief emphasis was laid(
upon a study of political institutions, "to
know the beginning, end, and reasons of
political societies, that they may not, in
a dangerous fit of the commonwealth, bei
such poor, shaken, uncertain reeds, of-
such a tottering conscience as many of
our great councillors have lately shown
themselves, but steadfast pillars of the
state." This was not written of ouri
Senate after the political fiascos of 1919,
but in 1644; and it is in the same pam-
phlet that Milton describes the usual cur-
riculum for students in even universities
as an "asinine feast of sow-thistles and
brambles which is commonly set befon'
them as all the food and entertainment o1
their tenderest and most docile age."
The truth is that the state of mind o:
the average college professor to-day ha;
I
February 14, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[155
abundant analogies in the history of
every social and political crisis. The
moment men's minds are brought sharply
against serious problems of reconstruc-
tion, with the threat of possible revolu-
tion in the offing, they turn at once to
education as the sovereign remedy or in-
oculation against disaster. And it is
because he feels the insistent demand of
the many that such liberal education as
is saved to-day be turned to the practical
uses of citizenship and "Americaniza-
tion," that the professor's heart is heavy
with misgiving; for his realm is all
knowledge, and his heart recoils at the
difficulty, nay, the impossibility of turn-
ing the imparting of knowledge, the in-
struction to good life, and the enforcing
of manners, into a propaganda.
Not that the college professor, in his
desire to distinguish between the service
of God and the service of Mammon, would
classify the attempt to twist courses in
History or Political Science into courses
in Patriotism as a species of devil wor-
ship— far from it; but any such attempt
at best would perform only a left-hand
service to truth. Scientific accuracy,
truth, right, and logical judgments based
upon correctly drawn inferences, these
are the goals of all real scholarship. If
in the study of history and political in-
stitutions there comes to the student a
pride in the stability, the justice, the
adaptability of the American Constitution
and the American people, it is well and
good, and a certain rational basis for a
scholarly patriotism has been soundly
laid. And it is undoubtedly true that
many instructors have, by thoroughly sci-
entific approaches, drawn classes to ap-
preciate to the utmost the virtues and
responsibilities of American citizenship.
But the results have been achieved as a
by-product. One is not inspired to pa-
triotism merely by studying constitu-
tional law or the economics of American
industry, though both are essential to a
scholarly appreciation of the duties of
American citizenship. The truth is that
patriotism, Americanization, citizenship,
are delicate terms with a thousand- of
emotional connotations. Though potent,
they are as undefinable as the laws of
filial affection and filial dutif ulness. And
it is precisely because into the rational
process of imparting knowledge and
grounding judgment there have been
thrust these emotional and poetic aims
that the average professor stands before
his task amazed and mightily perplexed.
The easiest and, perhaps, after all, the
most logical way out of the difficulty is
to "saw wood," to keep the old and tra-
ditional ideals of a liberal culture well to
the front. For even the Greek aorist,
though now sadly neglected, has its use
in unlocking the human nature in Sopho-
cles and Plato; and this, rightly handled,
will throw floods of light upon our prob-
lems of political and social unrest to-day.
It will be folly in these treacherous times
to forget that the study of the past is
significant only as a light for the study
of the present — to this extent all liberal
culture in the humanities is essentially of
the utmost practical value. And if the
college professor, through his liberal
studies, can see and understand the pres-
ent, the problem of reconstruction in
education ought once for all to be solved ;
or perhaps, better, there would be no
problem of reconstruction in education to
solve. Perhaps in this last sentence lies
the hint for the solution of all the col-
lege professors' perplexities. Perhaps
by this hint we may come to that educa-
tion which is "complete and generous,"
and will "fit a man to perform justly,
skillfully, and magnanimously all the of-
fices, both private and public, of peace
and war." We have been tested success-
fully in war — the harder test is now
upon us.
Philo M. Buck, Jr.
Book Reviews
A Carthaginian Peace
?
The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
By J. M. Keynes. New York : Harcourt,
Brace and Howe.
NO book since the armistice has pro-
duced an effect comparable to that
which has resulted from the publication
of Mr. Keynes's volume. Many, and
among them persons high in authority
in the political and economic world, re-
gard it as dealing a staggering blow to
the Treaty of Versailles, and confidently
predict that the author's searching analy-
sis and clear-cut deductions will force a
thorough and basic revision of that all-
important document.
The experience and position of Mr.
Keynes give weight to his analysis and
deductions. He is a comparatively young
man, only thirty-seven years of age. He
is a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge,
and a C. B. For the past fourteen years
he has been connected with the British
civil service, first in the India Office and
later in the Treasury. During the war
he was in charge of the British finan-
cial relations with the Allied Pow-
ers, and in this connection accompanied
Lord Reading to Washington in 1917 as
financial adviser. At the Peace Confer-
ence, he was the chief representative of
the British Treasury and a member of
the Supreme Economic Council. While
his name has not hitherto been well
known to the general public, he is not a
stranger to the leading financiers, nor
to those who follow current writings on
economic subjects.
In estimating the value of the present
sensational arraignment of the work of
the Peace Council, it must be borne in
mind that Mr. Keynes is a left-wing Lib-
eral, and by nature has a little of that
slant of mind which we are accustomed
in America to associate with the theo-
retical humanitarianism and interna-
tionalism of the New Republic school. It
is not to be inferred that this influences
the technical accuracy of his expert work
in the field of economics. Here he has
his feet firmly on the ground, even
though the conclusions he draws from
the figures that he presents may be
questionable. On the other hand, when
he deals with political and social prob-
lems, he is less certain of his ground
and displays an attitude of mind indica-
tive of the slant above referred to.
By way of introduction he makes a
rapid survey of the general economic sit-
uation of Europe before the war, and
lays especial emphasis upon the delicate
balancing of the economic interdepen-
dence upon which the existence of Eu-
rope's millions depended. In most of
this he travels well-beaten paths, for few
people have failed to realize the signifi-
cance of the industrial development that
changed whole peoples from self-con-
tained units, able to feed themselves
from their own agricultural production,
into cogs in a complicated machine that
absorbed imported raw materials and in
turn distributed manufactured articles
at a margin that provided foodstuffs
from abroad. To this he adds some in-
teresting comments as to the relation of
the psychology of society to the accumu-
lation of immense amounts of fixed
capital, that capital which played a pre-
dominant part in the organization and
operation of the economic machine itself.
He is jiot alone in calling attention to the
fact that it was the inequality of the
distribution of wealth and the tendency
of the rich to save the acquisitions of
their new wealth, instead of spending
them on their own enjoyments, that
made possible the building up of the
great accumulations of capital which dis-
tinguish our present age. It is his
conclusion, however, that the war has
disclosed to all the possibility of con-
sumption and to many the vanity of ab-
stinence. From this he deduces fur-
ther the inevitability of revolutionary
changes in the capitalistic system and
that the war settlement must take these
into account if civilization is to preserve
its gains. From this standpoint he finds
thr.t the Treaty of Versailles is not only
immoral, in tliat it violated the condi-
tions upon which the armistice was en-
tered into, but destructive, in that its
execution would preclude the restoration
of healthy economic life.
Mr. Keynes's account of the interplay
of ideas and personalities in the Peace
Conference is full of interest, and, on
the whole it only tends to confirm judg-
ments already formed on this side of the
Atlantic. He pictures M. Clemenceau aa
the disillusioned and even cynical realist
156]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 40
who devoted all the force of his strong
personality to safeguarding the future of
France by the crippling of her peren-
nial adversary. Bismarckian in his esti-
mate of men and national interests, he
had no faith in the possibility of the
moral reformation of the Germans or in
a new and altruistic world order. Even
on this basis, however, his vision was
limited by his ignorance of European
affairs outside his own country. A simi-
lar ignorance handicapped Lloyd George,
who furthermore placed the exigencies of
domestic politics ahead of considerations
of international welfare. Indeed, the
author attributes what he terms the un-
justifiable reparation exactions, as well
as the demands for the punishment of
those responsible for atrocities, to the
necessity of putting more "ginger" into
Lloyd George's Parliamentary campaign
in December, 1918. Unwarranted prom-
ises had to be made to stimulate support
for the Coalition party.
The author's estimate of President
Wilson and his part in the Peace Confer-
ence is an illuminating feature of the
book. To begin with, he lays emphasis
upon the prestige of moral leadership
with which the President came to Eu-
rope, a leadership, however, concerning
which Mr. Keynes was somewhat disil-
lusioned after coming into personal con-
tact with Mr. Wilson. He sized up the
President as a man who was not a hero
or a prophet, not even a philosopher, but
generously intentioned, with many of the
weaknesses of human beings, and lacking
that dominating intellectual equipment
which would have been necessary to cope
with the subtle and strong personalities
that he had to face in the Council. He
analyzed him at first glance as a man
whose temperament was not that of the
student or the scholar and who had not
much even of that culture of the world
which marked Clemenceau and Balfour.
He found the President insensitive to his
surroundings even in the external
sense; incapable of judging character,
motive, and subconscious impulse in the
men with whom he was dealing. The
clue to his character Mr. Keynes discov-
ered in a temperament and habit of
thought which were theological rather
than intellectual, and which were fur-
ther handicapped by a surprising lack of
information in regard to European con-
ditions, and in a mind that was slow and
unadaptable. His adversaries, on the
other hand, realized that their chief prob-
lem was to convince the President that
all the settlements they desired, no mat-
ter how selfish and brutal, were in accord
with the President's sentimental and
moral concepts as expressed in his Four-
teen Points and his subsequent addresses.
How well they succeeded in this was
shown by the difficulty which they found
in changing the President on some of
the points on which they had previously
convinced him. As Mr. Keynes ex-
presses it :
To his horror, Mr. Lloyd George, desiring
at the last moment all the moderation he
dared, discovered that he could not in five
days persuade the President in error in what
it had taken five months to prove to him to
be just and right. After all, it was harder to
de-bamboozle this old Presbyterian than it had
been to bamboozle him ; for the former in-
volved his belief in and respect for himself.
Thus, in the last act the President stood for
stubbornness and a refusal of conciliations.
The author feels that the Treaty of
Versailles in its exactions is dishonor-
able in that it fails to conform with the
conditions undertaken with Germany at
the signing of the Armistice, namely,
that it should be based upon the Four-
teen Points and the subsequent ad-
dresses of the President. For this point
of view Mr. Keynes has much to justify
him, though it should also be pointed out
that he fails to take account of the
vagueness and the manifest inapplica-
bility of the code embodied in Mr. Wil-
son's generalizations. After all, no states-
man versed in the practical affairs
concerned in a general European settle-
ment could take these sweeping enounce-
ments of purpose as a definitive practical
formula.
The heaviest artillery of the book
bears on the subject of reparations. This
is discussed in almost every possible as-
pect, and the presentation is uudeniably
powerful. Upon one point, which in-
volves no intricacy, the author's empha-
sis, however great, is no greater than the
case demands. He brings out - with
startling impressiveness what every man
of sense must recognize, even without
the aid of the specific arguments he mar-
shals, the absolute necessity of giving
Germany a genuine chance to restore her
producing power and her commercial
activity. It is preposterous to ask her
to pay heavy indemnities, in addition to
shouldering the inevitably heavy burden
of recreating normal conditions, and at
the same time cut her off from the requi-
site access to raw materials and to the
opportunities of international trade. On
this point at least, all reasonable men
should be in agreement.
It is on the subject of the amount of
the reparations that there is grave rea-
son to doubt the soundness of Mr.
Keynes's view. The subject naturally
raises three questions. The first of these
is, What is the total amount of Ger-
many's obligation under the terms of
the Treaty, (a) as actually drawn, (6) as
it should have been drawn according
to the armistice agreement? In Mr.
Keynes's judgment the amount assessed
against Germany in the actual Treaty will
prove to be about 40 billions of dollars,
while the extreme limit of what a proper
interpretation of the armistice agree-
ment would have allowed is 15 billions,
10 billions being his own estimate for the
latter sum. The basis of his computation
is, of course, too complex to enter into
here; and the point is not of the first
importance for practical purposes. The
second question is whether a definite
sum, and this a sum not greater than
what Germany might reasonably be ex-
pected to pay, should not have been fixed
in the Treaty as the limit of her obligation.
On this point we are emphatically in
agreement with Mr. Keynes's opinion.
It is, however, to the third question that
Mr. Keynes devotes the most elaborate
and searching inquiry — the question how
much Germany will find herself able to
pay; and it is upon this question that,
in spite of his impressive marshaling of
facts and figures, we see very strong
reason to doubt the correctness of his
conclusion.
To justify this doubt it is not neces-
sary to pick flaws in Mr. Keynes's figures
or statements of fact, although many
detailed criticisms might be advanced.
The objection we have chiefly in mind
is a very simple one. However great the
force of the particular items adduced by
Mr. Keynes — the apparent limitations of
Germany's producing power, the gravity
of the new difficulties under which she
labors, the diminution of her man-power
through the casualties of the war, the
obstacles which her rivals are likely to
put in the way of the extension of her
trade, etc. — however impressive these
items are, the sharpest test of his argu-
ment relates to what he says about the
limits of Germany's "surplus produc-
tivity"; which he estimates on the basis
of what it was before the war,
and brings down to the small sum of
$500,000,000 by various considerations
into whose validity we need not inquire.
In regard to those other items, shrewd
men will recognize that there are all sorts
of unknown possibilities of development
in a great number of particular indus-
tries which may upset the figures; but
most men feel that there is a kind of
fatal finality about "surplus productiv-
ity." But by "surplus productivity" is
meant the annual excess of production
over consumption; and this can be in-
creased by reduction in the amount con-
sumed as well as by increase in the
amount produced. Mr. Keynes does not
overlook this point altogether; but he
gives it merely a sidelong glance, and the
few words he devotes to it involve a fun-
damental error. He assumes that any
encroachment beyond the line of "surplus
productivity" would necessarily mean a
"lowering of the standard of life and
comfort." But in normal times this is
by no means the case. The surplus pro-
ductivity of Germany before the war,
estimated at upwards of two billions of
dollars, was a surplus of production over
an amount of consumption which in-
cluded a vast quantity of luxuries; and
the surplus could have been increased
February 14, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[157
very much by diminishing the consump-
tion of those luxuries. The same thing
will presumably be true in Germany
again, not many years hence. And under
present-day practice in taxation, hun-
dreds of millions of dollars might an-
nually be taken for the payment of in-
demnities with no other effect than the
cutting down of expenditure on luxu-
ries, and, therefore, with no appreciable
lowering of the standard of living for the
masses. In fact, the "surplus productiv-
ity" argument, when examined, has verj'
little force. Accordingly, while Mr.
Keynes is unquestionably right in saying
that the 30 or 40 billion dollars which
constitutes the total of Germany's obli-
gations contemplated in the treaty is be-
yond her ability to pay, we do not find
that he has made out a case as to her
inability to meet the requirements of
interest and sinking fund on the 15 bil-
lion dollars which is all that is definitely
imposed upon her.
Before leaving this part of the book,
we can not forbear to draw attention to
a point which seems to us to have an
important bearing upon the trustworthi-
ness of Mr. Keynes as a guide in these
high matters. The settlement which he
thinks ought to have been made, and
which he formally proposes as a substi-
tute for the actual one is as follows
(p. 260) :
(1) The amount of the payment to be
made by Germany in respect of reparation
and the cost of the armies of occupation
might be fixed at $10,000,000,000.
(2) The surrender of merchant ships and
submarine cables under the Treaty, of war
material under the armistice, of State property
in ceded territory, of claims against such ter-
ritory in respect of public debt, and of Ger-
many's claims against her former Allies should
be reckoned as worth the lump sum of $2,500,-
000,000 without any attempt being made to
evaluate them item by item.
(3) The balance of $7,500,000,000 should not
carry interest pending its payment, and should
be paid by Germany in thirty annual instal-
ments of $250,000,000, beginning in 1923.
We have no quarrel with Mr. Keynes
for thinking — whether he be right or
wrong — that this would, for one reason
or another, be a wise settlement. But we
do not see how it is possible for any man
of training, not to speak of an expert
economist such as he is, to represent
$2,500,000,000 in ships, etc., plus thirty
annual payments of $250,000,000 each,
as constituting a total of $10,000,000,000.
This is not the first place where he men-
tions this total. At page 135, for ex-
ample, he says that "it would have been
a wise and just act to have asked
the German Government at the peace
negotiations to agree to a sum of
$10,000,000,000 in final settlement with-
out further examination of particulars."
Thirty annual payments of $250,000,000
have a present value, not of $7,500,000,000,
but of $3,850,000,000 (interest being
reckoned at five per cent.) . If it is legit-
imate to spread the total over thirty years,
it is legitimate to spread it over a hun-
dred ; but the present value of those hun-
dred payments would be only a shade more
than $1,500,000,000. Of course no one
knows this better than Mr. Keynes; and
only an extreme bias in favor of the
result he desired could possibly have led
him to make a statement which, while
misleading no competent person, was cal-
culated to make a superficial impression
that the figure he was proposing ran
high into the billions.
When Mr. Keynes concludes his ar-
raignment of -the injustice and impracti-
cability of the Treaty in its reparation
exactions, and his warning as to the
menace which it presents for the future
of European civilization, he turns in a
final chapter to the subject of remedies.
His suggestions are four: The revision
of the Treaty; the cancellation of inter-
Ally indebtedness; an international loan
and the reform of the currency; and the
opening of new relations with Russia.
There can be little doubt that changes
and revisions in the Treaty will be neces-
sary and that they will be made with
greater ease as war passions are mollified
by time, and the desperate economic situ-
ation in Central Europe insistently
demands treatment. The proposal to can-
cel inter-Allied war indebtedness, desir-
able as that might be, seems scarcely
within the bounds of practical politics
in this imperfect world of ours. One can
scarcely see members of Congress in
Washington proposing to abrogate ten
billions of war loans. A great interna-
tional loan will probably be found neces-
sary, and may be engineered if the lead-
ing financiers and statesmen of the world
can agree upon the conditions of making
it and of utilizing it. The manner in
which he proposes the fourth of his rem-
edies, the opening of Russia, shows again
the slant of mind earlier referred to.
That the resources in food and raw ma-
terials .which Russia can furnish to Eu-
rope are indispensable to European re-
construction is too well known to require
discussion. But such production and ex-
portation, in the presence of the existing
Bolshevik regime in Russia, are not
within the bounds of possibility. Forces
are working within Russia towards the
overthrow of this impossible system.
How soon they will achieve success we do
not know, but it is out of the question
to base any hopes upon the solution of
the diflSculties of Europe from the direc-
tion of Russia until this eventuates. That
Germans must have an opportunity to
participate in the development of Rus-
sian resources goes without saying. This
is a matter which is beyond the control
of the Allied Powers or the Reparation
Commission. In fact, the restoration of
normal conditions in Europe waits on the
solution of the Russian problem, and Mr.
Keynes's inclusion of this in his list of
remedies is based on fact, even though
his interpretation may be subject to
serious criticism.
Education in a Democracy
A Lover of the Chaik. By Sherlock Bronson
Gass. Boston : Marshall Jones Company.
MR. GASS turns over from many
angles the leading problems of edu-
cation in a democracy, and the wider
problem of democracy itself. The mat-
ter is generally cast in dialogues, with
the disillusioned scholar described in the
title as arbitrator. Despite a certain
crabbedness and inflexibility of literary
form, the book is a notable one. It is
thought through, and has flights of grave
eloquence. As a survey and estimate of
modern society, as offering a tenacious
criticism which is ever tinged with
human sympathy, the book is a true land-
mark. On the side of education the
author has no difficulty in showing that
the present lurch towards vocational
training in the public schools is really
not democratic at all. It assumes that a
child is to be fitted for a place in which
he shall stay — anr aristocratic assump-
tion. Democratic training would look
towards stimulating the individual to
wisdom and magnanimity, and thus to-
wards producing an ever more enlight-
ened and generous majority opinion.
Democracy can remain valid only on con-
dition of an unsparing criticism of its
ideas and processes, and withal on con-
dition that something of private conven-
ience and prosperity shall be sacrificed to
the right conduct of public interests.
Without willingness to forego obvious
utilities, democracy perishes, for "De-
mocracy is at bottom only a faith in the
nobility of the people."
At this point enter the economic hu-
manitarian. Mr. Gass hits him off in
his numerous species with telling humor.
Your humanitarian preaches not sacri-
fice, but material prosperity for the un-
fortunate. The common denominator is
social sympathy. Assure people that
they are abused, impute merit to them
for this cause, promise them what they
want — such is the nearest approach to
a programme. This sort of socialism ia
merely an inverted form of aristocracy.
There is no faith in the people, and no
method of training them politically.
Somebody is to know what is good for
them, and these somebodies, having no
common idea, all differ. Moreover, social
compunction is often really a tribute to
Mammon.
Every age has its own way of feeling the
raw edge of life, and this is our way. It's
a matter of reactions. When tyranny's the
thing the poets climb down and are shocked
and join the revolution. There's the Eight-
eenth Century in France. When it's hardened
tradition and sophistication, when convention,
title, and rank are in the saddle, it's neglected
158]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 40
individuality and merit that cry out : "There's
the Eighteenth Century in England." And now
wealth's the thing, and poverty fills us with
horror.
The book closes with an autobiograph-
ical fragment which is its best literary
feature and has the advantage of bring-
ing the various problems involved to a
moral focus. We recall nothing that re-
veals so fully the aimlessness of the mod-
em college, caught between vocation-
alism and fading ideals of humane edu-
cation, as the record of the author's col-
lege days. His life, ironically that of a
college professor, soon resolves itself
into the old but ever urgent dilemma
between the active and contemplative life.
He gives the former a fair trial in set-
tlement work, and nearly succumbs to its
warm appeal. Finally, he withdraws to
his chair, at last without irony. Human-
itarian activity has built up no stand-
ards and furnished no ideas. He will
henceforth devote himself to the great
intangibles upon which, after all, civil-
ization rests.
For in realizing that the spiritual structure,
the humanizing product of men's thought and
wisdom, kept its tenuous life so precariously,
and had its life at all only in men's minds, he
saw how supreme was the value of those men
who shut themselves — perforce, to-day, alas —
aloof from the world, mastered the records of
the past, wrote their new volumes, taught, or
perhaps merely preserved by their example
the tradition of the love of learning.
Amid a thousand hustling and profes-
sionally hopeful books on education and
politics this one, with its quiet and whim-
sical seriousness, is rather likely to be
overlooked. To overlook it, however, is a
serious reader's loss.
Between Worlds
Michael Forth. By Mary Johnston. New
York : Harper and Brothers.
OlTTLAND. By Mary Austin. New York : Boni
and Liveright.
WHAT is "the truth about" Miss
Johnston? Is she too deep for us,
or has she a showy opalescence of surface
that baffles the eye? Her work appears
to have three chief phases. There were
her early costume romances, "To Have
and To Hold," "Audrey," and so on
which launched her on the way to what
looked like a safe popularity. They had
the right blend of colorful phrase, hectic
emotion, and red-blooded action (perhaps
that label was still to appear) ; and their
none too unconscious "literary" touch of
style did them no harm with the audience
of that day, which had not yet learned
on the highest authority, as we have, to
despise style. Miss Johnston seemed to
have a sure thing, and perhaps some
critics, after the notorious habit of their
envious tribe, twitted her on the fact.
At all events, she soon withdrew from it
into regions where she was safe enough
from the approval of the vulgar populace.
Her second phase was the heavy-his-
torical, in which she entreated with in-
dubitable zeal and ingenuity, but quite
dubitable effect, certain dramatic world-
episodes. Why, when they were so
earnestly conceived and zealously ex-
ecuted, did not these books get hold of
us more? Why, especially, did the two
Civil War novels, "The Long Roll" and
"Cease Firing," fall so dull and flat upon
our consciousness? Here, surely, in
these responsible and dignified efforts to
interpret the unforgotten tragedy, the
writer's serious and somewhat portentous
manner might justify itself. A South-
erner, the kinswoman of a great South-
ern general, she might reveal the 'sixties
as they had not been revealed before.
But these books were heavy, turgid, over-
strained— dull. One wearied of their
insistent pressure upon the nerves and
the emotions. At best, one "waded"
through these carefully, even prayerfully
written records. There was no pleasure
in them to atone for their interminable
high flown yet melancholy drone.
The third phase set in some years
since, and is still "on": a mystical
rhapsodic phase which interprets the
world in terms of some circumambient
and fluid superworld which knows not
time or space or stability, but unites all
men and all things in a kind of golden
sempiternal flux. Life is continuous; the
soul of our grandam has more or less
its will of us. We live many lives in
the flesh; we toddle, in each new ex-
istence, down a predestined and vaguely
familiar path. If the hopeful reader
delve patiently enough in "Michael
Forth" he may unearth the not very
satisfactory love-story of two young
Southerners of our own day, a Michael
and his Miriam. They are ancient
mates, we gather, and seem a good deal
more excited in chasing back their in-
timations of a joint immortality than in
living and loving through the incidental
present. We savor a sort of psychical
joke when Miriam dies — it matters so
little to their real union. A joke on
death or, perhaps, on the misguided
myriads who are so dull as to be de-
pressed by death. Michael does admit
that her departure has done something
to him : "The T posited itself in a realm
somewhat nearer to the all. It tented
there." The old campground! . . .
"Miriam was there, profoundly, deeply,
truly there." Not only profoundly, but
deeply. ... I have no wish to mock at
this evidently earnest dreamer. But it
is fair and friendly to caution her that
there is an accent of psychic hysteria
about all of her recent work. Perhaps the
only safe way to be a Swami is to keep
one's tongue firmly in one's cheek, or
at least to be able to laugh at those who
overdo the ecstatic. If Miss Johnston
is capable of laughter, there is nothing
in her books to show it : the utmost one
might postulate would be a pale and
trembling smile, directed patiently yet
encouragingly towards the eternal
heavens. Page after page here, chapter
after chapter of supra-liminal prophecy,
dim and continuous : yes, a word of warn-
ing is in order that this way lies, if not
madness, at least a form of mental dis-
integration. One paragraph may be
quoted as a fair sample of the oracle's
utterance :
The sea ran round the world. The fluid air
was not here nor there, it flowed far and near.
... I sat upon the deck of the Zeus and hs-
tened to Ransome the traveler — but also I was
away from this — all around and all through.
. . . Flowing mind that was also Ransome's
mind, as it was Miriam's mind, and others and
others in incalculable numbers — the host of
mind. . . . Strong was the rapture ! Thought
there had great voice — God voice. It sank
away, but its shadow, its echo, lingering,
clothed itself in words from an ancient dia-
logue between man and man — between the
individual and the Generic Consciousness.
One may confess an unregenerate im-
pulse, when people talk or write like
this, to make the specification "the Vir-
ginian" did on a famous occasion:
"When you say that, smile!"
Mrs. Austin's "Outland" is a less pre-
tentious and more intelligible adventure
between worlds: a fantasy vividly con-
ceived and gracefully and consistently
developed. The idea seems familiar
enough, yet we are able to recall nothing
quite like it. Algernon Blackwood and
others have told tales of contact between
modern men and the living gods of na-
ture. Pan or some lesser one. Another
British novelist (John Buchan, was it?)
has recently told a striking story of the
survival of a mysterious race among the
far mountains of Scotland who are sup-
posed to be a remnant of the ancient
Picts, living in remote fastnesses of the
hills and now and then wreaking their
malice upon the luckless shepherds or
travelers through that ill-omened region.
This is in a way analogous to Mrs.
Austin's idea, since her "Outliers" also
represent the survival of a primitive
race; but in her narrative the element
of horror, usually dominant in this gen-
eral order of fiction, has almost no place.
And her primal folk are given no historic
name or habitat. The scene happens to
be California, in a stretch of wooded
country, not many hours' journey from
city or sea or fashionable resort. The
man is a literal-minded professor in a
nearby university; the woman a teacher
who has retired to her lodge in the
chosen (and accessible) wilderness in
order to be an author at leisure. The
man is the woman's staid and unimpas-
sioned suitor. He thinks they ought to
marry because they are good companions
and because they are not in love. She
can not marry him on those terms; nor
can she be happy without him. She can
not write, he will not woo, and matters
are at a deadlock when a dim trail into
February 14, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[159
the wood leads the woman among a
strange, though not unfriendly, folk. The
man blunders after her, and the rest of
the story, which shall not be butchered
in any sentence or two of abstract, deals
with their adventures among this people
of primitive and endearing character;
and with what they learn of themselves
through that experience. It is the kind
of story which can not be told with any
amount of merely mechanical ingenuity
and be anything less than offensive; Mrs.
Austin has felt and conveyed the charm
of a delicate and original fancy.
H. W. BOYNTON
The Art of the Greek
Ceramists
A Handbook of Greek Vase Painting. By
Mary A. B. Herford. Manchester Uni-
versity Press. New York: Longmans,
Green & Co.
MISS HERFORD tells us that in this
brief account of the Greek ceram-
ists and their art she aimed to produce
a book primarily for "non-specialist"
readers, and also one that might prove
useful to students as an introduction to
more technical works or to the study of
other branches of Greek art. A double
purpose of this kind is admittedly diffi-
cult to carry out. There is always dan-
ger of falling between two stools and
satisfying neither group of readers;
and this danger Miss Herford has not
entirely escaped. Her earlier chapters,
on the potter and his craft, the shapes
and the uses of Greek vases, will hardly
make a strong appeal to the general
reader, especially the decidedly technical
distinctions between the diiterent va-
rieties of amphorae, hydrise, and other
forms. The "non-specialist" is likely to
be somewhat upset when, after working
through this dry material, he finds in
later pages references to a number of
less common shapes which are not in-
cluded in the chapter on forms, and are
either not described at all or only inade-
quately described in the connections in
which they appear. One wonders, too,
whether the general reader will readily
catch the meaning of various undefined
technical terms, such as "Kleinmeister,"
"matt" colors, and "Phaleron ware,"
and whether it would not be well to ex-
plain, when the word first appears
(p. 14), that the "Karameikos" was the
potters' quarter in ancient Athens,
rather than on its second appearance
(p. 18). It is true that the definition
is given in the Index, but as the Index,
in general, is not treated as a glossary,
the reader can hardly be blamed if he
fails to find this means of answering his
question.
On the other hand, the student of art
and archaeology, trained, presumably, to
demand exactness in the use of terms,
may well be puzzled to find the aryballos
described as similar to "small pear-
shaped vases without foot" (p. 41), after
it has been described and pictured (pp.
30 and 31) as a siib-class of the leky-
thos, with a "low ring-foot." It may ir-
ritate him, after he has been told that
vases with the name Leagros should be
assigned to the decade beginning about
510 (p. 78), to read three pages later
that Leagros is "the hero of the last dec-
ade of the fifth century"; and if he is
familiar with his classics, the numerous
small errors in the accentuation of
Greek words may weaken his confidence
in the writer's accuracy in other mat-
ters.
In this respect, our assumed student
reader would do Miss Herford an in-
justice. In general, her statements of
fact are accurate, and show, especially
in the second, or historical, part of the
book, that she is conversant with recent
discussions and theories. She writes
pleasantly and vividly of the vase-paint-
er's craft, and enlivens her text with
frequent and appropriate references to
Greek literature and to ancient and mod-
ern works of art. Some of these allu-
sions, such as the comparison of the
work of Assteas to that of Blake, are
decidedly original and interesting. The
illustrations — made, for the most part,
from photographs — are well chosen and
excellently reproduced. The book, there-
fore, may confidently be expected to
make the Greek vases more generally ap-
preciated than they now are. But one
leaves it with the feeling that a better
popular account could be written, that
the writing of such livres de vtdgarisa-
tion is still among the things which
"they order better in France."
The Run of the Shelves
THE claims of James Whitcomb Riley
are recalled to mind by Mr. Marcus
Dickey's new book, the "Youth of James
Whitcomb Riley" (Bobbs-Merrill Com-
pany), in which four hundred pages of
record and rhapsody are lavished on the
poet's youth alone. The Review will not
re-try the case. At most, it may venture
a word on the principles that should
govern the award. In the homeliness of
Riley's dialect there is neither accusation
nor amnesty. It fixes nothing. So far
as the court of criticism goes, the dispen-
sation from standard English, which is
cheerfully granted in the Riley case, is
not a dispensation from literature; it is
not a dispensation from sense or art or
style. There are various ways of being
rough as of being smooth, and literature
in both forms recognizes only the best
ways. What posterity may wish in re-
gard to Riley, if it makes him the sub-
ject of a wish, is not that he had been
less of a ploughman and more of a cava-
lier, but that he had been more of a
ploughman and less of a loafer. Even
in his own furrow Riley is an uneven
workman, an inconstant toiler. In the
very same poem, between firmnesses he
is flabby; between tensions he is nerve-
less. He was doubtless zealous in his art
after a fashion, but it is easier to be
zealous than to be steady. It is easier
in a way to give one's life to art than
to give half-an-hour to the subjugation
of a rebellious line. Riley's half-hours
were too precious to be thrown away
upon niceties; he had six volumes to
write.
Men are sometimes vindicated by the
quality of their detractors; they are
sometimes arraigned by the nature of
their eulogists. Mr. Dickey's book is a
sincere, generous, loyal book; its good-
nature is so sunny, and so unlike in
its comprehensiveness, that it exhorts a
sort of unwilling return from the doubt-
ing or contentious reader. Nevertheless,
it is little short of a menace to Riley's
fame. It is prolix and vacuous; in na-
ture, by the by, the greatest amplitudes
are voids. It is gushing and florid;
around springs one expects to find blos-
toms. Mr. Dickey quotes very freely
from Riley. He quotes indiscriminately,
or rather he seems to be guided by a
perverse dexterity to the wrong quota-
tion. If he quotes from Longfellow's
"Morituri Salutamus," for example, he
is guided past the imaginative line, "So
many ghosts are in the wooded plain,"
past the glowing metaphor.
How far the gulf-stream of our youth may
flow
Into the arctic regions of our lives,
to settle down upon perhaps the two
most arid and lustreless lines in the
whole poem.
Study yourself; and most of all note well
Wherein kind nature meant you to excel.
The effect of the application of a talent
so fatally inspired as this to a faculty
so portentously unsure as Riley's may
readily be guessed.
This is not all. The havoc which Mr.
Dickey's adoration is to work in the
reputation of his idol is still incomplete.
This book is curious, and in its way valu-
able, in its picture of a bygone literary
taste, a taste juvenile from the outset
and juvenile to-day in its very senility,
like Mrs. Skewton in "Dombey and Son."
The cult was showy, facile, smartish,
not so bad in its avowedly ornamental
and sentimental passages, though these
were bad enough, as in the plasters of
ornament and sentiment which it was
pleased to apply to passages which were
in substance plain and practical. Riley
undoubtedly had close afllliations with
this cult, and the unwilling and uncon-
scious wrong which this book does to its
idolized subject is to present Riley al-
most exclusively in the clutch of these
affiliations. If a man is half, and only
160]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 40
half, a fop, he is lost if he allows him-
self to be decoyed into a group-picture
in which the other participants are fops.
Riley was half a twaddler; the neigh-
borhood of twaddlers is his bane. Mr.
Dickey's book scarcely permits him a
moment's release from that compromis-
ing fellowship. A manlier taste in his
biographer would have acted as sum-
mons and incentive to the manlier Riley
to emerge from his retirement. Riley
found his vocation in the portrayal of
humble life in his native Indiana. One
can not help fancying that part of the
virtue of this step lay in the fact that
the return to his people was the exodus
from his class. That exodus is in a
■ense revoked in Mr. Dickey.
Dr. Trevor H. Davies' "Spiritual Voices
in Modern Literature" (George H. Doran
Company) is a book the contents of
which transpire in the very title. The
reader infers that Dr. Davies is a clergy-
man of the English Church in Canada;
■ that the point remains to the last an in-
ference is a just indication of some
breadth in his theology. He is a well-
bred and (comparatively speaking) well-
read clergyman, writing a colorless, but
limpid and fluid English, not a close
reasoner, but so partial to order and
classification that his book is almost tiled
with subdivisions. He wishes to find in
modem literature a reenforcement to
modern Christianity, and the original
feature in an unoriginal book is his addi-
tion of the names of John Masefield and
of Ibsen (in "Peer Gynt") to a list in
which the appearance of Tennyson,
Browning, Wordsworth, Ruskin, and
James Smetham, is entirely normal and
intelligible. The appropriation of Mi.
Masefield by the church is hardly spoli-
ation, though it is interesting as a mark
of the effacenient of the last echo of the
hue and cry which greeted the appear-
ance of the "Everlasting Mercy" not so
very many years ago. That poem was
essentially Christian, and if its blas-
phemies and ribaldries were meant to
ward off the pietists, it is interesting to
note that the period of their efficiency
is past. The case of Ibsen is very dif-
ferent. It is undoubtedly true that
"Peer Gynt" is a condemnation of half-
heartedness, and that half-heartedness is
the bane of modern Christianity. But it
must be remembered that Ibsen, through
the mouth of Brand, represented the God
of orthodox Norway as a bald old man with
skullcap and glasses, and it is unlikely
that he would have been cordially respon-
sive to the distinction that Dr. Davies
might draw, possibly with justice, be-
tween orthodox Canada and orthodox
Norway. Dr. Davies, at variance with
Ibsen on the main point, desires to profit
by Ibsen's authority on a secondary
question on which their agreement is
decided. Of course, any side is quite
right in availing itself of a friendly
particular in the testimony of a
generally unfriendly witness. But in
the special case where that witness is
cited as an authority, a distinct prob-
lem arises. His general unfriendliness
becomes a fact which it is unfair to
withhold and impolitic to confess.
The Harvard art department have put
their heads together and produced an
admirable catalogue raisonne entitled
"Collection of Mediaeval and Renaissance
Paintings," and the Harvard University
Press has given the handsome quarto
every advantage of fine presswork and
illustration. Over sixty pictures are re-
produced, most of them being of the
primitive Italian schools. These pictures
have been collected with the end of illus-
trating the courses in the history of art.
The pictures are so representative that
the editors have been able to build a suc-
cinct history of primitive European paint-
ing around the nucleus afforded by the
Fogg Art Museum. The brief chapters
on the several schools are competently
done. That on Byzantine painting is the
best short account available in English.
Especially good also are the color de-
scriptions, which are clear without
tediousness or over-elaboration. The edi-
tors record such pictures by artists rep-
resented in this catalogue as are in other
American collections. Bibliographical
features are pretty full and sensibly pre-
sented. Where the editors deserve high
praise is in their correct and scrupulous
conception of their task. The business
of a catalogue is to present the actual
state of knowledge about the objects cat-
alogued, and not the floating mass of
conjecture. A cataloguer should not
make new attributions for disputed pic-
tures, but arbitrate existing attributions,
and he should accept none that can not
measurably be proved. So evident a
counsel of probity should not need to be
urged, but when one recalls such wild
work as was made in the official cata-
logue of the Jarves Collection at Yale,
the scholarly conservatism of the Har-
vard editors appears in a very favor-
able light. They know how to reject
flattering attributions even when offered
by incautious distinguished experts,
they query attributions which most gal-
lery officials would welcome with open
arms. In short, the catalogue is a re-
markable exhibit of the New England
conscience, and withal taste, as applied
to the often charlatanistic field of con-
noisseurship. Such a work will not soon
go out of date. This catalogue should be
immensely valuable as an adjunct to in-
struction at Harvard, and it should
serve widely as an example. It is a fit-
ting crown to the remarkable work of
building the Fogg Museum up from al-
most nothing — and in only about fifteen
years— to its present estate of impor-
tance. The interest of the collection
may be judged from a mere enumeration
of some of the Sienese masters on the
walls. There are fine and certain exam-
ples of Simone Martini, Ambrogio Lo-
renzetti, Andrea Vanni, Taddeo Bartoli,
Sassetta, Matteo di Giovanni, Benvenuto
da Siena, and Girolamo di Benvenuto.
These may not be on household lists of
the world's ten greatest painters, but
they offer so many pure delights to such
as know how to love aright the pictorial
poetry of the City of the Virgin.
"Father Duffy's Story" (Doran) is the
regimental history of the 69th New York
Regiment, which bore its official designa-
tion, the 165th Infantry, impatiently as
an alias. Th« book begins with the re-
turn of the regiment from the Mexican
Border, and ends with its return after
service overseas with the Rainbow Di-
vision bearing nine new furls on the
regimental flagstaff for actions from
Luneville to the Argonne, followed by a
period of comparative rest with the
Army of Occupation on the Rhine. It
follows one thread faithfully through the
intricate pattern of the war. It is not
so much history as one of the sources
of history, a first-hand document by one
who had and used well every opportunity
to see and know what was going on not
only in trenches and dugouts, but at
headquarters, and in the minds of the
men. Father Duffy is priest, soldier,
scholar, man of the world, and man of
action; he is quite as at home in French
city, French village, front line trench,
headquarters mess, or observation post
as in his own parish in the Bronx. In-
deed, wherever he is he is in his own
parish; colonels came and went, but
Father Duffy took his parish to war and
brought it back. He is always in the
very heart of it, and to every man in the
regiment he is father, mentor, and friend
— we see it half the time as a militarized
parish, and half as parochial regiment.
We see it, its members, and all its ac-
tions, in all human and all humorous
aspects no less than heroic and historical.
The regiment stands out as against a
white screen, without background of the
war as a whole, and without visualization
of scene. But the tale does not profess
to be a work of art. A glimpse of what
we might have had if Joyce Kilmer had
written it we get in the appendix. Father
Duffy wisely did not attempt to continue
Kilmer's narrative; his work stands
sturdily on its own feet, and deeply as
we may regret Kilmer's relinquishment
of the task, we may be grateful for
Father Duffy's assumption of it. The '
book holds interest in every page; even <
those which in the author's phrase ■
"bristle with names" have the same in-
terest that every town and camp in
France had a few months ago; you are-
likely to come upon someone you know
in any one of them.
1-ebniaiy 14, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[161
Drama
Jacinto Benavente: Theatre
and Library
BENAVENTE'S "La Malquerida," or
the "Passion Flower," as it is orna-
mentally and inexactly named in the
current presentation at the Greenwich
Village Theatre, is a play which bears
perusal with difficulty and reperusal
even less. Dramas abound in disguises;
in the "Passion Flower," we have drama
itself in disguise, one play masking as
another. The result is unlucky in two
ways; the initial, or covering play has
no room to culminate; the final and ac-
tual play has no time to unfold. The
first play is the tale of a young man,
shot on the eve of his marriage, and of
a former rival who is accused of the
crime, acquitted, and pursued after hia
acquittal by the unslaked vengeance of
the victim's fiery kinsfolk. This drama,
exciting, traditional, and superficial, is
drawn aside like an Elizabethan traverse
to reveal a drama of quite another kind,
brooding, internal, sinister, deadly. Its
persons are three, stepfather, step-
daughter, and mother, and the element
which makes this simple grouping dy-
namic— I had almost written dynamitic
— is the reciprocal, though up to the
last moment unconfessed, passion, of
stepfather and stepdaughter for each
other. The link between the nominal
and the actual play is simple; the step-
father in the second is, through jeal-
ousy of the girl's betrothed, the
prompter of the assassination in the
first.
Let us turn now to the conduct of the
major play. I will dwell no more on the
fact that this play spends an act and a
half in haunting its own outskirts. Nor
will I enlarge on the uncomeliness of the
theme. Tragedy is tragedy; no one ex-
pects an earthquake to be polite. What
is Benavente's handling of these mate-
rials? My answer is emphatic. I can
scarcely name another play by a tried
and deft hand in which the disposition
of the materials is so inept. The situ-
ation is not developed; it is scarcely
even revealed. I might almost say that
the real drama is compressed — not to
say crushed — into five terminal minutes.
The march of events in these minutes is
of a dizzying, a blinding, rapidity. A
drama's business is to make us see.
"Why did the man (the stepfather)
kill his wife?," I was asked by my com-
panion in the theatre. I had read the
play not ten hours before; I had seen
the act not ten minutes befo.e; yet the
question halted, almost thwarted, me.
The last few minutes are revolutionary,
but to make the confusion still worse —
the last few seconds undo the work of
the last few minutes.
The fault lies largely in the nullity of
the characters. The girl Acacia, hating
her mother because she loves her step-
father, and at the same time hating her
stepfather because she loves her mother,
is a conception astonishing enough; but
in the execution she dwindles into little
more than an average rebel and vixen.
With the stepfather the failure is no less
clear. He is a good man who commits a
murder. In our country this would call
for explanations; Benavente offers none.
For him, apparently, a little murder now
and then is only human; Americans are
too inquisitive. The mother, though
fairly comprehensible, is unindividual
and uninteresting. The trouble with all
three persons is that they are half-sav-
ages; yet, since they are likewise half-
commonplace, their interest as savages
is incomplete.
These objections occurred to me in
the reading of the play. My experience
at the Greenwich Village Theatre the
other night was a very curious mixture
of indorsement and refutation of these
views. Nearly every objection was con-
firmed by the testimony of the boards,
yet the despair of the play which those
objections had bred was almost entirely
reversed. The play itself as a work of
art, as the rationalization of a train of
events, was utterly defenseless; it was
blind and lurching; it reeled from point
to point. Yet the play held the audience;
it held the critics; and the final curtain
fell upon the vivid general sense that
the night was memorable in the present
theatrical season in New York. This
was partly due to the unusual merit of
the acting, but it sprang likewise from
the atmosphere of tense expectation—
the atmosphere of a powder-mill — which
was generated by the play itself.
Miss Nance O'Neil seems predestined
to parts in which something passionate
and savage finds sudden issue through
a rift in the ordered circumstance of a
subdued and peaceful life. Her Rai-
munda is a sister of her Odette in the
"Lily," of her penetrating and unfor-
gettable Monna Vanna. Raimunda as
an individual is far less salient than
Monna Vanna, and it is partly for this
reason that Miss O'Neil's acting of the
part, fine as it is, may be classified as su-
perb melodrama. Her voice alone is an
endowment. There is a brocade in its
texture which can give distinction to
commonplaces, can exalt them without
inflating them. But its efficacy goes
much further. Its depth and gravity
supplies to those moments of passionate
abandonment in which she delights pre-
cisely the chastening and corrective
background which midnight furnishes to
conflagration. The part is extensive and
exacting, but it leaves no dent or mark
on the amplitude of her resources. Her
Raimunda is something of a wilderness,
but a wilderness is the place for novelty
and fascination.
Mr. Charles Waldron as Esteban,
while rather too human and manly for
his part, gave a clear and touching pic-
ture of the man whose nature has been
cleft in twain and of the effort of the
broken pieces to rejoin and re-annex
each other. Mr. Robert Fischer's Tic
Eusebio was perhaps the most finely
imagined of all the parts, and Mr. Ed-
win Beryl fitted snugly into the tiny
part of Faustino. The Angelus was
tolled in Act I, and in Acts II and III
there was a lovely and benign setting
that impressed me like an unceasing toll-
ing of the Angelus.
I take this opportunity to say a word
or two on a recent translation of four
of Benavente's plays by Mr. John Gar-
rett Underbill (Charles Scribner's
Sons). "No Smoking" is a one-act play,
in which moderation is apparent in the
merit of the anecdote and the skill of
the telling. "Autumnal Roses" is a
loosely woven story of family and fash-
ionable life in which the autumnal roses
represent the belated domestic peace
which unlimited patience and forgiveness
secure to exemplary wives. The trouble
with these roses is that they are stem-
less, the play offers them neither root
nor stalk. The "Governor's Wife," in
three acts, is a comprehensive and parti-
colored satire on town life in a Spanish
province. Its detail and its changeful-
ness give one the sense of running up
and down any number of twisting lanes
and alleys in some unswept Spanish town
in the distant hope of final emergence
into a spacious and practicable thorough-
fare. 'The only play in the volume that
interests me is "Princess Bebe," a study
of the errant and peccant offshoots of
modern royalty in that stringency of
conditions which makes life vacuous
within the palace and desolate without.
The psychic insight and the force of the
reasoning in this work are truly re-
markable, but the drama slumbers while
the characters talk, and auditors might
slumber with the drama.
Mr. Underbill is bent on clarity and
disapproves the "interlinear" transla-
tion. He usually understands the text,
but in the interest of an imaginary
clearness, he abounds in verbal altera-
tions, which, to say the least, are fussy
and meddlesome. I refer the curious
reader to the comparison of Princess
Helena's last speech on page 119, and the
whole dialogue between Gonzalo and Is-
abel, on pages 221-229, with their re-
spective originals in the "Teatro" (v. 10,
p. 165; V. 11, pp. 9-23). Mr. Underbill
wants to write between the lines; the
reader would be grateful for the oppor-
tunity to read between them.
0. W. Firkins
162]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 40
Music
Mary Garden and "Louise"
—The Concert Season
I WONDER who conceived that "Music
Week." The same bright mind, per-
haps, which devised the "Blue Bird
Week." The idea, in each case, seemed
so "pretty, pretty," that we must surely
have owed it to a woman's brain.
But did we need to intensify our music
production? It pleased some thousands
to get opera gratis, just for a change, at
the Manhattan. It might have delighted
more to have Caruso sing to them, on
the same terms. Apart from that one
free performance at the Manhattan,
though, what good came of the "Music
Week" campaign? The dealers may
have sold a few more pianos, or pianolas,
and gramophones. And then? What
then?
The critics (who are in a class apart)
have long been praying for less music,
not for more. And they are doing the
same thing, I read, in London. They
have found it hard to cope with two big
opera houses, three symphony orches-
tras, and recitals beyond counting. They
did not clamor for more shows and con-
certs, even heralded by silvery carillons.
If we could weed out half the recitals
of each season, the higher cause of music
might not suffer.
For art, you see, implies a wise selec-
tion. And art is poorly served by poor
recitals, nor is it greatly helped by spurts
of interest. If the dear people who con-
ceived that "Music Week" had been
really in earnest, they would have turned
their attention to more permanent
things. They would have joined the
ranks of those who for years past have
tried to induce Congress to give us a
National Conservatory, and, as a corol-
lary, at least one National opera house.
Without them, we shall never build up
music. Without them, we shall con-
continue to be what we are — vassals of
foreigners in music, in our concert
rooms, and especially in our opera
houses.
We should have music in our homes
and public schools. We should eventually
have not only a great National Conser-
vatory (preferably in New York or Chi-
cago, not in Washington) but also
allied State conservatories. As an ex-
ample, we should have a National opera
house. But this should be but one of
fifty houses for the production of Amer-
ican lyric drama, in which the operas of
the world, including our world, should
be interpreted in English, by Americans.
The reception given to "Cleopatra's
Night," at the Metropolitan, proves, if
we needed proof, that operatically we
are moving, slowly but surely. The per-
formance of Frederick Converse's First
Symphony, by the Boston orchestra,
gave hope, and more than hope, in other
ways. And now I hear that the First
Symphony of Louis Gruenberg — an
American, like Mr. Converse and Mr.
Hadley — has been accepted by three
symphony societies. A few more facts
like these might turn our composers from
the "comic" opera field, and prompt them
to create good, honest music.
There is a tendency to sneer at our
composers, to discourage their young
gropings after art. And against this
tendency it is high time to fight. French
opera was not made in a day, nor was
the Wagnerian form of art named music-
drama invented without many search-
ings. Our composers are just shaking
off their swaddling clothes. They should
be encouraged in their struggles, not
discouraged. Some day we shall yet
have good American operas, American
symphonies, and American tone-poems.
But not unless we stimulate their cre-
ation.
La critique est facile, et I'art est diffi-
cile. It is very easy to point out the
plagiarisms of Mr. Hadley. We might
do better to extol the ingenuity, of which,
in his "Cleopatra's Night" and other
works, he has given evidence, the intelli-
gence with which he has mastered the
principles of opera, the art with which
he has, to be sure, not invented a new
orchestration, but assimilated and at
times developed the inventions of his
forerunners.
Some day we may have an equivalent,
not merely imitative, of the "Louise"
which was revived, to our great joy, last
week at the Lexington. It is quite pos-
sible to find a theme on our East Side
no less dramatic in its way, and no less
poignant, than the one used by Charpen-
tier. New York is full of "heroines" like
Louise — weak, wayward girls, rebellious
against fathers, scornful of mothers and
intent on pleasure. The voice of our
great city calls to them as beguilingly
as that of Paris called to Louise. The
end is often here as in Montmartre, a
domestic tragedy. We have not, heaven
be praised, such men as Julien. But we
have Bolshevists and other kinds of reb-
els, as potent in their appeal to the young
Grand Street dressmakers as that
French phrase-monger and fifth-rate
poet.
In the character of Louise, Mary Gar-
den, who is nothing if not "personal,"
again fascinated us by the intensity,
even if she grieved the sensitive by the
perversity, of her interpretation of
Charpentier's work girl. Miss Garden
sang the only air {"Depuis le jour")
allowed her by the composer, with a
beauty of expression, a flawlessness of
intonation, and a warmth of feeling,
which should have dismayed those crit-
ics who persist in telling us that "she
can not sing." Her rendering of that
song was full of ecstasy, the outpouring
of a woman drunk with love. The epi-
sode at the opening of Charpentier's
third act in "Louise," beginning with
that wonderful air and continued in the
later scene for Louise and Julien, to my
mind at least is the most untrammeled,
the most masterly, the most beautiful
love rhapsody since "Tristan and Isolde."
But why, when from that scene, as in
the first act of Charpentier's love ro-
mance, we learn that Louise was intended
by the composer-librettists to be an echo,
not an inspirer, of her lover, does Miss
Garden more or less distort the signifi-
cance of the character by making it so
dominant? The centre of the opera is
the father of Louise and not the daugh-
ter, a father modelled on Charpentier's
father. Perhaps because she can not
help herself. She is swayed and run
away with by her temperament.
The Mother in "Louise" of Maria
Claessens restored the right meaning of
that part. You must know France and
the traditions of the French to under-
stand (as few here do) that, in this
mother, we should not seek a virago, or
an unfeeling woman, but a good, honest,
although rather narrow soul, hampered
by conventions if you will, yet really
striving to protect a willful child against
a lover whom she believes to be a peril
to her. Mme. Claessens sang her music
with fine taste and, at the close of the
third act, was most pathetic. The Father
of that excellent bass-baritone. Hector
Dufranne, was, as it has always been,
impeccable in its sincerity. And the
orchestra, under the leadership of Mr,
Charlier, almost redeemed itself from
the distressing faults which shamed it
when it attempted Verdi's "Falstaff."
It was a mistake for the Chicago Opera
Company to revive that masterpiece with
a baritone so utterly unsuited to the
title-part as Giacomo Rimini, a soprano —
an admirable soprano — like Rosa Raisa,
bai'ely recovered from an illness, as
Mrs. Ford, and inadequate artists in
some other roles. Above all, it was
wrong to expose so fine and eloquent a
work to absolute shipwreck by perform-
ing it without long and close rehearsal.
The one singer in the cast who achieved
success was Desire Defrere, whose inter-
pretation of the part of Ford surprised
the disheartened audience by its artistry.
What Mr. Rimini did not know of the fat
Knight would have filled volumes.
The reappearance of that master of the
sweet art of song, Alessandro Bonci,
gave joy to thousands who attended the
revivals of "Un Ballo in Maschera" and'S
even more antiquated works at the Lex-
ington. There is still room here for the
old "hurdy gurdy" operas when they are
dignified by singers such as Bonci.
{Continued on page 164)
'ebruary 14, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[163
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This is a new cditiuii of fhe immortal autobiography of the Rreat
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his remarkable qualities and his amazing career. Illustrated. $5.00
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By CAPTAIN RAYMOND RECOULY
So many facts, so many striking revelations indispensable to under-
standing Foch, the man, Foch, the general, and the mental background
of the Allied victory are contained in it that it is sure to become an
essential document to all intelligent readers who would go below the
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immortal general and his methods given by a man who worked with him
from day to day in the great crises. lUusttaled. tS-OO
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By KATHARINE FULLERTON GEROULD
Here Mrs. Gerould presents a volume of extremely clever essays,
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Attractive offerings are made during the Midwinter Book Season.
164]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 40
(Continued from page 162)
And now a word about the concert
season, with its three local and its visit-
ing symphony orchestras, its countless
recitals and its choral societies. It has
been crowded — far too crowded for the
critics, who have had on many days to
attend a recital and a concert in one
afternoon, and round out their day by
listening to two operas.
The New York Symphony, the Phil-
harmonic, and the New Symphony So-
cieties have, in the main, kept very
closely to safe lines. The "Eroica" and
the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven have
had due honor. The admired "Unfin-
ished" of Schubert, the "Pathetique" of
Tschaikowsky, and other stand-bys have
not been neglected. One work of prom-
ise, a symphony by John Alden Carpen-
ter, of Chicago, has had a hearing. The
"Pagan Poem" of Charles Martin Loeflf-
ler (by adoption a New Englander,
though born an j^lsatian) has been re-
vised, besides the "Salome" of that ver-
satile New Yorker, Henry Hadley, and
other efforts by less-known Americans.
Of the last three works I have named,
"Pagan Poem" seems by far the best.
If the composer of that beautiful tone
poem had checked himself when he had
told his tale, he would have given us an
uncommonly fine example of orchestral
music; not possibly at all points quite
original (for Loeffler is impressed by
French and German influences, and more
especially by the Debussy spell), but
really vital and informed with poetry.
It is amazing that the imaginative works
of Loeffler are so seldom played here by
the societies of which Mr. Walter Dam-
rosch, W. Stransky, and Mr. Bodanzky
are the directing minds. In France and
elsewhere they are valued highly.
At the first concert of the well-drilled
Schola Cantorum, under the conductor-
ship of that industrious student of the
old and new in art, W. Kurt Schindler,
Mozart's "Requiem" and Handel's "Ode
to St. Cecilia" were, sometime ago, at
last restored to us. They had been
slighted, as they never should have been,
in favor of "The Messiah" and "Elijah,"
which even those to whom they seem
most precious would not much miss, for
at least a year or so.
Of recitals there has been no end.
Violinists, pianists, 'cellists, singers,
harpists, of all merits and demerits,
have insisted on their right to self-pos-
session. They have sung to us and
played and gone their ways. And some,
not many, have left memories in their
trail, enchanting memories. For ex-
ample, Kreisler, who to-day stands at the
head of the great fiddlers of the world,
the worthy successor of Ysaye and Wil-
helmj, unequaled as to the purity of his
tone, his breadth and feeling by anyone
just now before the public. His perform-
ance of the Beethoven concerts a few
weeks ago gave the full measure of his
satisfying artistry. His rendering of one
marvelous cadenza almost won pardon
from the despisers of cadenzas, among
whom I count myself.
Then came the pianist, Guiomar No-
vaes, who, by the beauty of her art, her
romantic fervor, and her impeccable
technique, reminds one strangely of that
flaming light of music, the once, to some
of us, incomparable Carreiio.
We have heard other gifted pian-
ists this season — Gabrilowitch, Profiew,
Moiseiwitch, Rachmaninoff, and more.
We have heard violinists of unquestioned
gifts. But, of them all, two have shone
as the stars: Fritz Kreisler and that'
siren, Guiomar Novaes.
Charles Henry Meltzer
Books and the News
Health
The books written for laymen on the
subject of health are of two kinds : hand-
books of specific information, and the
more general discussions which include
such allied subjects as the mental atti-
tude towards bodily welfare.
Among the former, the "American Red
Cross Textbook on Elementary Hygiene
and Home Care of the Sick" (Blakiston,
1917), by Jane N. Delano, is brief and
gives references to further reading;
"How to Live; Rules for Healthful Liv-
ing" (Funk, 1916), by Irving Fisher and
Eugene Lyman Fisk, M.D., is a publica-
tion of the Life Extension Institute;
"Good Health; How to Get it and How to
Keep it" (Appleton, 1917), by Alvah H.
Doty, is another brief book; there is also
"How to Prevent Sickness" (Harper,
1918), by G. L. Howe. More specific in
their subjects are "The Cause and Cure
of Colds" (McClurg, 1910), by W. S.
Sadler; "Mrs. Rorer's Diet for the Sick"
(Arnold, 1914), by Sarah T. Rorer; and
Dudley A. Sargent's "Health, Strength
and Power" (Caldwell, 1904), which is
about gymnasium exercises.
Annie Payson Call's "Nerves and Com-
mon Sense" (Little, 1916) is one of a
number of books by this writer. E. M.
Bishop's "Daily Ways to Health"
(Huebsch, 1912) is well recommended;
and so is Henry D. Chapin's "Health
First" (Century, 1917). Hollis God-
frey's "The Health of the City" (Hough-
ton, 1910) contains ten chapters on con-
ditions which make for health or disease
in the city; it is an important and in-
teresting work, but is a study of the
community rather than a manual to be
used as a guide to personal health. It
has references to further reading.
Woods Hutchinson's writings are so
readable that he has suffered the penalty
of popularity, and been suspected (un-
fairly, I believe) of superficiality by those
who believe that only bitter medicine is
valuable. His "Handbook of Health"
(Houghton, 1911), "Exercise and Health"
(Outing, 1911), "Instinct and Health"
(Dodd, 1908) (also published as "Health
and Common Sense"), and "Civilization
and Health" (Houghton, 1914), contain
chapters upon many topics of interest.
Of those books which treat the topic
generally, Luther H. Gulick's "The Effi-
cient Life" (Doubleday, 1913) is good,
and Richard C. Cabot's "What Men Live
By" (Houghton, 1914) has always been
in high favor.
Many experts will doubtless recall the
man in Jerome's story, who reading too
muah on the subject, concluded that he
had every disease from ague to zymosis
(except housemaid's knee), and they will
endorse the prescription given by his
medical friend, which is still (with cer-
tain reservations in accord with our new
purity) sound advice for most men: "1
lb. beefsteak with 1 pt. bitter beer every
6 hours ; 1 ten-mile walk every morning ;
1 bed at 11 sharp every night; and don't
stuff up your head with things you dont
understand."
Edmund Lester Pearson
Books Received
FICTION
Baxter, Arthur Beverly. The Blower of
Bubbles. Appleton. $1.75 net.
Bindloss, Harold. Wyndham's Pal. Stokes,
$1.75 net.
Cournos, John. The Mask. Doran.
Holdsworth, Ethel. The Taming of Nan.
Dutton. $1.90 net.
Howard, Keble. The Peculiar Major.
Doran.
Merrick, Leonard. The Worldlings. Dut-
ton. $1.75 net.
Oppenheim, E. P. The Great Impersona-
tion. Little, Brown. $1.75 net.
DRAMA AND MUSIC
Hornblow, Arthur. A History of the The-
atre in America. 2 volumes. Lippincott.
$10.00 net.
Tassin, Algernon. The Craft of the Tor-
toise. Boni & Liveright. $1.50 net.
POETRY
Allen, W. F. Monographs. Boston : Four
Seas. $1.25 net.
Roth, Samuel. Europe : A Book for Amer-
ica. Boni & Liveright. $1.25.
Whitin, C. B. Wounded Words. Boston:
Four Seas. $1.00 net.
SCIENCE
Bishop, E. S. The Narcotic Drug Problem.
Macmillan. $1.50.
Hill, H. W. Sanitation for Public Health
Nurses. Macmillan. $1.35.
Hopkins, U. M. The Outlook for Research
and Invention. D. Van Nostrand Co.
Walsh, James J. Health Through Will
Power. Little, Brown. $1.50 net.
Wood, Frederic J. The Turnpikes of New
England. Marshall Jones.
LITERATURE
Foster, B. O. Livy, 13 volumes: Books I
and 2. Loeb Classical Library. Putnams.
Ker, Walter C. A. Martial's Epigrams. Two
volumes. Book i. Loeb Classical Library.
Putnams.
THE REVIEW
/6r
Vol. 2, No. 41
New York, Saturday, February 21, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment 165
Editorial Articles:
The President 168
Prices and the Gold Standard 169
Limitation of the Right to Strike 170
The Church and the World's Need 172
The Problem of Fiume. By Geographer 173
Aliens and the Political Party System.
By John Spargo 175
Poetry :
"Louvain Is a Dull, Uninteresting
Town . . ." By Robert Withington 177
The President's Secretary. By Spectator 177
Correspondence 179
Book Reviews:
An American Inquiry into British
Labor Conditions 180
Blake Outdone 181
I "Appassionata" 182
Doubles and Such 183
The Run of the Shelves 183
Old King's. By Archibald MacMechan 185
'i Drama :
I Eugene O'Neill— The Theatre Pari-
sien. By O. W. Firkins. 185
Music :
At the Lexington— "The Blue Bird" —
Caruso's Indisposition. By Charles
Henry Meltzer 186
Books and the News:
Education. By Edmund Lester Pear-
son 188
ly/TR. LANSING might, and prob-
ably would, have done well to re-
sign long ago. Mr. Wilson might,
and probably would, have done well
to request his resignation long ago.
The relation between the President
and his Secretary of State was ab-
normal. Mr. Lansing submerged his
individuality, and yet on some vital
matters avowedly differed radically
I in opinion from his chief. That he
acted, however, with scrupulous loy-
alty, both before and during the
i President's illness, is too clear for
dispute. The very conduct for which
the President so harshly, so unreason-
: ! ably, and so ungenerously censures
him — the calling of the Cabinet con-
ferences— was evidently inspired by
I the desire to make possible the con-
tinuance of the President's hold on
authority during an interval in which
I his inability actually to fulfill its re-
sponsibilities was manifest. The
country has shown straight common
sense in resting its rebuke of the
President upon the manner of his
dismissal of the Secretary, and not
at all upon the mere fact of parting
with him. For this last the simple
fact of want of harmony would have
furnished an all-sufficient reason.
T IKE the jaded epicure who finds
•*^ in the long-forgotten savor of a
dish of pork and beans a zest which
the high-flown arts of French chefs
had long ceased to purvey, the coun-
try, surfeited with idealism souffle,
listens to the old-fashioned Democrat
talk of Vice President Marshall with
a good deal of relish. His letter is not
a masterpiece, but neither does it pre-
tend to be a masterpiece. It has some
of the customary faults of the old-
time party pronouncements, but it
has some virtues of its own. It winds
up with an honest expression of Mr.
Marshall's state of mind, which be-
longs to this particular time and no
other, for at no previous time has
there been occasion for just such an
expression :
If a faith of this kind appeals to the Demo-
crats of Indiana, I desire to go as a delegate
at large to the convention at San Francisco
to advocate this kind of a platform, and to
ascertain whether everything that made the
Republic great was right or wrong.
COME of the points made by Mr.
^ Marshall are worthy of special
note. In the first place, he comes out
as emphatically as did Mr. Hoover
the other day against the submer-
gence of the individual — the substitu-
tion of all sorts of schemes of sociali-
zation for that self-reliance which
has been the very foundation-stone
of American character. "Legislative
efforts," he says, "to produce justice
and good order in society by listening
and acceding to the demands of per-
sons and classes will, in the hour of
peace, produce failure." Secondly,
he declares that "this is still a federa-
tion of States, demanding that the
States discharge the duties of local
self-government"; and, although the
historical accuracy of this statement
may be challenged, now that the
Eighteenth Amendment has been
sand-blasted into the Constitution, it
is sound in spirit and purpose. A less
fundamental but not less urgent issue
is touched upon when Mr. Marshall
includes in his programme the elec-
tion of
an executive pledged to discharge the count-
less officials and innumerable agents made
necessary by the war and to administer public
affairs along economic lines even to the point
of the veto of every bill carrying not only
unnecessary and ill-advised appropriations, but
appropriations for the benefit of a few citizens
rather than for the common good.
All in all, though the letter is marred
by some see-sawing and some pad-
ding, it bears out the idea, so well
expressed at its close, that the biggest
issue to-day is "whether everything
that made the Republic great was
right or wrong."
TN two respects the demand for
^ the surrender of the German war
criminals differed distinctly from
that for the extradition of Wilhelm
von Hohenzollern. It was based on
an accusation of specific crimes, and
the Entente's right to enforce its
execution results from the ratification
of the Treaty of Versailles by the
German National Assembly. The
legal grounds on which Queen Wil-
helmina based her negative reply to
the note of the Allied Powers offered,
consequently, no support to the Ger-
man Government for its refusal.
Nevertheless, the Allied Powers
have acted with wisdom and dignity
in acceding to that refusal. The con-
cession is coupled with the require-
ment that the German Government
shall carry out in good faith its dec-
laration of readiness to bring to trial
the men accused of high crimes
against the laws of war and the es-
tablished usages of civilized nations.
166]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 41
The difficulty is by no means at an
end ; it will be no easy matter to pro-
cure a genuine trial of high German
officers by their own countrymen, and
a judgment in accordance with the
evidence. The Allied Powers dis-
tinctly reserve the right to enforce
the terms of the treaty in the event
of the trials proving to be a mere
pretence. But it was evident that in-
sistence on the surrender of hundreds
of leading German military men, to
be tried by enemy judges in an enemy
country, would have meant a convul-
sion whose consequences threatened
to be ruinous to the whole world.
The solution arrived at represents
the nearest approach which was pos-
sible to the reconcilement of justice
with necessity.
'C'OUR weeks ago, when Secretary
■'- Glass, Mr. Hoover, the President,
and others were urging upon Con-
gress the provision of $150,000,000
for immediate use in rescuing the
starving populations of Armenia,
Austria, and other countries, the
Review said: "To hesitate or delay,
in the face of such harrowing need
and such clear opportunity, would be
a criminal failure of duty." The
House Committee to which the matter
was referred haggled over it a while
and then cut down the proposed
amount to $50,000,000. And now
Washington press reports tell us that
it is doubtful whether the measure
thus crippled will be passed at all. We
can only add that what we formerly
stated would be a criminal failure
of duty has now become a criminal
failure of duty. The leaders of the
majority in Congress should take
warning in time that the next election
will not turn wholly upon the polit-
ical crimes and blunders of their
opponents. The utter callousness of
Congress to the terrible conditions
which this measure aims to relieve
misrepresents both the humane feel-
ing and the sound judgment of the
American people.
IF the American Legion is to be-
come an instrument for extorting
money from Congress — and the sad
thing is that Congress is only too
willing to be bludgeoned in this way
— then it would have been better if
the Legion had never come into be-
ing. The men charged with the re-
sponsibility of its organization must
have been perfectly aware of how
things were going. It can not be sup-
posed that they liked the prospect.
But they chose to sponsor an organi-
zation which they hoped in part to
control to good ends, rather than that
there should be no organization at
all, or one which was openly and
shamelessly devoted to the raiding of
the Treasury. It is by no means cer-
tain that their choice was a wise one.
Having made it, the leaders should
throw all the influence they possess,
as they did very effectively when the
question was one of mob violence, to
the diversion of the Legion's energies
into other channels. If the Legion
wants something to do, let it concern
itself with the scandalously lagging
business of re-educating disabled
soldiers. Within the Legion itself
there should be a fight to the finish
on this question of "bonuses," and
it should be made now. Not until
such a fight has been made, no matter
what its outcome, can the public see
plainly where the Legion stands, and
effectively reckon with its power
both for good and evil.
/~\FFICIAL warning has been given
^^ that Canada takes very serious
exception to the Lenroot reservation.
N. W. Rowell, Acting Secretary of
State for External Affairs and Presi-
dent of the Privy Council, states ex-
plicitly that Canada can not and will
not give her assent to any impair-
ment of her status and voting rights
under the Treaty. He calls attention
to the fact that Canada's contribu-
tion to the common cause in the war
was not levied upon her from across
the Atlantic but was the voluntary
action of a self-governing Common-
wealth. A due regard for the sacri-
fice of lives and substance thus
willingly and independently made
renders it inconceivable, he thinks,
that any Government in Canada
could be so false to both living and
dead as to consent to her elimination
as a voting member in the League
Assembly. The clause in the League
covenant which provides for such
membership was, of course, a recogni-
tion of the large measure of inde-
pendent self-government which has
been so widely given to the outlying
parts of the British Empire as
rapidly as they have seemed equal to
the responsibility. This privilege of
independent representation in the
League Assembly, as distinguished
from the Council, involves no danger
to the interests of the United States,
as has been amply shown since the
subject has been under public discus-
sion. The Senate will make a very
serious mistake if it gives just
oflFense to Canadian self-respect and
national feeling by insisting upon a
reservation which is not required by
any legitimate American interest.
1YTR. WILSON'S memorandum on
the Dalmatian question chiefly
raised the thought — Why of all out-
standing issues is Italy's claim unfit
to be compromised ? The very terms of
the peace treaty are constantly being
readjusted. Compromise is possible
with Germany — nay, with the un-
speakable Turk. Why should self-
determination with all its "i"s dotted
and "t"s crossed be reserved for
Italy? Against Mr. Wilson's oddlj;
inflexible devotion to that principle
of self-determination which else^
where he has yielded, we have to se-
certain common-sense facts. Ital;i
has suffered frightfully through thj
war. Her deaths and casualties weri
proportionately as great as Engi
land's, her financial sacrifice fa I
greater. She sees England an
France dividing Arabia and Afric
under mandates. She receives onl
what would have been allotted he
had she preserved neutrality. Perhaj
Italy ought to be satisfied with tl
sense of duty done, but so long i
France, England, Japan, and recent
hostile Croatia and Dalmatia, g
every hearing and every concessi(
from the Supreme Council, while si
gets none, Italy is going to be di
contented. And an alienated Ita'
means a crippled League of Natioi.
These are facts that should mas
Italy's claim seem negotiable. Th'
look more impressive than a tar'
and vehement assertion of the pu
dogma of self-determination.
February 21, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[167
A STRANGE rumor has come out
of Moscow concerning the death
of Kalinin, one of the Bolshevik Com-
missars, which was reported by the
Soviet wireless a fortnight ago. Ac-
cording to this unconfirmed rumor,
Kalinin, who was considered a very-
energetic and capable man, and not a
Bolshevik by tradition, was elected
President of the Council of People's
Commissars in place of Lenin, who
was chosen Vice President, and there-
upon the Lenin faction put Kalinin
out of the way by poisoning him.
Wild as this rumor is, it can not
fail to draw attention to certain al-
most inevitable developments within
the Soviet policy. In revolutionary
times, strong and vigorous men spring
from obscurity to positions of re-
sponsibility and power. It is natural
that these new men, conscious of their
ability to administer large affairs and
direct men, should become impatient
of the authority of the doctrinaires
in whose hands power has remained
since the November Revolution. To
these newly emerging men of affairs,
Lenin, Bukharin, Chicherin, and the
rest must seem like old fogies and
doctrinaires, tied to an unworkable
programme. It would not be strange,
therefore, if, in view of the numerical
inferiority of the convinced Commu-
nists, and the growth of new classes
within the Soviet organization, there
were taking place to-day a struggle
the outcome of which will be great
changes in the structure and prin-
ciples of the Russian Government.
A SPECIFIC knowledge of the
-^*- American form of Government as
a requirement for a college degree is
the aim of a nation-wide campaign
just announced by the National Se-
curity League. Instruction in Ameri-
can history, including drill in the
Constitution, used to be a part of the
curriculum of most colleges, and if
it has recently been slighted, it ought
certainly to be jacked up. Method
is everything in these matters. We
want no more, for example, of the
partisan teaching of history which
for so long fostered anti-British feel-
ing. True, American youths should
still glow with pride when they read
how our forefathers rebuffed a tyran-
nical old English king, but it is not
sportsmanlike to keep picking on a
bully whom you have trounced and
who has made amends. Our schools
and colleges ought normally to en-
gender patriotism, but only as a by-
product. Any tendency in peace times
to shout "America first" would be not
so different from that strident chorus,
"Deutschland iiber Alles."
A SIR OLIVER for a "Pussyfoot"
-^ Johnson — which country is the
gainer by this exchange of pro-
fessors? The one peddles a substi-
tute for what the other takes away
from us. England is fortunate in
having tasted of the substitute be-
fore there was nothing else to taste,
and is not likely to put herself in a
position to get a craving for it.
T AW as a shackle on the progress
of justice, powerless or unwilling
to correct its own anachronisms and
inequities, is a favorite theme with
the type of mind which imagines that
the first condition of progress for the
train of civilization is to tear up the
track. Organizations of lawyers
themselves, however, are busily at
work trying to bring law and legal
procedure into harmony with im-
proved conceptions of human justice.
The New York State Bar Associa-
tion has just issued a pamphlet of ex-
tracts from the Annual Report of its
Committee on Law Reform, suggest-
ing various changes either in legisla-
tion or in rules of procedure, all in-
tended to bring legal relief more
simply, speedily, and cheaply within
the reach of the citizen. As the rec-
ommendations adopted are all clearly
of this beneficent type, and were
made without serious opposition, one
must certainly acquit the New York
State Bar Association of any disposi-
tion to maintain traditional injustice
merely because it is traditional, or
because the shrewd lawyer can use
it for his own gain. The type of
lawyer who to-day dominates such
organizations is neither the Bourbon
nor the shyster.
TN addition to various specific re-
-*- forms suggested, which we need
not stop to enumerate here, the Asso-
ciation passed a general resolution,
urging all bar associations, State or
local, to exert themselves systematic-
ally to procure the elimination from
the law in their respective States of
any anachronistic features impeding
the proper administration of justice
and thwarting those rights in which
the citizen should be secure. It was
further recommended to all bar asso-
ciations to take steps for a systematic
study of actual conditions in the ad-
ministration of justice, as affected by
anachronistic legal institutions, rules
and documents. And the New York
Association set the example by im-
mediately providing for a committee
of its own membership to take up
this task. The Association appeals to
the press for aid in calling attention
to this sensible step towards legal
progress. It is a matter of vital in-
terest to every citizen, and it is to
be hoped that this interest will find
such clear and general expression as
to insure reasonably prompt and
thorough action.
nPHE professors in the University
■'- of Washington have taken the
trouble to prepare their case in detail.
The substance of the pamphlet em-
bodying the report of the Association
of Instructors is familiar enough, but
the figures are presented in a form
which should command wide atten-
tion. Briefly, living costs have in-
creased about 100 per cent., while
the average increase in salaries,
arriving from ordinary promotions
on grounds of seniority, is less dur-
ing the last five years, and less by a
good deal, than the normal increase
during the years preceding the war.
According to the family budgets of
teachers of all ranks not a single
faculty family is operating without
a serious deficit. If increases to the
teaching staff were to be made equal
to the advanced wage scales in other
occupations, something like 100 per
cent, would be necessary. The pro-
fessors are content to ask for a
modest 50 per cent. The State Legis-
lature, when it meets in 1921, can
hardly fail to see the force of the
figures here presented. The average
of salaries in the University of Wash-
ington is 43 per cent, below the aver-
168]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 41
age for 28 other institutions, and a
full 30 per cent, below the average
for the same institutions in 1912-13.
Until the Legislature takes action,
however, the Washington professors
will presumably live as they can — on
their expectations.
The President
TN his letters of dismissal to Mr.
■"■ Lansing, President Wilson has
made a glaring exhibition of the
worst qualities of his mind and char-
acter. For imperious arrogance and
for intellectual irresponsibility alike,
they represent an attitude to which
it would be difficult to find anything
like a parallel in our political annals.
Mr. Wilson rarely condescends to
justify by specific argument any posi-
tion that he chooses to take; in this
instance he has assigned for his
course a reason which nothing but
contempt for the opinions of his fel-
low-citizens could possibly have led
any normal man to put forward. In
the painful situation which has thus
arisen, there is some comfort in the
thought that the country has unani-
mously dismissed as absurd his
charge that the informal Cabinet
meetings which were held during his
illness constituted a usurpation of
power or a violation of the spirit of
our Constitutional Government. His
right to call for the Secretary's resig-
nation on general grounds is undis-
puted, and no fault would have been
found if he had done so. As it is, a
wave of indignation has swept the
country with little distinction of
party. The one thing lacking has been
the assertion by the other members of
the Cabinet, with the exception of Mr.
Lane, of the position which the clear
requirements of manhood and self-re-
spect called upon them to assume.
That the President's real reason
for dismissing his Secretary of State
was not the one which he assigns as
the determining cause of his action is
doubtless true enough. Other causes
are mentioned in the correspondence
itself; and moreover they have been
perfectly well known to the public
for many months. Rumors abound
also of special causes for the Presi-
dent's displeasure which have not
come to the knowledge of the public.
But to delve seriously into these
things would be a process not only
futile but humiliating. We have not
yet reached the point where it should
be regarded as incumbent upon
American citizens to endeavor, like
the subjects of some Oriental despot,
to surmise the secret thoughts that
inspire the conduct of their ruler.
It would be an injustice to Mr. Wil-
son to treat this particular perform-
ance as a fair example of his usual
conduct. His physical condition, to-
gether with the terrible disappoint-
ments which during the past half-
year he has suffered, is unquestion-
ably responsible for the utter lack of
judgment and restraint which he has
in this instance exhibited. But it
would be an injustice to the truth not
to recognize that his attitude in this
matter is merely an exaggeration of
that which he has repeatedly and per
sistently manifested in the past. His
attitude toward the United States
Senate in the matter of the Treaty
has shown in only less extreme form
the same spirit. Had it not actually
happened, it would seem incredible
that any man with the clear necessity
before him of gaining the good will
of a body without which he was
powerless to effect his great purpose,
could have used the language he did in
his speech of March 4, 1919, on the
eve of his return to France. "Gentle-
men on this side," he said, "will find
the covenant not only in it, but so
many threads of the treaty tied to
the covenant that you can not dissect
the covenant from the treaty without
destroying the whole vital structure."
Thus to add contemptuous defiance to
persistent ignoring of his associates
in the treaty-making power was to
flaunt in their faces the kind of arro-
gance to which it is not in human na-
ture to submit, and which has had
consequences tragic to himself, to his
country, and to the world.
In saying all this, we are proceed-
ing on the assumption that the Presi-
dent's mind, however disturbed by his
illness and by the terrific strain under
which he had so long labored, is not
in any definite sense impaired. This
latter possibility can not, indeed, be
ignored. Recent assurances of the
most emphatic kind from physicians
in close attendance upon the Presi-
dent are to the effect that his mind
is absolutely sound. Opinions of the
opposite kind are expressed by some
others. But the country must act on
the one assumption or the other. For
five months, in the face of almost
impenetrable secrecy as to the facts
in the case, newspapers and public
men of both parties have forborne to
press the question. They have acted
on the supposition that Mr. Wilson
is still clothed with all the powers and
responsibilities of his great office.
Whatever was necessary to be done
in order that the Government should
function during his partial or com-
plete inability to attend to the busi-
ness of the Presidency has been done,
and no more. If this state of things
is to come to an end, well and good.
But there is at present no sign of the
relinquishment by Mr. Wilson of any
portion of his authority. On the con-
trary, he has never asserted it more
aggressively or more dictatorially
than within the last week. No con-
sideration for his personal feelings,
or for lamentable developments
which may yet take place, but which
at present can be only matters of .
conjecture, can be allowed to stand
in the way of that truthful criticism
to which the acts of the head of a
republic must be subjected in a time
like this if the republic is to be safe.
So far as the Revieiv is concerned,
its readers need hardly be told that
it has studiously refrained from all
avoidable fault-finding. Not only dur-
ing Mr. Wilson's illness, but in the
preceding months, its anxiety to
promote the possibility of a concilia-
tory settlement between the Presi-
dent and the Senate had caused it to
put as little stress as possible upon
the faults of either side. It has never
aspersed the motives either of the
President or of the great bulk of the
Republican opposition. But a time
comes when there must be plain
speaking. In the temper and method
now displayed by Mr. Wilson there is
the greatest possible danger to our
domestic welfare and to our interna-
tional relations. If that temper and
method are the manifestation of a
mind in sound condition, they call for
February 21, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[169
stern and unsparing rebuke; if the
mind is not in sound condition, the
country has a right to know it and
to be relieved of the danger which
it implies. The former must be
assumed to be the fact until the con-
trary is established ; and however dis-
agreeable the necessity under all the
circumstances, it is the duty of the
press to speak the words which the
situation demands.
Prices and the Gold
Standard
DURING the campaign of 1896 ad-
vocates of the gold standard,
though absolutely right in their stand
for sound money, were frequently
very far from right in the reasons
they assigned for it. Nothing was
more common than for them to at-
tempt to settle the whole question by
referring to the gold dollar as an ab-
solute standard of value. You might
as well, they said, have two different
yardsticks to measure length as have
two different dollars to measure
value. The gold dollar was a fixed
and unvarying measure of value ; the
silver dollar was just whatever it
might happen to be, and at the time
was about half of the real thing. If
the price of wheat had been cut in
two, that showed nothing whatever
about a change of value in the gold
dollar — it only showed that the value
of wheat had fallen ; and so on all
round.
For this view there was not the
slightest countenance in any accred-
ited doctrine of political economy.
The great majority of competent econ-
omists were, to be sure, opposed to
bimetallism; and almost without ex-
ception they were opposed to the
Bryan programme. But in neither
position did they rest the case on any
assumed perfection of the gold unit
as an unvarying standard of value.
They were opposed to international
bimetallism because they did not
think it would work out practically
to maintain the parity of gold with
silver at a fixed ratio ; and they were
opposed to Bryan's programme of
"16 to 1 without asking the aid or
consent of any foreign nation," be-
cause this would mean a debasement
of the actual currency of our country
— the currency upon which all busi-
ness transactions, all contracts and
debts, had been based for many years.
But Mr. Bryan was entirely right in
asserting that the value of that cur-
rency— the value of the gold dollar —
had greatly risen in the course of
those years, and that this rise of
value had, in large part at least, been
caused by the demonetization of sil-
ver in this and other countries, since
that demonetization had greatly les-
sened the aggregate volume of the
monetary medium in the chief com-
mercial nations of the world.
We are now in precisely the op-
posite condition, and are accordingly
witnessing precisely the opposite
phenomenon. The high purchasing
power of gold, a quarter of a century
ago, was due to the fact that the
volume of the monetary medium —
the effective monetary medium, com-
prising gold, circulating substitutes
(whether silver or paper) kept on a
par with gold, and bank credits —
had not kept pace with the volume
of business, as measured in commodi-
ties and services; and in the same
way the low purchasing power of
gold in this country to-day is due to
the fact that the volume of the effec-
tive monetary medium has increased
vastly more than the volume of busi-
ness, as measured in commodities and
services. If, comparing with five
years ago, twice as many dollars are
available to-day to pay for other
things — for wool and cotton and iron,
for bread and meat and candy, for
clothing and furniture and gim-
cracks, for skilled and unskilled labor,
and professional services — and if the
quantity of those things available for
purchase has not increased, then on
the average twice as many dollars
will be paid for each of these various
things ; though of course, for a multi-
tude of special reasons, there will be
great deviations (up and down)
from this average ratio.
A word as to the way in which this
is brought about may be helpful, for
some very intelligent persons experi-
ence a certain difficulty in seeing it.
Merely because I have more dollars,
they ask, why should I pay a higher
price for what I want? But the reason
is very plain. Anybody who has more
dollars than he had before wishes to
do something with the extra dollars;
he wishes either to spend them or to
save them. Now if the things to be
bought for the dollars are no more
abundant than they were before,
then, at the old scale of prices, he
would be getting more of the things
than he got before, and somebody else
would have to go without. Accord-
ingly somebody — either he or some-
body else — will pay a higher price
rather than forgo the satisfaction of
his desires ; and in this competition of
purchasers prices are raised. Nor is
the case different if he prefers to save
instead of spending. People do not
in our time put their extra money
into a stocking. They invest it so as
to draw interest. But to invest means,
directly or indirectly, to engage in
some form of production or trade;
and this, in turn, means to buy either
commodities or labor needed for the
carrying on of that production or
trade. Thus the extra money is put to
just the same kind of use as the old
money — the purchase of commodities
or services. And if the aggregate
quantity of those commodities and
services remains the same while the
number of dollars available for the
purchase of them is doubled, the aver-
age price of them will be doubled also.
But, although theory plainly indi-
cates that this will happen, and al-
though the fact that it has happened
is not the basis of the theory but only
a fresh confirmation of it, there ex-
ists in some quarters a curious dis-
position to deny that the high prices
are caused by the superabundance of
dollars. It is difficult to account for
this state of mind ; but we have little
doubt that it is partly to be accounted
for by a persistence of the delusion
— not clearly acknowledged indeed,
and in large part altogether unrecog-
nized, yet operating by a sort of
subconscious habit — the delusion we
referred to at the beginning of this
article, that gold is a fixed standard
of value. These opponents of the
quantity theory of money are apt to
devote a great deal of energy to prov-
ing what nobody denies — that the
currency of the United States to-day
170]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 41
is, all of it, as good as gold; that,
measured in gold, the dollar has not
depreciated. They are quite in the
right, too, in pointing out the differ-
ence— which, however, is also one
that nobody denies — between our
currency and that of England, or
France, or Italy, where the current
money is not exchangeable at its face
value for gold. But after all this is
admitted, we still have the fact that
the monetary medium of this country
is vastly greater in volume than it was
before the war, and that the volume
of business to be done with it — as
measured in commodities and serv-
ices— is but little greater than it
was then; and that in this state of
things the purchasing power of the
dollar must of necessity go down just
as it has done. And we have yet to
see any argument advanced to show
how any other result could follow
from these data.
It may be instructive to take a
glance at two recent illustrations of
this attitude toward the quantity
theory of money. In an article in
Scribner's Magazine, Mr. A. D. Noyes
says:
Economically speaking, there is no other
way to measure depreciation of a currency ex-
cept by ascertaining whether and how nearly
it can be exchanged, dollar for dollar, for
gold coin. People who say (and one hears it
said pretty frequently) that the currency is
depreciated in relation to commodities, are
merely juggling with words. If the simple
fact of the recent advance in prices is to be
accepted as meaning that our currency is de-
preciated, then, in case of a world-wide har-
vest failure in an ordinary year — a failure
which had put up prices on the average, say,
5 or 10 per cent — one would be driven to the
inference that the currency had even then
depreciated by that percentage. The conclu-
sion could not be escaped on such a line of
reasoning, even if that currency consisted of
nothing but gold coin. But this is to involve
the whole discussion in meaningless absurdi-
ties. It is the kind of reasoning which would
first say that prices have risen because the
purchasing power of money is less, and would
then turn about and say that the purchasing
power of money is less because prices have
risen.
But the quantity theory of money
perfectly recognizes that high prices
are quite as capable of being brought
about by diminution of productivity
(failure of a harvest, for example)
as by increase of the monetary
medium. In so far as productivity
has diminished in these last years, it
accounts for the rise of prices. How
serious that diminution has been, no-
body knows. But everybody knows
that there has been enormous increase
in the monetary medium ; and all that
the quantity theory says is that this
increase has caused a corresponding
rise of prices. As for the "meaning-
less absurdities," however, of which
Mr. Noyes gives so curious an illus-
tration, they exist only in his own
mind. If anybody says "that prices
have risen because the purchasing
power of money is less" and also "that
the purchasing power of money is less
because prices have risen" he is not
in either case speaking of causation
at all. The two things are simply
referred to (assuming that the vol-
ume of commodities, etc., has not
changed) as different names for the
same thing. It is a matter of defini-
tion, not of causation. One may, we
fancy, say that strychnine is a deadly
poison because swallowing a small
amount of strychnine will kill a man,
and also that swallowing a small
amount of strychnine will kill a man
because strychnine is a deadly poison,
without being accused of dealing in
meaningless absurdities. Neither
statement, to be sure, explains any-
thing. But neither of the statements
cited by Mr. Noyes professes to ex-
plain anything. The cause of high
prices, as stated by the quantity
theory, is not that "the purchasing
power of money is less" (which is
only another name for high prices)
but that the quantity of money is
greater.
The other illustration we have in
mind is an interview with Prof. J.
Laurence Laughlin, prominently fea-
tured on the first page of a New
York newspaper. "Production Costs
Make H. C. of L.," says the big head-
line; and the article bears out the
headline. Mr. Laughlin's idea is that
the prices of commodities are high
because, under the pressure of war
need, high wages were paid to work-
ingmen both in manufactures and
agriculture in order to stimulate
production, and that this had the
effect of raising the prices of all com-
modities. But this is only another
way of saying that the first thing that
rose in price was labor, and that other
things followed suit — which may be
perfectly true, but has absolutely
nothing to do with the question of
the relation between prices and the
supply of money. If commodities had
risen first, and wages had risen after-
wards in order to meet the increased
cost of living, the thing that made the
rise possible all round would still have
been the same — the increased supply
of money. As a matter of fact — and
indeed of notorious fact — the events
have taken place sometimes in one
order and sometimes in the other.
The new supply of money may flow
in the first instance to any one of a
hundred different points; but to in-
sist that because it flowed first to one
point rather than another, therefore
the flow of money had nothing to do
with the case, is suggestive of the
logic of Alice in Wonderland rather
than of the reasoning of political
economy.
All this may sound somewhat like a
kindergarten lesson in economics ; but
unfortunately great errors in national
policy on the subject of money have
again and again, in our own country
and in others, been caused by failure
clearly to grasp the simplest teach-
ings of economic logic.
Limitation of the
Right to Strike
A CONFERENCE of representa-
-^ tives of four large farmers' or-
ganizations, in session at Washington
the other day, declared against the
tying up of the country's transporta-
tion service by a railway strike, in
the following terms:
Those who believe that labor has an in-
herent right to organize a strike believe that
such organizations have a right to starve the
people of the cities to death, on the one hand,
and to destroy the property of the farmers on
the other. No such right has ever existed,
and no such right exists now.
These men were dealing with a con-
crete situation. Their judgment, how-
ever, rests upon the belief, if they
were to put it abstractly, that a pos-
sible action, not wrong in itself, may
involve the probability of such dis-
astrous results that organized society
can not grant the existence of an un-
qualified right to commit that action.
The bitter suffering caused in Kansas
by the coal strike of last November
led the Legislature of that State to
embody such a belief in an Industrial
February 21, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[171
Court law, which went into effect
about three weeks ago. This law com-
pels no man to labor against his will,
but does forbid the organization and
calling of strikes in industries neces-
sary to the production and distribu-
tion of the primal requisites of life —
food, fuel, and clothing. It equally
forbids the arbitrary closing of such
industries by the employers, as a
means of enforcing their point of
view in labor disputes. The court
which it establishes has large power
to deal with any real injustice which
can be shown, either in wages or in
the conditions of health, comfort, etc.,
under which labor must be per-
formed. The law thus recognizes that
in putting a curb upon the right to
strike, the State assumes the obliga-
tion to protect labor against any
harm to its legitimate interests which
this curb might entail.
The incident of the Boston police-
men brought home to the public
mind the fact that to certain classes
of public employees the right to strike
can not be granted with safety to the
vital interests of the people. But the
multiplicity of strikes during the past
year, and the circumstances sur-
rounding some of the more conspicu-
ous of them, have suggested to many
the need of limitations in a wider
field. The coal strike was called at a
time when every day it lasted struck
at the life of helpless thousands of
invalids, aged people, women, and
children, besides paralyzing indus-
tries in all parts of the land. New
York City has been threatened with
a strike of engineers and firemen
which would have shut off the heat
supply from hotels and apartment
houses at the height of an epidemic
of influenza and pneumonia, at the
risk of hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of human lives. This peculiarly
brutal threat ended with the granting
of the increase of wages asked. But
it has had the effect of spreading and
deepening the conviction that civi-
lized society must find some way to
save itself from facing the possibility,
every now and then, of a slaughter of
helpless citizens by wholesale as a
mere incident of a difference of opin-
ion between laborers and their em-
ployers. In other words, there must
be some limitation of the right to
strike, in any case where the exercise
of that right recklessly endangers the
life and health of the community.
There are but three possible
sources of limitation to the right.
The first is spontaneous self-re-
straint, on the part of labor leaders
and the organizations which so gen-
erally follow their direction. The
second is an enlightened public opin-
ion so deeply felt and emphatically
expressed that labor leaders and or-
ganizations tempted to reckless ac-
tion will see at once a force against
which they can not struggle with
hope of success. Finally, there is the
possible limitation of statute law,
executed through special industrial
courts or the ordinary tribunals and
duly fortified with penalties.
Unquestionably the restraint spring-
ing from good sense and right feeling
on the part of labor leaders them-
selves is the most desirable. And the
conduct of the great railway Brother-
hoods, through a considerable portion
of their history, shows that such re-
straint is not an impossibility. It can
be a reasonably safe reliance, how-
ever, only so far as organized labor
keeps itself free from control by the
lawless, destructive, and wholly un-
American influences which have re-
cently been trying to master it, and
which are as regardless of the life
of the innocent citizen as of the real
interests of the genuine laborer him-
self. Of course, successful restraint
along this line requires an equal dis-
play of good sense and right feeling
on the part of employers too, and
not of labor leaders alone.
In the absence of a positive will on
the part of labor leaders to reduce
strikes to the minimum, and espe-
cially a will to avoid any strike which
ruthlessly endangers the life and
health of innocent parties, public
opinion may enforce a substantial
limitation, but only if it is clear and
unified in its convictions, if it makes
itself audible and intelligible, and is
persistent in its purpose. Both in
the coal strike and the steel strike
public opinion was the decisive factor
in bringing them to a fairly speedy
end ; and if the heating strike in New
York City had been allowed to get
under way there is no doubt that the
wrath of the suffering community
would have been manifested in a suf-
ficiently impressive way. On the
whole, there is evidence that public
opinion is becoming so generally en-
lightened and aroused that it may
soon be in position, if wisely con-
centrated and led, to enforce a very
real restraint upon the present ten-
dency to reckless, and we may seri-
ously add murderous, abuse of the
right to strike. But to be permanently
effective, it must of course be equally
severe towards offenses from either
side.
It will be well for society, and espe-
cially for the cause of labor, if from
these voluntary sources shall come
the moral restraint, rather than legal,
that is needed to prevent the recur-
rence of such intolerable perils as
have threatened the American people
now several times within the past six
months. The mass of the American
people naturally sympathize with the
laborer in his desire for an adequate
wage and for proper working condi-
tions ; but with the spirit which would
recklessly endanger the life and
health of untold thousands, merely
in order to hasten some step in this
direction, no American worthy the
name can have any sympathy what-
soever. Every recurrence of this
peril makes the demand for effective
limitation of such abuses more gen-
eral and more insistent. And the de-
mand will not finally accept denial.
If reasonable limitation can not come
from labor itself, either through the
spontaneous stirring of humane and
manly feeling in the hearts of labor
leaders, or through a common-sense
appreciation of the wisdom of yield-
ing to public opinion, then the third
source of relief, to which Kansas has
already resorted, alone remains.
Public opinion, thwarted in its desire
for milder means, will at last feel
obliged to put itself into the form of
statute law, and to insist upon the
enforcement of that law. For it has
reached the point where it can no
longer tolerate wholesale intimida-
tion of the community by threats
against its very life, as a mere corol-
lary of the right of labor to accelerate
the betterment of its condition.
172]
rilE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, Xo. 41
The Church and the
World's Need
'T'HE church has been very much
-'• under fire since 1914. From the
moment it acquiesced in war, even a
defensive war, it was to our senti-
mental radicals but a broken reed.
What must it do to be saved ? It must
use its organization to enforce a new
order of humanity based on the prin-
ciple, "love thy neighbor as thyself."
Of any other spirituality, of the wor-
ship of God, they have nothing to say.
Such mystic elements as their reli-
gion contains are to be found in the
new relation which they would estab-
lish of man to man. The brotherhood
of man is the heart of their desire.
By means of it, not only will the less
fortunately placed members of soci-
ety be guaranteed equal sympathy,
equal opportunity with others, but
there will be a new heaven and a new
earth. For this ideal they are show-
ing a fervor, it must be admitted,
not unlike that displayed by the early
Christians. But how can the church
help to realize it?
The church, it seems, has without
protest permitted all life outside its
walls to become secularized. It has
withheld its authority when con-
fronted by the authority of the vested
interests, whether governmental or
civil. The moral order has none of
the efficiency which characterizes the
physical order under the State. The
church is now urged to have its say
as to the status, for example, of prop-
erty, which should be administered
solely in the interest of society. They
also urge the church to interest it-
self in "industrial democracy." If
they meant by it only an improved
relation between capital and labor,
both as to the working conditions
and the control of industry, the
appeal would be strong to the right-
minded. Unfortunately, the propo-
nents of industrial democracy are
much in the company of radical So-
cialists, and in the minds of these the
industrial democracy hoped for is to
replace our political democracy. As
Mr. W. J. Ghent, one of the ablest of
non-revolutionary Socialists, has re-
cently pointed out in the Review,
the Bolsheviks have had the best
chance in the world to substitute in-
dustrial for political control, and yet
politics is about the whole thing in
the Russian regime.
The radicals of this school are care-
ful to point out that their friendli-
ness towards the plain people of all
nations is prompted only by the
Christian spirit, and that in labor
unionism, Socialism, and Bolshevism
it is not political creeds which inter-
est them, but the fine democratic fel-
lowship that has been instituted by
these systems. They do not definitely
say that they wish to overthrow capi-
talism, even though to them capital-
ism is not a pretty thing. They are
merely suggesting apparently inno-
cent ways by which the church can
more and more put its finger on the
pulse of humanity.
But the church may well hesitate
when it is asked to preach, not merely
principles and attitudes of mind and
spirit, but a definite scheme of eco-
nomic policy. It is true that the
Catholic church has set up elaborate
industrial bureaus, but that church
has fortified itself against the danger
of being swamped by too much of
this activity, by means of compulsory
attendance at church service, as well
as by a body of doctrine utterly
opposed to Socialism. For the
Protestant church the risk will be
much greater. The recent history of
education in this country should fur-
nish an instructive analogy. Ameri-
can colleges, not so long ago, used to
think it proper to train the mind in
channels which did not lead directly
to useful pursuits in life outside.
They were great intellectual reser-
voirs upon which we drew in prepa-
ration for little in particular but
much in general. And it was sup-
posed that this general knowledge,
and the habits of thought set up,
would give one a real advantage in
the struggle of life. Then came the
demand for the practical, by means
of very special courses preparing for
this, that, and the other occupation.
That this system is without beneficial
results, no one would say ; but that it
made dangerous inroads upon the es-
sential culture of the college is evi-
dent from the sudden halt called by
certain institutions. Will not the
church be in similar danger if it
hearkens too much to anybody who
asks it to arbitrate the quarrels of
industrial life and to agitate for a
definite platform of public policy?
In social-welfare work most
churches have all along engaged, and
there is no reason why that should
not be extended to meet the needs of
these troublous days. But the main
function of the church still remains
what it has been in the past — to serve
as a rallying-place and guide of the
spirit. Its opportunities as such
were never greater. The presence of
a heightened religious feeling as an
aftermath of the war is abundant the
world over. It is merely waiting to
be organized and directed. Let the
church beware of adopting the lay-
man's methods of molding and trans-
muting it. For the present danger
to civilization would only be aug-
mented by the kind of cooperation by
the clergy which radical spokesmen
are bidding them undertake. The
clergy would be flirting with revolu-
tion in spite of themselves, and if it
came, politics ^vould, as in Russia,
swallow up both industry and reli-
gion.
The problem of the clergy is that
of all liberals to-day — to discover
foundation-stones upon whicn to
build up the progress of the prssent.
And one of the solidest of these is
the tradition of the church as a house
of worship and of spiritual refresh-
ment. Christ drove the money-
changers out of the Temple, not be-
cause they were money-changers, but
because the Temple was profaned by
their transactions.
THE REVIKW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Corporation
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars a year in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
certs extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright, 1920, in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Ayres O. W. Firkins
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson
Jerome Landfield
I
February 21, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[173
The Problem of Fiume
FEW other cities on the shores of
the Mediterranean occupy so stra-
tegic a position as Fiume. The pos-
sessor of this port holds the key to
the economic and political develop-
ment of a vast hinterland lying to the
north and east, and in case of war
would exercise a military control no
less far reaching and effective. That
this must be the case will become
readily apparent if we examine the
topographic features of the Adriatic
coast.
Between the interior valleys of the
Balkan peninsula and the Adriatic
shore stand the Dinaric Alps, a broad
belt of wild, mountainous land. To
bring to the reader a mental picture
of this region and a vivid conception
of its significance in the present
crisis, I can not do better than quote
a description of these mountains
which appeared in a book on military
geography published before the
Fiume controversy began to trouble
Europe :
The broad belt of mountains lying between
the Morava-Vardar depression and the Adri-
atic shore is one of the most imposing topo-
graphic barriers in Europe. . . .
. . . Included in the mountainous belt
arc ranges high enough to carry snow caps
until the month of August, and the name
"Albania" is believed by some to have its
origin in the snowy appearance of that wild
region. It is said that the "Accursed Moun-
tains" of northern Albania and eastern Mon-
tenegro include some of the least explored
lands of all. of Europe. . . . Among the
rocks involved in the mountain building,
limestone is a conspicuous element, and its
soluble nature has imposed a peculiarly for-
bidding aspect on the topography. Most of
the rainfall passes underground through sink-
holts and smaller solution cavities and then
finds its way through subterranean channels
to a few principal rivers, lakes, or tho sea.
-■Xs a consequence much of the mountain coun-
try is dry and barren, springs' are far apart,
and the open water courses difficult of access
because deeply intrenched in rock-walled
gorges. The "gaunt, naked rocks of the cruel
karst country" arc not only themselves of little
value to mankind, but they render inacces-
sible and, therefore, comparatively useless,
many excellent harbors on the east coast of
the .'\driatic.
A map representing the topog-
raphy of this region shows that the
mountainous belt is narrowest oppo-
site Fiume, and broadens rapidly to
the southward. This broader and
more inaccessible part of the barrier,
from the head of the Adriatic near
Fiume to its mouth at Valona, is
crossed by but two (or possibly now
by three) lines of rail, all of them
narrow gauge, two of them in part
cogwheel mountain-climbing tracks,
only one connecting directly with the
central valley of Serbia, and none of
them capable of serving the commer-
cial needs of the interior. It is no
mere accident that the first standard
gauge railway to cross the barrier
does so at the point where the moun-
tain belt is narrowest, opposite
Fiume.
The conditions which make rail
traffic across the mountain barrier
difficult and expensive are unchang-
ing conditions. No standard gauge
railway can ever be constructed in
this region without involving steep
gradients, much tunneling, great ini-
tial outlay and heavy continuing
overhead expense. If constructed,
every car of freight which crosses by
it must pay a heavy charge, not only
because of the high cost of transpor-
tation under the conditions just de-
scribed, but also because there will
be little local freight to help pay that
cost, given the sparsely inhabited and
unproductive character of the barren
karst. Geographic conditions have
made Fiume, situated at the head of
a sea which brings cheap water trans-
portation into the very heart of Eu-
rope and opposite the narrowest part
of the mountain barrier, the inevi-
table economic outlet for all the
northern portion of the Balkan pen-
insula.
If the reader will examine a map
showing the railway situation, he will
observe another very striking and
significant fact. Almost the entire
standard gauge railway system of the
new Jugoslav State is concentrated in
its northern part, in the latitude of
Fiume. This is because the broad,
fertile, and productive river plains of
the country are largely limited to that
region, because nearly two-thirds of
the population dwells on those plains
or in valleys tributary to them, and
because railway construction and op-
eration are comparatively easy and
cheap, and there is a volume of both
local and long distance traffic large
enough easily to pay haulage costs.
Thus it comes to pass that the eco-
nomic life of the Jugoslav nation is in
a peculiar degree concentrated in the
north of the country, and that the
great system of standard gauge rail-
ways upon which that economic life
depends has its one and only feasible
outlet to the sea at Fiume. The
power which holds Fiume holds the
life of a whole nation at its mercy.
But it is not only Jugoslavia which
has a vital interest in the fate of
Fiume. A whole vast hinterland to
the north and east, including Austria
and Hungary, and to some extent
Czechoslovakia and parts of the
newly enlarged Rumania, finds in this
port a most important outlet to the
sea. And all the outside world which
desires to trade with central and
southeastern Europe via the Mediter-
ranean route is vitally concerned in
the solution of the Fiume dispute. If
the frontier between Italy and Jugo-
slavia be drawn as described in the
President's famous public statement
of last April, the two great Adriatic
ports are assigned one to Italy and
one to Jugoslavia. The Italian port,
Trieste, could then supply the hinter-
land (Austria, Southern Germany,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary) by a line
of rail which does not have to cross
the territory of Jugoslavia; and the
Jugoslav port, Fiume, could supply
that same great hinterland by a line
of rail which does not touch on Ital-
ian territory. In other words, there
would be absolute freedom of com-
merce resulting naturally from a
choice of ports served by a choice
of routes, both ports and routes
being secure from possible inter-
ference or the annoying restric-
tions of a jealous neighbor. It would
be to the interest of each country to
improve its port and railway facili-
ties, to establish the most convenient
train service, and to charge the low-
est tariffs compatible with a reason-
able profit, in order to attract to its
port the largest possible volume of
business. Not only Europe, but all
the world would profit enormously
from such an equitable distribution
of economic advantages. Conversely,
not only Europe, but all the world
must suffer enormously if the Adri-
174]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 41
atic settlement leaves both these ports
in the hands of a single power, or es-
tablishes conditions which must ulti-
mately result in such one-power con-
trol, or gives to a single power the
control of both railways leading
northward from the two ports.
What economic interest has Italy
in Fiume? Even if one granted
Italy's demand that a solid block of
more than half a million Jugoslavs
be placed under her rule in order to
carry her frontier far enough east-
ward to take in the few thousand
Italians of Fiume, who form a tiny
racial island isolated in the midst of
a Slavic sea, the port would remain at
the most remote corner of Italian ter-
ritory. Nearer the Italian peninsula
would be the port of Trieste, which
Italian commerce certainly would not
pass by in order to reach a more
remote and less serviceable port.
Italy's economic interest in the trade
of Fiume is negligible, whereas that
of Jugoslavia and the rest of the hin-
terland is tremendous in quantity and
vital in character.
Let us next look at the problem
from the standpoint of the welfare of
Fiume itself and its inhabitants.
There was no natural harbor at
Fiume, for the city lies at the base of
a steep and straight mountain wall,
and the shore slopes off rapidly to
deep water. Consequently, an artifi-
cial harbor had to be constructed by
building moles in water over 100 feet
deep, and sometimes reaching depths
of 140 feet or more. For such a
costly enterprise Government support
was essential, and it is estimated that
between 1871 and 1913 the Hunga-
rian Government spent 75,000,000 kr.
in port improvements. Before the
war the quay length was already in-
sufficient for the actual traffic, and
future plans provided for the build-
ing of a great mole farther out to sea
in still deeper water. To pay for
such a gigantic undertaking out of
port charges would be impracticable ;
and the attempt to do so would raise
charges so high as to drive trade to
Trieste and elsewhere. More than
ever must Government support be
forthcoming.
What Government will furnish the
capital? Will Italy, in her difficult
financial situation, expend huge sums
to develop an artificial port to com-
pete with her better favored and
more accessible port of Trieste? The
inhabitants of Fiume know full well
that Italy can not, even if she would,
afford the luxury of two peripheral
ports where one will serve. They
know that, after struggling for
months at the Peace Conference to
gain additional hinterland for Trieste
on the ground that it was impossible
to have one of her chief ports within
12 or 15 miles of an alien frontier,
Italy will not commit the folly of ex-
pending her millions in developing a
port through one of the very basins
of which (Port Baross) would pass,
according to the Italian proposal, the
selfsame alien frontier, and where
an advance of a few thousand yards,
instead of twelve or fifteen miles,
might deliver the entire port into
enemy hands. They know, further,
that neither Jugoslavia nor any other
hinterland country can be expected
to provide capital for developing an
Italian port.
One may ask : "Can not some other
port serve the needs of Jugoslavia
equally well?" Sebenico and Spalato
have natural advantages superior to
those with which Fiume was origi-
nally endowed, and are situated near
the centre of the Jugoslav coast. But
immediately behind these two ports
lies the great mountain barrier de-
scribed in the first part of this article,
and presenting, as we have seen, an
unchanging obstacle in the way of
free commercial intercourse. The
economic life of the Jugoslav people
can never find an effective outlet
through any of the ports south of the
latitude of Fiume; for there alone is
the barrier narrow and the economic
life of Jugoslavia concentrated.
But there is a landlocked bay at
Buccari, only a few miles from Fiume.
Periodically Buccari is presented to
the world as an excellent substitute
for Fiume. Thus, when the Amer-
ican press on November 25 reported
that President Wilson had rejected
Italy's latest demands regarding
Fiume and published at the same
time an appeal from the Italian Pre-
mier urging the American people to
support Italy in its controversy with
the American Government, there ap-
peared on the same day, "from a
trustworthy official source," a well-
timed and adroit statement to the ef-
fect that the communication pre-
sented to the American Department
of State by the Italian Ambassador
at Washington contained among other
things, the following observation and
proposal :
As the President has shown a disposition
toward the outlet to the Adriatic for Jugo-
slavia and desired Fiume to go to it in order
to procure such an outlet for the Jugoslavs,
the Italian Government proposed the follow-
ing concession on its part:
Italy would build a port at Buccari for
Jugoslavia ; while the port was being con-
structed and until its completion the Jugo-
slavs would receive special privileges and
guarantees at Fiume.
Now it is difficult to believe that
the terms submitted by the Italian
Government contained any such prop-
osition. The Italian Government is
well aware that it could not build a
port at Buccari. The bay of Buccari
is admirably landlocked, but it is com-
pletely surrounded by high cliffs
which descend abruptly into the
water. There is no room at the shore
for port installations. Road and
trails must zigzag up the steep
slopes to reach the outside world, and
the railroad is inaccessible on the
heights above. The entrance to the
bay is rather dangerous, and sailing
directions warn against trying to
enter when the strong wind known
as the Bora is blowing. In the bay
itself the Bora descends from the
heights with such fury that the an-
chorage is not considered a desirable
one. The bay is entirely too small to
serve the suggested purpose. The
present port works at Fiume are
longer and the proposed improve-
ments are broader than the maximum
length and breadth of the bay of Buc-
cari. When Italian sources launched
the Buccari propaganda at Paris, it
was effectively exploded by the emi-
nent French geographer, Emmanuel
de Martonne of the Sorbonne. Chol-
noky, the leading Hungarian geogra-
pher, in a scientific description of the
Croatian region written before the
present dispute, says : "On the coast
no bays suitable for modern shipping
are open. The bay of Buccari is
closed like a lake, but it is very small,
and it has no shores suitable for com-
February 21, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[175
merce. The steep cliffs descend ab-
ruptly into the green water of the
little bay." If any further demon-
stration of the absurd character of
the Buccari proposal is required,
it is found in the fact that notwith-
standing the location of the land-
locked bay at the very doors of Fiume,
and the passage of the railway within
less than a mile of its shores, the
Hungarian Government spent many
millions in constructing a purely arti-
ficial harbor on the open coast
close by.
There is no escape from the conclu-
sion that Nature has made of Fiume
the only practicable outlet for the
economic life of an entire nation.
If Italy can not afford to have one
(Trieste) of her several important
ports located within 12 or 15 miles
of her frontier even when there is a
mountain barrier between port and
potential enemy, certainly Jugoslavia
can not afford to have her one and
only important port located practi-
cally within Italian territory, with
only the breadth of a city street be-
tween port works and an alien neigh-
bor. Even if open hostilities could
be avoided, endless friction would be
inevitable; and neither private nor
Government capital could ever be in-
duced to expend the millions neces-
sary to develop a port so absurdly and
so dangerously circumstanced.
It is clear that America, in asso-
ciation with France and Great Brit-
ain, has made the most sweeping con-
cessions to Italian demands. All of
the proposed new Italian boundaries
lie in regions peopled by alien races.
Both the natural geographic frontier
and the strategic frontier have been
passed in order to assure to Italy
special advantages upon which she
insisted. On the north a solid block
of over two hundred thousand Ty-
rolese patriots and on the east an-
other solid block of between three and
four hundred thousand Jugoslavs
have been placed under Italian rule,
for reasons in which neither the prin-
ciple of nationality nor the right of
self-determination could play any
part. Italy is assured such absolute
strategic control of the Adriatic Sea
that not a ship can move in its waters
without her consent, for she has been
offered the three keys to the naval
domination of that nearly closed sea :
Pola, Valona, and possession of some
central group of the Dalmatian is-
lands. Whereas the Treaty of London
assigned her but a part of Albania,
and that only in certain eventualities,
she has now been offered a mandate
over all Albania.
If, in addition to all these conces-
sions, the American Government has
been unable to concede Italy's de-
mands concerning Fiume, it is prob-
ably because of a fear that the terms
of the settlement upon which Italy
insists would imperil the security of
the only port of a new nation, and
hence impose upon that nation a
measure of economic subjection the
ultimate political consequences of
which would prove disastrous.
A Geographer
Aliens and the Political Party System
[While we are happy to give to Mr. Sparge
the use of our columns to make a point by
which he sets much store, we do not think that
the point affects the validity of the charge
preferred at Albany that the present organ-
ization of the Socialist party makes possible
the dictation of its policy by its alien mem-
bership.]
A MONG the several important
■^^ issues raised by the trial of the
Socialist legislators in Albany, none
is of greater interest or importance,
perhaps, than that of the relation of
aliens to our political party system.
It will be recalled that witnesses for
the prosecution brought out the fact
that the Socialist party of America,
a dues-paying organization, admitted
into its membership the following
classes of non-citizens: (1) minors,
the age qualification being set at
eighteen years; (2) women, regard-
less of the suffrage laws; (3) aliens
of every kind.
The representatives of the Socialist
party made no attempt to disprove
this charge; indeed, they could not
do so had they so desired. Evidence
was adduced to show that the local
and State organizations composed, in
part at least, of these three classes
of non-citizens, are by party constitu-
tion given the right to control the
actions of the party's elected repre-
sentatives and that in practice they
do so. It was clearly shown that it
was entirely possible for a repre-
sentative of the party in public office
to be subject to the control of a
majority composed in large part, or
even exclusively, of non-citizens. It
is possible for such control to be ex-
ercised by aliens entirely unfamiliar
with the language of the country, or
with its political and social institu-
tions.
Of course, this opens up a very
serious matter. Truly it is an aston-
ishing condition that in a country
based upon representative democratic
government it is possible for public
officials who have been elected by the
votes of their fellow citizens to be
subject to direction by a relatively
small number of persons, a majority
of whom are not themselves qualified
to vote. It would be difficult to con-
ceive of anything more anomalous
than this: On the one hand, we say
to certain people, "You are not quali-
fied to share in the selection of our
public ofl!icials," while on the other
hand we say to them, "You are com-
petent to share in the direction and
instruction of our public officials."
As a result of the manner in which
this anomalous condition has been
brought to the attention of the public
during the trial, a great many news-
papers throughout the country have
made the very natural suggestion that
it should be made unlawful for a polit-
ical party organization to include in
its membership any class of people
not entitled under our laws to exer-
cise all the rights and prerogatives of
citizenship. Various legislators have
intimated their intention of introduc-
ing legislative measures to this effect,
and there is undoubtedly a very large
public sentiment in favor of such a
proceeding. At first blush, there
would seem to be no worthy objection
to such a proposal. We shall do well,
however, to proceed with very great
caution in dealing with a problem
which is far from being as simple as
its first appearance indicates.
I am assuming for the purpose of
this discussion that our immigration
176]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 41
policy is to continue without any very
serious fundamental change ; that we
shall continue to receive large masses
of immigrant workers from various
European countries. As in the past,
these foreign workers and their
families will come to us speaking lan-
guages other than our own, quite un-
familiar with our political history
and institutions, each racial and na-
tional group bringing its own peculiar
psychology and experience. Among
those who come, there will be, as
there have been in the past, aggres-
sive, alert, and capable minorities —
those who in the countries from
which they come have taken part in
political and economic movements.
Among these will be many Socialists
and labor unionists. A very serious
question immediately presents itself
to the thoughtful student of American
problems, namely, whether such a law
or rule as that contemplated would
have the effect of retarding the Amer-
icanization of these groups; whether
it would tend to prevent their rapid
assimilation into our American polit-
ical life and to prolong the period
during which they remain aliens, un-
naturalized and unassimilated. In
other words, it is worth while asking
whether the practice of the Socialist
party, which is admittedly illogical
and apparently indefensible, is not,
pragmatically considered, really cal-
culated to hasten the Americaniza-
tion of the discontented alien worker,
whose discontent may so easily prove
a danger to our free institutions.
I do not want to dogmatize upon
this important question in order to
express a thoughtful judgment con-
cerning it, but from my observation
during many years' activity in the
Socialist party I am quite certain that
we must be careful to avoid hasty
action along the lines now suggested
in so many quarters. During the next
couple of decades, tremendous issues
will have to be solved in the various
countries from which the bulk of our
immigration comes. The strife will
be very bitter and very keen, and it
is quite unthinkable that the masses
of immigrants coming to this country
will be wholly immune and unaffected,
or that they will leave behind them all
their interests and feelings upon the
great issues involved when they enter
the United States.
I can imagine nothing more unde-
sirable than that Socialists coming
from Russia, Poland, Italy, or Hun-
gary, for example, should be encour-
aged to form in this country branches
of the Socialist party of the European
countries from which they come. Yet
that would be the almost inevitable
result, I fear, of any change in our
laws which forbade their admission
into the organized Socialist movement
of this country. They would be almost
certain, I think, to continue to be
members of the parties in the various
countries of their origin, and would
give their allegiance and their moral
and material support to those parties.
From this would result evils which
are by no means to be lightly set
aside: In the first place, they would
form, either openly or secretly,
branches of parties in Russia, Poland,
Italy, Hungary, and so on. Every
disturbance in any one of those coun-
tries would be reflected in the organi-
zations of that nationality here, and,
as a result, our working class would
be subject to unrest, having little or
nothing to do with our own political
and industrial conditions. Thus, in
every industrial centre in the United
States where there were large Polish
organizations in 1915 we found the
bitter controversy in the working-
men's movement of Poland seriously
disturbing the Polish workingmen's
organizations here.
Secondly, these organized groups
of emigres might very easily involve
the nation in embarrassing difficulties
with the Governments of foreign na-
tions.
In the third place, the mere fact
that they preserved organic connec-
tion with the movements abroad
would form a strong bond of con-
tinued allegiance to the mother coun-
tries and would tend to defer their
assimilation as Americans. Their
financial support would give the offi-
cials and agents a vested interest in
keeping them attached to foreign
branches of the party and preventing
them from turning that support to a
purely American party.
In suggesting these rather serious
objections, I am not guided by a
priori reasoning, but by very definite
and concrete facts. It is not as well
known as it ought to be that the
Socialist party by its free admission
of aliens to membership has done
much to break up just such organiza-
tions as I have described, with all
their dangerous entanglements. Much
has been said concerning the presence
in the Socialist party of federations
of foreign-speaking branches, very
largely composed of aliens. There are,
or were, in the party Polish, Russian,
Jewish, Scandinavian, Finnish, South
Slavic (Jugoslav), and Czecho-
slovak federations. That some of
these federations have exercised a
dangerous influence on the Socialist
party has been generally recognized.
Nevertheless, it may be doubted
whether it was anything like as great
as the evil influence they would have
exerted outside of the party, as com-
ponent parts of European move-
ments.
I am inclined to think that the So-
cialist party has, in this way, rendered
the nation a very great service. It
has required a long struggle, and I
recall the great satisfaction with
which it was accomplished in the case
of Polish Socialists in America, for
example. In a long conversation with
Daszynski, the brilliant leader of the
Socialist party of Poland, during his
visit to this country a few years ago,
I went over this whole matter, and
found him in entire agreement. Cer-
tain Russian Socialist groups have
created a similar problem.
I submit that the questions here
raised are of very fundamental im-
portance and must be seriously con-
sidered before any legislation is
passed bearing upon the subject of
the right of aliens to membership in
a political party. Because it is a
political party, and as such is under
the necessity of getting votes, the
Socialist party naturally uses every
possible effort to compel its members
to become citizens. This statement
is based, not upon hearsay, but upon
definite personal knowledge. The
alien who is admitted to membership
is urged to become naturalized as
soon as possible. It is a common
occurrence for applications to be re-
jected because the applicants have
Fehniiuv 21, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[177
lived for a considerable time in this
country without taking out "first
papers." In most large cities natu-
ralization classes have been held to
prepare applicants for citizenship.
It is only just and fair, when the
Socialist party is being so critically
examined, that the truth upon a mat-
ter of such fundamental importance
should be made widely known.
John Spargo
The President's Secretary
Poetry
"Louvain Is a Dull, Unin-
teresting Town. . ."
"Louvain is a dull, uninteresting
town . . ."
Thus Baedeker, before the War. Ay,
dull!
Dull flames from burning manuscripts
annul
The Past; and dull gray smoke drifts
slowly down
The broad main street; and dull fat
Prussians scowl
At hearing the dull moans of burghers
shot.
At seeing the dull eyes of corpses, not
A moment dead . . . There, like a stupid
owl,
A mother, quick with child, looks dazed
about.
Nor sees the soldiers — Swaggering,
rough of speech,
They spike her on their knives (one way
to teach!)
And, laughing, jerk the jagged saw-
teeth out.
To her dull wonder . . . Here, gray
Landsturm slouch
Against the station, guarding a dull herd
Of citizens, who stare, without a word.
Agape at hell, and listen, as they crouch
In the great square — a huddled, wildered
crowd —
To fire, and guns, and shrieks . . . and
see their shroud.
Long since have the ashes whitened,
And the dead have long been at peace,
And the town which bore up, unfright-
ened.
Has witnessed the Great Release.
But the scar of her sorrow is tender.
And the light in her eyes is veiled,
Though with courage bred of the blood
she shed.
And of men who never quailed.
She faces the future serenely.
No coward, and not cowed —
This "dull, uninteresting town"
Has made a nation proud !
Robert Withington
WHEN President Wilson fell ill, and
all the news from his bedside,
which had become the seat of govern-
ment, had to be screened through Mr.
Joseph Patrick Tumulty, the importance
of the office of secretary to the President
was thrown into high relief. It is a
matter of public concern who fills the
job. Mr. Wilson has altered during his
tenure of the White House many Wash-
ington values that had come to be ac-
cepted as permanent. He has pared
down the stature of many public and
official figures. No figure or personality
of consequence in the Washington
scheme of things as it existed prior to
Mr. Wilson's arrival has been so obliter-
ated, blurred in outline, reduced in value,
and decreased in functioning capacity as
that of secretary to the President. No
picture in the Washington gallery has
offered less resistance to the effacing
sponge than Mr. Tumulty. He and the
President between them have made the
secretaryship conform to the geometrical
definition of a point: occupying a posi-
tion in space but without dimensions.
At the present juncture this is an un-
relieved misfortune. It has given rise
to many honest apprehensions and much
concern. There have been persons at
Washington in office and authority, in-
cluding many Senators, who have been
quick to cast doubt and suspicion upon
every statement or utterance or paper
that has come from the White House in
Mr. Wilson's name since he became ill.
The personality and authority of the
secretary to the President and the im-
pression he had made upon Washington
have not been such as to still these tales.
Colonel House has been the chief per-
sonal agent of the President for the past
seven years. He has been entrusted
with more important tasks and missions
by Mr. Wilson than any other man in the
United States. Now it is currently be-
lieved in Washington, and has been
asserted as a fact in newspapers, cham-
pions of the administration, that Mr.
Wilson does not know that Colonel House
has returned from Europe and from his
activities and duties on the Supreme
War Council at Paris. If that important
and essential piece of news has not
reached the President, his secretary
must take the responsibility.
Since Mr. Wilson was unable to trans-
act public business in his office, it fol-
lows that his only channel of news of
what was going on in the world that
affected his responsibilities and his du-
ties as President was through his secre-
tary. It is equally true that the only
source of news Congress, the executive
officials of the Government, and the pub-
lic had of Mr. Wilson's condition, his
decisions, his desires, and his pttitude
of mind on the several immediate, press-
ing public problems that came to a head
since last September waa through Mr.
Tumulty.
When Mr. Wilson collapsed on his re-
turn to Washington after his break-
down on his Western trip, the whole
world was concerned and alarmed. The
President had in his hands the strings
of control of events in the making that
affected the destinies and literally the
lives of millions of people at home and
abroad. It was not curiosity about an
eminent figure but sheer, vital, absorb-
ing self-interest that made a startled
and apprehensive world turn to the
White House for exact, truthful, trust-
worthy news of the patient, what ailed
him, how sick he really was, and whether
he would get well again.
There are officials of the Government
at Washington, the Vice-President, the
members of the Cabinet, who would have
been charged with new and complex and
difficult duties in the event of Mr. Wil-
son's incapacity, and who were not told
in the beginning anything beyond the
bulletins given out for publication in the
newspapers. And these bulletins were
written in such language as to give rise
to the gravest forebodings. Their tone
and their phraseology were such as are
always reserved to give warning that
hope has been given up.
A clumsy, forbidding mystery was
made out of the President's illness, in
which sinister rumors bred like maggots.
There was lacking an articulate voice at
the White House, a spokesman with
enough vision and understanding to per-
ceive his obligations, not only to the
President, but to the whole people, and
to tell the whole truth simply and sin-
cerely in a way that would command
respect and instant acceptance. There
should be no more question about the
authenticity, validity, and scrupulous
accuracy of a "White House statement"
than there is about a Supreme Court de-
cision.
One great burden Mr. Wilson long ago
took off Mr. Tumulty. The secretary no
longer has to winnow out of an eager,
pressing horde the few persons whose
business is of sufficient importance to
merit a personal interview with the Ex-
ecutive. When Mr. Wilson came to
Washington, he declared that he in-
tended to keep his office door wide open
and see everybody. After a brief trial
this procedure was abandoned. The
office door was closed, and Mr. Wilson
began to see nobody except such few
persons as he sent for. It used to be
that a secretary was largely measured
by his tact and skill and intuition in
letting in to the President only those
persons whose affairs justified invasion
178]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 41
of the Executive's time. Men have
sought an appointment with the Presi-
dent to ask if he would allow them to
test a toy motor-boat in the basin of the
fountain at the rear of the White House.
One fine spring morning two Congress-
men asked Mr. Taft's Secretary for an
appointment to present a delegation to
the President. The request was granted.
On the day appointed, the two Congress-
men appeared with more than two thou-
sand men and women. They simply
overran the White House offices and
grounds. Mr. Taft, with great good
nature, shook hands with about five
hundred before giving up the job. His
whole schedule of appointments for the
day was hopelessly disarranged. A great
many other persons suffered inconven-
iences. The two Congressmen could not
be made to see that they had imposed
i,'„ upon the President or upon those others
who had engagements with Mr. Taft.
Of course, Mr. Tumulty never has that
problem to face. There are no more
White House visitors in the old sense.
The Secretary to the President can
not bluff his way through. He, like the
President, soon comes to be known for
what he is. His value, his fibre, his
quality are searchingly appraised. His
relations with his chief quickly emerge.
If the President trusts him, relies upon
him, gives him responsibilities, or is
guided by him in any degree, a good
many people soon come to know it. I
think a summary of the Washington ver-
dict on the relations between Mr. Wilson
and Mr. Tumulty would be, "The Presi-
dent is fond of Joe." But that Mr.
Tumulty has ever been a counsellor, or
even a trusted confidant, there is noth-
ing to show. The relation between the
two men had become fixed at Trenton,
before Mr. Wilson came to Washington,
and neither was prepared to make the
change when it became necessary greatly
to enlarge and radically increase the
power and discretion enjoyed by the
Secretary.
The job of secretary to the President
has been made, and should be, as im-
portant as that of a Cabinet officer. A
present-day secretary should be more
than a mere sublimated stenographer.
The office has no statutory definition.
One secretary may be a good stenog-
rapher, another a politician, another a
social leader, another a nonentity, an-
other a chump. All these different varie-
ties have flourished their brief day in
Washington. The office has greatly and
visibly increased in power, prestige, and
importance in recent years — until the
present administration — as new burdens
have been thrown upon the President
and as the conception of the powers of
the office of the President itself has been
enlarged.
There have been twenty-seven differ-
ent Presidents of the United States, and
all of them had one or more private
secretaries, but the list of men to whom
the office has proved a "stepping-etone"
to further honors and an enlarged sphere
of life is a short one. John Hay, John
G. Nicolay, Horace Porter, Daniel La-
mont, George Bruce Cortelyou, and
William Loeb, Jr., are names that stand
out from the list of those who have held
the office. The others fell back into
oblivion, or never emerged from it, even
while they were in the White House, and
their subsequent activities and exploits
are unrecorded.
The enlarged dimensions of the office
of secretary to the President were
marked out by Daniel Lamont when he
came to Washington as the President's
secretary in the first Cleveland adminis-
tration. He had been Governor Cleve-
land's secretary at Albany, just as Mr.
Tumulty had been Governor Wilson's
secretary at Trenton. Here the parallel
abruptly ends. In Mr. Cleveland's second
administration Mr. Lamont was Secre-
tary of War. During his tenure of
office as Secretary to the President, Mr.
Lamont to some extent piade it an added
Cabinet position. His personal influence
with Mr. Cleveland was on a par with
that of any one of the seven counsellors
provided by law.
After Lamont comes Cortelyou, who
was confidential stenographer to Grover
Cleveland, secretary to McKinley and to
Roosevelt, Chairman of the Republican
National Committee, Postmaster Gen-
eral, Secretary of Commerce and Labor,
and Secretary of the Treasury in the
Roosevelt Cabinet. Mr. Cortelyou was
very nearly the ideal secretary to the
President. He had political sagacity and
experience. He knew public men, he
was a competent executive, and could
dispose of an enormous amount of rou-
tine business without hitch or flurry.
He had an intimate and detailed knowl-
edge of the processes of government, was
careful and cautious to a degree, had a
manner that inspired confidence, and was
always the master of himself and of
circumstances. There were never "un-
fortunate slips" when Mr. Cortelyou was
in the White House executive offices.
Everything ran as smoothly as an eight-
day clock.
Loeb, who succeeded Cortelyou when
that efficient private secretary went into
the Cabinet, left a mixed impression in
Washington. While he was secretary to
Roosevelt, the newspapers continually
blossomed with the headlines "Loeb
Takes the Blame." It would have been
the same had an archangel held the post.
One of the chief duties of a secretary
to the President is to take the blame
when the President does anything rash
or unpopular. When the secretary does
anything clever, he must be equally quick
in seeing that the full popular credit falls
to his chief. No man had a more faith-
ful and devoted servant, or a more loyal
and untiring assistant than Roosevelt
had in Loeb. Though Loeb customarily
figured in the newspapers as a sacrificial
goat, he was a competent man in the
post and did not allow the dimensions of
the office to shrink during his incum-
bency. He had many and curious adven-
tures.
The line of Presidential secretaries
begins with Tobias Lear and Lawrence
Lewis, who served under Washington.
In the beginning and even down to Gar-
field's time, our Presidents seem to have
had a fondness for bestowing the secre-
taryship upon young kinsmen. Law-
rence Lewis was Washington's "sister
Betty's son." The letter is preserved in
which the young man accepted the post;
it runs in quaintly formal terms:
Fauquier Co.,
July 24, 1797.
My dear Sir :
I return you my sincere thanks for the kind
invitation I received when last at Mount Ver-
non to make it my home, and that whilst there
my services would be acceptable. This invita-
tion was the more pleasing to me from a de-
sire of being serviceable to you and from a
hope in fulfilling those duties assigned me I
should derive some improvement by them.
Untutored in almost every branch of busi-
ness, I can only promise a ready and willing
obedience to any instruction or command you
may please to give. I should have been with
you ere this, but for the unavoidable deten-
tion by my servant's running away, and that
at a time when I was nearly ready for my de-
parture. I have been ever since in pursuit of
him without success. The uncertainty of get-
ting a servant or my runaway will probably
detain me until 2Sth of August, but not a
moment longer than is unavoidable.
With sincere regard for my Aunt, and
family
I remain, your affectionate Nephew,
Lawrence Lewis.
Gen. George Washington.
Presidents from Washington to Mc-
Kinley had private secretaries. When
John Addison Porter came to Washing-
ton in 1897 to serve William McKinley
in that capacity, he assumed the title
of secretary to the President. The
next year Congress dropped the old title
and appropriated money to pay the salary
of a secretary to the President. The job
sadly needs to be restored to its old
dimensions and authority. Its rehabili-
tation should be one of the pleasantest
tasks that will confront Mr. Wilson's
successor.
But Mr. Tumulty is not to blame. He
has been cast for a role he was not quali-
fied to play. His previous experience had
not given him the outlook or developed
the capacities that a secretary to the
President must have. Mr. Wilson has
got along without a Cabinet, but he
should have permitted himself a secre-
tary. A really good one can do so very
much indeed to make the home bright
and happy.
Spectator
February 21, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[179
Correspondence
Amending the Amendments
To the Editors of Thk Review :
The legislatures of many States West
and North, with apparently no more con-
sideration than they gave to the Prohibi-
tion Amendment, have been voting to
ratify the Woman Suffrage Amendment,
even including States like Maine and
Ohio where the voters rejected State suf-
frage on referendum, and other as yet
non-suffrage States like Massachusetts,
Kentucky, and New Hampshire.
But in the South the States of the
black belt, Virginia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Missis-
sippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, have all
either negatively or affirmatively lined
squarely up against the Suffrage Amend-
ment evidently through fear that its
enforcement would involve the enforce-
ment of the Fifteenth Amendment and
the return of reconstruction conditions
and negro domination in the South, while
Maryland, a ninth State, seems about to
vote against the Suffrage Amendment in
a resolution attacking its validity on
States' Rights grounds similar to those
alleged by Rhode Island against Con-
stitutional Prohibition.
Among the States unrecorded, in none
of which (except Tennessee where Presi-
dential suffrage was granted) the women
now vote, and which may be considered
as possible negatives, are Connecticut,
Vermont, Delaware, West Virginia, and
Tennessee. Four of these (or three of
these, plus a negative referendum in
Ohio) would defeat the Amendment.
This leaves out of account Oklahoma,
a suffrage State but with strong Southern
connections, and Washington, a suffrage
State, where the Governer refuses to
call a special session and where, if he did,
a referendum could be invoked under the
precedent set by the State Supreme Court
when they sustained the referendum
there on Constitutional Prohibition. It
f~| does not necessarily follow that the elect-
' orate of a suffrage State where the
women are enfranchised would certainly
vote to force the people of unwilling
States to do likewise. The Ohio vote by
referendum on Prohibition indicated
such a possibility. The principle of
Home Rule under our Constitutional
form of government seems to appeal
more strongly to the electors than it does
to the members of the State Legislatures.
In view of the above, there seems no
likelihood of the Amendment's passage
before the Presidential election. A
working arrangement between Rhode
Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey, on
f ■ the one hand, and Maryland, Louisiana,
• " and, say, Virginia, on the other hand,
might yet bring the defeat of both
Amendments and save the Constitution
and Home Rule. Stranger things have
happened in politics before this.
Incidentally the people of Ohio invoked
the referendum on Constitutional Suf-
frage as they did on Prohibition. The
case involving the legality of their action
in so doing is set for argument before
the Supreme Court on March 1. This
case may incidentally determine the legal
effect of the other nine or ten referen-
dums invoked on Constitutional Prohi-
bition, and the question whether, until
these referendums are held, the Prohibi-
tion Amendment has in fact been rat-
ified by the required thirty-six States.
If the referendums are sustained, rescis-
sions in Maryland, New York, Massachu-
setts, and other States on Constitutional
Prohibition will clearly be in order.
Optimist
New York, Fehrimry 11
The Russian Problem
To the Editors of The Review:
You may be right about the world's
Russian problem, but there are two im-
portant questions about it you have not
discussed :
1. If foreign nations had given sub-
stantial aid to Kolchak, would not Lenin
and Trotsky have turned "patriots" and
have succeeded in rousing the fury of
the peasants against him as an alleged
"traitor to his country," a "tool of the
foreigner," a man "bought by foreign
capitalists" and the like?
2. Is it not expedient for the world to
let the Bolsheviki somewhere work out
their system to ruin, to a reductio ad
absurdum so plain that even the fools of
the world will understand its folly?
J. De Lancey Verplanck
Walhrook, Md., February 5
The Noise of Worms
To the Editors of The Review:
Sometimes the occupants of the back
seat now reserved for the humble Hel-
lenist are forced to sit up and take no-
tice of what goes on upon the stage.
Possibly it is difficult to imagine that
an ultra-modem poem, appallingly free
and new as the newest convention in auc-
tion bridge, would strike a responsive
chord, but such is the case; and yet —
well, I'm not very clear on the matter,
at that. Perhaps I am not, after all, vi-
brating in exact assonance with the
author.
However,- to come to the point. The
poem is the seventh (mystic number!
sacred to the Maiden Athena, unbegot-
ten and herself the mother of none) and
last of a group contributed by Mr. E. E.
Cummings to the January Dial, begin-
ning with the address:
O distinct
Lady of my unkempt adoration
two lines I greatly admire; they slip so
easily from the tongue. The poet im-
plores the aforesaid Distinct Lady, in
verses wholly innocent of punctuation,
to accept his fragile certain song, which
has the virtue of concerning itself with
the "Nothing and which lives" rather
than with the "many things and which
die"; the song being "taken," after
taking, the Distinct Lady and her un-
kempt adorer are to amuse themselves
observing together the perfect gesticu-
lation of the "accurate strenuous lips of
incorruptible Nothing" behind the car-
nival of life
where to a normal
melody of probable violins dance
the square virtues with the oblong sins
This latter is what struck my eye, for
to the Neo-Pythagoreans the virtues
were square and the sins oblong. Does
not Nicomachus of Gerasa tell us that
"the ancients of Pythagoras' group and
his successors saw the Other and Other-
ness fundamentally in the Dyad, and the
Same and Sameness in the Monad?" And,
of course, the universe has a numerical
pattern, with virtue falling in the same
line as Sameness, and vice on the side of
Otherness, Infinity, and Infiniteness
(that is why it is so attractive). Now
out of the Monad come the squares and
out of the Dyad the oblongs; so there
you have it, square virtues and oblong
sins. Unfortunately, there is no mention
of probable violins in any of the Pytha-
gorean sources; the nearest thing is
Pythagoras' monochord, on which he used
to practise the section of the canon, but
it is not related that he played jazz for
the oblong sins thereon. We shall, for
the present at any rate, have to waive
the probable violins.
One other matter. The poet admits
that he has
been true
only to the noise of worms
in the eligible day
under the unaccountable sun
This is a serious indictment. But would
a true Pythagorean call the sun unac-
countable? They had some reverence for
Heraclitus, and he remarked that "the
sun will not exceed his measures; if he
does, the Erinyes, the auxiliaries of Jus-
tice, will find him out." No; the sun
was held strictly accountable, and it was
no small matter to be pursued by the
heavenly Department of Justice.
And the "the noise of worms." Homer,
Sophocles, Plato, and the rest tell me
nothing about this important matter.
May they be forgiven. Moreover, a biol-
ogist friend tells me worms don't make
any noise. A chemist, however, thinks
it may be a reference to the common
herd. Maybe so. But since it may be
presumptuous in me to turn to these high
matters, I will sign myself
A Noisy Worm
Ann Arbor, Mich., February 7
180]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 41
Book Reviews
An American Inquiry into
British Labor Conditions
The Labor Situation in Great Britain and
France. The Commission on Foreign In-
quiry of the National Civic Federation.
New York: E. P. Dutton and Company.
THE labor situation in the United
States, though far from ideal, is
probably more nearly so than that of any
other country, yet we are continually
looking abroad for light to shine upon
our dark places. It is not our fault,
surely, if we find foreigners groping in
obscurity as dense as our own, with little
illumination to spare, and that of a kind
that loses its potency when transmitted.
The light of reason, evidently, is best
generated at home and reveals most when
shining upon familiar objects. Of
course, if Great Britain, France, and
other countries are industrially in ad-
vance of the United States, and we are
traveling the same road, their experience
may be of great value by way of warning
and example; but if their conditions are
different and their path of progress di-
verges from ours, the best we can do is
to compare notes and consider sugges-
tions, while working out our problems
in our own way.
Such is, in effect, the conclusion
reached by the commissioners of the
National Civic Federation after spend-
ing four months — February to June,
1919 — in Great Britain, with a side trip
of three weeks to France, during which
they interviewed innumerable people.
They read diligently in publications of
every kind, and did their best to get, not
a mass of undigested facts, but general
impressions of conditions and such an in-
sight into the trend of events as might
suggest measures for the direction and
control of affairs on this side of the At-
lantic. The Commission was composed
of representative citizens, including
Charles Mayer (shipping), chairman;
Charles S. Barrett (farmer) ; Albert F.
Bemis (textile manufacturer) ; J. Grant
Forbes (contracting engineer) ; James
W. Sullivan (typographical trade union-
ist) ; Andrew Parker Nevin (attorney-
at-law) ; E. A. Quarles, secretary. The
report is in three parts: the first, by
Mr. Nevin, from the point of view of the
public; the second, by Mr. Sullivan, as a
representative of the American Federa-
tion of Labor; the third, by Mr. Bemis,
from an employer's point of view.
Mr. Nevin, who sketches the situation
in broad lines, is much impressed by the
complex network of labor organizations
in Great Britain, the difficulty of ascer-
taining the character, scope, and purpose
of the various groupings, and the elusive
reactions of public opinion to their pro-
posals and activities. Yet it is possible
to distinguish two main groups: Those
who favor maintaining the existing sys-
tem with a minimum of state interven-
tion, and those who would gradually
substitute national control and adminis-
tration of industry in place of the pres-
ent capitalistic system. Although Bol-
shevism scarcely exists in Great Britain,
and Socialism of the school of Webb, Mc-
Donald, and Snowden is at a discount,
labor demands a new status, not merely
improvement in regard to wages and con-
ditions, but recognition such as it re-
ceived during the war, when the "classes"
felt their dependence upon the "masses"
and it was generally understood that
Britons of every rank and station must
stand or fall together. Yet the employ-
ers point out the fact that every right
involves a correlative obligation, and
they insist that labor must set its face
against ca'canny, sabotage, and every
other restriction of production, and work
for the speedy rehabilitation of industry.
In this attitude they are strongly sup-
ported by the Government, and when, in
last summer's coal troubles, the more rad-
ical labor leaders struck at the founda-
tion of the nation's prosperity, they
found the public dead against them, and
even the "Triple Alliance," on which
they had counted, could not be brought
into action.
Thus radicalism induces reaction, even
as reaction causes radicalism, and in try-
ing to avoid both extremes the British
are taking their usual middle ground,
the Government with the Whitley Coun-
cils, and the more progressive employers
with proposals for practical cooperation
in industry and a new morale based upon
mutuality of effort and reciprocity of
benefits. Lord Leverhulme says:
To-day's programme must go deeper than
mere attempt to prevent strikes and disputes ;
it must include the placing of employer and
employee on the footing of equal opportuni-
ties, and of sharing the profits of trade and
commerce between all the three elements nec-
essary for production, viz., Capital, Manage-
ment, and Labor. The tool-user must become
joint owner of the tools he wields.
Mr. Bemis, in presenting an employer's
impressions, says that British employers
find it hard to take the ideal middle
ground because the workers frequently
break their agreements and because of
the tendency of the unions to fall under
the leadership of men of glib tongue
and extreme views. Then, too, various
economic fallacies have been imposed
upon society through the joint efforts of
labor monopoly and idealists who have
had no experience in practical affairs.
Among these are the minimum wage, the
eight-hour day, the limitation of profit-
eering to capital, and the idea that indus-
try can dispense with the accumulation
of capital. In view of such ignorance
there is urgent need of the education of
all classes in the principles of economics.
Certainly, this is a most promising field
for economists to cultivate, and their
association with hard-headed business
men and hard-handed laborers should be
most beneficial to all concerned.
While economists and business men
are getting into closer touch with the
wage-earners, a number of labor leaders,
like Mr. Sullivan, have acquired a con-
siderable knowledge of economic theory
and the principles of business manage-
ment, and a rapprochement is taking
place between the several points of view,
which augurs well for the industrial re-
lations of the future. Mr. Sullivan thinks
that British trade unionism is distinctly
inferior to the American system, because
of the multiplicity of organizations and
the lack of centralized authority. Sec-
tionalism prevails; the unions are not
coextensive with the crafts; there is
little union shop solidarity, and no com-
plete national jurisdiction. The local
unions represent living districts rather
than working districts, and for general
proposals or appeals there is no straight
line, as in the United States, from every
member on through his local and national
union to the supreme court — the Amer-
ican Federation of Labor. Great Britain
has not one but four separate major or-
ganizations, differing in type and pur-
pose: The Trade Union Congress, the
General Federation of Trade Unions, the
Cooperative Union, and the British Labor
Party.
This lack of unity and control has
given rise to certain phases of the Brit-
ish labor movement which some Amer-
ican observers have hailed as precursors
of a new social order, but which Mr. Sul-
livan regards as symptoms of weakness
that are likely to be less prominent as
the British system conforms more
closely to the American model. Among
these are the shop-steward movement,
the Whitley councils, and the leadership
of politicians and Socialists. The shop
stewards became prominent during the
war because of the lack of shop unity of
organization and the difficulty of ob-
taining speedy decisions through branch
unions organized by living areas. These
shop stewards, many of them youthful
agitators imbued with Socialistic theo-
ries, drifted away from union control,
but as soon as the armistice came the
regular officials asserted their authority,
which was confirmed by a formal agree-
ment on May 20, 1919. Thus, the mass
of the workers in the engineering trades
have repudiated both their irregular
leaders and their insurrectional tactics.
Similarly, the Parliamentary Committee
of the Trade Union Congress has de-
clared that it can not accept the Whitley
Councils as a substitute for trade union
organization; and in the Parliamentary
elections of December, 1918, the Socialist
February 21, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[181
1
m
leaders were defeated — all of which
shows, as Mr. Sullivan believes, the
growing power of regular conservative
unionism, and the decline of syndical-
ism. Socialism, and excessive govern-
mental intervention.
The distinguished commissioners of
the National Civic Federation are evi-
dently well pleased with their investiga-
tions in Great Britain and France, inas-
much as they have confirmed the opinion
with which they probably set out, to-wit,
that labor conditions in the United States
are comparatively satisfactory, that our
country has little to learn from foreign
experience, and might have something
of our own to communicate, if foreigners
would seek it in a humble and teachable
spirit. In this respect they present a
strong contrast to another group of in-
vestigators, who have painted the Brit-
ish labor landscape couleur de rose as
they see it in the dawn of a better and
brighter day. Both groups of observers
are good men and true, but it is strange
to find them differing so widely in regard
to the facts which they select and the
conclusions which they draw. Perhaps
they should have a consultation, to which
they might invite one or more profes-
sional economists.
J. E. Le Rossignol
Blake Outdone
Wii.UAM Blake, the Man. By Charles Gard-
ner. Nev/ York : E. P. Duttoii and Co.
SINCE Swinburne set the pace with his
high-stepping, fire-snorting, apoca-
lyptic eulogy of Blake, there has been a
kind of fury among our critical folk to
imitate or surpass him. It can not be
said that the latest comer is entirely
free from this vacuous enthusiasm; but
in general his Pegasus is under some re-
straint; his style at least is always
definite, and his reflections are some-
times wise; above all he does more than
any of his predecessors, we think, to set
forth the intellectual milieu in which
Blake thought his thoughts and saw his
visions, and this must be reckoned the
peculiar merit, no small merit indeed,
of the book.
This historic sense is particularly
noticeable in Mr. Gardner's association
of Blake with Wesley and Whitefield
and the Methodist movement generally.
Like those religious revivalists, Blake
was seeking an escape into the sort of
enthusiasm which to Paley and the typ-
ical Anglican seemed fraught with
danger; as the Methodists demanded a
mysterious conversion which should put
the soul into immediate contact with
things divine, clothing it with the gar-
ment of Christ's righteousness in place
of the "filthy rags" of its own morality,
so Blake desired a sudden and overwhelm-
ing illumination which should bum away
the formal conventions of poetry. As
Whitefield had pungent things to say of
worldly respectability, so Blake thun-
dered in the index against all those who
took reason and habit for their law. It
is quite in character that he should have
been indignant when Samuel Foote ap-
plied the customary epithet "hypocrite"
to Whitefield. Blake, of course, did not
follow the doctrine of the new birth as
bound up with the revivalists' peculiar
theological tenets, but in a way it is
true that he was, and is, the Methodist
of verse, and that his special appeal is
to what may be called the Methbdistic
state of imaginative culture — though
Mr. Gardner, who starts the comparison,
would revolt from its logical conclusion.
Still more clarifying is Mr. Gardner's
analysis of the relation of Blake to Swed-
enborg. After several pages in which
the influence of -the Lutheran mystic on
the English visionary is discussed, the
point of divergence, from which pro-
ceeded the body of Blake's symbolical
writings, is thus stated:
Now Blake, being a visionary, knew that
vision depended on will, and he learnt further
from Swedenborg that it depended also on
state, and so, as a man's state changed, his
vision changed also. Blake's state was the
imagination of the poetic genius (Los),
Swedenborg's the dry logical faculty of the
unassisted reason (Urizen), and as Blake
looked at Swedenborg's heaven and hell, he
saw them approaching one to the other and
finally with an impetuous rush locked in a
marital embrace.
This is the most significant vision of modern
times, after which it is easy to judge Sweden-
borg. He had given for life, theology; for
beauty, ashes; and instead of emancipating
the modern world he condemned it to the
appalling tedium of an everlasting Sunday
School. The doctrine of the New Jerusalem
was not half so beautiful as that of the Old
Jerusalem. Christ come again in Glory was
stripped of that beauty that men had per-
ceived in His first lowly coming. Blake's in-
dictment of Swedenborg was severe. It was
also an indictment of the whole of protestant
theology. The magnificent fruit of Sweden-
borg's action and reaction, attraction and re-
pulsion for Blake was "The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell." . . .
Heaven, then, consists of the passive obeyers
of reason, the religious, the good; hell of the
active obeyers of Energy, the irreligious, the
evil. Here let it be well marked and remem-
bered that by the religious Blake always meant
those who repress their energies or passions
until they become passive enough for them
to obey reason.
Blake henceforth belonged definitely to
the band of rebels who were bringing in
a transvaluation of all values, wherein the
old hell was to be converted into the new
heaven. But here again Mr. Gardner
keeps an eye on the differences as well
as on the resemblances. "Blake," he
says, "sympathized with all these rebels
in their political aspirations; but where-
as their watchword was reason, and
their revolt was in the name of reason,
he believed that reason carried one very
little way, and that the elemental deeps
of life and passion that lie far under
reason must be stirred and aroused if the
work of rebellion was to bring forth
lasting fruit." For the Age of Reason,
then, which was the ideal of Godwin and
Paine and Holcroft and Mary Wollstone-
craft, he would introduce the age of the
spontaneous imagination, and for the
rights of political "liberty" he would de-
mand freedom of the passions. "What
was left for Blake? The sex question
had never been dragged out into the
light. The subject was unclean. Sexual
morality consisted in repression. No-
where as here does repression breed such
poisonous fruits. Was not sex a part
of that vital fire and passion in which
Blake believed with his whole heart?
Was it not true that whatsoever lives is
holy? Must not there be liberty for the
sexual instinct if it was to be kept clean?
For the next ten years Blake became
the advocate of bodily liberty, indistin-
guishable from free-love."
Mr. Gardner deserves full credit for
his skill in showing Blake's place in the
currents of his age, but when it comes
to Mr. Gardner's own place the account
is rather mixed; in fact, a more amaz-
ingly confused thinker you will scarcely
meet outside of Alice's Wonderland.
Though in a perfunctory way he calls at-
tention to Blake's surrender of free-love
theories for a humdrum loyalty to his
wife, as on the whole rather the decent
thing as the world goes, yet it must be
clear enough that the critic's keener sym-
pathy is with the insurgence against
"repression" formulated in the "Heaven
and Hell," as indeed there is the true and
dynamic Blake. So it was that the Eng-
lish visionary "anticipated much of the
better side of Nietzsche's teaching"; and,
although Mr. Gardner does not emit the
ominous name, he presents Blake as a
pretty thorough Freudian in doctrine,
and exults in him as such. We let that
pass; this is not the place to show that
the evil consequences of the so-called
Freudian "repression" are not at all the
results of restraint, or repression if you
choose, but of lack of restraint in the
imagination, where character really be-
gins. The astonishing thing about Mr.
Gardner is not that he should have been
gulled by the current theories of self-
control, but that he should have fathered
these upon what he regards as Catholic
Christianity. He seems to see no in-
compatibility between the doctrines of
Freud and of Jesus Christ. For him
Christ is chiefly notable as a law-breaker,
and the story of the woman taken in
adultery is a lesson in free-love. He
reads the Gospel as Blake read it, and
thinks he reads it as a good Catholic.
We should like to hear Cardinal Gib-
bons' opinion of a Freudian Savior of
mankind.
But the confusion does not end here.
Our reader will gasp, but it must out.
182]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 41
Having combined Freud and Christ, the
critic proceeds to complete his trinity by
adding the name of Samuel Johnson.
Oh yes, he sees the differences between
Johnson and Blake:
The truth is that Blake was not a great
thinker, still less a system-builder. He ought
to have found the best Christian system while
young and kept to it. Then he could have
lived his life of vision within coherent bounds.
Clear, sharp dogma, like outline in art, would
have given rest to his mind, substance to his
visions, and saved him from the waste of pour-
ing out a torrent of incoherent sayings con-
taining scraps of gnosticism, theosophy, rosi-
crucianism, and almost every heresy under the
sun. The master-mind in his youth who could
have given him a sound system was Dr. John-
son, and he would not listen to him. How
should the arch-rebel pay any attention to the
arch-conservator? Dr. Johnson said many
foolish things about things of no great im-
portance : he was wise in great matters.
You will say that our critic is talking
very good sense. He is, and he says
other very sensible things — which is an-
other element of his strange confused-
ness — and then, having said them, he
adds: "Eventually Blake subscribed to
the same creed as Dr. Johnson!" And
so we have, as the ideal which Mr. Gard-
ner brings to his criticism of Blake, a
trinity of Freud and the Christ of Rome
and Dr. Johnson; "that surely is a mar-
velous unanimity for such diverse
minds."
''Appassionata'
Impressions That Remained. Memoirs by
Ethel Smyth. 2 Vols. Longmans, Green
& Co.
MUSIC-LOVERS may recall the per-
formance of "Der Wald" in the
Metropolitan Opera House in March,
1903. It was the work of an English-
woman who is recognized on the Conti-
nent, and even in her own country, as
a remarkable composer of virile and im-
aginative music. Durham University
has conferred on her the degree of Doc-
tor of Music, honoris causa, a most un-
usual mark of distinction. Her three-act
opera, "The Wreckers," has met with
great success at Prague, and elsewhere.
Specht, the Viennese critic, ranks her
as easily first among all women compos-
ers. She has been the Tyrtaeus of the
feminist movement in England, and has
fought in the foremost ranks of the
combatants for the vote.
Now she has published her memoirs,
which give the key to the woman behind
these activities. They read like a first-
class novel in the first person singular.
The setting is familiar. The heroine is
one of an old-fashioned English family
of eight. Her father is a typical British
officer, handsome, limited, conservative,
doing his "dooty" consistently in what-
ever state of life into which it pleased
God to call him. Her mother is half
French, clever, musical, temperamental.
There is a strong Irish strain in the
blood. The other children find their natu-
ral spheres, the girls in marriage, the
boys in the army; but Ethel develops a
talent for music. Her unusual gifts are
recognized by a friend of the family.
Colonel Ewing, composer of "Jerusalem
the Golden." At the age of twelve, she
makes up her mind to follow music as
a career. Here she encounters the John
Bull conservatism of her father, who
would almost as soon see a daughter of
his go on the streets as start off by her-
self to study her chosen profession in
foreign parts. But Ethel has a will of
her own; she bides her time, and in the
end, by dint of suffragette tactics, she
overcomes the paternal opposition to her
long-cherished plan. Full of joy, hope,
and youthful enthusiasm, she sets out
for Leipzig in the summer of 1877.
The Germany she soon learned to know
and love was the old Fatherland of little
States and little cities, simple, old-fash-
ioned, provincial in life and standards.
At once she made friends with the most
desirable members of an intensely mu-
sical set. Here was the atmosphere for
which she pined in England. Music was
the element she lived in, the air she
breathed, her daily food. Her musical
friends, Livia Frege, Lili Wach (Men-
delssohn's youngest daughter), and Elis-
abeth von Herzogenberg were certainly
women of unusual talent, character and
charm; their portraits attest the truth
of their English friend's descriptions;
and they all returned her adoring devo-
tion. For there is nothing tepid about
Dr. Ethel Smyth or her memoirs, nor
will they be understood by tepid people.
As a child she made a list of a hundred
"passions" — girls and women to whom
she would have proposed had she been
a man. So it was throughout her life.
Extremes rule her. To her everyone is
angel or devil. When her dearest woman
friend, "Lisl," refuses to write to her
any more, she wonders that she did not
go mad. Later she hates her. She
"swarms" for her friends; she blackens
the character of her enemies. Now she
is a "freethinker;" now she is "High
Church;" now she can listen for an hour
and a half to a Scottish sermon. Her
physical organization corresponds to this
temperament. She is the athlete of the
family, a dancer, a tennis-player, a bold
rider. Her German friends call her
Lebensteufel; her family, "Stormy Pe-
trel." The doctor gives her up, more than
once, and she "makes one of her usual
lightning recoveries."
The crisis to which this temperament
works up seems borrowed from "Die
Wahlverwandtschaften." Her greatest
friend, "Lisl," as she calls Elisabeth von
Herzogenberg, a childless woman, be-
comes her second mother, writes the ten-
derest letters, nurses her with almost
more than maternal solicitude during a
severe illness. For seven years the Her-
zogenbergs' house is practically her
home. But "Lisl" has a sister, Julia, al-
most as beautiful in person, but very dif-
ferent in character. She is as "modem"
and "advanced" as "Lisl" is traditional
and conservative. Julia is married to
Henry Brewster, who is half French, half
American, handsome, attractive, a gen-
ius, "one of the Wise Men of the World,"
as Miss Smyth describes him, and —
eleven years younger than his wife. For
them "marriage is but a ceremonial
toy," a superstitious performance in a
church which they comply with humor-
ously for the sake of their friends. They
regard their relation as a "friendship,"
dissoluble by consent at any time, when
either partner meets a more magnetic af-
finity. Ethel visits the pair in their
"ivory tower" in Florence, and proves
to be the foreordained mate of "H. B."
The conventional triangle is now com-
plete. On discovering their feelings,
these three remarkable persons face the
situation frankly and discuss the rela-
tions involved. The wife believes the
feelings of the other two to be imagi-
nary; the man in the case remains neu-
tral, apparently; but Ethel cuts the knot
by going away. Then, although she con-
fides the whole story to "Lisl" at once,
and is not blamed by her bosom friend
for her part in the tangled relations,
"Lisl" soon ceases to write. When
Ethel implores her to give the reasons
for her silence, she gives them plainly.
"The scales fell from my eyes and I
suddenly saw myself not as coadjutator
(sic!) in a noble reading of Destiny, but
simply as the thief of some one else's
goods." These two friends never saw
each other again. The silence remained
unbroken. No jilted lover could suffer
more than this woman because another
woman broke off intercourse with her.
She names the period of their estrange-
ment "In the Desert."
These confessions, put forth without
the usual canting excuses, will be very
differently judged by different natures.
Mrs. Candid, Mrs. Grundy, Mr. Worldly
Wiseman, Sir Benjamin Backbite will do
after their kind. Lovers of gossip and
scandal will fasten on the indiscretions
of the book. Readers of finer mould,
while regretting the cruel necessity
which drove the writer to do public pen-
ance in the market place, will believe and
condone. No one can fail to be drawn
by the record of that vanished Germany,
the writer's spiritual home, and the un-
conscious delineation of her own char-
acter by a woman of genius. The psy-
chologist will study these fascinating
pages for data of the artistic tempera-
ment, its force, its egotism, its limita-
tions, of which it is not itself aware.
But no one who begins the book can lay
it aside until he reaches the end.
February 21, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[183
Doubles and Such
The Worldlings. By Leonard Merrick. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
The Carrington's of High Hill. By Marion
Harland. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons. . ^.l
THE writer of the introduction of this
newest volume in the limited edition
of Merrick's works does his best not to
be left altogether behind by his distin-
guished colleagues in the rather odd busi-
ness of introducing one of their most
distinguished colleagues to the world.
Mr. Neil Munro has done his best, one
may be sure, to persuade himself that
"The Worldings" is a fine sample of
Merrick. "It has in it," he says, "almost
every element of Merrick's attractiveness
as a tale-teller, save perhaps his humour,
here kept severely in restraint as a
quality out of key in a story founded on
'one of the passionate cruces of life, where
duty and inclination come nobly to the
grapple.' " But the truth is, a Merrick
without his humor would be like a col-
orless sunset or an odorless onion — you
might as well call it something else.
Merrick may have taken demure satis-
faction in turning out a romantic shocker
without betraying by the quiver of an
eyelid that the author was conscious of
its limitations. But for a few opening
bits of description of life at the South
African diamond fields, which are said
to be remarkably realistic, the story is
.melodramatic stuff and nonsense.
But this is to say that it deals in the
l6ss perishable materials of deliberate
make-believe. The pauper suddenly en-
riched, the peasant whose physical double
is a prince and who is destined to play
the princely part, the long-lost son, the
criminal nobly (if vainly) offering him-
self to justice — what older or better mat-
ter for romance can be found — romance,
at least, of the mechanical sort? Our
hero-villain's second intention, of course,
is sufficient. It proves him to be the
fine fellow he has seemed, and altogether
worthy of the heroine (he has already
married her, to be sure, in this instance)
— the heroine who doesn't care whether
his name is Philip or Maurice so long as
He remains Him. . . . "The Worldlings"
was written, it appears, soon after
"Cynthia" and "The Actor-Manager,"
wherein Merrick kept as close to reality
as might be without imperiling his status
as a story-teller — which, unlike many of
his contemporaries, he never permits
himself to forget. Mechanical romance
offered a restful field for the moment.
His own romantic field he was to discover
later on, in company with the questing
Conrad and the sportive Tricotrin. On
the whole, we miss the feeling that most
of these collected volumes have given us
— of having been in contact with some-
thing very nearly perfect in its kind.
The mechanism is not sufficiently con-
cealed; and the suspicion persists that
for once this skillful and little rewarded
artist may have let himself down to a
pot-boiler and have put no more effort
into it than he felt such work demanded.
The Maurice-Philip person is a good
enough puppet, the action is strung upon
a good enough plot. It is all good enough,
and barely good enough, for its purpose.
To the better sort of mechanical ro-
mance belongs also "The Carrington's
of High Hill." As a tale of the South
of Mrs. Terhune's own girlhood, it is
full of what majf as well be called real-
ism, the honest portrayal, however col-
ored by memory and temperament, of
a vanished social and political estate.
The author retains an inherited rever-
ence for the "old-school" manners and
standards with whose outward appear-
ance, fiction, and the stage have made us
overfamiliar as with something quaint,
that is, both lovable and more or less
absurd. Therefore her types have life,
recognizable as they are; the Southern
aristocrat in his stately home; the great
lady of the old regime who is absolute
ruler of her little world; the faithful
retainers, and so on. And therefore her
plot, with all its elaboration, stands up
as well as a plot may which is so patently
worked out according to formula. The
pride of the Carrington's gives a certain
plausibility to the mystery which sur-
rounds the family skeleton in its closet.
Its existence is denied and its where-
abouts known only to one person; but
its bones may be heard faintly rattling,
almost from the first moment of our
setting foot on High Hill. Paul Car-
rington, twenty years since, has brought
to his Virginian home a beautiful bride
from New Orleans. She is a belle and
a flirt and worse. She sets the neighbor-
hood by the ears, openly antagonizes
Madam Carrington, and flaunts off to
New Orleans, where she presently dies.
So, at least, it is understood at High
Hill, as well it may be, since her body is
supposed to have been brought back and
buried there. But she has really eloped
with another man. For many years
Paul Carrington carries the burden of
the secret: not even his lady mother
knows. A perfectly fitting mate for him
is at hand; but of course he cannot think
of her. Then comes private news of the
runaway wife's death, and the way seems
smoothed for happiness and peace at
High Hill, after all. But this is not to
be too readily permitted by the plot-
maker. With the aid of a confusion of
identities (turning partly upon physical
likeness increased by, as it were, a forged
strawberry-mark), a tense situation is
brought about. Of course it is the
wicked wife herself who has turned up,
intending malice. But after two false
alarms, death does really take her in
time to prevent the worst. And now the
tables are turned, for it is Madam Car-
rington who holds the key to the real
skeleton-closet, and it is her son whose
later happiness she resolves, must and
shall be founded in a way, on false
premises. Neither he nor his second
bride nor the daughter of the guilty
woman may ever know the depths into
which she would have plunged them. "No
other excepting ourselves," cries Madam
Carrington, "must ever know this story.
It is as unbelievable as it is monstrous
and revolting. If known it would take
rank with county legends for a century
to come. I will not have my son's name
blackened by the tale. . . ." So in a
fine flurry of family pride, triumphant
virtue, and impeccable manners the tale
comes properly to a close.
H. W. BOYNTON
The Run of the Shelves
THE results of forty years of immer-
, _ sion in all branches of occult research
have been given to the world by Mrs.
Violet Tweedale in "Ghosts I Have Seen"
(Frederick A. Stokes Company). Ac-
cording to the paper jacket, Mrs. Twee-
dale "vouches for the truth of whatever
she narrates." We had long waited for
the disappearance of uncertainty from
this troubled theme. The evidence is
plentiful almost to satiety, and Mrs.
Tweedale's security and content are so
inflections that the book affects one like
a picnic in the unseen world. The style,
even in horrors, is cosy; Mrs. Tweedale
is perhaps the first writer on record to
handle themes of this kind purringly.
Hers is a mind which colloquies with
Browning, the production of several
novels, acquaintance with countesses and
duchesses by the score, war-work, arrest
in Austria have left engagingly, or — if
one's temper be morose — enragingly in-
fantine. Spiritualism is a field in which,
ordinarily, the believer's faith is hateful
to the skeptic and the skeptic's unfaith
provoking to the believer. Mrs. Twee-
dale's faith can smile at the adversary.
Mrs. Tweedale has met scores of
spirits, but the motives which give ra-
tionality to the meetings of living men,
the exchange of services, of news, of
sympathy, are practically never found
in these encounters. The evident fond-
ness of spirits for Mrs. Tweedale's com-
pany has not smoothed the way for even
two minutes of rational intercourse. If
communications be genuine, they are
almost certainly fifty years old, and when
we reflect that both the dead man and
the living often belong to a race which
has perfected in the interval the ocean-
cable, the telephone, and wireless teleg-
raphy, the backwardness in the psychic
field remains remarkable. Moreover, we
may suppose that a ghost, like a man,
may be gauged by his power to con-
tribute to our prosperity or pleasure, and
184]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 41
the failure of Mrs. Tweedale's ghosts
to do anything that would make a human
being in their place attractive or useful
is conspicuous. Indeed, a human being,
behaving as they do, would be subject
to arrest for trespass or vagrancy at
the hands of the nearest constable. They
may have reserves of rationality which
differ totally from ours, and so may
lunatics — a possibility which has not pre-
vented the erection of asylums. The
notion of playfulness which obtains
among ghosts may be inferred from the
fact that Mrs. Tweedale attributes the
mysterious appearance of a swarm of
gray moths on her bed to a practical
joke carried out by a magician in the
spirit world.
Mr. Charles Fort has, after twelve
years of patient research, finished his
"Book of the Damned" and Messrs. Boni
and Liveright have published it. With
enormous industry the author has col-
lected accounts from newspapers, scien-
tific reviews, books, personal statements,
gossip, and traditions of all the things,
commonplace or weird, which have fallen
on the earth. "Things that, without the
formidable mass of evidence adduced,
would be incredible, support the author's
argument"; thus, the publishers. Ap-
parently there is a persistent and tre-
mendous dropping from the sky of all
sorts of animal, mineral, and vegetable
things. It is Mr. Fort's purpose to prove
that these missiles are hurled at us by
the inhabitants of other planets who take
this method of letting us know of their
existence. The reader will probably sup-
pose that the "Damned" is Mr. Fort.
The "Damned," however, prove to be
this "procession of data" and the au-
thor's ingenious hypothesis which Dog-
matic Science has excluded from the
kingdom of heaven. It is a curious col-
lection which may tend to increase the
placidity of a scholar's postprandial pipe.
It is a cosmopolitan group of artists
that Martin Birnbaum passes in review
in "Introductions" (Frederic Fairchild
Sherman). Aubrey Beardsley, Charles
Conder, Charles Ricketts, Charles H.
Shannon, and John Flaxman are British,
as is by recent adoption Edmund Dulac.
Paul Manship, Albert Sterner, and
Robert Blum are Americans. Leon
Bakst and Maurice Sterne are born Rus-
sians. Jules Pascin is a Bulgarian, Kay
Nielsen a Dane, Elfe Nadleman a Pole,
and Alfred Stevens by birth a Belgian.
These essays were originally written as
leaflets for so many exhibitions conducted
by Mr. Birnbaum. The task was that
of aesthetic toastmastership. To be grace-
ful, informing, and readily understood
was the problem. The author has solved
it with sure literary tact and offers as
well a fine criticism which was not in
the bond. With a few exceptions he
deals with eccentric forms of art. Gen-
erally he has kept his perspective in a
criticism that readily leads to loose
superlatives. It seems to us that he
gives Bakst, Dulac, and Pascin more than
their due of praise. But in the main he
keeps his proportions, writing in a
valediction which is in itself a criticism
of the most comprehensive kind, "We
need something to liberate us from the
tyranny of our more or less ugly mode
in art." Perhaps the best of the brief
essays is the Conder. It has the dainti-
ness of its subject. Of»most importance
is the elaborate essay on John Flaxman's
classical drawings. It reveals noble and
very able qualities of draughtsmanship
which are obscured in the familiar en-
gravings. The essay is so good that one
could wish that Mr. Birnbaum might
oftener let himself out. It is a pleasure
to come in touch with the newer move-
ments under a guide who eschews jargon
and keeps his head. The book is beauti-
fully printed in a limited edition, fully
illustrated, and bound in neat cartridge
boards.
"Pres des Combattants" (Paris:
Hachette) would be an interesting war
book whether or no, because of its author,
M. Andre Chevrillon, who always adorns
whatever he touches. The fact that it
has to do with the western front even
before we came into the struggle may
militate against it at this rather late
day. We refer to it mainly on account
of its dedication, which runs as follows:
En pieux souvenir de I'ami qui congut tout
le sacrifice et qui I'accomplit, Raymond
Aynard, engage volontaire, tue a Tennem!,
a Renneville pres Verdun, Mars, 1916.
The following extract from a private
letter throws more light on the calvary
of Raymond Aynard and offers another
example of the greatness of soul of so
many of the elite in the recent war:
My friend was a French diplomat who held
an important post in Egypt, where he was
Commissairc Frangais de la Dette Egyptienne.
He was fifty years old. a married man, the
father of four young children, and though
the authorities at our Foreign Office insisted
on his staying at his post where he was
useful even in time of war, he thought
that he could be easily replaced there and
was not satified till he was allowed to come
to France and enlist. On account of his age,
he was set to the teaching and preparation
of young recruits somewhere near Lyons.
(He had reached a certain ranl< — sergeant, I
believe — thirty years before when doing his
military service.) This did not satisfy him.
and he had no rest till he succeeded in being
sent to the front as lieutenant attached to a
divisionary staff. But even this was not
enough for him, and finally he managed to be
sent nearer Verdun at the head of a com-
pany. This was in February or March, 1916,
a few days after the terrible German push,
which, at first successful, had begun. He
now saw what was coming for him, and on
the morning of the day of his death he said
to another officer who miraculously escaped
the same fate : "Les Boches ne m'auront pas
vivant." His idea of military duty was very
stern and he didn't believe in allowing one-
self to be made a prisoner. His body re-
mained some time in "no man's land."
Finally he was found by a German officer,
who sent to Mme. Aynard a beautiful poem
that he had found in my poor friend's pocket-
book — a poem which expressed his idea of
duty and his acceptance of sacrifice.
For children up to fourteen years the
staff of life is not bread, but milk. Even
adults can get along better without
bread — especially white bread — than
without milk and the other dairy prod-
ucts, butter and cheese. It is therefore
a matter of extreme importance to check
the tendency to use substitutes for milk
which prevails because of its high price.
High price or low, the consumption of
milk should not be cut down. Mr. Fred-
erikson, who is a graduate of the Royal
Danish Agricultural College, and has
had forty years of experience, frankly
declares, in his Story of Milk (Macmil-
lan), that, compared with the cost of
other food, milk has remained remark-
ably cheap. "Milk and its products
should be used to a much greater extent
than heretofore," he says, "not only as
a drink, but in the daily cookery,"
where it partly takes the place of meat,
and thus justifies our outlay for it.
While the amount of milk for various
uses produced in the United States in
1917 was over 84,000,000,000 pounds,
this is only a fraction of what it should
be. Increasing the number of cows is
one way, but a better way is to improva
the cows. A good Holstein yields 7,000
to 10,000 pounds of milk a year, but the
best Holstein yields up to 30,000 — nearly
46,000 pounds. A Jersey has been known
to yield her own weight of butter — 900
pounds in one year!
In less than two hundred pages Mr
Frederikson tells all about dairy cattle,
composition of milk, control of bacteria,
pasteurization, cream and ice-cream,
butter and buttermilk, condensed and
evaporated milk. Fifty pages are de-
voted to American and European cheese-
making.
Sales management, as distinct from
salesmanship, is now being taught at a
dozen colleges and universities, notably
Dartmouth, which has a "professor of
marketing," and New York University.
The curricula of many high schools in-
clude the subject. For this specialized
subject a text-book has just appeared
under the title "Modern Salesmanship"
(Appleton) by J. George Frederick,
President of the Business Bourse and a
Governor of the New York Sales Man-
agers Club. The book, with its thirty-
four chapters and 382 pages, is the first
of its kind to appear with the imprint
of a book publisher, and is already in
use as a college text-book. The treat-
ment of the subject is complete and com-
petent and based on a wide experience of
actual conditions.
February 21, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[185
Old King's
CAN New York have any concern in
hearing that a little college was
burnt to the ground the other day in
Nova Scotia? If New York ever thinks
of its past, the news should recall a
vivid page in its history.
Seventeen-eighty-three was a great
year for the Thirteen Colonies. The
long, dragging, uncertain war for inde-
pendence was won. Peace had come at
last, with honor. The treaty was signed.
It only remained to sweep out the odds
and ends of the long campaigning from
the country. King George's redcoats
were gathered together in New York,
and, with them, thousands of native
Americans, who had fought on the los-
ing side, or sympathized with it, un-
desirable citizens awaiting deportation.
These were the hated Tories.
All that year the little eighteenth-cen-
tury town at the foot of Manhattan
island was busy despatching transports,
slow, comfortless sailing vessels, loaded
to the gunwale with homeless refugees.
Some went to Britain, some to the West
Indies, but most were bound for the
nearest colony which had not joined the
Thirteen in throwing off the yoke — Nova
Scotia. That year, twenty-five thousand
men, women, and children, whose fault
was loyalty to their king, were dumped
in the northern wilderness, which the
jeering whig journalists nicknamed with
justice "Nova Scarcity." At once those
exiled Americans manifested the national
energy. They split the old province in
two, and carved out a separate Govern-
ment of their own. They built their
capital at the mouth of a great river,
and organized it on the model of the
city which had cast them out, as it is
this day. They built another city — since
vanished — of ten thousand inhabitants,
wherein, on election day, King Street was
so crowded that one might have walked
on the heads of the multitude. They
founded soon after a monthly magazine,
a college, and a bishop's see. The college
is the subject of my story.
On the frieze of Columbia's cathedral-
like library a stately inscription pro-
claims orbi et urhi, that the metropolitan
university springs from King's College
founded "when loyalty no harm meant,"
in the reign of King George the Second,
otherwise Dapper George, the fat little
fighting German monarch (he could
swear fluently in English) who charged
on foot with his troops at Dettingen. The
visitor to Columbia will also note the
motif of the king's crown appearing fre-
quently in the decoration of that repub-
lican seat of learning, and will not be
surprised to learn that the oldest society
in the university perpetuates in its name
the same reminiscence of its monarchical
past.
In "Nova Scarcity" those exiled New
York Tories founded a second King's
College, and fortified it with a royal
charter under the sign manual of George
the Third. They would not plant their
seminary for ingenuous youth in the
wicked capital, where the business of
half of the town was to make rum, and
the business of the other half was to
drink it, where a full brigade of troops
always lay in garrison, where a squadron
of the King's ships was always stationed,
where soldiers and sailors spent their
pay and prize-money in the fearless old
fashion, and Princes of the Blood led
the dance. They pitched on a beautiful
site in the innocent country some forty
miles away, outside the pretty hamlet of
Windsor. Every visitor to-day approves
the wisdom of their choice. The rolling
country has the look of an English shire.
Here two tidal rivers join their waters;
and twice a day they fill with "Fundy's
orange tide." A fort stood on Block-
house Hill, and was still a military post.
About were several gentlemen's estates
with their tenantry. It was a most de-
sirable spot for a college; and there, on
a hill facing south, the Tories built their
Tory college, the first planted outside
the British Isles in what is to-day the
British Empire. That is its pride. For
a century or more, it stood on the hill
with its "bays" and its central pillared
portico amid its tall guardian elms, in
simple dignity.
As far as possible the founders made
a little Oxford of it. Residence, chapel,
subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles
were compulsory. The Archbishop of
Canterbury was Visitor. Though it is
not recorded that he ever discharged his
function, Tom Moore visited it in 1804,
and left a memento of his visit, a Lucian
with an inscription. Kingsmen were for-
bidden to frequent the mass, or any dis-
senting meeting-house, or conventicle,
lest they should imbibe irreligious or re-
publican principles. William Cochran,
who had been professor of Latin and
Greek at King's College, New York, could
not be made president; he was but a
graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and
the Governors desired an Oxford man.
Thus "old King's" came into being, the
child of a still older American "King's"
in order to promote "classical learning,
divinity, and belles lettres." For a cen-
tury and more it has kept its antique
standard flying valiantly, despite many a
storm.
Time enriched the little college. It
educated the scions of provincial gentry.
Here Haliburton studied, the creator of
"Sam Slick," and Colonel Jack Inglis of
the Rifles, who held Lucknow through
the Great Mutiny, and Fenwick Williams,
whose defense of Kars in the Crimean
War was the admiration of all profes-
sional soldiers. A Gothic library was built,
which also served as a hall for Convoca-
tion—Encuenia, with the proceedings in
Latin. A picturesque little chapel was
erected in memory of a beloved teacher.
A library was gathered; and it is a
library which might make the wealthiest
biblomaniac's mouth water for its in-
cunabula. Aldines and Elzevirs, ex-
amples from the presses of Plantin,
Fraben, Etienne, editionen principes of
Plato and Aristotle, the "Speculum Vit«
Humanae" of 1471, the Jenson Bible of
1476 are among the treasures of "old
King's."
Thus was an institution of learning
planted, and thus did it grow, fulfilling-
into destiny as an oasis in the desert, a
light in darkness. As the years passed,
memory and association endeared it to
many men. Its housing became sacred
and venerable. The time-honored walla
were a landmark on which all eyes rested
with pleasure.
Now calamity has befallen "old
King's"; the main building is a pile of
ashes. Only the tall old chimneys remain
standing.
Archibald MacMecham
Drama
Eugene O'Neill-The
Theatre Parisien
MR. EUGENE O'NEILL achieved a
measure of reputation some months
ago by a volume of rude seafaring, one-
act plays in which grimness was qualified
by literature. In "Beyond the Horizon,"
now shown to the public at the Morosco
in the diffidence of special matinees, Mr^
O'Neill has essayed a three-act play. The
step from one act to three in playmaking
is a long one, and Mr. O'Neill has slipped
— has even fallen — in the undertaking.
It is not merely that he views the three
acts as a sum in addition, though that
error would be grave enough, but that
he does not tax himself to make the items
in the sum dramatic. He has not only
failed to give us a three-act play or three
one-act plays; he has failed to give us
even a one-act play with excess baggage.
The main situation is time-worn, but still
vigorous — two brothers and a woman.
Will it be believed that from the first
word of the play to the last there is not
a vestige of conflict between the two
brothers, and that the passion of the
younger brother is completely and finally
cured in the interval between the first
and second acts? This removal of the
combustibles at the very moment when
we are prepared to kindle the fire is an
act of self-denial hardly matchable in
drama. Indeed, the characteristic of Mr.
O'Neill's play, which does no justice to
his faculty, seems less the mere absence
of drama than a fear of drama, a hos-
tility to drama, a vigilance and persist-
186]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 41
ence in the closure of every loophole by
which that disturbing and incendiary
force might creep into his play.
It is time to be a little more particular.
Of two farmer's boys, Robert and An-
drew Mayo, Andrew has been destined
to husbandrj' and to Ruth Atkins, Robert
to poetry and the sea. Ruth finally
chooses Robert, and a reversal of the old
assignment sends Andrew to the mast
and Robert to the furrows. Furrows to
dreamers are but ruts, and, like ruts,
they are unproductive. Labors and
losses multiplj'. Nothing encourages love
for a man of affairs like marriage with
a dreamer. Ruth tells her husband that
she loves Andrew. A response on An-
drew's part would create a dramatic situ-
ation; Mr. O'Neill has carefully averted
that response. The disclosure of Ruth's
passion to Andrew would be in itself
dramatic; Mr. O'Neill is vigilant to pre-
vent that disclosure. Andrew returns
in the middle of Act II to do — exactly
nothing. He returns in the middle of
Act III to repeat the achievement. A
fortune which he has promptly and point-
lessly accumulated in the interval has
been promptly and pointlessly lost. Mean-
while Robert and the farm have laid
each other waste. His child and his
mother die; he dies himself after a long
detail of symptoms, corporal and mental,
in the third act, which might have in-
struction for an audience of medical
students or nerve specialists.
It will be seen that some of this ma-
terial is touching. It would have moved
me strongly in a real play; even in "Be-
yond the Horizon" it did not leave me
quite unmoved. The public, as "John
Ferguson" showed, is keenly sensitive
to domesticity in strong, primitive situa-
tions, defecated of the odor of flannels
and of cookery. Mr. O'Neill's attitude,
however, is ambiguous, or, perhaps, two-
fold. It is difficult to pardon the sen-
timental and the brutal in the same per-
son; Mr. O'Neill subjects me to that
difficulty. I call him sentimental in the
old-fashioned prettiness of the relation
between brother and brother and father
and child, though I personally enjoyed
both those relations, and I call him brutal
when he allows a generous man, on almost
no discoverable ground, to say "God
damn you" to a widow beside her hus-
band's body not two minutes after his
death. One should be north wind and
zephyr at the same time.
The actors were drawn from the casts
of the "Storm" and "For the Defense,"
and the performance gained vastly by
their evident, and to my mind, rather
astonishing, sympathy with their parts.
Mr. Edward Arnold won our affection
as Andrew Mayo. The hesitating va-
cancy of Mr. Richard Bennett's smile
as Robert Mayo sometimes nearly undid
for me the influence of his finely sympa-
thetic voice. He flattened Robert Mayo
too much, yet the picture as a whole
was not unmoving, and the pathology in
Act III was adroit. Miss Helen Mac-
Kellar's Ruth Atkins impresses me more
and more as sound, sound in the f eatheri-
ness of Act I, sound, again, in the second
act, in the small raspingness which
makes frail women deadly, soundest of
all in the apathy of Act III with its
alternate stripes of petulance and com-
passion. Miss Louise Closser Hale's por-
trayal of the termagant was brilliant;
in this subdued play its brilliancy was
almost glaring. Miss Mary Jeffery as
Mrs. Mayo had supernal moments in
Act I.
I was actually disappointed to read the
words "Farewell Week" on the pro-
gramme of the Theatre Parisien for
Tuesday night, February 10. I have
a pleasure in French plays and French
actors which is almost independent of
their merit; in being French, they have
obliged the world. Not that merit has
been lacking in the Theatre Parisien.
The acting, in particular, has impressed
me as supple, swift, and joyous; I could
hardly have asked for anything better
than the rendering of "Le Coeur a ses
Raisons," a one-act comedy by de Flers
and Cailavet, on Tuesday night. The
concurrence, or consentience, of their
acting is a pleasure to Americans. Pos-
sibly the American spectator feels it even
more than the French; it is the foreigner
who sees a race as an ensemble.
The managers of the Theatre Parisien
should be conversant with the taste of
their public. The public, however, is
largely feminine in its quality as in its
make-up, and remains in a fashion a
mystery to the managers as a woman
remains a mystery to her husband. This
remark is incidental; what I am trying
to say is that, if the taste of the Theatre
Parisien's public has been correctly
divined by its servants, that taste is very
narrow and somewhat trivial. I say
nothing of tragedy or the classics, but
a public for whom "Le Demi-monde" and
"L'Aventuriere," and "Le Flibustier,"
"La Princesse Lointaine" are too sub-
stantial is not a public to which we shall
feel obliged to explain our own indiffer-
ence to Mr. Shaw and Mr. Barker. The
Theatre Parisien presents only love-
comedies in that lightest and gayest form
in which love is reduced to bagatelle,
almost to gimcrack.
The plays are literary in a sense, but
they cling to the border of literature;
they are the fringe on its skirt, not al-
ways undefiled by the dust of the pave-
ment. Even on literary grounds some
of the selections are doubtful. Is French
workmanship in operettas so un-French
that one must really accept, in "Le
Poilu," a two-act piece in which the tie
between the acts is weak by comparison
with like ties in "Buddies" or "My Golden
Girl"? A comedy of intrigue lives and
moves in the suppleness of its articula-
tions. What shall we say of the mal-
adresse of M. Paul Gavault, who in "Ma
Tante d'Honfleur," allows a visitor at a
country house to describe herself falsely
as the wife of another visitor without
securing in advance either his absence
or his complicity ? The comedy is doubt-
less amusing enough, and for every kind
of dramatic offense a laugh is amnesty
on Broadway. We looked to the French
colony in our midst to teach us something
better than the power of our own ex-
ample.
O. W. Firkins
Music
At the Lexington— 'The
Blue Bird"— Caruso's
Indisposition
wriTH Titta Ruffo, Bonci, Galeffi,
W Raisa, and Galli-Curci in the casts
of the Chicago Opera Company, great
singing has been heard lately at the
Lexington. At times the singers have
excelled themselves and stirred audiences
as they are very rarely stirred here.
Titta Ruffo, with the "Drinking Song"
in Ambroise Thomas's highly un-Shake-
spearean "Hamlet," amazed them by his
vocal virtuosity. His power, his tones,
and, more than all, his breath control —
which allows him to hold notes almost
indefinitely — were, in their way, as re-
markable as Bond's more delicate graces.
Rosa Raisa, though less finished in her
art, thrilled all who heard her.
The only novelty (or, rather, semi-
novelty), with the exception of a ballet
by Felix Borowski, the Chicago critic,
which has been added to the repertory
at the Lexington, is "Hamlet," a work on
which I do not care to linger. It is a
futile effort to achieve the impossible
and, but for the "Drinking Song" (a
gross offense to Shakespeare and
Ophelia's "Mad Scene") it would long
years ago have been lost in forgetfulness.
Before these lines get into print, the
English version of Wagner's "consecra-
tional festival play," the revived "Parsi-
fal," will have been presented at the
Metropolitan, where, let us hope, with
the new words of Mr. Krehbiel, it will
have reconquered the high place to which
the sublimity of its theme and the beauty
of the music entitle it.
Meanwhile, may I, though late, say a
word about Albert Wolff and his arrange-
ment of "The Blue Bird"?
Of all the dramas which we owe to
Maurice Maeterlinck, this "L'Oiseau
Bleu" to me seems the least surely suited
to the opera stage. Unless you know the
work by heart (as many do), and can
follow all the ins and out of Maeter-
(Continued on page 188)
February 21, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[187
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Mrs. Gerould, already well known as the author of some
of the most notable short stories of the last decade, has also
achieved a remarkable recognition as an essayist on condi-
tions and questions of the day. This volume collects for
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188]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 41
Establuhnl 1851
Nassau and Pine Streets
The Hanover National Bank
OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
WILLIAM WOODWARD President
E. HAY WARD FERRY Vice-President
SAMUEL WOLVERTON Vice-President
JOSEPH BYRNE Vi:e-Preiident
CHARLES H. HAMPTON Vice-President
HENRY P. TURNBULL Vice-President
WILLIAM E. CABLE, Jr.,
J. NIEMAN
WILLIAM DONALD
GEORGE E. LEWIS
JAMES P. GARDNER
FRED, A. THOMAS
Cashier
Ass't Cashier
Ass't Cashier
Ass't Cashier
Ass't Cashier
Ass't Cashier
FOREIGN DEPARTMENT
WILLLIAM H. SUYDAM
Vice-President and Manager
ROBERT NEILLEY. Ass't Manager
FREDERIC A. BUCK, Ass't Manager
Capital $3,000,000
Surplus and Pro'fits $19,000,000
(Continued from page 186)
linck's dialogue in the French original,
it is bewildering to the listener and spec-
tator. The eternal wanderings of the
characters in pursuit of happiness are
undramatic. There are few climaxes of
interest in the story. As for the some-
what childish dialogue of the Belgian, it
loses its effect when poorly sung. And
of the artists who take part in the
performance, only six — Flora Perini
(Light), Florence Eastman (Mother
Love), Leon Rothier (Father Time and
Gaffer Tyl), Louise Berat (Granny Tyl),
Raymonde Delaunois (Tyltyl), and Paolo
Ananian (Daddy Tyl), are clearly au-
dible.
As for the music, although not a great
achievement — for only at moments has
it real originality — it gives much prom-
ise and is distinguished by unusually
true scholarship. The disjointed words
and vagaries of the libretto do not allow
the composer honest opportunities for
music — except at one point, in the "Fare-
well," in the last act. Mr. Wolff, who
was quite conscious of this fact, has done
his utmost to atone for what is lacking
in the play itself by means of connect-
ing intermezzos and introductions, of
which two are masterly. But the chief
beauty of his work — and the one episode
which, I believe, will live long after the
Bachian interlude and other passages in
this "Blue Bird" have been forgotten —
is the composer's setting of that "Fare-
well" scene. It has a poetic glow, a
charm and grace which haunt me still.
And, with submission to some critics
who have whistled Mr. Wolff's score
down the wind, it seems quite original.
The man who could invent the exquisite
music which accompanies that scene
should have a future.
"Owing to a slight cold, Enrico Caruso
was unable to appear last night at the
Metropolitan."
This brief announcement in the daily
newspapers set many thinking. The
Italian tenor means so much to the
Metropolitan that, if (which heaven for-
bid) he vanished even for a month or
two from that institution, its prestige
might (and would) be gravely compro-
mised.
We know, of course, that, once in the
history of the Metropolitan, Caruso had
to take a lengthy rest. We know that,
notwithstanding that sad fact, the opera
house kept open. But the announcement
I have quoted, none the less, meant more
to some — and particularly to the rich
backers of the Metropolitan — than a tem-
porary embarrassment.
Suppose (for, after all, such things
may happen) the chief "star," the very
pivot of the great opera house, dropped
out some day? His health is marvelous.
His vitality is exceptional. But other
tenors in the past have failed quite sud-
denly, Duprez, for instance. Cou'd Mar-
tinelli or our own Orville Harrold step
like a god from the machine to replace
the "star of stars"? Would spoilt sub-
scribers, used to hearing Caruso twice
each week, accept either of those artists
as permanent substitutes? And even if
they did, what would it prove?
There are some of us who think, and
very rightly, that a great institution like
the Metropolitan should not depend too
much upon one singer. They hold that
there should always be another "star," of
equal magnitude, as an alternative. They
go so far, indeed, as to pretend that the
most wealthy lyric theatre in the world
should have alternatives for every "star"
— that it should not be necessary to post-
pone a performance of "Samson et
Dalila" because Caruso was ill, or to de-
prive us of "Carmen" because Geraldine
Farrar had the "flu."
But where, you ask, shall we find the
alternatives? Well, there are more than
three or four who could replace Miss
Farrar easily at a pinch. In Caruso's
case, I admit, the case seems harder. No
singer in the world has quite Caruso's
voice just now. But there are singers no
less fine and even finer. For example,
Bonci. And there are artists vastly
greater.
To name one, off-hand, there is Lucien
Muratore, who has had many triumphs
with the Chicago company. Though he
has not Caruso's round and luscious
voice, he has far more than the Italian's
art and style. He is romantic to a fault,
and creates illusions in such characters
as Samson, Prinzevalle, Faust, and des
Grieux. His merit is, some say, the only
explanation of his strange ostracism by
the Metropolitan. But this, of course
may not be wholly true.
Charles Henry Meltzer
Books and the News
Education
A CORRESPONDENT suggests that
education is always a timely subject,
and that there are many parents to whom
it suddenly becomes a practical problem.
They care nothing about the fads nor
the quarrels of the schoolmen; they do
wish to formulate some ideas about the
theories and practice of education. What
does it mean to be educated? What
should the young get from school and
college? What are the soundest ideas
about educational methods to-day?
The books, pamphlets, and articles upon
the subject are endless in number; the
disagreements of its doctors acrimonious.
Here are a few titles of books.
Upon the theory of education : Herbert
Spencer's "Education : Intellectual, Moral
and Physical" (Appleton, 1900), which,
together with John Dewey's "Democracy
and Education" (Macmillan, 1916) and
Nicholas Murray Butler's "Meaning of
Education" (Scribner, 1915), offer the
(Continued on page 189)
EDWARD T. DEVINE
Associate Editor of the Survey
Will lecture on the following subjects:
THE THREE R'S
Reaction : Revolution : Reconstruction
INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL UNREST
Remedies and Proposals
AMERICANIZATION
True and False
For dates and terms address Miss Brandt,
Room 1204, 1 '-2 E. Nineteenth St., New York
February 21, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[189
reader general comment upon the philos-
ophy of the subject. There should also
be mentioned Charles Hanford Hender-
son's "What is it to be Educated?"
(Houghton, 1914). A recent book, Ell-
wood P. Cubberley's "Public Education
in the United States" (Houghton, 1919),
is a text-book upon present problems, but
is also partly historical. For a brief his-
tory of education, Paul Monroe's "Brief
Course in the History of Education"
(Macmillan, 1907).
For an explanation of modern methods
in elementary schools, John and Evelyn
Dewey's "Schools of To-morrow" (But-
ton, 1916), Mrs. Dorothy Canfield Fisher
describes the Montessori methods in "A
Montessori Mother" (Holt, 1912), and
these methods are subjected to examina-
tion in William H. Kilpatrick's "The
Montessori System Explained" (Hough-
ton, 1914). On the subject of the kinder-,
garten, see Susan E. Blow's "Letters to
a Mother on the Philosophy of Froebel"
(Appleton, 1899). Ella F. Lynch's "Edu-
cating the Child at Home" (Harper,
1914) relates to the same period in life.
So do Henry S. Curtis's "Educating
through Play" (Macmillan, 1915) and
Barbara S. Morgan's "The Backward
Child" (Putnam, 1914).
For two books about vocational educa-
tion, there are Joseph S. Taylor's "Hand-
book of Vocational Education" (Mac-
millan, 1914) and J. A. Lapp and C. H.
Mote's "Learning to Earn" (Bobbs,
1915). For commercial education, Joseph
Kahn and J. J. Klein's "Principles and
Methods in Commercial Education"
(Macmillan, 1914). Of the numerous
books upon health in relation to the
schools, Francis W. and Jesse D. Burks
have written "Health and the School"
(Appleton, 1913). Upon the public
schools, consult S. T. Dutton and David
Sneddon's "Administration of Public
Education in the United States" (Mac-
millan, 1912). For the high school,
Irving King's "High School Age" (Bobbs,
1914). For the country school, J. D.
Eggleston and R. W. Bruere's "The Work
of the Rural School" (Harper, 1913).
For the college — for those about to go to
college, Frederick P. Keppel's "The Un-
dergraduate and his College" (Houghton,
1917) and Charles F. Thwing's "The
American College" (Piatt, 1914). Many
of these books contain references to
further reading in their special fields.
Edmund Lester Pearson
Books Received
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Clemence. Legen<l.
Macmillan.
Dane,
$1.50.
Ganz, Marie, and Ferber, Nat J. Rebels
Into Anarchy — and Out .'^gain. Dodd, Mead.
$2.00.
MacFarlan, Alexander. The Inscrutable
Lovers. Dodd, Mead.
Nathan, Robert. Peter Kindred. Duffield.
$2.00 net.
Newton, Alma. A Jewel in the Sand. Duf-
field. $1.35.
Wade, Horace Atkisson. In the Shadow
of Great Peril. Chicago: Reilly & Lee.
BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
Howe, M. A. DeWolfc. George von Len-
gerke Meyer: His Life and Public Services.
Dodd, Mead.
Webster, Nesta H. The French Revolution.
Dutton. $8.00 net.
EDUCATION
Immigration and Americanization.. Se-
lected Readings. Compiled and edited by
Philip Davis, assisted by Bertha Schwartz.
Ginn.
Studenskey, Paul. Teachers' Pension
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$3.00 net.
ESSAYS AND CRITICISM
Gerould, K. F. Modes and Morals. Scrib-
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LITERATURE
Bazalgette, Leon. Walt Whitman. Dou-
l)leday, Page.
Hamilton, Eriiest. Elizabethan Ulster.
Dutton. $6.00 net.
MUSIC
Bispham, David. A Quaker Singer's Rec-
ollections. Macmillan. $4.00.
POETRY AND DRAMA
Guiterman, Arthur. Ballads of Old New
York. Harper. $1.50 net.
Palmer, William Kimberly and Panes,
Ernest. American Nights. New Era Pub.
Co.
Winter Sports Verse. Chosen by Haynes,
W.. and H.irrison, J. L. Introduction by
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STUDIES IN SPANISH
AMERICAN LITERATURE
By Isaac Goldberg, 'Ph. D.
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[Vol. 2, No. 41
{Continued from February 14)
In an edition of Horace printed in
Milan by Zarotto in 1474, there is a
printer's note or colophon which rather
quaintly approximates the use of the
modern colophon as a guarantee of high
purpose and quality. "All the works of
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, carefully cor-
rected, and by Antonio Zarotto elegantly
and faithfully imprinted, March 16,
1474; whoever buys this will never be
sorr>'."
In a much wider sense, the university
presses of the country were founded for
the purpose of publishing the kind of
books whose readers would "never be
sorry" for having acquired them. Most
of these presses have adopted as colo-
phons the devices and mottoes of the
universities with which they are con-
nected.
rwr\
motto of the University, designed by
Pierre de Chaignon la Rose. The
phoenix rising from the flames is signifi-
cant of the rise of Chicago from the
ashes of 1871. At the time of the
World's Fair it was used on banner,
cornice, and tower, and the "I Will"
figure of the city bears it as a crown.
Above this symbol of immortality, youth,
vigor, and aspiration is the Latin inscrip-
tion "Crescat scientia; vita excolatur" —
"Let human knowledge grow from more
to more ; and so be human life enriched."
the dates respectively of the original
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corporation of the Press, with the motto
"In litteris libcrtas." This imprint has
been used in the books of the Press since
the beginning of its activities in 1893.
A variation of the imprint is used on
magazines published by the Press but
with the same details.
The official seal of Harvard Univer-
sity with its courageous one-word motto
—VERITAS— is found on the books is-
sued by the Harvard University Press.
No apology, no boasting : a simple prom-
ise, "Truth." None of the hesitancy of
one old Italian printer who published an
edition of Virgil containing some poems
later found to be spurious works. "You
ask why these poems, though obscene,
are printed? Excuse them: they were
writ by Virgil."
The University of Chicago Press has
used since 1912 the coat of arms and the
The imprint used on the publications
of the Columbia University Press con-
sists of a crown, representing the crown
of King's College, above an open book
bearing upon its pages "Columbia Uni-
versity Press" and the dates "1754-1893,"
The University of Illinois Press uses an
{Continued on page IV)
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THE REVIEW
H'
Vol. 2, No. 42
New York, Saturday, February 28, 1920
Fll-TEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment 191
Editorial Articles:
Hillquit on the Socialist Programme 193
Profiteer-Hunting and Political Econ-
omy 194
Agriculture, the Basic Industry 196
Outwitting Winter 196
A Lamentable Failure 197
The "Student-Hour" and College Effi-
ciency 198
Pre-War American Diplomacy. By
Lindsay Rogers 199
What Must the World Do To Be Fed?
By Thomas H. Dickinson 200
The Uncult. By Weare Holbrook 201
Correspondence 202
Book Reviews:
The Interpreter of American Na-
tionalism 204
Disentangling Socialism from Bolshe-
vism 206
Recent Books on Mexican Problems 206
Mr. Bullard on Russia 207
Proletarian Comedy 207
Ancient Architecture 208
The Run of the Shelves 208
Winter Mist. By Robert P. Utter 210
George Soures, an Athenian Satirist.
By Aristides E. Phoutrides 211
Music :
"Parsifal" in English at the Metro-
politan. By Charles Henry Meltzer 212
Drama:
"Letty" and "His House in Order" —
Ibsen in England. By O. W. Fir-
kins 213
Books and the News:
Recent Books. By Edmund Lester
Pearson 214
'T'HE Esch-Cummins railroad bill
■*■ reported out of Conference Com-
I mittee has passed both Houses by
substantial majorities, and was put
through the Senate with extraordi-
nary promptness. In the all-impor-
tant matter of rate-making it is not
so good a bill as the Cummins bill,
but in the matter of labor disputes
it is an improvement upon the latter.
The much-debated Section 6 of the
Cummins bill has been modified so
as to widen the field within which
the Interstate Commerce Commission
may exercise its discretion. The re-
turn of 51/2 per cent, upon aggregate
property value is made contingent
upon "efiicient and economical" man-
agement by the companies — of which
the Commission is presumably to be
the judge. Thus an ample opportunity
is reserved for Mr. Clifford Thome's
ingenious sophistries and for a new
series of "happy thoughts" similar to
those advanced in the 1913 Eastern
rate case by Mr. Brandeis. Neverthe-
less, Senator Cummins is to be con-
gratulated upon a notable victory in
that the bill clearly recognizes the
only correct principle of rate-making,
namely, that based on the "regional
tariff" as applied to the "regional
group." This is the greatest single
forward step in the history of Ameri-
can railroad legislation, and it is of
immense value. It may indeed be con-
sidered as cheaply purchased at the
cost of partial confiscation of the
profits of individual railroads, inde-
fensible as such confiscation is upon
any grounds other than those of pure
expediency. Let us hope that the
Interstate Commerce Commission will
make good use of the shelter that it
affords them against popular resent-
ment when they are obliged to do the
unpopular thing.
npHE provisions of the bill which
■'■ deal with labor disputes in the
railroad industry are not, at first
sight, very imposing. Yet, whether
by accident or design, they follow a
principle which is perhaps the sound-
est and most effective that can be
applied in matters of this kind. That
principle is — publicity. Elaborate
machinery is provided for inquiry
into the facts, when disputes arise
between managements and employees,
and for decision by a tripartite board
upon the facts. Enforcement of the
decision is left to public opinion.
There is no interference whatever
with the right to strike, much less
the right to organize, but means are
provided whereby the public is in-
formed as to the facts. Nearly thirty
years ago Charles Francis Adams
proposed a similar plan of dealing
with all industrial disputes which
were of sufficient importance to affect
the public convenience or safety. He
suggested that in all such cases there
should be appointed by the Governor
a commission of inquiry with full
power to secure evidence and that a
report on the facts of the case should
be made as promptly as possible
to the Governor, who should make it
public. No more thoroughly demo-
cratic principle could be imagined,
nor one more directly effective in its
results, and the Esch-Cummins bill is
in accord with it. It is perhaps not
surprising that the representatives of
organized labor do not like it, for it
threatens the very foundations of the
oligarchy which they have contrived
to establish. Moreover, it points the
way to yet further establishment of
genuinely democratic control by the
community over its various constit-
uent elements. Application of the
publicity principle to labor-union elec-
tions, strike votes, and so forth, sug-
gests many important possibilities.
TT may help to clarify the contro-
versy over Fiume and the Adriatic
islands if we perceive that the Four-
teen Points and their attendant ideal-
ism are in no wise involved. The is-
sue is simply whether Jugoslavia
should or should not possess a valua-
ble and much-desired outlet to the
sea. The issue is one of commercial
strategy and expediency. Moreover,
Fourteen-pointism has counted for al-
most nothing in the entire Italian
settlement. Italy takes the Trentino,
with a large German population, in
spite of self-determination, in order
to set her northern boundary on the
watershed of the Alps. That is, the
Supreme Council acted under the old
theory of military, strategic, boun-
daries. We say this merely to show
that the entire problem of the Italian
102]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 42
settlement was too complicated to fit
into the neat categories of the new
political idealism. A strict applica-
tion of the principle of racial self-
determination would have allotted to
Italy all the Eastern ports and islands
of the Adriatic. Paradoxically, the
Pact of London was more nearly in
accord with the Fourteen Points than
any subsequent proposal has been. It
g&\e Italy virtually ail of the Italian-
speaking littoral. Mr. Wilson's in-
flexibility against Italy's claims to
Fiume rests really on a new dogma,
that an inland nation must not be
bottled up. Bohemia must boast her
seaports ; Shakespeare was right. Mr.
Wilson's stand, furthermore, is baaed
on the assumption that a nation is
bottled up unless she owns her own
seaports. This strikes us as a false
view and fraught with trouble-mak-
ing possibilities. If every inland
country is entitled to the fee simple
of a corridor to the sea, the League
of Nations will have its hands full.
TN common sense and morals, all
■*• that a nation which happens to be
shut off from the sea can claim is
that she have proper consideration
from the nations whose ports she
u.sos. In practice, Germany, with
limited facilities on the North Sea,
used Rotterdam as advantageously as
she did her own ports. It is gen-
erally simply good business for the
possessors of exceptional port facili-
ties to share them as widely as pos-
sible. We might come near reality,
and even morality, in the matter of
Fiume if we judged that the City, be-
ing Italian, should belong to Italy, but
that Italy should be most solemnly
bound to maintain Fiume aS a free
port and not to discriminate against
shippers from the old Austrian do-
minions. Such, approximately, was
the proposal that Mr. Wilson has
blocked. For many years to come,
Fiume is a necessary outlet for the
Austrian Hinterland. Hence all these
interests should be scrupulously safe-
guarded. But to insist that because
the port of Fiume is a necessary con-
venience for Jugoslavia it should be-
long to it, is really a very German
-argument and below Mr. Wilson's
controversial form. Admiral von
Tirpitz would not have argued other-
wise about Rotterdam. Rightly or
wrongly, Fiume has become the sym-
bol of Irredentism. If this Italian
city goes into alien hands, Italy will
enter with no heart into the League.
If the case were clearly covered by a
moral principle, there might be a
chance of persuading her to neces-
sary self-sacrifice. But on the point
of morality, her own plea under self-
determination is at least as impres-
sive as Mr. Wilson's aversion to bot-
tling up Jugoslavia. It will be easier
for Italy to satisfy the spirit of his
demand by reasonable guarantees
than it will be for him to convince
Italy that she is wrong because in
the fifteenth century her colonists got
in the way of a Jugoslavia that was
to be. The case is one for negotia-
tion and compromise.
wrHY worry over all sorts of new-
'^ f angled problems? Senator
Penrose knows a trick worth two of
that, when it comes to picking a Re-
publican candidate for President.
"The principal test," he says, "will be
that the nominee be an approved Re-
publican." Of course there are a
good many "approved Republicans,"
and there may be a good deal of a
tussle between them at Chicago; but
nobody minds that. The great thing
is to keep them from worrying over
labor, finance, economic restoration
of the world, and things like that.
Stick clo.se to the good old rule, the
simple plan. Run your candidate on
his Republican label!
'T'HE Federal Reserve Board, in its
■'- annual report, deals in an earnest
and yet cautious spirit with the ques-
tion of "deflation." So far as re-
gards the practical steps to be taken,
the cautiousness is unqualifiedly com-
mendable; for instance, everybody
must approve this statement of pol-
icy:
Too rapid or too drastic deflation would de-
feat the very purpose of a well-regulated
credit system by the needless unsettlcnient of
mind it would produce and the disastrous re-
action that such unsettlement would have upon
productive industry.
Radical and drastic deflation is not, there-
fore, in contemplation, nor is a policy of fur-
ther expansion. Either course would in the
end lead only to disaster and must not be per-
mitted to develop.
On the other hand, the Board would
have done better service to straight
thinking if it had avoided the slipperi-
ness of such an outgiving as this :
Dcdation, however, merely for the sake of
deflation and a speedy return to "normal" —
deflation merely for the sake of restoring se-
curity values and commodity prices to their
pre-war levels without regard to other conse-
quences— would be an insensate proceeding in
the existing posture of national and world
affairs.
Deflation for the sake of deflation is
an object well worthy of the most
serious thought. In point of fact,
we have little doubt it actually fur-
nishes a large part of the motive for
the Reserve Board's recent and pros-
pective policy, though the Board
seems anxious not to admit this mo-
tive explicitly, as it might imply a re-
proach on its previous record. But
nobody is asking for a "speedy re-
turn" to pre-war commodity prices,
or for the pursuance of a policy of
deflation "without regard to other
consequences." Everybody knows
that this would be an "insensate pro-
ceeding." Knocking down a man of
straw is usually a sign of weakness.
TN declining to serve as a delegate
-■■ at large to the Republican National
Convention on the ground .that he
should be in Europe in June, Mr.
Root did not say that he should be
there in the interests of the Per-
manent Court of International Jus-
tice, to be created by virtue of Article
14 of the Covenant. But it is a fair
influence that such is his intention.
And if it is true that he has accepted
the invitation which was supposed to
have been extended to him, to share
in the establishment of the new
tribunal, then the omens may be pro-
nounced most favorable. There is no
one whom the United States could
depute to this task with more confi-
dence that it was making a genuina
contribution towards the realization
of a hopeful project. It is no longer
a question of whether there should
or should not be a League ; the Leaguf
is in being. Its best chance of con-
tinuing in being, of gaining genuim
recognition as a respectable anc
trustworthy agency in regulating th(
affairs of men, seems to lie, if we an
not greatly mistaken, in the increase!
opportunity it offers for arbitral am
February 28, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[198
judicial settlement of international
disputes. Here the world is not deal-
ing with something wholly new. It
has had experience of this kind of
thing before, an experience which
is by no means discouraging to any
one who does not expect perfection at
a jump. The opportunity for advance
along lines where it has already been
demonstrated that advance is possible
is worth the attention of the world's
best brains, and if Mr. Root is to be
her representative, America will feel
that she has given the best she has.
A NYTHING like armed rebellion in
■^ Michigan against the enforce-
ment of Federal Prohibition is of
course unthinkable. Iron County is
not out for blood. But the mere fact
that a Federal Prohibition Director
should ask for United States troops
and for the wholesale arrest of
county officials leaves an unpleasant
taste. There is not enough raisin
wine in all Iron County to wash it
j out. There is not in all Olympus un-
j quenchable laughter sufficient to give
savor to the situation.
'T'HE two questions concerning
i ■'- Allied policy toward Russia asked
I by a correspondent in a letter pub-
! lished last week are searching and
pertinent, but the inquirer is mis-
taken in assuming that the points
raised have not been discussed already
in these columns. The first query is
j whether, if foreign nations had given
i substantial aid to Kolchak, Lenin and
i Trotsky would not have turned
i "patriots" and succeeded in rousing
I the fury of the peasants against him
as "a tool of the foreigner" and the
like. The answer is that Lenin and
1 Trotsky, although by profession in-
j ternationalists despising patriotism,
I tried all this, but without success. It
was only when they represented Kol-
I chak as the head of a movement de-
I signed to take away the peasants'
j lands that they made any impres-
' sion. Even then hundreds of villages
rose in revolt against the Bolshe-
viks in the hope that Kolchak would
come in time to save them, and work-
' men in the great Putilov works at
Petrograd cheered openly for him.
On the other hand, when the later
policy of Lloyd George towards the
border provinces indicated that his
purpose was to dismember Russia,
the patriotic anti-Bolshevik bourgeois
Russians, not the peasants, swung in
under the Bolshevik banner in de-
fense of the unity and integrity of
their country.
'T'HE second question asks if it is
■*■ not expedient for the world to let
the Bolsheviki somewhere work out
their system to ruin, to a reductio ad
abaurdum so plain that even the fools
of the world will understand its folly.
This is rather a cold-blooded vivisec-
tion proposition on a gigantic scale.
The world might perhaps look on
complacently, but unfortunately Rus-
sia does not live for herself alone,
and the prolongation of her agony
jeopardizes the very existence of
European civilization. It is all very
well that a child should burn himself
to acquire a wholesome fear for fire,
but it is scarcely wise to encourage
him to set the house on fire in order
to learn this important lesson. It
must be borne in mind that the Bol-
sheviki are a very small minority of
the Russian people, for the most part
alien to them and maintaining their
regime by force and terror ; that their
programme proved itself a failure
within two months after they secured
control, and ever since they have been
making radical changes and adjust-
ments in it in the futile effort to adapt
it to actual conditions ; and that they
regard Russia not as a social labora-
tory, but as a point d'appui from
which to spread the malignant poison
of their propaganda of revolution
throughout the world. We do not be-
lieve that it was expedient to stand
idly by while a gang of cutthroats
and robbers tortured and plundered
the helpless Russian people, only to
use their blood-stained loot to under-
mine and overthrow other govern-
ments. We have a lively scientific
interest in social and economic experi-
ments, but in this case the results do
not justify the cost.
/^LD and far-off things, but not
^-^ unhappy, are brought to mind by
the death of the discoverer of the pole.
What would we not give to-day for a
return of the boyish ardor with which
we all hailed Peary's triumph, and
the unstinted interest we all took in
the great Doctor Cook controversy!
Will such things ever be again?
Shall we be able to forget the world's
terrific problems, class struggles at
home, the cost-of-living question, and
the rest, and throw our whole heartf»
into something as remote from presc-
ing trouble as was the nailing of the
flag to the North Pole? Well, there
is some comfort in thinking of the
stir Einstein has made even in the
very depth of our woes; and it is
quite certain that the first man who
makes a landing on the moon will
create excitement even greater than
that which greeted Peary's splendid
exploit.
Hillquit on the Socialist
^amme
Progn
T UCIDITY and directness char-
'-^ acterized the testimony given by
Mr. Hillquit before the Judiciary
Committee of the New York Assem-
bly, which covered almost every im-
portant phase of the Socialist move-
ment in this country. He denied
throughout that that programme con-
templated incitement to violence. He
admitted, or rather asserted, through-
out that the programme was distinctly
a programme of revolution. The
change which the Socialists aim to
bring about is a revolutionary change,
and it is to Mr. Hillquit's credit that
he made no attempt to disguise this
fact. No intelligent person needed
to be instructed upon it, but many
intelligent persons take refuge in
misty obscurities rather than face it.
The sharpest test to which he was
put related to the possibility of a
resort to force at some future time
for the actual attainment of this revo-
lutionary goal. He was confronted
with an article of Victor Berger's in
which the former Socialist Congress-
man declared that in a pinch "the
ballot may not count for much," and
that therefore "workingmen should
make it their duty to have rifles and
the necessary rounds of ammunition
at their homes, and be prepared to
back up their ballots with their bul-
19-t]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 42
lets if necessary." Mr. Hillquit did
not flinch from the defense of this
position. He did not repudiate it;
but, with great ability and ingenuity,
he placed upon it an interpretation
consistent with his denial that the
programme of the Socialist party in
this country was in any way a pro-
gramme of lawlessness or violence.
He admitted that the article was
"somewhat unfortunately worded,"
and that some of the expressions in
it were "altogether too strong for the
meaning which they carry and in-
tended to carry" ; but he interpreted
it as pointing to the use of the bullet
only in defense of rights actually
acquired by the ballot. The question-
ing brought out from him this some-
what formal statement of the So-
cialist party's position as he under-
stands it:
Our position with reference to violence is
— we say we will protect the right of the ma-
jority to make or unmake the form of gov-
ernment. We proceed upon the assumption
that we shall bring about the change by con-
stitutional methods, and that the minority will
submit when we are in the majority, as we
submit now when we are the minority.
While we anticipate a peaceful change, his-
tory may play one of its tricks by forcing us
to defend ourselves. History has shown
among other things that when the privileged
minority is about to lose its privileges it be-
comes desperate; it tries to obstruct lawful
progress, to destroy reforms. In that case it
will be up to the majority to defend its rights
and in a case of this kind it may come to
shooting.
Now, what are we going to do
about it? That is the question that
is squarely before the American peo-
ple. How are we going to treat men
like Hillquit? What are we going to
do about the representatives whom
the party that he describes may suc-
ceed in sending to our State Legis-
latures or to Congress? What are we
going to do about the spread of the
opinions and sentiments which in-
spire that party? We had been jog-
ging along in the presence of these
men and these things, without being
brought to the point of any sharp
definition of policy in relation to
them. Speaker Sweet's spectacular
coup at Albany suddenly made a ques-
tion acute which might otherwise
have continued mildly chronic for a
long time. It produced instantly a
sharp division, not as between So-
cialists and conservatives, but among
the conservatives themselves — mean-
ing here by the word conservative
every person who is an upholder of
American institutions, or, indeed, of
the historic institutions of civilization
itself. Those who have opposed and
those who have defended Speaker
Sweet's action are not distinguished
from each other by a greater or less
fidelity to the principles of our Gov-
ernment or to the established insti-
tutions of society. They differ in
their view of the conduct which is
demanded for the maintenance of
those principles and those institu-
tions.
Mr. Hillquit's testimony ought to
serve the purpose of still further
clarifying the issue thus drawn. The
real question between those who be-
lieve that the Socialist Assemblymen
should be expelled and those who be-
lieve that they should be allowed to
retain their seats is essentially the
question whether a man holding the
views expressed by Mr. Hillquit,
and whether the representative of a
party occupying the position that he
defined, is disqualified from member-
ship in an American representative
assembly. A score of odds and ends,
some fantastic, some trivial, some of
a certain degree of real importance,
were brought out in the earlier part
of the inquiry, but they have failed to
make any serious impression on the
public mind. The only substantial
element now in the case is that of
general attitude ; and both sides might
well agree to regard this as repre-
sented, for all practical purposes, by
Mr. Hillquit's testimony. Accordingly,
what we have to decide is just this :
What is henceforth to be the status
of men who avow their determination
to do all in their power by lawful
means to bring about a fundamental
change in our system of government,
who purpose to effect a revolution in
the economic order, and who. hold this
object so paramount that they do not
shrink from the possibility of being
compelled at some future time to as-
sure its consummation by force of
arms?
The answer given by those who
have a genuine faith in the efficacy
of free institutions is that the only
way to beat these men is to beat them
at the polls. Let them persuade as
many of their fellow-citizens as they
can that they are right. Let us per-
suade as many of our fellow-citizens
as we can that they are wrong. Then
if they are beaten — as we feel sure
they will be — all the world will know
that they have been beaten. Nobody
proposes to kill them, to put them in
prison, or even — in so far as they are
American citizens — to deport them.
They will remain with us, whether
we seat their representatives or not.
Their attachment to their own con-
victions will not be weakened, but
strengthened, by denial to them of
the fundamental right of American
citizens, the right of representation.
Moreover, those convictions them-
selves involve no depravity, either of
mind or of morals. They are shared
by multitudes of persons in all the
leading countries of Europe. No
stigma can be put upon them by any
method of proscription. If, with all
our advantage in numbers, and, as we
firmly believe, in intelligence, we can
not make head against them in a fair
contest, there is in ourselves a defect
of character or of spirit which Ameri-
cans surely must be loth to admit.
It is not by shutting people's mouths,
but by convincing their minds and
stirring their hearts, that the people
of a nation of freemen must uphold
the institutions that they hold dear.
Profiteer-Hunting and
Political Economy
THE outcry which was raised against them
on this occasion was, we suspect, as ab-
surd as the imputations which, in times of
dearth at home, were once thrown by states-
men and judges, and are still thrown by two
or three old women, on the corn factors.
This sentence occurs in Macaulay's
essay on Lord Clive, which appeared
in the Edinburgh Review in the year
1840. He is speaking of the rumor
which was spread in England at the
time of the terrible East Indian
Famine of 1670 "that the Company's
servants had created the famine by
engrossing all the rice of the coun-
try"; and the contrast to which hf
refers is that between the state oj
mind which had been almost universa
before the rise of the science of polit
ical economy and the enlightened un
derstanding of elementary economi(
February 28, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[195
phenomena which at the time when
he was writing had become equally
universal among educated persons.
Among the elementary teachings
of that science, few are more note-
worthy than that which points out
that intelligent hoarding, in the face
of impending or actual scarcity, by
men whose business it is to watch the
prospects of demand and supply, so
far from being an injury to the pub-
lic, is a great public service. The mo-
tive of such hoarding unquestionably
is private gain ; but that gain — always
supposing that nothing in the nature
of monopoly enters into the case —
can only be realized through the in-
terest of the speculator coinciding
with the interest of the public. His
gains are made not at the time of
withholding the supply, but at the
time of releasing it ; and if his calcu-
lation is correct, the scarcity he re-
lieves by selling is more extreme than
the scarcity which he intensifies by
hoarding. Prices may be made some-
what higher at a time of comparative
ease, but they are made decidedly
lower at a time that would be one of
extraordinary hardship if the with-
held supply had been previously con-
sumed.
It is something of a shock to one's
Twentieth Century complacency to
think how numerous in our time has
become that tribe which Macaulay
dismissed eighty years ago as repre-
sented by "two or three old women."
In our frantic endeavors to do some-
thing about the high cost of living
we have clutched at all sorts of
straws, and at none more eagerly
than that of "profiteering." The hunt
for profiteers has taken many shapes,
but the most conspicuous of them has
been that of sporadic crusades against
the storage of food products. Four
or five months ago. State and Federal
agents in all parts of the country
were busily engaged in discovering
supplies of eggs, and sugar, and
meats, which in their judgment were
more than ought to be allowed to
remain in storage, and thrusting
them upon the market. The front
pages of the newspapers bristled with
the figures of a million eggs here and
a thousand tons of sugar there, which
through the zeal of the people's offi-
cers were rescued from the maw of
greedy speculators. We had got the
beast by the tail at last, and prices
were to be reasonable once more. Of
course, nothing of the kind happened.
The price of eggs and the price of
sugar went higher than ever — we do
not say because of these seizures, but
at least in spite of them. The fact was
that besides the impossibility of ac-
complishing the object in any such
way — besides the circumstance that
whatever effect it did produce was
almost sure to be precisely the op-
posite of what was intended — the
amounts involved, large as they
looked to the unthinking, were too
small to exercise any important in-
fluence on the general situation.
It is just to acknowledge that, wide-
spread as was (and is) the delusion
on this subject of the relation be-
tween speculation and prices, it was
not shared by the more intelligent
part either of the business world or
of the press. What was wanting,
however, was that firm grounding in
fundamental principles which is
necessary to enable intelligent senti-
ment to dominate over unintelligent.
And the absence of this — as illus-
trated in many another economic
question — is to be ascribed, above all
else, to the discredit into which the
"classical" political economy fell some
three or four decades ago, under the
influence chiefly of the then fashion-
able German historical school. This
latter school itself lost its vogue per-
haps as far back as twenty years ago ;
it really had but a short run of favor.
Whatever its merits, it was soon
found that it was quite incapable of
offering a substitute for the fruitful
ideas on which the science had been
built by the great British economists,
or for the central doctrines which had
flowed from those ideas. But, so far
as the general public was concerned,
the mischief had been done ; with the
consequence that the world has gone
through a vast deal of floundering for
want of the authoritative guidance
which nothing but those central doc-
trines can supply. What this flounder-
ing has cost our country and the
world, it is quite impossible to com-
pute.
We are by no means unaware of
the errors into which the world was
led, partly by a too naive acceptance
of the doctrines of the classical econo-
mists, partly by a misunderstanding
of them, and partly by faults which
are justly to be laid to the charge of
those economists themselves. Most
mischievous of all, perhaps, was the
readiness of statesmen and journal-
ists to regard economic principles
which constituted merely an analysis
of what is, as dogmatic declarations
of what ought to be or what must be.
The business of economic theory is to
extricate from the great and com-
plex mass of economic phenomena
those factors which are of funda-
mental importance, and to trace out
the relations of cause and effect which
flow from their operation. That there
are factors of a non-economic char-
acter which the statesman must take
into account, the great economists
have never denied ; nor have they de-
nied that it is possible for the state
to introduce economic factors which
modify the operation of those brought
into play by individual initiative. The
doctrine of laissez faire, though
doubtless overemphasized by many
political economists of the past, is not
a doctrine of economic science at all.
Its merits in any given instance must
be determined by all the considera-
tions bearing on the case, among
which those that belong to economic
science are only a part.
What the doctrines of theoretical
economics can do for the world is not
to furnish a magic prescription for
the conduct of its affairs, but to en-
able it to think clearly about some of
the most vital elements that enter
into them. The mariner's chart and
compass do not tell him for what port
he should steer, neither do they enable
him to dispense with the services of
the pilot who knows the rocks and
shoals with which the voyage may be
beset. But we do not throw away the
compass and the chart because they
do not of themselves assure the suc-
cess of the voyage. In our wander-
ings among the economic difficulties
of the time, iliese invaluable aids
have fallen into regrettable desuetude,
with the result of a vast amount of
most expensive sailing on false
courses.
196]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 42
Agriculture, the Basic
Industry
A MERICAN agriculture, as a basis
-^ for American aid in the recon-
struction of Europe, is the subject of
a very interesting pamphlet put out
a few days ago by the publicity de-
partment of the Guaranty Trust
Company, of New York. In spite of
the "drift to the cities" of which we
hear so much, the volume and value
of our farm products continues to
show remarkable growth. Forty
years ago the far output of the nation
was valued at a billion and a half per
year. From that date to the begin-
ning of the great war, the annual
value is estimated to have risen to
about eight billions, and to have
doubled this immense figure within
two years, under the influence of war
conditions. The author of the pam-
phlet fails to call attention to the fact
that this last violent "increase," in
so short a time, is in the main not
an increase of production but merely
the evidence of a great decline in the
purchasing power of the medium of
exchange. Yet after proper deduction
on this score, there was a notable
increase.
The proportion of the population
now living on farms is put at a trifle
less than one-third, but nearly twenty
millions more live in towns of less
than 2,500 and many of these are
directly engaged in farming, or are
the owners of rented farms. Mention
should also be made of the increasing
number of professional and business
men in cities who own and operate
farms. We do not refer to the "city
farmer" who is simply amusing him-
self with a country home and farm,
regardless of expense, but to nie'n who
are themselves of farm origin and
who hold their acres to an even
stricter financial account than farm-
ers who have never had the business
training of the city. Farming of this
type is especially in evidence in the
Middle West, where so many cities
have rich farm lands immediately
adjoining. Such farms are often of
great value in introducing business
habits and scientific agricultural
methods into backward communities.
Among the systematic means now
in use for the introduction of better
methods, the "county agent" is the
most pervasive and perhaps most suc-
.cessful. We are told that there are
a trifle under three thousand agri-
cultural counties in the United States,
and a county agent, sometimes with
one or more assistants, is now em-
ployed in more than three-fourths
of them, not merely addressing farm-
ers' meetings, but going from farm
to farm and giving expert advice to
meet the individual need. In each
of about 1,700 counties a woman
"home demonstration agent" is also
employed to carry to the women of
the farm the newer applications of
agricultural science to such matters
as canning, care of poultry, house
sanitation, etc. In some parts of the
country the banks are employing
agents to assist farmers in so apply-
ing loans as to increase net profits.
The amount of money loaned on farm
property at present is estimated at
something like $6,000,000,000: but
these are very largely loans for the
express purpose of increasing profits,
not the resylt of a failure to meet
expenses and a consequent necessity
of mortgaging the farm that the
family may be clothed and fed until
the coming of better times. And
with better methods, the agricultural
borrower is making steady progress
towards a lower rate of interest. Go
to any of the towns and small cities
in the good farming districts, and the
banks will tell you that the farmers
are steadily growing in importance
as depositors and investors. In these
phenomena the compilers of the
Guaranty Trust Company's pamphlet
find evidence that the American
farmer will constitute a very effec-
tive factor in absorbing the securi-
ties necessary to provide the credits
essential to the reconstruction of
Europe.
There is nothing in the facts
brought out by this pamphlet to deny
the special difficulties with which the
farmer is now contending, such as
scarcity and high wages of labor.
There is much, however, to show that
the forces by which these difficulties
are to be met are already well in
hand and making steady progress.
There is no occasion to grow pessimis-
tic over the future of American
agriculture, faulty conclusions from
still more faultily managed ques-
tionnaires to the contrary notwith-
standing.
Outwitting Winter
COMEONE recently dug up Steven-
^ son's remark about life being "an
amusement totally unsuitable for
winter." Yet surely winter is not so
different from other things that there
is not something to be said for it. It
happens to be just fifty years ago
that Lowell spoke his "good word for
winter," as "a thoroughly honest
fellow, with no nonsense in him, and
tolerating none in you, which is a
great comfort in the long run." One
would expect that from Lowell ; ruddy
and hirsute, with hands thrust deep
in the pockets of his pea-jacket, he
might pass, as one met him on his
daily walk, for old Hiems himself.
The frailer Stevenson, unequally but
not ungallantly pitted against the
dour Scots climate, has in him the
larger share of our common humanity.
Accepting winter, however, as a
fact — and gad ! we'd better — its chief
charm appears to be that it may in
one way or another be outwitted. This
is, after all, the best of winter sports.
Skating, skiing, snow-shoeing, tobog-
ganing, curling, ice-boating are all
very well for one who had but the
requisite opportunity and stamina,
but for most grown people they can
furnish at best but a very occasional
day's sport. The bulk of the winter
must somehow be got through with-
out them. And, indeed, to one given
to reflection, they offer very little that
is sustaining. This may be proved by
referring to a recent anthology called
"Winter Sports Verse." The thing
was worth doing, perhaps, merely to
show what could be done. As a dem- ,
onstration it is perfect. But as for
poetry, a man would soon perish on
a diet of snow and rushing air. It is ,
all too confoundedly healthy and 'I
cheerful for any use. There is too
much crying of "ho!" in it.
No, the poetry of winter, the satis-
factions of winter, as distinguished
from its fun, lie largely in getting
February 28, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[197
the better of it, in defeating its pur-
poses by means of fire and com-
panionship. Lowell, in his essay, has
faggotted up what the poets have
had to say on this subject, and it is
all to this same purpose. The best
strategy is even to convert it into
an ally. The simplest creature-com-
forts gain from us a respect that we
forget to pay them in easier days.
One of the few warm touches in our
book of verses about winter sports is
this from Theodore Roberts:
What matters though the winds blow chill
And toot the drifts about our door,
When we have fire-light, and good-will,
And bear-skins strewn upon the ffoor,
And bacon and a pot of tea
To make the time go merrilee?
The world shut out, we are the more
ready to value the little that we have.
We have come, it is true, a long
way from the primitive days in which
humanity huddled together comfort-
ing one another as under a common
calamity, looking to its waning stores
and half wondering if the miracle of
spring would in truth repeat itself.
We have progressed far in the game
of outwitting winter with our the-
atres and concerts and other ways of
being warm and bright and pretend-
ing it is for some other reason that
we are got together. We may have
our peaches at a dollar apiece. The
old minstrel's tale of cherries at
Christmas is no miracle at all; it is
merely a matter of having the price.
But we all have deep in our bones
some ancestral sense for winter as it
was, some lingering zest for the older
game of looking for winter's compen-
sations, as against the newer game,
not always successfully played, of
pretending that winter doesn't exist.
To whom will the sound of sleigh-
bells come without a lifting of the
heart? When snows have made of
the automobile a lurching, helpless
body upon ineffectually spinning
wheels, when the shag-coated horse
is roused from his winter nap, and
the old cutter in which the hens lately
roosted or the mice worked their will
is dragged rustily across the barn
floor, who does not feel himself
warmed by the spectacle of the con-
traption as it passes? The sound of
its bells lingers in the ear, now faint
and now generously showered about
one by a moment's gust, like ancient
memories forgotten in all but their
sweetness. In future ages, when new
religious forms shall rise among peo-
ples with manners seemingly new,
yet blood of the old blood in their
veins for all that, who shall say that
annually a ceremonial sleigh, like the
car of the ancient earth-goddess, shall
not pass between lanes of reverent
folk, who shall do honor to its smooth-
gliding course and the music of its
bells, not quite knowing what they
do, but sure that without these things
the people perish?
A Lamentable Failure
T^HE breakdown of the work of re-
-*• educating our disabled soldiers
makes a story, as it is set forth by
the New York Evening Post, that
leaves the heart sick. Failure here is
more humiliating than in any other
of the many sorts of endeavor which
the war called forth. To fail in the
face of a superior enemy can be sup-
ported by fortitude; to blunder and
still to win may be excused to human
nature ; but to fail in a clearly recog-
nized duty toward those who uncom-
plainingly yielded up the strength of
their young manhood is, for the rest
of us, to accept the brand of un-
pardonable sin. Failure is the merited
word. Seventy-five per cent, of the
men who are eligible for training are
not in training, though it is now
twenty months since the Division of
Rehabilitation was established. Three
hundred thousand of our boys were,
in greater or less degree, disabled.
Two hundred thousand of these ex-
pressed a desire to avail themselves
of the offer of help — real help, no
mere cash bonus — which Congress
held out to them. According to the
Post's figures only 24,000 have so far
been put in training, and only 217
have graduated into gainful employ-
ment.
Money has been spent in abun-
dance, a clerical force of more than
three thousand have been busy, at
good salaries, constructing impene-
trable entanglements of red tape,
spacious offices have been hired and,
sometimes, paid for, and the business
for which the Federal Board for Vo-
cational Education was created sim-
ply has not gone forward. The ex-
soldier, sensitive of his disability and
easily discouraged, had a burden of
proof placed upon him by the Board
which was more than he could bear;
summoned by form letter to inter-
views that ended in nothing but wait-
ing, ordered to produce this document
and that, subjected to repeated med-
ical examinations, it is small wonder
that he came to the conclusion that
it was the Board's intention to wear
him out if it could ; counsel, support,
encouragement, a sustaining sense
that someone was looking out for his
interests, there was none. Even when
a man finally found himself placed in
training, there seems to have been no
adequate care taken to see that he
got what he was supposed to get.
It can hardly be doubted that the
Board for Vocational Education
counted among its number some who
labored devotedly and with a sense of
the issues at stake. But it is only too
plain that the direction of the work
was not intrusted to men of insight
and grasp. It was a task at once diffi-
cult and delicate. Mere organization,
without appreciation of the human
values involved, could not meet it.
As a demonstration of the failure of
bureaucracy when it comes to inti-
mate dealings with the lives of human
beings it leaves nothing to be desired.
If the Board had been made respon-
sible to one of the several Depart-
ments which contended for its con-
trol, things might have gone better.
Even now it is not too late for Con-
gress, which alone is directly respon-
sible, to do something, not by way
of investigation but by putting the
work in charge of a man capable of
retrieving what is yet retrievable.
If Congress will do nothing, being
busied in withholding grants to the
stricken peoples of Europe and in
distributing a cash bonus among ex-
service men as one gives a check at
Christmas because it is too much
trouble to pick out a gift that means
something, then the charge falls upon
each community and upon each indi-
vidual of means to see to it that this
draft upon the nation's dearest honor
is worthily met. Dishonored it must
not and can not be.
198]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 42
> }
The "Student-Hour
and College Efficiency
THERE are fields in which "effi-
ciency" is a matter of definite
physical measurement. A sewer sys-
tem is efficient in proportion as its
discharge, within a given period, ap-
proximates the greatest amount of
sewage which the calibre of its tubes
will in theory permit it to carry. But
there are fields in which efficiency is
a quality too elusive for such easy
methods of evaluation. We may not
say, on the analogy of the sewer, that
a college classroom is efficient in pro-
portion as its discharge of students
at the end of each class-hour approxi-
mates the full number which its seats,
not to speak of windowsills and
standing room, will accommodate.
And yet there are not a few American
colleges in whose administrative of-
■ fices a careful record is now kept of
the "student-hours" taught by each
member of the faculty. This aggre-
gate is obtained by multiplying the
number of hours taught per week by
the average number of students in
the instructor's classes. Now there
may be reasons entirely harmless, if
not positively useful, for collecting
and filing such statistics. There is a
growing suspicion, however, that col-
lege presidents and trustees are in-
clined to attach an undue importance
to them when such matters as salary
increases, promotions, and the grant-
ing of requests for department sup-
plies are concerned.
Few things could be more inimical
to the true spirit and purpose of
higher education than the rating of
the comparative efficiency of teachers
on any such basis. A class of five or
six students in some abstruse and
comparatively neglected subject may
seem a waste of effort to the admin-
istrative officer bent on economy, but
the inspiration gained from close per-
sonal contact with a scholarly instruc-
tor under such conditions has not
infrequently made of one man a
greater force than a hundred ordi-
nary college graduates, whether in
wise public leadership or in some im-
portant special line of scholarly re-
search. We readily grant that college
students are more intelligent than the
average, but their experience of life
and sanity of judgment have not yet
reached the point where their com-
parative numbers in two departments
of study, or in the classrooms of two
different instructors, can be taken as
a safe indication of comparative edu-
cational values.
We are not unaware that college
administrators have of recent years
encountered a real evil in the multipli-
cation of small classes. The evil re-
sides, however, not in the size of the
classes but in the relative unimpor-
tance of the subjects, in the too close
paralleling of courses already sched-
uled, or, in undergraduate work, in
the introduction of subjects for which
the students are not yet sufficiently
prepared. In all these cases the evil
would be still greater, educationally,
if the classes were larger. The young
instructor, and sometimes the veteran
professor in competition with the
younger, finds no greater temptation
to cheapen the standard of his work
than that which comes from an ap-
parent show of special administrative
favor to the teacher of large classes
in comparatively easy subjects. The
college administration that has the
broad interests of scholarship most
intelligently at heart will realize that
it has a special duty of support and
encouragement, both financial and
moral, to any branch of study which,
important in itself, is suffering from
student neglect, whether because it
is inherently difficult, or because it is
too far out of the ordinary course of
student thinking for its importance
to be known, or because it is without
any direct bearing upon the power to
earn money. We have ceased to insist
that every student should pursue cer-
tain definite lines of study in order
to secure the distinction of a college
degree; but this very concession
should arouse our colleges to a firm
determination that no branch of
higher learning having a vital relation
to human life and culture should be
dropped from its schedules, or al-
lowed to languish, merely because
subjects more superficially attractive
have caught the taste of the time.
In addition to the danger to im-
portant subjects of study not spon-
taneously elected by large numbers,
another harmful tendency of the
"student-hour" idea is to speak of
recitation halls as attaining their
maximum efficiency only when each
classroom is occupied by a class every
hour of the college day. A storage
warehouse is of course most profit-
able when each day's withdrawal of
goods is accompanied by immediate
entries of equivalent amount; but a
vacant hour in a college classroom,
when the teacher can linger with the
more interested of his pupils, or even
compel the less interested to linger
with him, and converse a little more
freely than the requirements of the
regular hour will allow, will often
raise a student to a new level of effort
and attainment. Opportunities for
such informal converse ought to be
favored, not discouraged by an effort
to use the "plant" to its full capacity
every hour of the college day. Modern
ingenuity has wrought out certain
mechanical processes and standards
of measurement which are of great
practical value when intelligently ap-
plied to their appropriate objects;
but when we turn about and attempt
to apply them to the workings of the
human intelligence itself, failure and
confusion is the result. This may
seem to some too obvious a truth to
need utterance ; but many college pro-
fessors are to-day required to furnish
statistics the collection of which is
evidently inspired by a belief in
these mechanical theories of educa-
tional evaluation. The triumph of
such ideas would be far more effec-
tive than low salaries in driving
genuine scholars, of the true teaching
spirit, out of the profession.
THE REVIEW
A weekly so^^^t^l of political and
general discussion
Published by
Thb National Weekly Corpokation
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin. President
Harold ds Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars a ^ear in
advance. Fifteen cents a copj. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24. Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyriffht, 1920, in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Avres O. W. Fiiikin<j
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson
Jerome Landfield
February 28, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[199
Pre -War American Diplomacy
IT IS now a commonplace of American
politics that the President's control
of foreign affairs is thoroughly auto-
cratic and, in spite of the powers of the
Senate, may be exerted without any
check except the very indefinite one
of public opinion. The Constitutional
authority delegated to the Federal Gov-
ernment is incompletely and not too
definitely parceled out; neutrality, the
recognition of new Governments, the ab-
rogation of treaties, and the conclusion of
agreements not so formal as to require
the sanction of the Senate are all within
the prerogative of the President. And,
as Mr. Wilson has said, to guide diplo-
macy prior to the conclusion of a treaty
is very often to force ratification — the
present conflict being the exception to
the rule. Yet the fact that the Senate
must ratify all agreements is likely to
make us believe that we really have popu-
lar control of foreign policy when, as a
matter of fact, less is knovsTi about
American diplomacy before and during
the war than about the exchanges lead-
ing to and accompanying the belliger-
ency of any of the other Allies.
This is rather forcibly brought to
mind, so far as pre-war American
diplomacy is concerned, by the publica-
tion in the January Contemporary
Review of extensive excerpts from the
testimony of Count Bernstorff before a
"Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry
into Responsibility in and for the War,"
which was instituted by a Reichstag
resolution under Article 34 of the new
German Constitution. The sub-commit-
tee before which Bernstorff testified was
to investigate "all occasions which of-
fered a possibility of peace negotiations
with the enemy." The former Ambas-
sador's revelations, even in their sub-
stantially verbatim form, contain many
omissions and can not be definitely dealt
with until they are heavily documented.
But some prima facie disclosures are
made on a number of points concerning
which the American people have been
vouchsafed little information.
After his first public attempt at
mediation. President Wilson made un-
successful overtures in September, 1914,
which were not answered by the
Entente; after his first trip abroad for
the President during the winter of 1914-
1915, Colonel House reported that the
moment for peace had not yet come; on
June 2, 1915, in discussing the Lusi-
tania, President Wilson told Bernstorff
that if Germany would give up the use
of submarines, he could persuade the
English Cabinet to agree to abandon the
attempt to starve Germany, and "he
hoped that this would be the beginning
of peace action on a great scale." Presi-
dent Wilson first insisted that Germany
should admit the Lusitania outrage to be
a breach of faith, but later gave way and
was satisfied with the statement that
"reprisals must not inflict injury on
neutrals." In January, 1916, Colonel
House found the chief opposition to
peace in Paris and a certain willingness
in Berlin and London. Many negotia-
tions took place in New York between
Bernstorff and Colonel House in order
to avoid the publicity that White House
conferences would have entailed.
House told me Wilson no longer had the
power to oblige England to obey the practices
of international law [this was just after the
Sussex affair] ; American trade was so inti-
mately tied up with the Entente that Wilson
could not possibly disturb these trade rela-
tions without evoking a terrific storm. On
the other hand, he was in a position to ob-
tain a peace without victory, and he intended
to do so as soon as an opportunity offered
itself. But seeing that such a step would
now universally be called pro-German in
America, he could only do it when public
opinion about relations with Germany had
somewhat calmed down. He proposed a
pause, and hoped without fail to be able to
make a beginning of peace mediation towards
the end of the summer. Then Rumania en-
tered the war.
This made the Entente sure of victory
and caused Wilson to defer his interven-
tion.
In October, 1916, the Emperor trans-
mitted through Ambassador Gerard a
memorandum to the effect that he was
willing to entertain a peace offer, but the
Presidential election caused a delay.
The Peace Note which Wilson dispatched
on December 18 had been composed as far
back as the middle of November but had been
thrust by Wilson into his writing table, be-
cause another wave of anti-German feeling
swept through the country on account of the
Belgian deportations. Colonel House told me
that the peace offer which was already drawn
up by the middle of November was not sent
off by Wilson because he could not be re-
sponsible for it in the state of public feel-
ing. . . .
On November 24, Bernstorff telegraphed:
Wilson has commissioned Colonel House to
tell me in the strictest confidence that he
would undertake an effort for peace as soon
as possible, presumably between now and the
New Year. But meanwhile he made it a
condition that we should discuss peace as
little as possible, and that we should allow
no new submarine controversies to spring up,
in order to prevent a premature refusal by
our enemies.
When the German reply to President
Wilson's peace note of December 18 con-
tained no mention of terms of peace.
Count Bernstorff "telegraphed that Lan-
sing had begged him at any rate to com-
municate our peace terms to him in
confidence." The terms sent by the
Germans with their peace proposal of
December 12 were so moderate, however,
that "Lansing answered me that he was
unable to understand why we did not
ask as much as the others ; then a middle
line of compromise could be arranged."
Bernstorff said that "an American
peace mediation which should not include
the restoration of Belgium was wholly
excluded" ; he understood President Wil-
son's "peace without victory" address to
the Senate on January 22, 1917, "to
mean that Germany was to retain her
world position undiminished."
It must always be remembered that on Janu-
ary 31, 1917, Wilson's whole attitude under-
went a change. Until January 31 Wilson
believed us to be wishing for a peace by agree-
ment; after January 31 he was convinced we
would only accept the so-called German peace.
These are the most significant points
in Count Bernstorff's testimony, and
they serve to show the incompleteness
of what we know of American neutrality.
Practically all of the formal notes con-
cerning the submarine warfare have
been published, but Bernstorff's testi-
mony indicates very clearly that the in-
formal exchanges were both frequent
and important. Ambassador Gerard's
book did tell us something, but it was
valuable chiefly as propaganda and, while
he doubtless participated in pourparlers
which, at the time of publication it was
thought wise to leave out, his story can
not be important, since most of the ne-
gotiations were conducted in the United
States. Judging by the few times he
figures in Bernstorff's evidence. Secretary
Lansing will not have any startling dis-
closures; the German Ambassador dealt
chiefly with Colonel House. One won-
ders, however, what the State Depart-
ment's archives contain. In a volume
entitled "A Survey of the International
Relations between the United States and
Germany, 1914-1917," published in 1918,
James Brown Scott (who had been chair-
man of the Neutrality Board which ad-
vised the State Department) casually
quoted an unpublished pledge (February
16, 1916) of the German Government
with reference to the Lusitania and sub-
marine warfare in the future. This
formula, never, so far as I know, pub-
lished in the newspapers or official edi-
tions of the correspondence, is doubtless
the partial admission of fault which
Bernstorff told his investigating commis-
sion President Wilson was persuaded to
accept. With the exception of matters
such as this and the controversy over
armed merchantmen, we shall have to
look to President Wilson and Colonel
House for the full story.
In England the documentation of the
war is proceeding rapidly. Lord Hal-
dane's personal defense of his much-dis-
cussed reports on the 1912 mission to
Berlin is about to appear in book form.
Lord Morley is known to have a third
volume of "Recollections," and it is an
open secret that certain members of the
Liberal Government of 1914 are not well
200]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 42
pleased. There are many authoritative
volumes on war responsibility as indi-
cated by the diplomatic correspondence,
by Headlam, Price, Archer, Stowell, and
Oman. Early in the war Professor Gil-
bert Murray issued a semi-official de-
fense of "The Foreign Policy of Sir
Edward Grey," and extreme radicals
like Morel and left-wing Liberals like
Lord Loreburn have published reasoned
attacks on the diplomacy which obligated
England without a treaty, an adequate
army, or Parliamentary approval, but
could not tell Germany that England
would intervene. Little remains to be
known of Anglo-German relations — at
least on the English side.
America's case against Germany was
much simpler and more indubitable than
England's, yet President Wilson's policy
has not been adequately disclosed. What
did the President say to Bernstorff and
what notes (not yet published) were
sent to Berlin? Did President Wilson
and Mr. Balfour discuss the secret
treaties? Was there any attempt at
political preparedness for peace before
the final debacle? What actually did
Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and
Orlando say to each other in that stuffy
room which housed the Council of Four?
These are things that we must know be-
fore even provisional estimates can be
formed of President Wilson's policy be-
fore and during the war; and, in spite
of our machinery for popular control of
diplomacy, Americans know rather less
of their own recent history than of Eu-
ropean history. It is a nice ethical ques-
tion, finally, as to whether the citizens
of a democracy should not be told these
matters by official publications instead
of personal memoirs.
Lindsay Rogers
What Must the World Do
To Be Fed?
TWO books are at hand which deal
expertly with a problem which a
few years ago only the initiated recog-
nized as a problem at all. The first,
"The Feeding of Nations," by E. H.
Starling, was written by the Chairman
of the Royal Society Food Committee
and Honorary Scientific Advisor to the
British Ministry of Food during the
war. The second, "The World's Food
Resources," is by Professor J. Russell
Smith, lately Consulting Expert of the
War Trade Board and Professor of
Economic Geography at Columbia Uni-
versity. If the present writer ventures
to call attention to the importance of
these two works, it is not because he
has long been in the class of the in-
itiated, but because in common with
thousands of his fellows he has learned
to see in recent events the development
of a new function of statecraft.
The world learned more of the tech-
nique of democratic government during
the few fevered years of the war than
it had learned in a hundred previous
years. And the war served as well to
reveal the dangerous pressure points in
the democratic structure. Not the least
of these concerned the utilization of re-
sources which are the very grist of the
democratic mill. The campaigns for con-
servation of national resources had
seemed to have camparatively only a
doctrinaire interest until the operations
of Dr. Walther Rathenau in Germany
and of the Munitions Ministry of Lloyd
George in England taught the necessity,
as well as the possibility, of a strict mo-
bilization of all the resources of a na-
tion. But more important in every
respect in the psychology of peoples, and
even the stability of governments them-
selves, are the questions which arise in
connection with the administration of
the food supply. For these questions the
foundations have already been laid in
abstract science, two branche? of which
are represented in the books before us.
Dr. Starling is a representative of ap-
plied physiology, who finds his attention
drawn from the problems of the composi-
tion of food and the food requirements
of the average man back to the questions
which are involved in Europe's deficit
for 1920 of 16,000,000 tons of cereals.
Professor Smith is a representative of
economic geography, who finds himself
asking the question, "Has food shortage
come to stay?" The best answer he
can find is that it depends on whether
man behaves. By all odds the most in-
teresting and significant portion of Pro-
fessor Smith's book is the last fifty
pages, in which he discusses "The Dis-
tribution of Food and of Men," and
"Hunger, Trade, and War."
As our authors well know, these ques-
tions involve more than economic geo-
graphy or applied physiology, important
as these are. They involve new zones
of administration in the state. For these
administrative activities there are few
enough precedents. Until the great war,
food policy was either lacking or it was
doctrinaire. When starvation lay out-
side of the paths of the world's markets
it was taken as the handiwork of God.
When nations have had a foodstuffs policy
it has been a local one. Germany began
to adapt its national life to the food
problem immediately after the Franco-
German War. Since then she has ex-
traordinarily increased her productive-
ness per man unit, but she did nothing to
prepare for the supreme test of her
policy in war, and when war came her
policy failed her. Great Britain never
had raised enough for her own consump-
tion; but she has been kept from facing
the problem by her excess of manufac-
tured stuff which she could exchange for
foodstuffs from abroad, and by her com-
mand of shipping. Free trade was Eng-
land's food policy, and it was a local one.
The place of food policy as an economic
principle of government was not learned
until Herbert Hoover taught it in con-
nection with the work of the Commis-
sion for Relief in Belgium. There the
true governmental function of the food
supply in all its various social, financial,
economic, and diplomatic aspects was
created during the first two years of the
war. When Hoover was taken into the
war Government as United States
Food Administrator, this function of
government was accepted by the United
States as belonging to its war policy.
This was followed immediately by the ap-
pointment of Lord Rhondda as British
Food Controller, and, a little later, when
the Clemenceau Government was estab-
lished in France, food policy was ac-
cepted as a factor therein. During the
two years of war that followed and the
one further year before peace was finally
declared, the world learned all that it
now knows of the statesmanship involved
in the food supply. .It is not likely soon
to forget the pressing need of all the
lessons it learned in the hard school of
war.
Is peace to bring an end to the food
problem? One cannot gather an affirma-
tive answer to this question from either
of these books, or from any sane view
that one may take of the situation. The
best that one can say is that the food
problem will end if the world can get
together. And this answer is worth
little enough, for it must be taken with
a plenty of reservations and interpreta-
tions. Aside from the inherent diffi-
culty of rebuilding again the broken
bonds of faith between nations, of fill-
ing up the lack of manufactured goods
to exchange for products of the farm, of
establishing on a larger and better basis i
international finance and shipping, in
fact of providing again a social equi-
librium within the States as well as be-
tween States, there is the further diffi-
culty that food policy never has been
rationally envisaged as a world problem;
and getting together, therefore, will nol
mean a return to the conditions of be
fore the war, but advancing by slow ant
painful stages to a point at which th(
internal food policy of a nation is ad
justed to the world situation.
Immediately after the armistice, Eu
rope asked for a continuation of inter
Allied food control, and Dr. Starling add
his plea for cooperative control in tim
February 28, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[201
of peace. No man more than Mr. Hoover
stands for the entente between na-
tions, and yet he has been compelled
to oppose from the first all such meas-
ures. The reasons are not selfish ones.
The nations of Europe must return to
a basis of defensible independent food
policy before the United States can un-
dertake even to consider the pooling of
her vast but sorely-tried resources with
those of Europe. During the war we
were willing to feed high-priced grains
to live stock in order to provide a quick
export of fats to Europe. We cannot
indefinitely continue such an expensive
programme. The physiological mean
necessary for sustenance is a useful ab-
straction when you have reached the
danger point. The time has not yet
come for the application of this mean
to America along with Europe to com-
pensate for errors in Europe's food
policy. Europe has been living from
hand to mouth for generations, and
meanwhile, by means of embargoes which
were both murderous and suicidal, de-
stroying the production across border
lines. The destroyed herds of Serbia
must have come back more than once in
five hungry years to plague the con-
sciences of Magyar statesmen. Germany
came near to having a rational food
policy, but the difficulty of enforcing a
strict application of policy on the farm-
ers during the war was responsible for
the wastage of incalculable amounts of
cereals on the maintaining of useless
herds, which were good neither for milk
nor fat, and was one of the contribut-
ing causes to the loss of the war.
The problem as to how food policy
v/ill enter into the psychology of govern-
ment will constitute in time to come one
of the severest tests of democracy. The
failures in food policy of the last five
years have been even more illuminating
than the successes. On account of her
position in the food market and because
she has had the advantage of wise ad-
ministration, the United States has been
put in the way of the successes. We
learned to conserve in the midst of
plenty, to produce readily at a sugges-
tion of need, and to control stable dis-
tribution in the midst of a nervous mar-
ket. The failures of Europe were also
partly on account of her position. Para-
doxical as it may seem, it is more diffi-
cult to stabilize a market in the midst of
conditions of scarcity than in the midst
of well-advertised plenty. And it is
more difficult to exercise suasion over
the producer than over the distributor.
You can encourage producers to raise
wheat and pigs, as we did in America,
but you cannot force them to give up
the last margin on a requisition. More
important still, you cannot force them
to measures of scientific economy, as was
shown in Germany in connection with
the cattle supply.
An important difference revealed by
the war between the food policy of Great
Britain and that of Germany is preg-
nant with meaning. Throughout the
war Great Britain managed to keep her
average consumption per man about the
same as the pre-war average, about 3,400
calories. She did this by reducing the
overlavish consumption of the rich and
increasing the ration of the formerly
ill-nourished classes. Germany sank
from the excess of pre-war days to 2,300
calories in 1915 and to 1,600 calories in
1916. Upon such a ration no man can
thrive. There developed, therefore, what
may be called the underground stocks
that were never counted in the available
supplies of the nation and finally reached
only the hands of those who could pay
exorbitant prices. While England as a
matter of governmental policy was bind-
ing to her cause the classes that were
necessary for the prosecution of the war,
Germany, on the other hand, on account
of her hard straits and as well on ac-
count of her ancient ineptitude in popu-
lar government, was draining food-
stuffs from the people for the support
of the wealthy few. And when the well-
fed Junkers in power called upon the
people in their extremity in the fall of
1918, either the people were dead or they
had turned against the Government
which had betrayed them.
Thomas H. Dickinson
The Uncult
I AM in touch with the hippodrome of
the seven arts. The ringmaster is on
the wire.
Mrs. Challis informs me that the
Athelney Club is to give a dinner to-
morrow night. The Athelney Club
doesn't give dinners without provocation,
and, whenever I receive an invitation, I
ask "Who?" Then I say "Oh, of course,"
and blunder about the public library feel-
ing like a regular dilettante.
"The guest of honor," Mrs. Challis's
moral-suasion tone indicates that I am
being reproved for not knowing all about
it, "the guest of honor will be Arthur
Veronicus Roehm. You know."
"He was in Welterweight's Anthology
last year, wasn't he?" I venture. I can
venture things over the telephone quite
recklessly ; I think I could win in a long-
distance poker game. Besides, Welter-
weight's Anthology is the surest of all
literary hazards, as Mr. Welterweight
distributes two-penny bouquets to every-
one who ever wrote a rhyme. I have
wounded Mrs. Challis, however. She
moans prettily, and I know that her eyes
are like a dove's that sickeneth.
"You are confusing him with Ada
Roehm who wrote ' Sonnets from the
Bosnian,' " she corrected me with the
glibness of a barber exploding the fal-
lacy that Mollowitz pitched his first game
for Milwaukee in 1902. "Mr. Roehm
writes those reminiscences of a rivet-
slinger for the Next-to-Reading-Matter
Weekly — without any punctuation, you
know. And his spelling is a scream.
You must be there to-morrow night. Be
sure, now."
The receiver stops its gracious grating,
and I hang it up, and wonder a little.
My sense of duty tells me that I ought
to meet this lion with the screaming
spelling. I ought to sit at the Athelney
dinner-table and look and listen and have
Boswellian thrills, but, first of all, I ought
to read something by Arthur Veronicus
Roehm.
I hunt up one of the Reminiscences of
a Rivet-Slinger and plunge into it man-
fully. My eye searches in vain for capi-
tal letters and commas. I shouldn't let
such superficialities prejudice me. Some-
where there is an idea, everywhere there
is humor; the editor's foreword says so.
"Whenever we have cumpany to eat the
wife gives me eyebrow signels all the
time for feer I should maybe cut my
mouth with my nife but I never dun it
yet and I am age 28 yrs old if its a
day." . . . The sociable seat-mate!
the smoking-car raconteur! the relatives
of the charwoman! that rough diamond,
the self-made man! Rather than turn
over a handsome advertisement of Dutch
Cleanser, I stop reading.
Truly, illiteracy is upon us in a deluge.
It is more popular than ever before, and
it has always been more or less popular.
Daisy Ashford is the newest member of
the uncult, and takes a place above Ring
Lardner, H. C. Witwer, and "Dere
Mable." The Lowell centenary brought
the Biglow Papers to the attention of
many as something entirely new. We can
all remember "Hashimura Togo" and
"Chimmie Fadden," and we still have Abe
Martin as the successor to* Josh Billings,
Petroleum V. Nasby, Artemus Ward, and
M. Quad, whom our oldsters are now
ashamed to have laughed over in their
bicycle days.
Modernize old Samuel Pepys' orthog-
raphy and construction, and he would
become as ponderous a bore as Benjamin
Franklin. Write the "Real Diary of a
Real Boy" as it would be written by the
super-schooled youth of to-day, and
Plupy and Beany would sink into oblivion
with Sanford and Merton.
What is the lure of the illiterate, the
spell of the misspelled? What is there
about bad grammar that so charms the
dear public?
The bright boy at the end of the col-
umn states that he believes the vogue of
the uncult is due to its sincere humility.
He goes on to say that the dear public
is weary of the condescending voices on
Parnassus. It is no longer impressed
by holier-than-thou literary style and the
apotheosis of the polysyllabic ; it has dis-
covered that an honest heart may beat
202]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, Xo. 42
between a split infinitive. It prefers the
writers who get on its own level — the
street level — or even a little lower, in
the gutter.
However, in spite of this pessimistic
conclusion, I shall attend the Athelney
dinner to-morrow night, and give this
Roehm person the double-o.
Weare Holbrook
Correspondence
The Decline of Liberty
To the Editors of The Review:
In the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury Mill contended, with iwpular ap-
proval, that the duty of a Government
was to assure the individual the greatest
amount of liberty compatible with the
liberty of all. Herbert Spencer was of.
the same mind; and Lord Acton ex-
pressed the same conviction when he
said a perfect Government must be one,
irrespective of its form, in which each
man was free to follow the dictates of
his own conscience. In America, as late
as 1905, James Coolidge Carter could
endorse the laissez-faire doctrine with
the approval of thoughtful students of
sociology.
Are we drifting away from these
tenets of Benthamite liberalism? The
course of contemporaneous legislation
would so indicate. Women have been
given the vote, it is true, but their
liberty to contract or to dispose of their
property has been considerably abridged.
They may not work more than a certain
number of hours a week, and only in
places conforming to standards approved
by Government inspectors. Employees in
certain occupations are forbidden to sue
their employers for torts, but obliged to
accept the benefits of insurance schemes
required by law. There is a constant and
successful agitation for laws forbidding
work for less than a minimum wage, pro-
hibiting many callings to children, pro-
scribing articles of food and drink, and
assuring special privileges to individuals
or classes supposed to be powerful in
politics.
The lassez-faire policy gets no hearing
to-day. Government help has been sub-
stituted for self-help. It is purposed
to give the mass of the "workers" their
"fair share" of what they contribute to
the national wealth. This interesting
experiment has never been tried before.
The feudal baron took from his serfs
everything they produced except what
was essential to support their lives. In
return he kept the peace and gave them
employment. He kept the seed com him-
self until the seeding time. If he had
confided it to the serfs, can anyone doubt
there would have been none to plant?
The Russian peasants drank up the har-
vest annually. Contemplate the excesses
of our own artisans who stayed home
during the war. Are they rich? No,
they have eaten the seed corn. They
now have silk shirts, second-hand auto-
mobiles, imitation jewelry, and the mem-
ories of numberless movie shows. But
they have no capital.
They still have votes, however, and if
they can not render themselves financially
independent by economic means, they will
by political. Alas, to climb the hill of
prosperity requires more than votes. If
one increase one's income by dollars
which are unearned, the buying power of
the dollar depreciates. This is not due to
a capitalistic conspiracy. No form of
government can be invented which will
relieve the irresponsible of the effects of
their incompetence. If oversight of the
seed corn is really necessary, will it be
cheaper to have the Government do it
than the capitalists? Or shall we be
merely delivering ourselves up to the
mercies of a new set of thieves who will
have to make up for lost time?
Those of us who prefer to be free and
be cheated rather than to bargain away
our liberty to the Government for protec-
tion against the rich are little heard
from in these days. Perhaps we shall
have to give collectivism a chance. About
the end of the century the pendulum will
swing back again, and it will be observed
that the same old crowd is acting as the
custodian of capital.
George W. Martin
New York, February 20
What Might Happen to the
Constitution
To the Editors of The Review:
In a statement published in the New
York Times, Mr. Wayne B. Wheeler,
chief counsel of the Anti-Saloon League,
asserts that "the power to amend the
Constitution of the United States is un-
limited except in two particulars named
in Article 5. On all other questions
there is no limitation except as to the
method prescribed in that article."
If Mr. Wheeler's contention is upheld
by the Supreme Court of the United
States it will be constitutionally possible
for 180 Members of Congress, 86 less
than a majority of both Houses, and less
than 3,000 members of 36 State Legisla-
tures, to do these things:
Abolish a republican fonn of govern-
ment.
Establish a hereditary monarchy.
Abolish the Supreme Court.
Take away from the several States the
right to levy taxes.
Prohibit the exercise of the Christian
religion.
Confiscate all money in the banks.
Repudiate the national debt.
All these revolutionary changes, de-
stroying the American system of govern-
ment, can be brought about by less than
3,000 men, in spite of the protest of all
other citizens of the United States, and
the Supreme Court will be powerless to
hold that such amendments are void, even
though, as is clearly the case with the
Eighteenth Amendment, they are in
direct conflict with the existing Consti-
tution.
E. J. Shriver
Chairman Executive Committee, The
Vigilance League
New York, February 18
The Outlook for Religion
To the Editors of The Review :
Religion, as well as industry and poli-
tics, needs resistance to dangerous radi-
calism. In the former, as in the latter,
irresponsible agitators and conservative
extremists make true progress difficult.
Orthodox believers still cling to the
literal infallibility of the Bible, and will
not study it as they do other books, priz-
ing the good and rejecting the evil. "They
worship it as the basis of all truth and
virtue. The Catholics regard the Church
rather than the Bible as the final au-
thority, a position theoretically more
liberal, but in practice they are as un-
compromising as the Protestants.
Many movements, such as Positivism,
Ethical Culture, Spiritualism, Theosophy,
Christian Science, Monism, Rationalism,
etc., have attempted to improve upon or
supersede the Christian religion, and
have rendered benefits along certain
lines; but too often they have served
only to destroy existing abuses, failing
to advance constructive principles. With-
out disparagement of the work of any
of these movements, or of any of the
Christian denominations, the writer
maintains that Rationalism — the exercise
of reason in all problems of thought and
conduct — thoroughly accepted and ap-
plied, would go a long way toward meet-
ing present difficulties. It has long
existed, both within the Church and
without. It was a leading factor in the
Renaissance and the Reformation, and
can claim credit for the Copemican sys-
tem, the doctrine of Evolution, and many
other great truths. It has given hu-
manity countless advances in science, art,
education, and government, sharing at
least equally with the altruistic spirit
of Christianity in building the great
edifice of modern civilization.
The most urgent task, therefore, is the
rationalization of the churches, making
all religious creeds and ordinances sub-
ject to the rules of reason, and substitut-
ing progress for the idea of finality.
But Rationalism must discover and pro-
claim new religious views, as well as
pass judgment on those already existing.
It must work out a new philosophy of \
February 28, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[203
the cosmos, and a new code of morals,
not destroying the vital elements of the
old, but reproducing them in higher
form, and correlating them with modern
thought.
The separation of Church and State,
in this country and some others, puts
a serious difficulty in the way of thor-
ough modernization. The people as a
whole can not act in the interest of their
religious needs. Religion, as education,
concerns the people in general, and
should be supervised and regulated by
the Government. The "community
church" is a move in the right direction,
and all efforts to discard strictly sec-
tarian teaching are commendable, but
creeds and platforms should not be
dropped entirely. The various creeds
should be retained by those who sin-
cerely hold them, but with tolerance
and respect for the views of others.
Gradually, the collective thought and
experience of the congregations will
determine what is helpful and what
detrimental. The present is a supreme
crisis in the churches, and the movement
towards a more rational programme
must be rapid if they are to endure.
Liberals will accept all in the Christian
religion that is sound and uplifting, but
they will not accept error, or abandon
the principles of rationality and pro-
gressiveness in the search for truth.
Cyrus H. Eshleman
Ludington, Mich., February 19
Universities and the Danger
Point
To the Editors of The Review:
I read, February 7, "What Are Col-
leges For?" with profound interest. It is
good to have you emphasize what can-
not be too widely known. President But-
ler's and President Lowell's opinion that,
as you say, education along the lines
of narrowly applied science is not the
only thing worth while. I can bear wit-
ness to the fact that one president of a
State university — it cannot be doubted
that there are others, and it is to be
hoped that there are many — President
Bryan of Indiana has long held and up-
held the same opinion. But I cannot
believe that your adjective, "dominant,"
used in respect to this idea is applicable
to Columbia or Harvard or any other uni-
versity in the United States at this time,
and, therefore, I can not agree, much
as I should like to do so, that the "point
of danger" is passed. I should say rather
that the point of danger has been per-
ceived and is being attacked by a few
farsighted men. But this is not enough.
I dare affirm that a decided majority of
every university faculty in the country
to-day believes that education along the
lines of narrowly applied science is the
only thing worth while, including the
"science of education." I heartily wish
that facts to prove me wrong might be
forthcoming.
May I touch upon one other point?
You say that students must learn
breadth and tolerance. But what you,
and other farsighted ones who make this
declaration, do not do is to keep on to
the conclusion — the practical reason for
studying the humanities — namely, in-
crease of understanding among men;
human sympathy. Sympathy is the
product of imagination, and imagina-
tion— that which "bodies forth the
forms of things unknown" — imagination,
with all men save geniuses, soon withers
and dies if it be not nourished by the
one support which can be given it, com-
munion and constant intercourse with
the best that the past has thought and
done. This support the American alma
mater has largely withheld from her
children for decades past. Applied
science, largely at Germany's academic
dictation, has taken the place of English
literature, particularly English poetry,
while the humanizing thought of the
past, as expressed in architecture, the
allied arts and music, has had, relatively
speaking, no place at all. That the
genius finds such support somehow,
somewhere, is a commonplace.
John Drinkwater makes the point in
question beautifully clear in his "Abra-
ham Lincoln" when — it is the Fort
Sumpter crisis — he has the President
turn to Seward and say, (after a pause) :
"There is a tide in the affairs of men "
Do you read Shakespeare, Seward?
Seward : Shakespeare ? No.
Lincoln : Ah 1
But the rank and file of undergradu-
ates are not geniuses or near-geniuses.
With these it is necessary that imagina-
tion be nursed to the great end that
sympathy may be awakened and quick-
ened, and so their capacities for getting
on with their fellow countrymen and
worldmen be increased.
Alfred M. Brooks
Blooming ton, Ind., February 18-
Pelf and Pedagogy
To the Editors of The Review:
Up and down the land the hat is being
passed for the somewhat problematical
benefit of the professor. Heroic exer-
tions are being made to increase univer-
sity salaries from fifteen to fifty per
cent, over the present scale, although the
authorities do not fail to realize that to
save the present, or, to be exact, the for-
mer status of college teachers, their sal-
aries will have to be doubled at the least,
and that in the very near future. Of
course, the crucial question is: Where's
the money to come from? The teachers
are tempted to say to their trustees:
"That's not our problem, but yours."
But being teachers, they say nothing.
To some people it looks like a conspiracy
of silence; they fear the teachers might
"unionize" or amalgamate with the A. F.
of L. No fear. Their vocational soli-
darity is not sufficient for that. Some-
thing else will have to happen to arouse
the authorities to a full sense of the
danger; rather, it is happening now. As
the teachers die off, one by one, or as
they desert the educational camp for the
wider fields of business, their places are
filled by men of lesser calibre.
Now supposing, optimistically, that the
salaries of university teachers can be
sufficiently amplified to put a stop to the
professorial exodus, will the other press-
ing needs for duplication, aye, triplica-
tion, of collegiate endowments be met?
The question simply amounts to this : Can
the new crop of multi-millionaires pro-
duced of late be relied on to foster the
higher learning with the same lavishness
that has built up our institutions under
the munificence of the past two genera-
tions? Or, in case the majority of pri-
vately endowed colleges should starve to
death, can we hope for such spiritual
enlightenment in our State Legislatures
as would bring about a sudden amplifica-
tion of their educational budgets? The
truth is, universities have not been man-
aged in conservative business fashion.
Most of them have undertaken more than
their finances can carry, they have "bit-
ten off more than they can chew." The
remedy lies in retrenchment. We have
altogether too many institutions that
strive to cover the whole ground, crip-
pling themselves and their rivals in
the effort. They are run too much like
department stores ; only there is no actual
profit in some of the lines to offset
losses in others. Isn't it absurd, for in-
stance, for urban universities to encum-
ber themselves, for the factitious show
of the complete stock, with schools of
mines and agriculture, or for rural uni-
versities to be conducting schools of law
and medicine?
Educational institutions ought to
change from their silly attitude of rivalry
to one of thoroughgoing cooperation.
Then they could easily agree on some
form of labor division, and abandon the
imaginary obligation of maintaining
singly and severally all conceivable de-
partments of instruction. By the assign-
ment of particular departments to par-
ticular institutions within a given zone,
and by partnership in the maintenance
of important, but under the present sys-
tem unprofitable, endeavors, the avail-
able funds could be made to go much
farther; at the same time, the cause of
higher education would be much better
served.
Otto Heller
Washington University,
St. Louis, January 21
204]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 42
Book Reviews
The Interpreter of American
Nationalism
The Like of John Marshall. By Albert J.
Beveridge. Four Volumes. Boston :
Houghton Mifflin Co.
THE first and second volumes of ex-
Senator Beveridge's "Life of Mar-
shall" appeared in 1916. The third and
the fourth, three years later. They all
have but a single theme. In Marshall's
day there was much mutual jealousy
and suspicion among the different sec-
tions of the country. A majority of the
people of each State felt it was, of right,
still sovereign and independent. The
Life makes plain how Marshall came to
think and to feel nationally. It pictures
to us those qualities which, at the age of
forty-five, made him Chief Justice, and
which, during the more than a third of a
century of his service, enabled him to
play in the nationalizing of the American
people a part greater than that of any
other man.
The present is a fitting' time to tell
such a story. It is true that it is fifty-
five years since Appomattox, but, for
almost another half century, the great
party which Jefferson organized con-
tinued to profess adherence to those doc-
trines of States' Rights and strict con-
struction upon which, in 1791, he based
his argument against Hamilton's bill to
charter a bank of the United States.
That party has won seventeen out of our
thirty-three Presidential elections. Even
when, during its almost one-hundred and
thirty years of activity, its fortunes
have been at the lowest, its followers
comprised nearly one-half the people of
the United States.
So recently as 1912, the platform of
the convention from which Mr. Wilson
received his first nomination denounced
as "usurpation the efforts of our oppon-
ents to deprive the States of any of the
rights reserved to them, and to enlarge
and magnify by indirection the powers
of the Federal Government." Before an-
other national convention came together,
a Congress, Democratic in both branches,
had enacted the first anti-child labor
law, the Federal Reserve Bank Bill, and
many another measure which, directly or
indirectly, extended national power and
influence at the expense of the States.
The party of Jefferson had become as
nationalistic as its opponents, and in
1916, for the first time in its history, its
declaration of principles was silent as to
States' Rights. In spite of the Virginia
and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, and
the teachings of John C. Calhoun and
Jefferson Davis, the first four States to
ratify the Eighteenth Amendment were
Mississippi, Virginia, Kentucky, and
South Carolina. Marshall has won. His
triumph may be even too complete. The
future will tell. At the moment his
views are those of every section of his
country. Were the economic, industrial
and social forces which worked for na-
tional consolidation so powerful that
they were bound to triumph, even if
Marshall had never been?
It took a millennium to make Germany
one, and, in the end, unity was achieved
by methods which taught the German
people that philosophy of politics which
made possible the blood and wrack of
the world war and its aftermaths. That
titanic struggle enables us to compre-
hend, as before it few could, why our
forefathers, during the wars of the
French Revolution and Empire, felt and
acted as they did. We were wont to
think that the Republicans and the Fed-
eralists of the last decade of the Eight-
eenth Century, and of the first fifteen
years of the Nineteenth, allowed them-
selves to become so absorbed in the drama
which was being played across the sea
that they lacked something of national
self-respect. Since the 1st of August, 1914,
we have learned to understand them bet-
ter. For over a century everybody has
wondered how the Federalists could have
been stupid enough to pass the alien and
sedition bills. John Marshall thought
they were blunders then, and said so. In
these last times we have put upon the
statute book much legislation inspired
by similar fears and dislikes, and are
proposing to add to its volume.
We learn from this really great biog-
raphy what manner of man Marshall
was — how he worked and how he played.
He becomes to us very human indeed.
The book is readable from start to fin-
ish. In Marshall's early life there was
little out of the ordinary. He served as
an officer in the Revolutionary Army.
He began to practise as a lawyer before
he had made any serious study of the
law. He was elected to the Legislature
and subsequently to Congress. All these
experiences were common to successful
young men of his day, and since. His
father, the descendant of some genera-
tions of mechanics and small farmers,
was personally of the type that naturally
becomes influential in the community.
He was vestryman, burgess many times,
sheriff, clerk of court, colonel in the Revo-
lutionary Army, and a lifelong friend of
Washington. His mother was a Keith
of that family of the Earls Marischal of
Scotland, many of whose members had
brains as well as pedigrees. It was more
to the purpose that she was a great-
grandchild of that William Randolph and
Mary Isham who were the common ances-
tors of Thomas Jefferson, of John Mar-
shall, of John Randolph of Roanoke, and
of Robert E. Lee.
Marshall was black-haired, tall, gaunt,
loose-jointed and awkward, of great
strength, and, in youth, athletic and fleet
of foot. His eyes and the kindly expres-
sion of his countenance were his most
attractive features. In his early life he was
described as convivial to excess. This is
doubtful, but it is probable that he al-
ways liked play better than work, though
deep thinking was not necessarily work to
him. At the bar and on the bench, he
had an almost infallible instinct for the
really important points of a case, and he
seldom wasted time or strength on any-
thing else. He never sought occasion to
exert himself over that which did not
seem worth while.
He had little faith in popular govern-
ment, but in personal taste and habits he
was the most democratic of men. He
loved to mingle on familiar terms with
people of every class. He enjoyed their
society, and they his. The touch of in-
dolence in his nature, combined with
strong but quiet self-confidence, made it
easy for him to listen patiently to argu-
ments of intolerable length, or to appear
so to do, even when he had prepared his
opinion before counsel opened their
mouths. He once jestingly said that the
acme of judicial distinction means "the
ability to look a lawyer straight in the
eyes for two hours, and not hear a
damned word he says." One who thinks
that easy has never been a judge.
Senator Lodge in his "Life of Hamil-
ton" refers to Marshall as "standing at
the head of all lawyers," adding, "espe-
cially on Constitutional questions."
There is point to the qualification. Mar-
shall was a great advocate, and still a
greater judge, when, as in Constitutional
and international cases, he could think
out great fundamental principles and
apply them, unembarrassed by prece-
dents established by minds of feebler
grasp. Apart from the branches of
jurisprudence to which a statesmanlike
breadth of view is essential, his contri-
butions to legal science were not great.
His name is not associated with its de-
velopment as is that of Mansfield, for
example. On the bench he took his
share, and perhaps more, of the common
drudgery, but it is probable that he was,
as a rule, quite willing to let his asso-
ciates have a free hand in disposing of
the ordinary run of cases, important as
these usually were to the litigants, and
intellectually interesting as they fre-
quently proved to those who had a turn
for such questions. If so, it was all the
easier for them to follow his lead in
matters about which he really cared.
The terms of the Supreme Court were
then short. Travel was so uncomfortable,
and even dangerous, that the Justices sel-
dom brought their wives to Washington.
During the sessions of the Court they
lived in one boarding house; so that they
became personally far more intimate than
is usually possible to-day. Under such
conditions, Marshall's charm and lovable-
February 28, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[205
ness, his spirit of comradeship, his lik-
ing for a joke and a story, no less than
the impression he always created of men-
tal breadth, strength, clarity, and wis-
dom, gave him a personal influence over
his colleagues, the importance of which
it would be difl!icult to exaggerate.
These qualities explain why his power
to speak for the Court did not end before
his work was well begun. While for the
first ten years of his Chief Justiceship
the majority of his Court were, like him-
self. Federalists, after 1811, Bushrod
Washington was the only associate who
was not an appointee of Jefferson, Mad-
ison, or of one of their successors of the
same political party. Of Marshall's
great Constitutional decisions, only Mar-
bury vs. Madison, and Fletcher vs. Peck
were handed down while he still had the
support of a Federal majority of the
Court. Sturgis vs. Crowninshield, Dart-
mouth College vs. Woodward, McCulloch
vs. Maryland, Osborn vs. The Bank,
Cohens vs. Virginia, Gibbons vs. Ogden,
Brown vs. Maryland, and the rest were
decided by a court more than two-thirds
of whose members had been selected in
large part because it was believed that
they were opponents of all that Marshall
held dear in Constitutional construction.
One can not help being interested in
the long duel between Jefferson and Mar-
shall. There was no love lost between
these second cousins, once removed. Jef-
ferson nursed a grudge longer and had a
greater capacity for personal hatred, but
Marshall was at least equally tenacious
in his opinions. Senator Beveridge
throws into strong relief the exceeding
shrewdness with which, during the crit-
ical opening years of the last century, he
carried on the struggle to keep for the
Judiciary that place which he believed
the Constitution gave to it and which he
was convinced the welfare of the country
required that it should maintain.
The Republicans came into power,
flushed with victory, and full of rage
against the National Courts, as the last
stronghold of their defeated adversaries.
The "midnight judges" were ousted in
contemptuous defiance of the Constitu-
tional provision that they should hold
their offices during good behavior. In
each of the two Houses, the right of the
Judiciary to pass upon the constitution-
ality of that or any other Act of Con-
gress was vehemently denied. Procedural
and other obstacles made it impossi-
ble for the Courts to reinstate the dis-
missed judges. There was grave danger
that the practical limitation thus imposed
upon the judicial power would, by the
passage of years, ripen into an authori-
tative and irreversible construction of
the Constitution. It was imperative that
the Supreme Court should defend itself,
and that right speedily, but how was it
to be done? If executive assistance was
required to enforce any order of the
Court, based upon its having stricken
down an Act of Congress as unconstitu-
tional, it was certain that Jefferson would
say, as very nearly thirty years later
Jackson did say, "John Marshall has made
his decision; now let him enforce it."
The Chief Justice found in Marbury's
application for a mandamus to compel
Madison, as Secretary of State, to deliver
to him his commission as Justice of the
Peace for the District of Columbia an
opportunity safely to do the needful
thing. The Supreme Court declared it
could not grant the relief for which the
plaintiff asked, because the Act of Con-
gress which attempted to confer upon it
the power to issua the writ of mandamus,
was unconstitutional, and, in consequence,
void, for the reason that it extended the
original jurisdiction of the Court beyond
the limits fixed by the Constitution. Jef-
ferson might rage and his followers
might imagine vain things, but, as to that
case, there was nothing that they could
do, for although the opinion said that
Madison had refused to do his duty, no
order had been passed against him.
The more zealous partisans of the ad-
ministration hoped, through the exercise
of the power of impeachment, to teach
the judges that the Houses were their
masters. It was upon this issue that the
trial of Justice Chase really turned,
rather than upon the allegations of the
specific articles exhibited against him.
No one had a clearer understanding of all
that was involved than John Marshall.
He knew that the intemperate expres-
sions and the indiscreet conduct of his
associate had put weapons into the hands
of the foes of the Court. The pages of
the Life tell us how alive he was to the
danger, and how prudently he bore him-
self while the proceedings were pending.
The acquittal of the accused ended for-
ever the attempt in that way to strip the
judiciary of its independence, as sixty
years later a like verdict in favor of
Andrew Johnson determined once for all
that the President's political responsibil-
ity is not to Congress.
By his opinion in Marbury vs. Mad-
ison, Marshall took from his opponents
the aid of time, and made it his ally. The
longer what was there said remained un-
reversed and unqualified, the less likeli-
hood there was that it could be success-
fully challenged. The Court could wisely
rest content with the situation, but Sena-
tor Beveridge is not quite accurate in
saying that fifty-two years passed before
( in the D red Scott case) it again asserted
its right to declare unconstitutional an
Act of Congress. In Hodgson vs. Bow-
erbank, 5th Cranch, 303, decided in 1809,
it was held that the provision of the
Judiciary Act of 1789, which attempted
to confer upon the Circuit Courts juris-
diction over suits to which an alien was
a party, exceeded the authority of Con-
gress because it went beyond the Consti-
tutional grant of judicial power to the
Federal Government "over controversies
between a State, or the citizens thereof,
and foreign States, citizens or subjects."
The most significant thing about this
otherwise unimportant case is that in six
years the doctrine of Marbury vs. Mad-
ison had become, to the Bench and Bar
of the Court, a finality. The chief Jus-
tice disposed of the case in a single sen-
tence: "Turn to the article of the Con-
stitution of the United States, for the
statute can not extend the jurisdiction
beyond the limits of the Constitution."
That was all. It was conclusive. The
whole report of the case occupies but half
a page.
One who holds that the Courts should
strike down unconstitutional legislation
need not necessarily favor a broad con-
struction of the Constitution itself. In-
deed it is a strict constructionist who
would most often wish to exercise such a
power. In the earlier years of the coun-
try's history, however, the earnest up-
holders of the prerogative of the Courts
in this matter were almost always
believers in an effective national govern-
ment. This was strikingly true of Mar-
shall. Why was he so strong a Nation-,
alist when most of the Virginians of his
generation took the other side? Senator
Beveridge finds the chief explanation in
the impressions made upon him by the
unnecessary sufferings at Valley Forge,
and, indeed, throughout the Revolution-
ary War, resulting from a military ineffi-
ciency which prolonged the conflict far
beyond the time in which it could have
been ended had the resources of the
American Colonies been effectively used
by a well-organized central administra-
tion. His devotion to Washington un-
doubtedly confirmed his Nationalistic
leanings, but more important was his
knack for seeing the essential thing.
He felt that unless the power of
the nation was strong enough not
only to hold the States together, but to
limit the lengths to which temporary
gusts of popular opinion in particular
localities might go, union, peace, order,
or justice could not long be maintained.
Almost all men have since reached the
same conclusion. He got there first.
Senator Beveridge takes up each of
Marshall's great decisions, and makes
clear to us the way in which the issues
involved presented themselves to the dif-
ferent classes then making up our people.
His story of Burr's trial is especially in-
teresting and unusually well told. Had
Marshall been less firm and less clear-
headed, our annals might not be so free
of political prosecutions, under the guise
of treason trials, as they fortunately are.
It might have been easier than we
think to have fallen into the habit of at
least occasionally waging our political
battles by the aid of gallows, block, guil-
lotine, or firing squad.
206]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 42
Space will not permit an examination
of the author's account of the great
cases in which Marshall upheld the duty
of the Supreme Court to compel State
tribunals to act upon its construction of
the Constitution, and to require State
Legislatures to respect the obligations of
contracts, and to refrain from interfer-
ing with interstate commerce or with
those agencies which the Federal Gov-
ernment, in the exercise of its implied
powers, has found useful. All of it is
excellently done. Since Thayer's Cavour,
no American has given to the world so
valuable a biography of a great historical
personage.
John C. Rose
Disentangling Socialism
from Bolshevism
The Psychology of Bolshevism. By John
Spargo. New York: Harper and Brother.
MR. SPARGO'S efiforts to disentangle
Socialism from Bolshevism arouse
(in one who knows his Spargo) mixed
emotions. In the mixture it is easy to
identify a modicum of amusement, a
jnodicum of admiration, and a modicum
of satisfaction; and, under the influence
of these three, it is natural to pronounce,
if not an enthusiastic, at least a tolerant
benediction upon those efforts. In the
language of the street, they will prob-
ably be "all to the good," anyhow!
"The Psychology of Bolshevism" is an
amusing work, because it exhibits Mr.
Spargo's anxiety (as a Socialist) to clear
his own skirts and the skirts of his
party from responsibility for the conse-
quences of putting into practice the doc-
trines of their chief evangelist, Karl
Marx. It excites in the reader a real
admiration for the mental agility that
is displayed therein, and it produces at
least some satisfaction, because it shows
that Socialism in practice, alias Bolshev-
ism in Russia, has frightened a good
many of our Socialists in America, who,
seemingly, never intended any such re-
sults and do not like them now that they
have occurred. In the belief that Mr.
Spargo's latest book may help to bring
others to the same state of dissatisfaction
it has our blessing.
His adventures in the field of psycho-
pathology — to explain the phenomena of
"parlor-Bolshevism," and so forth — are
conducted with the same fluent facility
of phrase-making and easy generaliza-
tion that are to be found in more than
one of his previous essays in compro-
mise. Much in the "Psychology of Bol-
shevism" reminds us of his book wherein
he "reconciled" Socialism with the Ju-
daeo-Christian theology. It is all simple,
after all. One can as easily say "hyster-
ical hyper-sesthesia" as "immanence,"
and "psycho-neurosis" is a very comfort-
able refuge. Besides, every intelligent
newspaper reader nowadays is presumed
to know the main "complexes" recognized
by the "Sunday science" of psycho-
analysis. It is a diverting sketch that Mr.
Spargo draws of the typical Bolshevist
Intellectual. Here are some of his main
characteristics : — " exaggerated egoism,
extreme intolerance, intellectual vanity,
hypercriticism, self-indulgence, craving
for mental and emotional excitement, ex-
cessive dogmatism, hyperbolic language,
impulsive judgment, emotional instabil-
ity, intense hero-worship, propensity for
intrigues and conspiracies, rapid alterna-
tion of extremes of exaltation or depres-
sion, violent contradictions in tenaciously
held opinions and beliefs, periodic, swift,
and unsystematic changes of mental at-
titude." He has evidently been conscien-
tious in his studies of the current lit-
erature of "opinion," journalism of "pro-
test," and broadsheets of "revolt." To
do him bare justice it is only fair to say
that he himself has never been of this
class ; compromise has ever been the key-
note of his thought. He has always
sought to prove that Socialism was a
gentle thing, quite compatible with re-
ligion, the family, personal property,
home comforts, and the other simple
pleasures and treasured convictions of
the humble every-day bourgeois. Small
wonder that he wants to convince us
that Bolshevism is a wicked perversion
of the true Marxian faith !
He will not grudge us a quiet chuckle
over it, we feel sure !
Recent Books on Mexican
Problems
The Plot Against Mexico. By L. J. de Bek-
ker. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Intervention in Mexico. By Samuel Guy
Inman. New York: Association Press.
Industrial Mexico. By P. Harvey Middle-
ton. New York: Dodd, Mead and Com-
pany.
IN recent publications concerning Mex-
ico there is to be found little that
has not already appeared several times
during the last three years. So long,
however, as the Mexican problem con-
tinues to have news value, we must ex-
pect the frequent publication of books
with such titles as "The Shameful Treat-
ment of Americans by Mexico" or "The
Crime Against Mexico." If a corre-
spondent becomes impregnated with the
desire to carry to the American public
the message which comes to him during
his fleeting "first-hand" investigation,
he must, of course, express it in print,
but it is unfortunate that he can not
state it in a concise article in one of
the current periodicals or in a Sunday
supplement.
"The Plot Against Mexico," by Mr.
de Bekker, is the most recent contribu-
tion from visiting journalists. Of the
nineteen chapters, two are devoted to the
"plot" and occasional reference to this
thesis may be found elsewhere, but the
remainder of the book is devoted to a
repetition of impressions and facts that
have for some time been common prop-
erty. The writer appears to have a
genius for relating the most common-
place facts -with all the ardor of one
who has made a new discovery. The
reader should remember this literary
ability when he reads, for example, on
page 53, that Mexico's "assets are a
thousand times in excess of her liabili-
ties."
The plot against Mexico is not unde-
serving of attention. There is, undoubt-
edly, a small group of men who have
wished to bring about intervention in
Mexican affairs. And any discerning
reader of the daily newspapers must
have been impressed by the "yellow"
character of much of the news coming
from Mexico. It has been unfair, highly
colored, and calculated to stir the feeling
of the country. Mr. de Bekker does a
service in bringing these facts together
in striking form. But to recognize these
facts is one thing, and to characterize
them as "a plot" in which high Govern-
ment ofliicials are implicated is quite an-
other thing.
Mr. Inman's book is much more care-
fully and modestly written. Mr. Inman
has had long experience in Mexico, and
is entitled to express seasoned opinions.
Moreover, he has the first requisite of a
writer upon Mexico, viz., a sympathetic
understanding of the Latin-American.
He has known President Carranza longer
and more intimately than any other
writer in the United States, and while
his picture of the Mexican President is
highly complimentary and possibly a
little prejudiced, he is not ignorant of
the weaknesses of the man, and, alto-
gether, his portrayal of Carranza is
probably the best that has appeared in
English. Mr. Inman is also much im-
pressed by the activity of those Ameri-
cans who desire intervention. He is
firmly of the opinion that intervention
would be a tremendous blunder. He has
no panacea, but believes that the Mexi-
can problem can be solved only by long
and patient efforts to educate the masses
of the people in the practical arts, the
cultural subjects, and in higher ideals.
And, finally, "the great problem before
the Mexican people is the development of
character, and to the working out of this
problem all of Mexico's friends are called
to help." As a presentation of the Mexi-
can point of view, there is much in this
volume to arouse sober thought amonj.
Americans.
Mr. Middleton's book is of an entirely
different type, and we must confess somi
relief in reading a current book tha
makes no pretense at interpreting Mexi
cans or the Mexican problem. The boo"
is an economic manual, giving the prin
February 28, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[207
cipal industrial and financial facts — such
as we have been accustomed to find in
the Mexican Year Book up to 1914, and,
more recently, in the Latin-American
Year Book. Mr. Middleton's book is
superior to the Mexican Year Book in
that it brings the facts up to date, and
it is better written and more carefully-
edited than the Latin-American Year
Book.
In addition to the ordinary commercial
and industrial statistics, it contains
much recent information of interest to
American investors, such as the proposed
new petroleum law, the new mining law,
together with some remarks on the prob-
able trend of the new banking legisla-
tion. The book is readable, timely, and
appears to be reliable. Mr. Middleton
states, in his interesting introduction,
that the business men of best standing
in Mexico are now of the opinion that
Article 27 of the new Constitution will
be so amended as to protect the foreign
interests. He is also of the opinion that
the Mexican Government is about to
take steps to recognize and refund the
debts of the Huerta regime. It is diffi-
cult to conceive of two acts of the Mexi-
can Government that could do more to
quiet the feeling of unrest that is evident
wherever the interests of foreigners are
touched by the present Government.
And, incidentally, nothing could do more
to rehabilitate Mexico's credit. The
opinion that Mexico is preparing to
recognize her international obligations is
borne out by other recent books. It
would seem, therefore, that the present
is not the time to spread broadcast a
propaganda of intervention.
Mr. Bullard on Russia
The Russian Pendulum. By Arthur Bul-
lard. New York: The Macmillan Com-
pany.
MR. BULLARD'S new book deserves
careful attention. Much of it is
valuable first-hand material for the stu-
dent, and some of it, alas, can not be
considered as entirely accurate or un-
biased. The author is a trained and
painstaking observer, and where he has
erred it has been in fields where he de-
pended on the testimony of others rather
than upon his own personal investigation,
and where his own background has in-
clined him to see many things only
through the eyes of the Russian revo-
lutionists of the beginning of the pres-
ent century.
Quite the most valuable feature of the
volume is his opening chapter devoted
to Lenin. Here we have the results of
the author's personal observation and
searching interviews, and it is to be
doubted if there exists a more authori-
tative analysis of the mentality of the
man who is the brains of the whole Bol-
shevist revolution. What makes this
analysis particularly interesting is that
it is based on an acquaintance dating
back to 1905.
When Mr. Bullard deals with the con-
ditions and institutions of Russia under
the Old Regime, he is less sure of his
ground. Few will attempt to defend the
lumbering old bureaucracy with its arbi-
trary conduct, its incompetence and cor-
ruption, but if one sees it only as a ma-
levolent tyranny and has not actually
lived among the peasants under it, the
tendency is to exaggerate their unhap-
piness and misery. His study of the
Zemstvo, Duma, and Cooperative insti-
tutions is well done, considering the
space at his disposal, and especially good
is his account of the development of that
new phenomenon in Russian life, the
Soviet, an account that shatters the
fiction circulated concerning it by Ray-
mond Robins and other superficial ob-
servers. In his treatment of the land
problem, and particularly of the peasant
commune, he is less happy. His state-
ments concerning land tenure, allotment,
and redemption payments, and especially
the attitude of the peasants toward the
commune, require considerable correction
and modification. He distinctly misin-
terprets the land reforms of Stolypin and
their motives, reforms that were almost
universally welcomed by the peasants as
freeing them from the yoke of the com-
mune, and which marked a great step
forward toward an enlightened solution
of the agrarian problem.
In dealing with the March Revolution
and the Provisional Government, Mr. Bul-
lard does not exaggerate the difficulties
that confronted Kerensky, but he takes
entirely too kindly a view of this con-
temptible and cheap little demagogue,
who, more than any other, was respon-
sible for the failure of the revolution.
On the other hand, he does not do justice
to Kornilov, displaying a partisan bias
and ignoring Kornilov's address before
the Congress at Moscow and his under-
standing with Kerensky, which the latter
so treacherously repudiated in the crisis.
The study of the November Revolution
and the Bolshevik regime is excellent.
With all of the author's judgments and
conclusions one may not agree, but one
must grant it fairmindedness and care-
ful analysis. With the third section of
his book, the part that deals with Si-
beria, the case is different. Here he
viewed events and men from the far-dis-
tant city of Vladivostok, the worst place
in all the world in which to gain informa-
tion as to the facts or to form fair judg-
ments as to men and movements. With
reference to this, it is fair to quote the
author's own words, appended to his ac-
count of the coup d'etat of November 18,
1918, at Omsk. "The truth of the mat-
ter was that at Vladivostok we did not
have any facts on which to base a judg-
ment." In fact, the Siberian part is un-
worthy of the writer and appears to have
been done under pressure to pad out an
otherwise admirable book, a pressure
which is also indicated by the faulty
transliteration of Russian names.
Proletarian Comedy
Storm in a Teacup. By Eden Phillpotts. New
York : The Macmillan Company.
Two Men : A Romance of Sussex. By Alfred
OUivant. New York: Doubleday, Page
and Company.
The Taming of Nan. By Ethel Holdsworth.
New York: E. P. Dutton and Company.
THE comedy of the small town and the
main street continues to win much
attention from current British novelists.
Mr. Phillpotts is still at his old game
with the witty, garrulous, and appallingly
above-board denizens of what may now
be frankly recognized as the land of
Phillpottsia. Long since it became evi-
dent that, for all their differences of
accent and whether placed in Devon or
Wales or Cornwall, his people are pretty
much the same in type and treatment.
For the rest, "Storm in a Teacup" adds
to his earlier romances of industry the
atmosphere and the technique of the
paper-maker's trade. Step by step, with
interludes of romantic comedy, we fol-
low the processes of paper manufacture;
and the expositor makes little attempt
to conceal from us that we are under
instruction. No less than seven of
the chapters are frankly devoted to
describing the different stages of paper-
making, most of them under titles like
"The Rag House," and "The Drying
Lofts." In short, readers of Mr. Phill-
potts who do not skip these chapter^ for
the story may now add a knowledge of
this industry to the lore of poppy-grow-
■ing, shepherding, slate-quarrying, and
divers other trades with which the
writer's earlier novels will have ac-
quainted them. He has little to add to
the interpretation of rustic character
and situation which charmed so many
readers in his earlier novels; and there
is no denying a sense of repetition and
dilution in much of the later work.
"Two Men" and "The Taming of Nan"
are chronicles of the main street and
the vulgar cit. Mr. Ollivant's two men
are brothers. Their father, Edward
Caspar, is not quite a gentleman, being
the son of a rich but rough-and-ready
contractor. With the makings of a
scholar, he has succumbed early to drink,
and allowed himself to be privately mar-
ried by a lower-class woman of char-
acter who is devoted to him. Ernest, the
elder son, inherits something of his
father's wondering simplicity of na-
ture, his practical helplessness, and his
taste. Alf, the younger, is a bom gut-
ter-rat, the embodiment of all the squalid
instincts and sordid motives of the slum-
bred child. To tell the truth, it is Alfs
very completeness which casts doubt upon
208]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, Xo. 42
the whole book. He is too unshaded a
rascal. His pusillanimity and malignity
are plain to see; and we can not believe
that the Trupps and the Pigotts of the
stor>' would have let him off with any
such mild tushing and finger-shaking as
the narrative records. Nor can we quite
believe that his mother, who is certainly
not a fool, would have waited so long
before turning on him with the verdict
he patently deserves. Alf becomes the
pushing and foxy man of business and
duly achieves a waistcoat and a watch-
chain. Em, the feckless and half-
awakened, drifts along unprosperously
enough, putting always the wrong foot
foremost, and yet never altogether losing
sight of a faint star towards which his
stumbling way does vaguely lead. In the
end, or rather at the point where we lose
sight of him, his loyal heart finds its
humble reward. What makes the book,
of course, is not its matter but its sub-
stance, that fabric which owes its rich-
ness more to the workman's hand than
to any visible quality in the material.
Mr. OUivant's work has been oddly un-
equal in this respect, ranging from the
firm perfection of "Bob, Son of Battle,"
to the artificiality of "Boy Woodburn."
But for the dubious figure of Alf, one
might unhesitatingly place "Two Men"
with his best work.
Readers with a keen eye for new work
of unusual quality may recall the appear-
ance a year or two ago of "Helen of
Four Gates" by an Englishwoman who
chose to sign herself "An Ex-Mill Girl."
It was a rather "grim" story, with a
flavor which reminded more than one
reviewer of Hardy and, a considerably
stranger thing, won the praise of the
old Master himself. "The Taming of
Nan" is less "uncompromising," that is,
less disagreeable in its net effect. In-
deed we recognize it, in retrospect at
least, as romantic comedy. But it is
romantic comedy reduced to nearly its
lowest terms. Nan Cherry, married to
and honest fellow, and mother of a nearly
grown girl, is a fighting shrew: "The
untamable hooligan — the Stone Age hid-
den under the veneer of Civilization.
She had neither humor, imagination,
nor protectiveness. She should have been
an apache's mate." The man Cherry is a
huge porter, a man of humor and self-
command. We see him in the opening
scene, breasting the torrent of his mate's
wild speech and regarding her with a
glance "of affectionate tolerance, mingled
with that of a man who has lost all
illusions, but knows that he has his feet,
if the worst comes to the worst." Feet,
that is, to stand on and if necessary to
run away with. He loses them presently
on the railway, and comes home a cripple
for life. Nan does not soften towards
him. She scorns him for his helpless-
ness and for a long time treats him
brutally. How he gets back a place in
the world and finally wins Nan for good
is the matter of a very good story.
There is Polly's story, too, which is of
hardly secondary interest. Indeed, it is
as a study of her emergence from the
blurred prettiness and apparently un-
protected amativeness of girlhood to real
achievements in character and happiness
that the book may especially commend
itself to the confirmed yet still hopeful
novel reader.
H. W. BOYNTON
Ancient Architecture
The Foundations of Classic Architecture.
By Herbert Langford Warren, A.M., Late
Fellow of the American Institute of Archi-
tects and Dean of the Faculty of Archi-
tecture of Harvard University. Illustrated
from Documents and Original Drawings.
New York: The Macmillan Company.
THE death in 1918 of Professor Her-
bert Langford Warren, late Dean of
the Harvard University School of Archi-
tecture, deprived American scholarship
of one of its most promising figures. The
volume which the Macmillans have just
published under the title of "The Foun-
dations of Classic Architecture" gives
rise to new regrets that his late-matur-
ing, but richly-developed, literary and
critical talent was not spared for wider
and still higher achievement. His death
left the manuscript of this volume nearly
ready for publication; the last chapter
has been sympathetically completed from
his notes by the editor, Professor Fiske
Kimball, upon whom devolved also the
selection of the 118 excellent illustra-
tions which elucidate the text and of
the beautiful drawings by the author's
brother, Harold B. Warren, which serve
as caption-pieces to the five chapters or
sections of the book.
These five chapters discuss with fine
scholarship, wholly free from affectation
or pedantry, and with admirable discrim-
ination between essentials and non-essen-
tials, the architectures respectively of
Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, the Aegean
civilization, and Greece. The author vi-
talizes the ancient styles, setting forth
with simplicity and clearness the condi-
tions which gave them birth, and the
processes by which they were developed.
His explanations of their methods of con-
struction and his descriptions of their
characteristic forms and decorative de-
tails gain in the reader's interest by their
freedom from technical jargon. The
various streams of influence leading
through and from the more ancient archi-
tectures to the culminating art of Greece
are traced with remarkable clarity. The
reviewer knows of no work that deals
more sanely, and at the same time sym-
pathetically and convincingly, with that
glorious culmination. Breadth of view
and sincerity of treatment characterize
the whole discussion.
It was inevitable that such a survey
should involve dealing with certain mat-
ters of controversy, especially in the field
of theories or origins. Such questions
Professor Warren handles with perfect
fairness to theories from which he dis-
sents, while expressing his own conclu-
sions with clear conviction. • Not all
readers will agree with his contention in
favor of the purely lithic origin of the
entire Doric order, both column and en-
tablature, but one is forced to admire the
clarity and sanity of his presentation of
this contention. We may assent in gen-
eral to his division of all architectural
forms into the two classes of "primary"
and "secondary" forms, according to
their structural origin, without neces-
sarily assenting to all his applications of
this classification; but no one can read
Professor Warren's suggestive and il-
luminating discussions of such ques-
tions without an awakened interest and
a real intellectual pleasure. Here is the
ripest work of a scholar and teacher,
who refuses to follow traditional ruts or
to be bound by narrow prejudices; the
final masterpiece of a teacher who never
could be a mere pedagogue, but who, if
his teaching was like this book in its
charm of literary style and clearness of
exposition, must have been an inspiring
and stimulating educator.
The book is beautifully printed on
heavy plate paper, and the only typo-
graphical error the reviewer has discov-
ered is the unfortunate printing upside
down of Figure 91 on page 284. There
is an adequate index, but no list of illus-
trations.
The Run of the Shelves
WITHOUT doubt Mrs. Whitehouse did
excellent work in interesting the
Swiss press in the war aims of America
and in the vast war preparations which
were being made. She admits it. No
doubt, also, this publicity was not without
its effect in counteracting German propa-
ganda in Switzerland and in heartening
those whose sympathies were with the
Allies. But a reading of her book ("A
Year as a Government Agent" ; Harper) ,
interesting as it is, leaves one in doubt
as to whether it is an apologia or a suf-
frage tract. Further, it exposes again
the error of creating an extra-legal gov-
ernment department, The Committee on
Public Information, with authority to
act abroad in matters of foreign policy
independently of the Department of
State. It may be that, as Mrs. White-
house declares, the American Legation
in Switzerland was inefficient, or tram-
meled by the traditions of diplomacy,
unable to meet certain vital issues raised
by German propaganda. But the fact
remains that an independent publicity
bureau, uncontrolled by the Department
of State, might easily, and in many
February 28, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[209
places actually did, put forth "publicity"
and foster policies inimical to the lines
decided upon by the Department. The
obstructions which Mrs. Whitehouse
found from this quarter are not correctly
attributable to the fact that she was a
woman and a suffragist, or to antiquated
methods of secret diplomacy, but to the
fact that, lacking proper control in a field
for which it was solely responsible, the
legation could not be sure of her dis-
cretion and the subordination of her
work to the Department policy. The fault
was not that of Mrs. Whitehouse, but of
those who instituted a system in which
there was bound to be conflict of au-
thority.
Mrs. Whitehouse's book is a lively re-
cital of her personal experiences and
gives a vivid account of the trying con-
ditions under which Switzerland main-
tained neutrality, and her doctrinaire
views on diplomacy and democracy add
zest to it.
During the course of the war it
looked for a time as though the conven-
ient little Leipsic "Tauchnitz Edition of
British and American Authors" might
go down in the universal wreck of Ger-
man interests. In the middle of 1915,
M. Louis Conard started at Paris "The
Standard Collection of British and
American Authors," modeled, as regards
size and thickness, on Baron Tauchnitz's
volumes, and declared that "ninety per
cent, of the former Tauchnitz authors
have signed with me for the duration
of the war and for five years after the
peace." Before the end of 1916, M. Con-
ard had published nearly forty volumes
from such well-known writers as Mrs.
Humphry Ward, Booth Tarkington, W.
E. Norris, Mrs. Atherton, Arnold Ben-
nett, Joseph Conrad, Miss May Sinclair,
and John Galsworthy; and the volumes
are still appearing. But so are the Leip-
sic volumes, and what is more, some au-
thors are found in both lists. Thus, C.
N. and A. M. Williamson gave M. Conard
"Secret History" more than two years
ago, and Baron Tauchnitz starts his re-
newed, after-war series. No. 4, 527 of
the Edition, with "The Wedding Day"
of these same joint authors. Mr. Arnold
Bennett is still more conspicuous in this
respect. Though he gave M. Conard
"The Price of Love" and "These Twain,"
four volumes in all, he has just appeared
in two volumes at Leipsic — "The Truth
About an Author" and "The City of
Pleasure." Bernard Shaw, however,
much as might have been expected, re-
mained faithful to the German house,
and both of the latest issues from across
the Rhine are from him — "The Plays for
Puritans" and "John Bull's Other Is-
land." The truth of the matter is that a
great collection of nearly 5,000 volumes,
the copyright paid for, the plates stereo-
typed, and embracing, not only the most
popular British and American authors
of the day, but the classics of the past
like Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Irving,
Cooper, Dickens, Thackeray, Macaulay,
Emerson, and a host of others, can not
easily die, especially as the founder of
the series, the first Baron Tauchnitz, and
its continuator, the present Baron, were
the warm personal friends of many of
the most famous writers on both sides of
the Atlantic.
"Memoirs of the American Academy
at Rome" Volume II (New York: Uni-
versity Press Association) offers first a
selection of the current work of the Fel-
lows of the Academy in painting, sculp-
ture, and architecture. We have recon-
structions of the Ponte Rotto, of
Hadrian's Round Pavilion near Tivoli,
a study of the admirable formal garden
of the Villa Gamberaia at Settignano,
and, most important, a reconstruction of
Bramante's original design for the Court
and Pavilion of the Belvedere at the
Vatican. Expressive of the advantages
of cooperative study under favorable
conditions is the joint design for the
sanctuary of a Roman Catholic church
by fellows respectively in architecture,
painting, and sculpture. Four archaeo-
logical papers by members of the affiliated
School of Classical Studies make up the
bulk of the volume. These are creditable
on the scholarly side and interesting to
any reader with a modicum of ancient
lore.
E. Douglas van Buren discourses
on Terracotta Arulae. These miniature
altars are mostly tomb finds from Magna
Grsecia and Sicily. The author thinks
they represent a survival of an Asiatic
custom of combining altar and tomb. Of
the 276 examples analytically catalogued,
86 are animal subjects, 97 mythologies,
and 69 genre themes. These altarlets
are of good period. Fifth and Sixth Cen-
turies B. C. The essay seems pretty
well to exhaust the subject. Lucy George
Roberts's article on "The Gallic Fire and
the Roman Records" touches the layman
more nearly. Historians, supposing that
the sack of 387 B. c. must have destroyed
all records, have dismissed all earlier
accounts of Rome as legendary. From a
careful study of the location of the
archives and of fabric records Miss
Roberts arrives at the reassuring con-
clusion that international, legal, and
senatorial papers probably survived the
fire, while only priestly records were
certainly destroyed. These could have
been replaced from memory. Thus, we
need not wholly forego the she-wolf nor
yet the capitoline geese. In a brief pa-
per Albert William van Buren makes
some minute contributions to the
archeology of the Forum at Pompeii. It
is a bit of a shock to learn that impor-
tant and bulky objects mentioned in the
diaries of the excavators have utterly
disappeared. The single contribution in
the mediaeval field is Stanley Lothrop's
careful study of Pietro Cavallina, who,
more than his junior contemporary,
Giotto, revived the Roman style of paint-
ing. Mr. Lothrop's reconstruction fol-
lows the lines of Venturi's, but is more
conservative, rejecting all panel pictures.
Thirty-five plates of good scale and defini-
tion are treasure trove for the special
student. The very interesting frescoes
in the Palazzo Communale at Perugia are
here first published. The whole volume
make an impression of serious and well-
balanced activity on both the practical
and historical sides of art. It should
hearten the supporters of the Academy
to renewed and extended effort looking
towards a permanent endowment.
Mrs. Cynthia Morgan St. John, of
Ithaca, New York, who died last summer,
spent nearly forty years of her life
making one of the most complete Words-
worth collections to be found here or in
Europe. For the past ten years Mrs.
St. John was occupied in preparing for
Messrs. Houghton Mifflin a "Bibliog-
raphy of Wordsworth," but the publica-
tion was finally abandoned on account of
the author's ill-health. Into this work
was being put a mass of inedited notes
and references, and it would have con-
tained also eighteen facsimile illustra-
tions of interesting Wordsworthiana
from her collection, which is now being
catalogued and about to be offered for
sale.
Besides the thirty-three regular edi-
tions given in some of the bibliographies
of the poet, Mrs. St. John had the rare
privately printed issues and several con-
taining variations not noted elsewhere.
In addition to a copy of "The Lyrical
Ballads" (1798), we find here a second
copy of the same issue, but with the
name of Joseph Cattle, Bristol, on the
title page, which slight variation adds
considerable value to the volume.
The collection contains not only books
and separate poems by Wordsworth, but
many volumes, pamphlets, and poems
about the poet — publications referring
to him, biographies, poems addressed to
him, parodies, a considerable number of
manuscripts, a score of books from
Wordsworth's own library, the bust
which belonged to Mrs. Wordsworth, an
early portrait painted for Cattle by
Shurter, a considerable number of other
portraits, including a large engraving
signed by Wordsworth, and many rare
relics, such as a lock of his hair.
It is impossible to read many pages
of Laurie Magnus' "European Litera-
ture in the Centuries of Romance"
(Dutton) and retain one's patience. It
is exasperating to be told that Dares and
Dictys relate the story of Troilus and
Criseyde, that Saxo's History is inter-
210]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 42
esting because "it narrates the tales of
the old Anglo-Saxon epic 'Beowulf,' " that
the Nibelungen poet "incorporated all
that went before him in the matter
known as 'Germania'; the lay of Hilde-
brand . . . 'Beowulf of the north-
ern mainland, 'Maldon' of our own coasts
and similar heroic poems," that "Piers
the Plowman, who is Peter the Church,
starts in the character of a just man,
and is gradually spiritualized into a
symbol of Christ. His original dream in
the Malvern hills," etc., etc. In a gen-
eral sketch of European literature from
the tenth century to the twentieth, of
which this first of three projected vol-
umes brings the story down to the mid-
dle of the seventeenth, minor inaccu-
racies and considerable omissions might
be pardoned, if the broad lines were
sound and clear.
Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
What we get instead is clutter, and not
very trustworthy clutter, and at a fright-
fully high price. Magnus and ordo are
as the poles asunder. Doubtless as the
work progresses into more modern times
things will go better. It would have
been wiser if the first part had not been
attempted at all.
"The Story of the Great War," by
William Stanley Braithwaite (Stokes), is
intended for the boy and girl reader, but
the style and method is that of a com-
pressed weekly press history, crowded
with detail. A more concise and more
general treatment would have answered
better the writer's purpose ; it is a quite
possible thing to do, and has not yet
been attempted. The general spirit of
the book is appreciative rather than dis-
criminating— we read, for instance, that
"the conquest of the air was an Ameri-
can achievement." Beside this, the occa-
sional inexcusable errors of the text fade
into insignificance. For the most part,
the author is accurate in his statement
of facts. His military narrative presents
a clear arrangement, chronologically and
by campaigns — except for the events of
1918; but it is not clear how his boy
and girl readers are to follow even the
larger outlines of his narrative without
even a single map.
The devices which go to the making
of E. Phillips Oppenheim's "The Great
Impersonation" (Little, Brown) — the
two men who look alike, the assumption
by one of them of the role of the other,
and even the skillfully managed surprise
at the end — have all met with the ap-
proval of time. But they are not for
that reason the less capable of holding
one's interest, especially when the story
turns on the machinations of the German
spy system in the tense days preceding
the war.
Winter Mist
FROM a magazine with a rather cynical
cover I learned very recently that
for pond skating the proper costume is
brown homespun with a fur collar on
the jacket, whereas for private rinks
one wears a gray herringbone suit and
taupe-colored alpine. Oh, barren years
that I have been a skater, and no one
told me of this! And here's another
thing. I was patiently trying to acquire
a counter turn under the idle gaze of a
hockey player who had no better busi-
ness till the others arrived than to watch
my efforts. "What I don't see about
that game," he said at last, "is who
wins?" It had never occurred to me to
ask. He looked bored, and I remem-
bered that the pictures in the magazine
showed the wearers of the careful cos-
tumes for rink and pond skating as
having rather blank eyes that looked
inimitably bored. I have hopes of the
"rocker" and the "mohawk"; I might
acquire a proper costume for skating on
a small river if I could learn what it is;
but a bored look — why, even hockey does
not bore me, unless I stop to watch it.
I don't wonder that those who play it
look bored. Even Alexander, who played
a more imaginative game than hockey,
was bored — poor fellow, he shpuld have
taken up fancy skating in his youth; I
never heard of a human being who pre-
tended to a complete conquest of it.
I like pond skating best by moonlight.
The hollow among the hills will always
have a bit of mist about it, let the sky
be clear as it may. The moonlight, which
seems so lucid and brilliant when you
look up, is all pearl and smoke round the
pond and the hills. The shore that was
like iron under your heel as you came
down to the ice is vague, when you look
back at it from the centre of the pond,
as the memory of a dream. The motion
is like flying in a dream; you float free
and the world floats under you; your
velocity is without effort and without
accomplishment, for, speed as you may,
you leave nothing behind and approach
nothing. You look upward. The mist
is overhead now; you see the moon in a
"hollow halo" at the bottom of an "icy
crystal cup," and you yourself are in just
such another. The mist, palely opal-
escent, drives past her out of nothing
into nowhere. Like yourself, she is the
centre of a circle of vague limit and
vaguer content, where passes a swift,
ceaseless stream of impression through
a faintly luminous halo of consciousness.
If by moonlight the mist plays upon
the emotions like faint, bewitching mu-
sic, in sunlight it is scarcely less. More
often than not when I go for my skating
to our cosy little river, a winding mile
from the mill-dam to the railroad trestle,
the hills are clothed in silver mist which
frames them in vignettes with blurred
edges. The tone is that of Japanese
paintings on white silk, their color show-
ing soft and dull through the frost-pow-
der with which the air is filled. At the
mill-dam the hockey players furiously
rage together, but I heed them not, and
in a moment am beyond the first bend,
where their clamor comes softened on
the air like that of a distant convention
of politic crows. The silver powder has
fallen on the ice, just enough to cover
earlier tracings and leave me a fresh
plate to etch with grapevines and ara-
besques. The stream winds ahead like
an unbroken road, striped across with
soft-edged shadows of violet, indigo, and
lavender. On one side it is bordered
with leaning birch, oak, maple, hickory,
and occasional groups of hemlocks under
which the very air seems tinged with
green. On the other, rounded masses of
scrub oak and alder roll back from the
edge of the ice like clouds of reddish
smoke. The river narrows and turns,
then spreads into a swamp, where I
weave my curves round the straw-col-
ored tussocks. Here, new as the snow
is, there are earlier tracks than mine.
A crow has traced his parallel hiero-
glyph, alternate footprints with long
dashes where he trailed his middle toe
as he lifted his foot and his spur as he
brought it down. Under a low shrub
that has hospitably scattered its seed is
a dainty, close-wrought embroidery of
tiny bird feet in irregular curves woven
into a circular pattern. A silent glide
towards the bank, where an)ong bare
twigs little forms flit and swing with low
conversational notes, brings me in com-
pany with a working crew of pine
siskins, methodically rifling seed cones of
birch and alder, chattering sotto voce the
while. Under a leaning hemlock the
writing on the snow tells of a squirrel
that dropped from -the lowest branch,
hopped aimlessly about for a few yards,
then went up the bank. Farther on,
where the river narrows again, a flutter-
headed rabbit crossing at top speed has
made a line seemingly as free from
frivolous indirection as if it had been
defined by all the ponderosities of mathe-
matics. There is no pursuing track;
was it his own shadow he fled, or the
shadow of a hawk?
The mist now lies along the base of
the hills, leaving the upper ridges almost
imperceptibly veiled and the rounded
tops faintly softened. The snowy slopes
are etched with brush and trees so fine
and soft that they remind me of Diirer's
engravings, the fur of Saint Jerome's
lion, the cock's feathers in the coat of
arms with the skull. From behind the
veil of the southernmost hill comes a
faint note as
From undiscoverable lips that blow
An immaterial horn.
It is the first far premonition of the noon
February 28, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[211
train; I pause and watch long for the
next sign. At last I hear its throbbing,
which ceases as it pauses at the flag sta-
tion under the hill. There the invisible
locomotive shoots a column of silver
vapor above the surface of the mist,
breaking in rounded clouds at the top,
looking like nothing so much as the
photograph of the explosion of a sub-
marine mine, a titanic outburst of force
in static pose, a geyser of atomized water
standing like a frosted elm tree. Then
quick puffs of dusky smoke, the volley of
which does not reach my ear till the
train has stuck its black head out of
fairyland and become a prosaic reminder
of dinner. High on its narrow trestle
it leaps across my little river and dis-
appears between the sandbanks. Far
behind it the mist is again spreading
into its even layers. Silence is renewed,
and I can hear the musical creaking of
four starlings in an apple tree as they
eviscerate a few rotten apples on the
upper branches. I turn and spin down
the curves and reaches of the river with-
out delaying for embroideries or ara-
besques. At the mill-dam the hockey
game still rages; the players take no
heed of the noon train.
Let Zal and Rustum bluster as they will,
Or Hatim call to supper . . .
Their minds and eyes are intent on a bat-
tered disk of hard rubber. I begin to
think I have misjudged them when I con-
sider what effort of imagination must be
involved in the concentration of the
faculties on such an object, transcending
the call of hunger and the lure of beauty.
Is it to them as is to the mystic "the
great syllable Om" whereby he attains
Nirvana? I can not attain it; I can but
wonder what the hockey players win one-
half so precious as the stuff they miss.
Robert Palfeey Utter
George Soures, an
Athenian Satirist
HE made others laugh, but he could
not laugh himself. Of very few
men would this saying hold so true
as of George Soures, the most popular
poet of contemporary Greece, whose death
was announced a few weeks ago from
Athens. As a poet, in the strictest sense
of the word, he can hope for little favor
at the hands of the critics. Horace
might bring against him the same charge
he brought against Lucilius : "Often in
a single hour he would declaim two hun-
dred verses as a great feat and stand-
ing on one foot at that." But he might
also say of him that he is clever and keen
to detect and satirize evil. In the field
of satire there is no doubt that Soures
deserves a place of honor.
His popularity has been unchallenged
for years. To mention the name of
Soures might be sufficient to make any
Greek townsman or peasant smile. A
poem or verse of his recited would bring
good humor to a gloomy company. In
Athens when the paper boys who had the
luck to seize the first packs of Soures'
weekly, The Romios — the word means
"The Greek" with a derisive touch to it
— rushed through the streets yelling at
the top of their voices "two cents for
Soures' 'Romios'!" the announcement
had the effect of an exhilarating breeze.
The sleepy man in the generally crowded
coffee house would jump up eager to
snatch a copy; the businessman would
dispatch his errand boy for the new
number of the satirical review. The
housekeeper would open her window to
call loudly after the impatiently run-
ning youngster; and the hired cook would
exercise particular industry in her work
for that day in order to gain from her
mistress the privilege of a glance at the
comic little weekly.
In lounging places a group would as-
semble round the happy owner of a copy
and listen to the reading, eager to hear
how Soures would handle the last politi-
cal developments and what he had to say
about the Prime Minister, the King, the
Queen, the Parliament, the Mayor, the
Great Powers, etc. Often the readers
would be delighted to find that Soures
would poke fun at himself and sometimes
even at his own wife and children.
Friendship, kinship, majesty, power were
all the same to him. He would heap ridi-
cule upon them whenever they seemed to
deserve it; and, although he never shows
bitterness and appears to enjoy himself
by making others laugh good-naturedly,
one easily detects that the comedian
laughs lest he should weep.
To say that Soures is an incurable pes-
simist, that he is absolutely disgusted
with life, and that he laughs a hopelessly
tragic laugh, would seem to the great
majority of the Greeks a preposterous
statement. For they have always ac-
cepted him as a merrymaker through
and through. But Soures was not a happy
man. Born in 1853, in the island of
Syra, of a Chian family, he studied in
his native place and then went to the
University of Athens to attend courses
in classical philology. For some reason
he failed to pass his examinations for
the doctorate, a fact which led him to ex-
ercise his satirical genius against one of
the professors whom he held mainly re-
sponsible for his failure. Often he says
of himself that "he had once taken im-
portant examinations under Prof. Se-
mitelos, and, failing unanimously with
high honors, he had become an example
for all candidates for examinations." He
first attempted to make his livelihood in
a small town of the Azof shores in Rus-
sia, where he was employed by a grain-
dealer. His employer forgave him his
inability for serious work because he en-
joyed his merry rimes. Describing in
one of his poems his experience in Russia,
he tells us how one day, when his em-
ployer had asked him to keep a lookout
on one of his storehouses filled with
grain, a whole army of pigs invaded the
place :
I was mad ; I stoned them, chased them ;
But they could run, too, and so the great war
started ;
The cursed animals — they were not so few
either —
As soon as I had pushed one out there
rushed in another,
And so in a little while they were so many
You might think they had sown pigs with
that grain.
I am sure there are as many barbarian pigs
flourishing in Scythia
As there are wise and literary men in Greece.
An unfortunate love affair, as well as
his conviction that he could never cut a
figure in commercial life, drove him back
to Athens, where he finally settled and
married. From that time he devoted all
his energy to political and social satire.
His family life seems to have been quiet
and happy, although he suffered from ill
health and had to struggle to keep the
wolf from his door. But what depressed
him most was the social and political
condition of his country. He lived
through a period of national nightmares.
Only one part of Greece was liberated.
The great majority of the Greeks were
under the Turkish yoke. Of the modest
public wealth of the state a large part
had to be sacrificed to armaments for th»
relief of nationals across the borders.
There seemed to be no hope for the ful-
fillment of the national dreams. Greece
saw herself treated with contempt by the
Powers which made the treaty of Berlin,
and passed through a long period of mor-
bid resentment, until the climax of mis-
fortunes was reached with her defeat by
Turkey in 1897. Naturally the blame was
laid on everybody and everything, and the
intelligentsia of the nation, with a few
exceptions, were plunged into despair.
Few of the literary world, like Palamas,
kept up the light of faith under the black
veil of agony. Soures gave up all hope
and turned to laughter for relief. It
added to his gloom that even his satiri-
cal laughter was not taken seriously by
the majority of his fellow countrymen,
who, far from detecting under the comic
masqiie the real motives of his satire,
simply enjoyed good-naturedly the super-
ficial merriment derived from his verses.
Yet he did not grow angry or bitter; only
once or twice he gave definite clues to
his state of mind. That he thought of
his work as a sad complaint rather than
as coarse, meaningless fun, we see clearly
in his lines "To Myself" :
Come, Myself, and find but once
Beautiful this globe of ours;
Let some golden worlds appear before you ;
And see this dark night as a Day.
See the world as good, just once;
In the black sorrow, scatter joy;
Look for a quiet sea before you,
For spring and flowers, not for misfortunes.
212]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 42
Tear and bum your mourning verses;
Get to drinking, get to laughing;
Write some sprightly merry songs,
•And say that Greece sails on first rate.
Fascinate all ears with some happy news,
Don't be so surly, my poor sell!
Enough of nagging and complaining;
Spend one hour, at least, content.
When will you be calm, at last?
When will you be sick of ailing?
When will you warm your tongue?
Eat it, after all, before it eats you I
His sincerity is by no means subdued
when he attacks himself. He discloses
mortifying incidents of his own life, not
shamelessly but relentlessly. He will tell
how be was beaten by the brother of a
girl he made love to. He will confess his
love for a Russian beauty he calls Vera.
Courting distantly, he tried to impress
her by singing a Greek serenade under
her window, which never opened, only to
find out next day that the fair one had
left town never to return. He will even
give his portrait with unsparing realism :
Four feet high ;
With ugly face;
And a beard
Sparsely haired.
Brow divine
Somewhat broad
Surest sign
Of a poet.
Two eyes black
Without guile.
Full of fire,
Crassly dull.
Nostrils long.
Deeply cut ;
Bearded chin
Shaped like Christ's.
Mouth, a well ;
Flowing hair
And enough
For a mattress.
Savage face
Shrivelled up
Pale and cold
Like a corpse.
Not a color
Fits it much ;
And it changes
Even now —
Teeth are lacking;
Others are
Full of cracks ;
And my looks
Are like a Jew's,
Treated roughly.
Soures worked industriously Jto the
verj' end. His life and work will al-
ways reflect one of the saddest periods of
Greece. Only the last few months of his
life brought light in his world of dark-
ness. He saw his country tear itself
from the dishonor which a foolish king
and his gang endeavored to inflict on it.
He saw with pride his people rise into a
revolution and dethrone a popular king
in order to rank themselves with the
forces of freedom and make good their
plighted word; and he died with the hope
which his last verses frankly reflect, the
hope that Greece is at last to come to
her own inheritance and a new life.
Aeistides E. Phoutrides
Music
"Parsifal" in English at the
Metropolitan
THE revival of "Parsifal," with new
English words, at the Metropolitan
last week, was another milestone on the
road to the achievement of an ideal. It
was a concession by the management of
our leading opera house to the desire of
many thousands of Americans to have
music-drama sung in their own tongue.
To be thorough in the fulfillment of
his task, Mr. Gatti-Casazza, a devout
and warm Wagnerian, had flung away
the old trappings, scenery, and costumes,
used during the consulship at the Met-
ropolitan of the late Heinrich Conried.
New costumes, very handsome and quite
accurate, had been designed for the oc-
casion, besides stage pictures which were
here and there appropriate.
Since "Parsifal" was ravished (by a
trick) from its Bayreuth sanctuary. New
York has changed. To many the mys-
terious work of Wagner seems too long.
The majority, I think, would not have
sorrowed if some parts of the first
"Temple" scene and in the Gurnemanz
episodes had been shortened. New York,
you see, is not another Bayreuth. The
subway runs below the Metropolitan.
And there are no more lazy beer halls on
•Broadway, in which, between the acts,
the weary may recuperate.
I have heard "Parsifal" quite forty
times, or more. To me, with two ex-
ceptions— -"Tristan und Isolde" and "Die
Meistersinger" — it is the greatest, most
sublime, of Wagner's music-dramas. Its
meaning may have had too much stress
laid on it. I can not think that it was
wholly Christian. It is tinged with
Hinduism. Much of it was anticipated
in Buddhistic legends. More of it is
merely monastic mysticism. But the in-
ventor of this "consecrational festival
play" no doubt conceived it as an atone-
ment for his sins, the proof of a much
bruised and chastened soul, which had
expressed itself in earlier days too pas-
sionately. And yet, for one who really
wished to play the penitent, the composer
lapsed at times into strange license. The
"Temptation" episode, for instance,
almost terrifies one by its unbridled
boldness. No wonder that some call the
work "degenerate."
The chief novelty in the revival was,
beyond question, Mr. Krehbiel's. transla-
tion of the text. On this, and on the
ability (or inability) of the chief singers
in the cast, hung more than the success
or failure of the performance. Success
might lead to other longed-for efforts
at the Metropolitan to replace foreign
tongues by our own English idiom. The
difficulties which a translator has to con-
quer in such tasks as Mr. Krehbiel's are
considerable. No man knows more of
this than I do. For I, also, have put
Wagner into what I am assured is sing-
able English. It is pleasing to be able
to say, honestly, that, by and large, ex-
cept in a few passages, Mr. Krehbiel has
done very well indeed. He has preserved
the general sense of Wagner's text
(though now and then he has taken
needless liberties with straightforward
lines). He has done no really vital out-
rage to the German rhythms. His
words are clear enough, if often tame;
and, if well rendered by singers used to
English, would be no less intelligible to
attentive Americans than the original
could be to German audiences.
Mr. Krehbiel has supplied a good
equivalent for the prophecy
Durch Mitleid wissend,
Der reine thor. . . .
and so on, in his
Through pity, knowing.
The blameless fool. . . .
He has been particularly happy in his
equivalent for the "Good Friday's Spell"
words. As an example let me quote his
opening lines:
Are not the meadows strangely fair today ?
True, I did meet sonic marvellous flowers
Which sought around my neck to twine their
tendrils.
But — yes, I regret to say, there are
some "buts" — throughout his book he
has shown a distressing tendency to pre-
fer words of Latin origin to Anglo-
Saxon words. By this he has often
weakened the original sounds of Wag-
ner's lines. Extreme cases of the kind
occur in his translation of the Flower
Maidens' call to Parsifal.
Come ! Come ! Pretty lover.
Make me your treasure.
For your solace and pleasure
I will strive without measure.
and in his opening of one chorus in the
first "Temple" scene:
Wine and bread of last refection.
Chang'd at our blest Lord's election,
By compassion's loving pow'r. . . .
which in the place of "Wein und Brod
des letzten Mahles," and so forth, is
"tolerable, and not to be endured." Nor
can I see why Mr. Krehbiel has gone out
of his way to substitute for the strong |
German "Wer schoss den Schwan?" the
much weaker English "Who did the '
deed?" when "Who shot the Swan?" ;
seemed logically indicated.
On the whole, Mr. Krehbiel is not
guilty if quite three-quarters of the
text of "Parsifal" remained obscure at
the performance. The responsibility
weighs partly on certain singers who,
being innocent of English when they be-
gan rehearsals, failed to enunciate their
parts with proper plainness. Among
them I may mention Leon Rothier, the
French Gurnemanz, who had attempted
what to him was utterly impossible, and,
the Polish Klingsor, Adamo Didur.i
February 28, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[213
Margarethe Matzenauer, the Kundry,
was understandable in her legato pas-
sages, but became meaningless in her
declamatory moments. The choruses, of
course, were unintelligible. But, after
all, though one may deplore the de-
ficiencies of some singers, the manage-
ment picked out the artists for their
lespective parts. It can not, therefore,
be acquitted of its share of the respon-
sibility for what was lacking in the per-
formance. In justice to the singers I
have named, I wish to add that their
interpretations of their parts did them
great credit. I should also add that
Orville Harrold, the new Parsifal, sang
almost all his lines with clearness, and
that, both as to his English and as to his
performance, the Amfortas of Clarence
Whitehill could hardly have been bet-
tered.
The orchestra, directed by Bodanzky,
interpreted the master's score with elo-
quence; perhaps slightly overdoing some
of the climaxes, by giving the brass in-
struments more than the accustomed
prominence, but doing justice to the
gracious and exquisite beauties of the
"Good Friday's Spell" music and other
episodes. The choruses at times were
out of tune.
The new scenery devised by Joseph
Urban for this "Parsifal" revival was
good and less good. It seemed a com-
promise between the literal realism of a
bygone age of stage art and the more
modern style which seeks to be sugges-
tive. The landscapes were distinctly un-
suggestive of that part of Northern
Spain in which the Templars of the
Grail had their abode — as we, at all
events, suppose. The setting used for
Klingsor's Magic Garden gave one the
impression that it was somewhere in the
tropics. But the white mountains near
at hand seemed in Castile. Far more
effective was the majestic Temple scene,
with its stone pillars and impressive
gloom. Admirable, though, like the
other scenes, it ignored the most
cherished orders of the composer, was
the simple hint of a high tower from
tvhich the Magician watched the ap-
oroach of the young hero in the second
ict, and bade tortured Kundry tempt him
Tom his virtue. The "Verwandlung"
—moving transformation scene — pre-
iicribed by Wagner and employed in the
i^onried production, as at the Festspiel-
liaus at Bayreuth, was omitted by Mr.
Jrban, and as a consequence some mys-
leries were sacrificed. In its place we
|iad a dimly painted curtain. The
ipring-lit meadow called for at another
|ioint expressed the loveliness of meed
0 apparent in both the verses and the
nisic of the composer. But it conflicted
ith preceding hints and evidence as to
le landscape roundabout the Templars'
ome.
"My fathec," once said Siegfried
Wagne.- to me, as we sat in the shadow
of the Festspielhaus, "intended his mu-
sic-dramas to be tieated as plays. And,
for that reason, he desired his words to
be understood by those who hear them."
Charles Henry Meltzer
Drama
"Letty" and "His House in
Order" — "Ibsen in
England"
The Social Plays of Arthur Wing Pin-
ERO, Vol. II: Letty — His House in Or-
der. Edited by Clayton Hamilton.
New York: E. P. Button and Com-
pany.
Ibsen in England. By Miriam Alice
Franc. Boston: The Four Seas Com-
pany.
SIR ARTHUR PINERO'S books were
a pile — or less than a pile even, a
heap — upon a littered floor. He owes
much to Mr. Clayton Hamilton for pick-
ing out the best volumes, dusting them,
and ranging them in straight rows on a
clean table. If only there were a fire-
place in the room and a friend with
courage enough to dispose of the incrim-
inating residue! Sir Arthur's literary,
or sub-literary, progeny is large. One
can not help wishing that the Spartan
custom of the exposure of feeble or
sickly infants for the purgation of the
stock had been prevalent in Sir Arthur's
time and place. But England is not
Sparta, and the sort of exposure which
they did receive was not fitted to invig-
orate the breed.
Pinero is a mixture of the ordinary
and the extraordinary, beside which the
merely extraordinary looks rather com-
monplace. The difference between the
two types in him is precipitous, myste-
rious, almost scandalous. One wonders
how the better Pinero could have tol-
erated the worse as a trespasser on his
premises or a loafer in his stable. Mr.
Hamilton, whose perceptions are quick,
is quite aware of this inequality, and
points out that the dramatist wrote the
groveling "Wife Without a Smile" be-
tween "Letty" and "His House in Or-
der." Had Pinero no concern for his
intellectual and literary admirers? Or
was he bored by these admirers, like
Nora Helmer by her husband's cloying
virtues, and are these inferior plays his
way of saying "Damn it all!"?
Mr. Hamilton's "Introduction" con-
tains some sound and shrewd remedies
suggested by Pinero's partiality for
women. Women, says Mr. Hamilton,
dominate Pinero's stage, because they
fill his orchestra and galleries, and
women love to study women as men do
not care to study men. I will add that
the two sexes take sex very diff'erently:
In sex women are a sect; men are a
club. There is a cult of women by
women; the male sex, though arrogant
enough in its phlegmatic way, Iniilds no
altars to itself. I may add that there
should be a sting for Sir Arthur Pinero
in Mr. Hamilton's quiet and entirely
friendly assumption that the roots of
his fondness for women are mercantile.
In the two critical prefaces Mr. Ham-
ilton is never less than competent and
interesting, but I own that his general
observations have helped me less than
his uncommonly quick eye for particu-
lars, for times, places, settings, points
of diction. I can not go with him in his
feeling that "His House in Order"
owes its vigor largely to technique. Its
technique is indeed masterly; as ship it
is trimmer than "Iris" or the "Second
Mrs. Tanqueray"; their advantage is in
the lading. But the special claims of
"His House in Order," sympathy for a
baited young creature, delight in her
power over her tormentors, admiration
for her generous surrender of that
power — these energies reside in the ma-
terial, not the craft. There seems to be
a vague notion in the air that technique
is a substitute for power or feeling, a
means of doing emotion's work without
emotion. Technique is to me a lever, a
middle term between power and result.
A man may lift a weight with a bar or
with his arms; in both cases he lifts it
with his muscles. A man may move an
audience with or without technique; in
both cases he moves it by feeling. Tech-
nique does not generate feeling any
more than the lever creates muscle. The
lever applies or concentrates muscle;
technique applies or concentrates emo-
tion. "His House in Order" ranks high
for me among Pinero's plays; less orig-
inal than "Iris" or the "Second Mrs.
Tanqueray," less cogent than the "Thun-
derbolt," it excels in the union of con-
summate workmanship with a vividly
human, and in the main healthy, appeal.
"Letty," on the other hand, breaks
down in the effort to rationalize a sug-
gestive and original idea. A man and
a woman face each other alone in the
hour of sexual crisis. Men have spared
girls at such a moment. To Pinero
came another thought. Could that hour
be critical, not for the girl only, but for
the man? Could it be the hour when a
decadent race completed its damnation
or began its self-retrieval? There is a
step further in originality. Could the
girl, in a sense, spare the man? Such
an idea savors of the tremendous; it
savors of the ridiculous. The most that
can be said for Pinero's treatment is
that the ridiculous is avoided; the tre-
mendous certainly is not achieved. For
adequacy in such a situation, both man
and woman should possess the rudi-
ments of greatness. Nevill and Letty
are both small. Mr. Hamilton admires
the faultless gentleman in Nevill. I
214]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 42
should call him an occasional gentleman,
a gentleman with intermissions.
Mr. Hamilton objects, on the whole
rightly, to the epilogue in "Letty," an
expedient in which Pinero shows him-
self at one and the same moment a good
man of business and a bad man of let-
ters. Even if we waive the point of cli-
max, the briskness and patness with
which rewards and punishments are
handed out in this dapper little epilogue
reveal a shallowness in Pinero which it
is not easy to forgive. There are men
who are more royalist than the king;
Pinero's providences put Providence to
shame. He renews his adhesion to the
copybook and psalmbook type of moral-
ity when, in "His House in Order," he
permits Nina to grovel before the Ridge-
leys in a quagmire of renunciation. Let
her burn Annabel's letters by all means,
but as for her puppies and her ciga-
rettes— Sir Arthur becomes a Ridgeley
himself in the penitence through which
he drags this high-spirited young wife.
The dramatist fails to see that conduct
is a compromise between nature and pre-
cept, and that the precept which tram-
ples upon nature to-day is a precept
upon which nature will trample to-mor-
row.
To write the story of Ibsen in Eng-
land was a good thing to do. It was so
good a thing to do that, even when ill
done, the result is not worthless. The
titles of four out of the seven chapters
of Miss Franc's book, "English Trans-
lations of Ibsen," "Performances of
Ibsen in England," "Parodies and Se-
quels to Ibsen Dramas," "Ibsen's Influ-
ence on English Drama," will suggest
the scope and interest of the topics.
Two appendixes, listing English trans-
lations and performances, are perhaps
almost more agreeable than the book
proper, because they are all that they
claim to be — lists — whereas thtf book
proper claims to be narrative, and is
logbook. Ibsen's career in England is
a story, almost a drama, and it. is re-
grettable that the person intrusted with
its recital should have been deaf to the
challenge of these facts. Accuracy in
such a work is the one apology for mech-
anism. I tested the accuracy of Miss
Franc by verifying a short list of refer-
ences, fifteen, I should say, or at most
twenty. The very first reference, on
page 84, to the "Athenaeum" for June
6, 1889, was wrong. There is no "Athe-
naeum" for June 6, 1889. Another ref-
erence, on page 105, to Shaw in the
Saturday Review for June 26, 1897,
was wrong; the true date is July 3,
1897. In the chapter on influences,
where judgment is naturally required,
suggestiveness on the largest scale and
often on the smallest evidence is attrib-
uted to Ibsen. One is reminded of that
fantastic paternity which the daughter
of the Dovre-King endeavored to thrust
upon Peer Gynt. A curious instance of
that laxity in figurative language which
prevails in so many quarters nowadays
is found on pages 144-145, where the
topic is "Man and Superman" and "Get-
ting Married": "The discussion walks
away with the plot and the characteriza-
tion, and there is left nothing but a
very long and very tedious conversa-
tion." The discussion walks away and
the conversation is left. What Miss
Franc should do is to go over her work,
fact by fact, with the utmost particu-
larity, verifying and correcting, and to
rewrite the chapter on influences, omit-
ting from one-third to one-half of the
examples she has got together. Her
work will then be useful as a book of
reference.
0. W. Firkins
Books and the News
Recent Books
THE holiday books were especially in-
teresting, and the mid-winter books
are no less satisfactory, whether you
seek information or amusement. The
conscientious reader must peruse Mr.
Keynes on "The Economic Consequences
of the Peace" (Harcourt) ; few econo-
mists have a more readable style. Do
not fail to see Punch's rhymed re-
view of the book. Speaking of rhymed
reviews, Arthur Guiterman's "Ballads
of Old New York" (Harper) is a suitable
book for a gift, that is, one whose charm
does not vanish after a first reading. An
artist in rhyme made these verses, so
that they linger in the memory, as vers
libres fail to do. Mrs. Clement Scott's
"Old Days in Bohemian London"
(Hutchinson) tells of notable folk; but
it pushes too far the present British
custom of adopting an extremely chatty
style of memoirs. Rather better is "My
Bohemian Days" (Stokes), by Harry
Furniss, and his sketches enhance the
book.
A volume of literary biography is "A
Book of R. L. S." (Scribner), by George
E. Brown. Arranged like a reference
book, with its entries in alphabetical
order, it seemed to me, nevertheless,
readable throughout, with its comments
upon his friends and family, his books
and their characters, his homes and his
travels. I can never get too many books
about Stevenson, for like Mark Twain,
he is one of the few writers whose life
was also interesting. "Leonard .Wood:
Conservator of Americanism" (Doran),
by Eric Fisher Wood, is not to be dis-
posed of as "a campaign biography." It
is an admirable study of a man of im-
mense importance in the world to-day.
Three volumes of fiction for pure
amusement are Melville Davisson Post's
"The Mystery at the Blue Villa" (Apple-
ton), George A. Birmingham's "Up, the
Rebels!" (Doran), in which the author
makes his nearest recent approach to his
earliest successes of "Spanish Gold" and
"The Major's Niece"; and "A Thin
Ghost, and Others" (Longmans), by Mon-
tague R. James. The last may dis-
appoint readers who hope to find such
good stories as those in "Ghost Stories
of an Antiquary" by the same author,
but Dr. James always paints in a weirdly
fascinating background, even when the
incidents of his plot are slight.
To turn to graver subjects. Bertha
E. L. Stockbridge's "What to Drink;
Recipes for Non-Alcoholic Drinks" (Ap-
pleton) may help those who see hope in
pineapple tosh and raspberry rumble.
But its sub-title is significant: "The
Blue Book of Beverages." Stephen Gra-
ham's "A Private in the Guards" (Mac-
millan) is a capital account of going to
war with one of those regiments where
pipe-clay and brass-polish are house-
hold gods. Viscount Haldane, in "Before
the War" (Funk and Wagnalls), tells of
his conversations with William II, with
Bethman-Hollweg, and with Tirpitz.
Two light-hearted books of essays are
"Old Junk" (Knopf), by H. M. Tomlin-
son, with its talk about the sea, about
travel, and about books; and Carl Van
Vechten's "In the Garret" (Knopf), the
musical fiavor of which would have put
it beyond me, if it had not been for one
striking essay upon New York, called
"La Tigresse." Satirical and vigorous
are Mrs. Gerould's essays in "Modes and
Morals" (Scribner), in which she pays
her compliments to the "British Novel-
ists, Ltd." The publication of this book
enabled me, to my great joy, to place the
anecdote about the milliner in a New
England town, who when told by a cus-
tomer that "they are wearing hats low
in New York, this year," retorted, "They
are wearing them high in Newbury-
port!" Knowing something of my birth-
place, I believe that what Mrs. Gerould
mistook for Yankee conservatism was
really Irish wit.
Edmund Lester Pearson
Books Received
FICTION
Benson, E. F. Robin Linnet. Doran.
Fuller, Henry B. Bertram Cope's Year.
Chicago : R. F. Seymour. $1.75.
Robey, George My Rest Cure. Stokes.
$1.40 net.
GOVERNMENT AND ECONOMICS
Butler, Sir Geoffrey. A Handbook to the
League of Nations. Longmans, Green. $1.75
net.
Dillon, E. J. The Inside Story of the Peace :
Conference. Harper. $2.25.
Gwynn, Stephen. John Redmond's Last |
Years. Longmans, Green. $5.
{Continued on page 216)
February 28, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[215
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PUBLISHED FEB. 27
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Intimate pictures of artists and critical studies done in the author's
quick, brilliant way which describes it in terms of all the arts at once.
Included are Mary Garden, Caruso, George Luks, the painter,
Debussy and modern music, of the whole-tone scale, among other
subjects. Illustrated. $2.00
The Grand Canyon of the Colorado
Recurrent Studies in Impressions and Appearances
By JOHN C. VAN DYKE
The Canyon is the ideal subject for the author of "The Desert," "The
Mountain," and *'The Opal Sea," and during all the years of his inti-
mate acquaintance with it may be said to have awaited his ideal treat-
ment. The book, splendidly illustrated from wonderful photograph:^,
is at once an interpretation, a guide, and an inspiration.
With illustrations from photographs. $2.00
Socialism vs. Civilization
By LIEUTENANT BORIS BRASOL
With an Introduction by T. N. Carver, Professor of Political Economy
at Harvard University.
Hitherto socialism has been merely a theory; now it is actually, in
Russia, a condition, and it threatens soon to become so elsewhere. It
is therefore time men learned what ideas socialism rests upon, what
socialist purposes are and how they are to be achieved. The author
tells these things plainly. He explains Karl Marx's doctrines, which
are the basis of socialism, and reveals the fallacies in them. He shows
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CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
FIFTH AVE. AT 48*^ST. NEW YORK
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216]
THK REVIEW
[Vol. 2, Xo. 42
{Continued from page 214)
Johnson, Severance. The Eneniy^ Within.
New York : The James A. McCann Co. $2.50.
National Social Science Series :
National Evolution, by George R. Davis;
Housing and the Housing Problem, by
Carol Arnovici ; The Monroe Doctrine
and the Great War, by A. B. Hall. Mc-
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Secret Treaties of Austria-Hungary, 1879-
1914. Vol. 1. Edited by Alfred Franzis Prib-
ram. English edition by Archibald Cary
Coolidge. Harvard University Press. $2.00.
Spargo, John. Russia as an American
Problem. Harper. $2.75.
Taussig, F. \\'. Free Trade, The TariflF and
Reciprocity. Macmillan. $2.00.
Taylor, Hugh. Origin of Government.
Longmans, Green. $4.00.
W'hitaker, A. C. Foreign Exchange. .\p-
pleton. $5.00 net.
HISTORY
Boynton, Percy H. History of American
Literature. Ginn & Company. $2.25.
Bronson, W'alter C. A Short History of
American Literature. D. C. Heath & Co.
Smith, C. Foster. Thucydides. Books i and
2. In four volumes. Loeb Classical Library.
G. P. Putnam's Sons.
White, Hugh G. Evelyn Ausonius. Book i
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MISCELLANEOUS
Davis. Malcolm W. Open Gates to Rus-
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Hard. William. Raymond Robins' Own
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Home— Then What? The Mind of the
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John Kendrick Bangs. Doran.
Jonescu, Take. Some Personal Impres-
sions. Stokes. $3.00 net.
MacVeagh, Ewen ( . and Brown, Lee D.
The Yankee in the British Zone. Putnam,
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enth. Appletonu
Scott, Percy. Fifty Years in the Royal
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field.
Tweedale, Violet. Ghosts I Have Seen.
Stokes. $2.00 net.
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
Anonymous. Our Unseen Guest. Harper.
$2.
Barton, W. E. The Soul of Abraham
Lincoln. Doran.
Cooke, G. W. The Social Evolution of Re-
ligion. Stratford Co. $3.50.
Henslow, G. The Proofs of the Truths of
Spiritualism. Dodd, Mead. $2.50.
Huysmans, T. K. En Route. New Amer-
ican edition. Dutton. $2.50 net.
Williams, Gail. Fear Not the Crossing.
Clode.
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Balkin, H. H. The New Science of Ana-
lyzing Character. Four Seas Co. $3 net.
Elliott, Hugh. Modern Science and Ma-
terialism. Longmans, Green. $3.00 net.
Roljinson, Victor. Pioneers of Birth Con-
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Towns. C. B. Habits That Handicap.
Funk & Wagnalls.
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION
Shackleton, Sir Ernest. South. Macmillan.
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In 1918, William A. Dwiggins designed
for the Yale University Press a colophon
adapted from the Yale College seal.
The seven-branch candlestick used by
Mr. B. W. Huebsch was designed by
Charles B. Falls about ten years ago.
Mr. Huebsch had long sought for an un-
hackneyed device that symbolizes light,
and finally adopted this candlestick with
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{Continued on page IV)
The Clanking of Chains
By BRINSLEY MACNAMARA
Author of "The Valley of the Squinting Windows"
A daring and vividly realistic story,— an interpretation of
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i'l
THE REVIEW
Vol. 2, No. 43
New York, Saturday, March 6, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment
Editorial Ariicles:
217
What Is a Liberal?
219
Tiie Soviet Drive for Peace
220
Mr. Asquith's Return
222
The Women's Colleges
223
Constantinople and the Straits.
By
Philip Marshall Brown
224
The Case of Sir Oliver Lodge.
By
Joseph Jastrow
22b
Correspondence
227
Book Reviews:
Jeremiad and Jumble
229
A Catholic Critic of Sinn Fein
230
Among Our Americas
231
War and Discipline
2b2
The Run of the Shelves
234
Unlocking the Great Lakes. By L. J
.B.
235
Books and the News: Mr. Wilson.
By
Edmund Lester Pearson
237
AS we go to press, the outlook for
ratification of the treaty, in 'any
form, is as dark as possible. If the
event shall prove as now seems bo
probable, there will be few indeed
who will be able to take any satisfac-
tion in the retrospect. The only vic-
tors will be the outright enemies of
the treaty, with Senators Borah and
Johnson at their head; and, in spite
of the extremely objectionable char-
acter of some of the tactics employed
by them, they will at least be entitled
to the satisfaction of having gained
an end which they had consistently
and fearlessly avowed, and to which
many of them at least were sincerely
devoted as a matter of principle.
With this exception, all parties, from
President Wilson to Senator Lodge,
will experience a sense of bitter mor-
tification as they review the long his-
tory of the impotent wrangle.
TT is still possible that a new turn
■^ may be given to the situation. But
the possibility rests on the faint hope
that in one or another of the decisive
quarters a largeness of mind and of
soul may be manifested which has
thus far been wholly absent. As for
I
the "great and solemn referendum"
which will ensue upon failure of the
treaty, nothing is more certain than
that it will be neither great nor sol-
emn. The time is past when the
American people could be got to con-
centrate their attention upon the sub-
ject, to the exclusion, or even the
subordination, of other issues. Not
only has the lapse of time, together
with the urgency of other questions,
thrown it into the background, but
the issue itself has been so bedeviled
with trivialities and personalities
that the country is sick and tired
of it. The only way to make it a gen-
uine and central issue before the
nation would be for Mr. Wilson him-
self to be the candidate, a contingency
which seems in the highest degree
improbable. Barring that possibility,
the injection of the treaty quarrel
into the Presidential campaign opens
up the prospect of a prolonged night-
mare from which all citizens may
devoutly pray to be spared. Until the
doom has actually been pronounced,
we cling to a shred of hope that it
may still be averted.
/~\F the appointment of Bainbridge
^-^ Colby as Secretary of State, it is
almost enough to say that for those
who like that kind of Secretary of
State, he is just the kind of Secretary
of State they like. This does not
mean that, as some have imagined,
Mr. Colby is to be, or is expected to
be, a "doormat," or even a "rubber
stamp." He has engaging qualities
and a bright mind, and will doubtless
be a great comfort to Mr. Wilson,
who evidently likes him extremely.
The danger to be apprehended from
his appointment is not that he will be
merely a passive tool in the Presi-
dent's hands, a function which, while
not brilliant, may be useful, and, in
the case of a President determined to
be his own Secretary of State, per-
haps as useful as any that he could
perform. The danger is that Mr.
Colby, who has no perceptible quali-
fication for the post, but who has a
mind of his own, and has winning
ways, may, while humoring the Presi-
dent to the top of his bent as re-
gards things in general, exercise an
evil influence over him as regards
many a thing in particular which
will come up during these months of
acute international trial. Neither in
his training nor in his habits of
thought and action does Mr. Colby
possess the attributes which ought to
be regarded as essential to the head
of the country's department of for-
eign affairs.
'T'HE editor of the Nation, after
-'• reciting the holding up of certain
American cotton ships by the British
blockade, characterizes ex-Secretary
Lansing as "one of those who thought
that just as stiff a note should be sent
to England about these matters as
had been sent to Germany about the
Lusitania." We have yet to see any
real evidence that Mr. Lansing ever
committed himself to the equating of
the Lusitania crime with the British
blockade. The "0. G. V." Washing-
ton correspondence of the Evening
Post at the time had much to say
about a note answering to this de-
scription, prepared before Bryan's
resignation, held for five months, and
finally sent only after it was so
altered as to recognize a material dis-
tinction between taking human life
without warning and holding up cot-
ton, with judicial resource to deter-
mine whether the seizure was legal.
Until convinced by indubitable evi-
dence, we prefer to believe that the
hand and heart of Mr. Lansing aided
in softening the note rather than in
putting into it (if it really was ever
there) that blind disregard of both
moral and legal distinctions with
218]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 43
which "O. G. V." credits it, and for
which he commends it.
PRESIDENT WILSON is not happy
-■- in his diplomatic appointments,
and the result is that America is in-
adequately represented at foreign
capitals at a time when our foreign
relations demand the highest type of
diplomatic ability. It is difficult to
say whether these appointments are
due to the paucity of material in the
Democratic party or to the faultiness
of the President's judgment. The
appointment of Mr. Charles R. Crane
as Minister to China is the latest
example. Mr. Crane is an amiable
gentleman, a philanthropist, and very
rich. He is feverishly but superficially
interested in movements and men,
lacking in tact and discretion, and a
dilettante in international politics.
With the best will in the world, he
may easily compromise our position
in the intricate and complex situation
in China.
npHE considerations that have led
■'• the Supreme Council to decree
that the Turks should retain Constan- '
tinople are not made clear in any of
the statements thus far made public.
In answer to the outcry of protest
among liberals everywhere, and es-
pecially that voiced by Lord Bryce,
Mr. Lloyd George puts forward the
claim that England is bound to con-
sider the wishes of the eighty million
Moslems in India who loyally sup-
ported the war. Mr. Montagu, Secre-
tary of State for India, has sought to
clinch matters by a premature an-
nouncement of the action in India
itself. But this explanation is far
from satisfying. On the one hand,
it has not been demonstrated that the
Moslems in India have any such rev-
erence as is represented for the Sul-
tan as Caliph, nor that this is neces-
sarily localized in Constantinople. On
the other hand, it is an anachronism
that after more than four centuries
of misrule, the Turks,, themselves a
minority, should be left in possession
of a great city which possesses such
singular significance for hundreds of
millions of Christian peoples. It is
possible, of course, that the British
policy is based upon the desire to
retain as warder at the gate a sub-
servient tool. But there are ugly
rumors in the European capitals of
financial interests and sinister in-
trigue, and it is implied that the chief
consideration involved is that of pro-
tecting the French and British bond-
holders. Mr. Montagu is not only
Secretary of State for India; he is
also a member of one of the greatest
banking families of Europe.
In nearly all the discussion over the
disposition of Constantinople, how-
ever, a most important factor has
been entirely overlooked. That fac-
tor is Russia. To ignore her entirely
now is to store up trouble for the
future. A tactful acknowledgment of
her interests, and an intimation that
the settlement will in due time be sub-
ject to her review without prejudice,
would be a wise precaution against
wars to come.
'T'HE reputed founder of the Utah
■'- State Juvenile Court and various
other institutions for boys. Judge Wil-
lis Brown, has discovered a new ap-
proach to our longed-for political
millennium. It lies in the very simple
process of organizing four million
first voters and plumping their com-
bined first votes in favor of the right
man for President. The thing looks
easy, if you just shut your eyes tight
enough, as the devisers of such
schemes never seem to have any diffi-
culty in doing. Of course, if these
four million freshman voters -once
realize that they can elect a Presi-
dent of the United States, they will at
once cut loose from all present influ-
ence of parents and older brothers
and friends, throw overboard all in-
herited political prejudices, give up
all divided opinions on all divisive
political questions, pick the best man
with infallible judgment, close ranks,
and read the death sentence to any
party foolish enough to disagree. The
only chance of slipping up seems to
be that the sophomore voters, jealous
of such presumption, might organize
theii- four million and pick somebody
else. In the ballot tug-of-war thus
precipitated, with a year's experi-
ence on the sophomoric side, Judge
Brown's freshman team might con-
ceivably get pulled into the creek, and
the bedraggled millennium be left on
the bank of defeat, disconsolately
drying its sweater in the chill Novem-
ber breeze.
TN spite of the labor troubles which
-*• have absorbed so much of public
attention, a recent number of the
Labor Market Bulletin, published by
the New York State Industrial Com-
mission, shows that the past year has
been one of progress. December
averages for 1919, as compared with
those of the previous year, show a
considerably higher level of employ-
ment in many important industries,
such as building materials of all
kinds, house furnishings, wearing
apparel, leather goods, musical in-
struments, sheet metal and hardware,
rubber goods, and silverware. The
total number of factory workers is
higher than a year ago, as high as at
the close of the two previous years,
when the output of special war neces-
sities was so great, and about one-
third higher than in 1914. Total
payroll expenditures for December,
1919, were 16 per cent, higher than
in 1918, 49 per cent, higher than in
1917, and 178 per cent, above the
figure of 1914. The compilers of the
bulletin figure out a distinct gain for
the wage-worker in increase of earn-
ings as compared with the increase
of price of food products, though we
must remember that all such figures
merely show whether or not it is pos-
sible to live more cheaply, not
whether any particular class is actu-
ally doing so, or even making the
attempt. In the matter of the fac-
tory man's dinner table, as elsewhere,
de gustibus non disputandum.
TN sustaining Oklahoma's income
-'■ tax law and in declaring void that
part of the New York State law
which discriminates against non-resi-
dents, the Supreme Court has ren-
dered two important decisions which
common sense hastens to claim for its
own. The fact that the right of a
State to tax incomes accruing to non-
residents from their property or busi-
ness within the State is susceptible i
of abuse is no valid ground for deny-
ing such a right. One such abuse is
forever removed by the New York;
March 6, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[219
decision — non-residents must be taxed
on precisely the same terms as resi-
dents; the privileges and immunities
enjoyed by citizens of New York must
not be denied to other citizens of the
Republic. As a rebuke to the care-
lessness, if it was carelessness only,
of the New York State Legislature,
the decision is additionally welcome.
T AST year Lenin made it clear in
^ repeated statements that the un-
limited printing of paper money and
the consequent demonetization of the
ruble was but a step in the general
plan to overthrow capitalism by doing
away with money. Now, however,
the Bolshevist Commissar of Finance,
Krestinsky, has issued a statement,
preliminary to the expected foreign
trade, that the Soviet Government will
issue a new type of credit note, backed
by reserves of platinum, to the value
of 37,500,000 gold rubles. The issue
will be limited to 65,000,000 rubles,
and the Government will be ready on
call to convert them into platinum
coins. These platinum notes will be
used in payment of foreign purchases
made direct by the Government. This
complete volte face in Bolshevik
finance is only another indication of
the way in which the Soviet Govern-
ment is turning to capitalism. It is
interesting, both as a financial expe-
dient and as illustrating the charac-
ter of the Bolshevik mind. As it is
only an expedient to secure a modest
amount of credit on the security of
platinum now in the possession of the
Bolsheviks, the businesslike way of
doing it would be to deposit the plati-
num in some satisfactory financial
institution as a guarantee for a loan
in sterling or dollar exchange. This,
however, might require proof that
the metal had not been stolen from its
rightful owners.
'pHE numerous "drives" that are
-■- being made by the men's col-
leges ought to make it easier rather
than harder for the women's colleges
to obtain the endowment which they
also need. The argument is the same
in both cases. Faculty salaries must
be raised if faculties are to be re-
tained; the old salary schedules are
absurdly inadequate in view of exist-
ing prices. Each appeal that has
already been made has helped to drive
the argument home. The campaigns
for Bryn Mawr, Smith, and Mt. Hol-
yoke are now under way ; they should
meet with a generous response not only
among the alumnae, or the alumnae
and their friends, but among people
generally who realize the critical
state in which the cause of education
in America stands to-day.
TT is a safe enough prophecy that
-"- blundering attempts to fight So-
cialism by unfair means will increase
the Socialist vote. To admit this,
however, is not to concede the reason-
ableness of "voting Socialist" as a
means of punishing bad official con-
duct or securing good. A vote for the
Socialist ticket, in any case in which
the political views of the candidate
have any bearing at all, can be justified
only by an honest conviction that So-
cialism is right in its fundamental
fight against individual initiative, and
the right of the individual to better
his position by the fruits of his own
brains, toil and thrift. If one really
believes in that doctrine, he is justi-
fied in supporting it at the ballot
box, but not otherwise. The fact that
some one is rocking the political boat
does not justify the voter who wants
a safe passage in joining hands with
those who openly seek to knock out
the bottom.
TT seems hard to get the idea out
-■- of the heads of certain Congres-
sional leaders at Washington that
economy in appropriations is a mere
matter of totals. The Air Service
has already been seriously crippled
by the denial of the financial support
necessary to hold together and keep
at work the best of the trained per-
sonnel in the service at the close of
the war. And now more than half
has been cut from the estimates for
carrying on the work of the Bureau
of Foreign and Domestic Commerce
in soliciting foreign trade. If this
action stands, the commercial attache
service of the bureau will be wrecked.
Representatives of many American
business organizations in session in
New York a few days ago formally
pronounced this "a direct blow at
American foreign trade, at a time
when it is most in need of trade infor-
mation from foreign lands." The
division of statistics of the customs
service is seriously hampered by a
similar display of Congressional
economy, not having force enough to
present its results with the prompt-
ness and completeness which alone
can give them real value to the busi-
ness world. To follow the example
set by these economizers in Congress,
our dairymen should seek a more
economical production of milk by cut-
ting down the amount of food appro-
priated for their cows, and farmers
should reduce the cost of their corn,
wheat and potatoes by eliminating the
expense of fertilizers.
What is a Liberal?
npHE ultimate aim of the Labor Party, and
-*• of those who would inspire and direct its
policy, is the acquisition and operation by the
State of the whole machinery of the produc-
tion of the country. That is a form of indus-
trial tyranny against which, if you can conceive
of it ever being brought into practical effect,
it is, in my opinion, the first duty of Liberalism'
to protest.
In this clean-cut declaration by Mr.
Asquith in the opening speech of his
victorious campaign at Paisley, the
word Liberalism (with a capital L)
is doubtless used in the British party
sense. But it is time we were begin-
ning to think, both in this country
and in England, of the meaning of
the word in a sense broader than, and
yet not out of accord with, the mean-
ing it has had in British politics dur-
ing the past half-century. What Mr.
Asquith declares to be "the first duty
of Liberalism" in Britain is really
and truly the first duty of liberalism
everywhere. The word has too long
been conceded to th« representatives
of a cast of thought and a tendency
in action to which it has no just appli-
cation. To be a liberal it is neces-
sary that one have his mind open to
possibilities of improvement and re-
form; but not every scheme of real
or supposed economic improvement,
and not every project of real or
supposed moral reform is entitled
to the designation of "liberal." The
word is a good word, and a valuable
one; and it ought to be reclaimed
from the hands of those who have too
220]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 43
long enjoyed the benefit of its impli-
cation, while displaying none of its
spirit.
First and foremost in this category
are the socialists and, still more, the
half-socialists who are promoting the
socialist programme without any
clear perception of what it means.
It is open to anyone to think that
socialism is better than liberalism;
but certainly socialism is not liberal-
ism. It is the opposite of liberalism.
Under whatever form it may be pro-
posed to put socialism into effect, it
will not liberalize but unliberalize
the world. It may conceivably im-
prove the general economic condition
of mankind. It may reduce, or even
extinguish, poverty. It may improve
the public health, cut down the rate
of infant mortality, and lengthen the
average span of human life. The
existing institutions of society have
themselves had an effect in all these
directions, which, on casting a glance
backward over a period of a hundred
years, or two hundred years, any can-
did mind must recognize as most
impressive. Socialists may claim that
their system would accelerate the
process. But the gains which we have
made have been attained without sac-
rifice of those ideas of personal inde-
pendence, and personal self-assertion,
which are of the very essence of lib-
eralism. The gains which socialism
would make — if it did make them —
would be purchased at the cost of an
almost complete extinction of those
ideas as the dominant factor in
human life.
The central aim of all schemes of
socialism or semi-socialism is the
extinction of economic evils. It is
true that in the minds of many social-
ists this aim is exalted by the convic-
tion that all, or nearly all, of the moral
evil in the world is traceable to eco-
nomic causes. That extreme poverty
is a prolific source of moral evil no
reasonable person would deny, and it
must be the constant aim of right-
minded persons to work toward the
abolition of extreme poverty. But
there is no reason whatever to believe
that when we get above that plane
there is any correlation between eco-
nomic well-being and moral excel-
lence. On the contrary, there is
abundant reason to believe that the
necessity for economic struggle, the
stimulus of reward for exertion im-
posed from within and not from
without, and of punishment for fail-
ure to put forth such exertion, is the
great nursery of human virtue as
well as of human endeavor. But in
point of fact, ninety-nine times out of
a hundred, socialists and semi-social-
ists not only think — as we all do — of
economic improvement as an end in
itself, but think of it as the one all-
sufficient end. They seek it with little
or no regard for the price which may
have to be paid for it in the shape of
abandonment of liberal principles and
liberal ideals. What the standardiza-
tion of life may mean, in relation to
its broader and deeper aspects, sel-
dom troubles their minds.
That the older idea of liberalism,
the idea that has been embodied in
four generations of American and
British history, is being reasserted
with fresh vigor after the tempestu-
ous eclipse of the past year or two,
there are encouraging indications.
Quite in line with Mr. Asquith's pro-
nouncement have been the recent
declarations of Mr. Hoover and Vice-
President Marshall, neither of whom
belongs in any degree to the genus
mossback. It is not impossible that
in the recoil from that vague revolu-
tionism which has for some time held
the centre of the stage there may be
some recrudescence of reactionary
activity. But it will not get far.
Quite to the contrary of what was so
glibly predicted a short time ago, the
contest is almost sure to be not be-
tween "reaction and revolution," but
between liberalism and what for want
of a better term is nowadays called
radicalism. The radicals are for
what they confidently label as prog-
ress, but what, however it may affect
the economic condition of men, is
progress away from liberalism and
towards regimentation and tyranny.
It was John Wesley, we believe, who
protested that the devil should not
have all the good tunes. The radicals
are not entitled to the good tune of
liberalism. Liberty, variety, indivi-
duality— that is the tune to which
liberals should march, and in that
sign they will conquer.
The Soviet Drive for
Peace
TT is evident to all observers that the
^ opening of relations with Russia
and some form of conditional recog-
nition of the Soviet regime will soon
be announced by the Council of Pre-
miers. The successive steps by which
this is approached are patently face-
saving expedients and will deceive no
one. Mr. Lloyd George long since
yielded to the influences that were
pressing him in this direction, and
with him it was only a question of so
manoeuvring this change of policy as
not to arouse too great opposition on
the part of the Conservative elements
of the Coalition. What these influ-
ences are is becoming clear. They
are, of course, domestic, but they are .
not, in the main, as has been sur-
mised, the demands of radical labor,
protesting against a policy that rep-
resented to them an attempt of capi-
talist interests to crush a working-
men's revolution. They are the more
potent forces of British capital itself,
pressing to have opened to them the
commercial and industrial opportuni-
ties of Russia lest they be outstripped
by their German rivals.
The British capitalists have much
to justify them. Their hatred of Bol-
shevism has not abated, and they take
no stock in the much-advertised
change of heart and reform of the
Bolsheviks themselves. But they are
aware that there are in Russia at the
present time more than two million
Germans, entrenching themselves for
the industrial conquest of Russia, and
that German marks are being used by
the hundred million to purchase
stocks and bonds of Russian enter-
prises, securities that may now be
something of a gamble even at the
prevailing rate of exchange, but
which before long will place the con-
trol of these enterprises in German
hands. They see no merit or advan-
tage in abstaining from work in the
Russian field if the result is only to
give their rivals a private preserve
and a flying start. And it must not
be overlooked that the exploitation
of the resources of Russia has an
international political significance for
March 6, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[221
the future that outweighs mere
pecuniary considerations.
At the same time the Soviet Gov-
ernment is feverishly engaged in a
drive for peace. All who follow
attentively Bolshevist propaganda in
its diverse manifestations must have
been struck by its singular concen-
tration upon this one aim during the
past few weeks. Their artillery of
every kind and calibre was massed
for the attack. The Nation published
seven alleged Soviet peace proposals
to the United States and carefully
refrained from quoting the state-
ments of Lenin and Trotsky that
peace was sought by them only to
obtain a breathing space, the better
to renew the struggle. The New
Republic bemoaned the fact that hard-
hearted capitalists continued to dis-
play vicious hostility to the revolu-
tionary democracy of Russia (as if
the Soviet Government were a revo-
lutionary democracy!), and let Nor-
man Hapgood pour out his Bolshevik
soul in several columns of superlative
ignorance and misstatement. A
claque of petty business men, organ-
ized by Ludwig C. A. K. Martens and
Dudley Field Malone, issued a lot of
false and misleading statements to
create the impression that England
was already carrying on trade with
Soviet Russia and flimflamming us
out of our share. A number of hand-
picked correspondents were person-
ally conducted to Moscow to be given
special interviews with the Bolshevik
leaders. There could be no doubt
that the Bolsheviks wanted peace and
wanted it badly.
But students of Bolshevik propa-
ganda must have noticed also a great
change in its character. No longer
was emphasis laid upon the beauties
of the social revolution or what it
I promised to the laboring man. Only
the most perfunctory allusions were
I made to the evils of capitalism and
j imperialism. On the contrary, Lenin
said to one of the specially invited
correspondents: "All the world
knows that we are prepared to make
peace on terms the fairness of which
even the most imperialistic capital-
ists could not dispute. We have
reiterated and reiterated our desire
for peace, our need for peace, and
our readiness to give foreign capital
the most generous concessions and
guarantees." To the same corre-
spondent Trotsky said: "Foreign
capitalists who invest money in Rus-
sian enterprises or who supply us
with merchandise we require will re-
ceive material guarantees of amply
adequate character." In all the prop-
aganda every effort was made to
appeal to the cupidity of the capital-
ist, and to allay his fears, by assert-
ing that the Bolsheviks had reformed
and were no longer the ferocious
looters of last year, and by covertly
intimating that he need not worry as
to the security of private property
rights. Indeed, they were ready to
allow the election of a Constituent
Assembly (whatever that might sig-
nify), and permit non-Bolsheviks to
participate in government.
But by far the most striking mani-
festations of their propaganda are
to be seen in Trotsky's announce-
ment concerning turning the Red
Army into labor battalions, and the
publication in foreign countries of
the Soviet code of labor laws. This
code is an astounding production. It
provides that every citizen between
the ages of sixteen and fifty who is
not incapacitated shall be subject to
compulsory labor. Every laborer is
placed in a definite group or category
by the authorities, and his scale of
wages determined. He must carry a
labor booklet, which serves as a sort
of passport, and he can not change
from one job to another without the
permission of the authorities. The
code deprives the working man of the
last vestige of liberty and reduces
him to industrial serfdom. The
object of the publication of this dras-
tic code is clear — it is to assure the
capitalist that if he will come and
invest his money in Soviet Russia, he
need fear no labor troubles and can
treat his workmen as slaves.
The fact is that the Bolsheviks have
utterly failed in Russia and stand on
the brink of disaster. They have
brought about the complete ruin of
economic life and have existed thus
far on reserves already accumulated.
Now these reserves are approaching
exhaustion and their only hope is to
persuade capital to come in and take
over the task of putting things to
rights. They are not concerned over
the fate of the millions of hapless
people, but they see in this new move
a chance to retain their power as well
as the ill-gotten riches that have built
up a whole new Bolshevik bour-
geoisie. Here is a simple analogy.
Suppose a gang of ignorant bandits
and cut-throats, led by a few dream-
ers and fanatics who believe they
have discovered a marvelous process
for extracting gold without labor or
expense, have jumped the claim to a
rich gold mine. They badly maltreat
the mine and come to the end of their
resources. In their extremity they
appeal to capitalists to take over the
property and supply machinery and
engineers, meanwhile opening up fine
oflices and putting on the finest front
possible. They hope to see the mine
restored to productivity and they
expect to retain a controlling interest.
For the ruined stockholders they have
no care.
Russia will be opened up, and
before long. It will present a fearful
spectacle of disorganization and ruin.
Life has gone back to a primitive
state — to the Dark Ages — and to
material destruction is added moral
degradation. Two years of violence,
corruption, injustice, and terror have
done their deadly work. The ques-
tion is how long will the Bolshevik
regime endure. If the blockade were
to continue a short time longer, there
is little doubt that the Soviet Govern-
ment would topple over, for it has
never been weaker than at the pres-
ent moment, despite its military vic-
tories and its brave front. But if it
should fall under these conditions,
there is nothing apparently to take its
place, and the result would be a vast
welter of anarchy. If relations are
opened with Russia and capital vig-
orously attacks the problem of reor-
ganizing economic life and bringing
the people back to a state of produc-
tivity, the Soviet Government may
continue in authority yet a few
months longer, and, vile as it is, it
may serve as the necessary cohesive
force to prevent utter disintegration
until new forces can be developed to
succeed it. Such a system can not
continue to exist in modern civiliza-
tion, even in so primitive a country
as Russia. During its brief hour it
has held sway by brute force and
222]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 43
terror over cowed and servile mil-
lions; it has robbed the gentlemen
and the scholars of Russia of their
heritage; it has wiped out Russian
civilization and Russian culture like
a Tatar horde. It would indeed be
the irony of history if in its final
days it should perforce serve a useful
purpose.
Although England, F ranee, and
Italy are moving rapidly towards the
recognition of the Soviet Government,
there is no reason why America
should lower herself by grasping the
blood-stained hands of the tyrants at
Moscow. We are not driven by neces-
sity to make friends with temporarily
successful evil, only to appear ridicu-
lous a little later, when those forces
of evil fall. America must in the
future play an important role in the
tasks of reconstruction in Russia;
this is incumbent on us by reason of
our surplus capital and our future
international interests; and there is
no reason to compromise these oppor-
tunities for any temporary and insig-
nificant trade advantages. On the
other hand, it is our duty to work
out a comprehensive and practical
plan whereby we can perform these
tasks wisely and adequately, looking
out for our own national interests,
and at the same time safeguarding
the Russian people against exploita-
tion.
Mr. Asquith's Return
t'VER since his defeat in the elec-
•*-' tions of 1918, Mr. Asquith has
maintained a dignified aloofness from
politics, being well aware that the
sound common sense he might utter
would fall on deaf ears so long as
the nation had not sobered down from
the intoxication of victory. The peo-
ple's excited passions are a fit instru-
ment for a man of Lloyd George's
talent to play upon, but to the nation
in its soberer mood the self-contained
wisdom of an Asquith will make the
stronger appeal. He has been biding
his time and appears to have chosen
the right moment for his return. The
greatness of his personality is out of
all proportion to the smallness of the
party as whose leader he will oppose
the Coalition Government. Indeed,
if the vote of the Paisley electorate
had brought no other change than the
substitution of Sir Donald McLean
by Mr. Asquith as leader of the "Wee
Frees," as the small group of Free
Liberals is nicknamed, the result of
the recent election would be merely
a personal victory for Lloyd George's
predecessor. But it is more than
that, inasmuch as the former Pre-
mier's reappearance in the House of
Commons is fraught with the prom-
ise of great and far-reaching conse-
quences.
The Coalition has had its day.
There are few people in England who
continue to believe in its vitality. The
abortive attempt of Lord Birkenhead
to form a new, the National, party, a
camouflaged revival of the moribund
Coalition, has only emphasized the
fact that it is unavoidably doomed.
Its Liberal members, realizing its
approaching break-up, will probably
rally round the old leader whom they
abandoned in 1918. And what, in
that event, will Lloyd George's next
move be ? It has been observed that,
less punctilious but more cautious
than Bonar Law, he refrained from
sending a message of best wishes for
his success to the Coalition candidate
at Paisley, whom they both knew to
be going in for a losing fight. He
evidently did not wish to commit him-
self to any utterance which might bar
for him the way to a reconciliation
with his former chief, in the event of
the latter beating his Labor opponent.
The Welshman's resourceful brain is
capable of conceiving any new com-
bination, however impossible its
realization may seem to the outsider.
Is it likely that Mr. Asquith would
accept the hand proffered him by the
man whom he must admire, but
whom he can not possibly respect,
as a politician?
British opportunism and love of
compromise may build the bridge
across the hostility that divides
the two former associates. The
chief question of the near future
is whether British Labor shall dic-
tate its will to the country or be held
in check by that innate love of mod-
eration in reform which is one of the
many aspects of the Briton's common
sense. Mr. Asquith has taken a
definite stand against the Labor
Party's demands for socialization of
the mines and railroads. On the
other hand, by his hearty approval
of Lloyd George's Russian policy he
has drawn the line between his party
and the Conservative section of the
Coalition. These two problems of
national and foreign policy, the most
important that the present brings up
for solution, form the common ground
on which the Prime Minister and the
Liberal leader may meet and join
forces.
A reconstitution of the old Liberal
Party, if thus realized, would natu-
rally react upon the attitude of the
Conservatives. The defection of the
Liberals from the Coalition would
force them to take their bearings
afresh. The proposed Centre Party,
a fusion of progressive Conservatives
and Coalition Liberals advocated by
Winston Churchill, could not be con-
stituted without the support of Lloyd
George. It is significant of the gen-
eral impression that its fate will be
decided by the result of the Paisley
election and the subsequent course of
events, that little has been heard dur-
ing the past month of any steps being
taken towards the realization of the
plan. Lord Robert Cecil was gen-
erally held to be the man destined for
the leadership of the new party, but
he has maintained a punctilious
silence, evidently waiting to take his
cue from the move that Lloyd George
is going to make. If the latter
chooses Asquith for Lord Robert, the
Conservatives of divers hue will have
to rely upon themselves, and, giving
up all hope of continuing the Coali-
tion in some disguise or other, smooth
over the differences that divide them
in order to retain their significance:
as a party. Conservatives and Lib-
erals, though each retaining their
independence as in former days, will
be united in opposition to the nation-
alization schemes of the Labor Party
The exultant note struck by Ramsaj
Macdonald in a recent article in the
Nation would probably have beei
tuned a little lower if it had beei
written after Mr. Asquith's victor;
had opened the writer's eyes to th
possibility of a different course o,i
developments. !
March 6, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[223
The Women's Colleges
WHEN Emma Willard, in 1819.
. made her appeal to the New
York Legislature for the endowment
of a "female seminary," nothing was
farther from her thoughts than the
idea that she was preparing the way
for the inauguration of colleges for
women. A large part of her dis-
course, in fact, is taken up with the
repudiation of any such motive. "The
seminary here recommended," she
says, "will be as different from those
appropriated to the male sex as the
female character and duties are from
the male." This from one of the most
advanced spirits of the time.
The modesty of the demands of
those who were pioneers in the field of
women's education shows more clearly
than anything else can do the force
of the opposition arrayed against
them. Always "the phantom of the
learned lady" (in Emma Willard's
phrase) must be laid to rest before
the positive argument for a more
than ABC education for girls can
proceed. And the reasons assigned
for wishing to have girls educated
even in a very small way are as care-
fully unassuming as are the schemes
of education proposed. Girls should
be educated because as women, they
will have an "influence" on society.
They will be wives, they will be moth-
ers; they may even, on occasion, be
teachers of small children. It will
make a distinct difference to the
human race (of which women them-
selves seem to be rather an appendage
than a part) whether they are intelli-
gent creatures or not. The idea that
women's minds may be worth culti-
vating for the sake of the women
i themselves is rarely even suggested.
Yet the recognition of the fact that
women's education was, from what-
ever point of view, a matter of public
concern, marks a big step forward.
The Troy Female Seminary, which
Emma Willard established in 1821,
soon became famous throughout
the country, as did also, a few years
later, Catherine Beecher's school at
Hartford and Mary Lyon's seminary
at Holyoke. Nothing better was done
for girls in the Eastern States until
Vassar opened in 1865. In the West
more progress was made. Oberlin,
founded as a collegiate institute in
1832 and chartered as a college in
1850, was coeducational from the
start, and Antioch not only admitted
women students but made a point of
having women as well as men on its
faculty. But the number of women in
attendance was small, and the fact of
their being admitted did not attract
wide attention. The opening of Vas-
sar in 1865 impressed people gener-
ally as the real beginning of higher
education for women.
Matthew Vassar, in his first ad-
dress to the trustees of the college,
struck no uncertain note. "It oc-
curred to me," he said, "that woman,
having received from her Creator the
same intellectual constitution as man,
has the same right as man to intellec-
tual culture and development." The
aim was to provide a liberal educa-
tion, not toned down to meet supposed
requirements of the female mind, nor
trimmed up with feminine "accom-
plishments." Vassar was to be "an
institution which shall accomplish for
young women what our colleges are
accomplishing for young men," and
there was to be no pretense that sew-
ing for girls is the equivalent of
science for boys.
The movement, once started, made
rapid progress. By 1885, when Bryn
Mawr was opened, Vassar, Wellesley,
and Smith were flourishing institu-
tions, Cornell and a few other East-
ern colleges had taken women in, and
at the State universities of the West
coeducation was a matter of course.
"The phantom of the learned lady"
melted away. It was found that
women's minds were really of the
same stuff as men's, and that girls
were neither enfeebled nor unsexed
by contact with Greek, physics, and
higher mathematics. Bryn Mawr,
building on what had already been
accomplished, was able to give new
strength to the movement by raising
the standard of admission and by
establishing, under the influence of
Johns Hopkins, a first-cldss graduate
school such as few colleges in the
country at that time possessed.
In view of the combined weight of
incredulity and disapproval which
the idea of the woman scholar had to
contend with, it is remarkable that
hostile prejudice retreated as quickly
as it did. Nothing is left of such
prejudice nowadays. The existence
in large numbers of college-trained
women is one of the important
aspects of our national civilization,
and in the East, where coeducation in
undergraduate work is not a common
practice, no one would deny that col-
leges for women are as vitally neces-
sary as colleges for men. But while
the public has been quick to appre-
ciate, it has been slow to help. The
difficulties of raising money for a
woman's college are peculiar. Men's
colleges increase their endowments
chiefly through gifts from the alumni ;
ninety per cent, of the money raised
in the present Harvard "drive" is
from this source. Women's colleges,
on the other hand, must depend
largely on outside contributions. Their
alumnae associations are compara-
tively small, and contain a com-
paratively small proportion of rich
members — and even those members
whom one calls "rich" often have no
large sums of money at their own dis-
posal. The maniffest need can not be
met unless disinterested citizens, and
especially men of wealth, become alive
to the opportunity for usefulness that
is here offered. At a time when
women's higher education was but an
unpopular hope, Matthew Vassar gave
away one-half of his hard-earned for-
tune in order to found Vassar Col-
lege. Our present-day millionaires
know the worth of the institutions
that he and his successors estab-
lished; how many will come forward
and help sustain them?
THE REVIEW
A tverkly joitrnal tf foliticat »n4
general discussion
Published by
Thk National Weiicly CoitroiATiOH
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian FaAHKLiN, President
Hakold di Wol» FinxE». Treaturer
Subscription price, five dollars a /ear im
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cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sobs, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2. Eofland.
Copyright, 1920, m the United States tf
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DI WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Har«y Morgan Aykss O. W. Fiikins
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson
Jerouk Landfiilj)
224]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 43
Constantinople and the Straits
SHORTLY after the Dardanelles
were opened to the warships of
the victorious Allies, in November,
1918, I saw once again the glistening
dome of Hagia Sophia, and thought
with wonder of the many strange
mutations of human fortunes this
ancient Christian monument had wit-
nessed. Among my fellow passengers
was a group of fervid Greek patriots
who were exalted by the belief that
before long the Church of Holy Wis-
dom would once more resound to the
liturgy of the Greek Church.
This idea has recently received the
vigorous support of a group of Eng-
lish churchmen of prominence who
are demanding that the Turks shall
not be permitted to keep possession
of this most ancient of Christian edi-
fices. The British press has published
violent protests against the decision
of the Supreme Council to allow the
Sultan to continue to reside in Con-
stantinople.
This point of view has very many
supporters in the United States —
notably, Ex-Ambassador Henry Mor-
genthau, who rendered such splendid
services in Turkey at the outbreak
of the war. It is generally main-
tained, in the familiar words of Glad-
stone, that the Turks must be driven
out of Europe, "bag and baggage."
Against this point of view we have
the solemn protest of Mr. Montagu,
Secretary for India, that Great Brit-
ain must not affront the sensibilities
of those millions of Moslems who look
with pride to Constantinople as the
seat of the Caliphate. Both he and
Lloyd George have asserted that the
British Government can not prove
faithless to its formal assurances
given during the war that there was
no intention of driving the Turks
from their capital. Otherwise, as
they forcibly declare. Great Britain
had no right to call on its Moslem
subjects to help conquer Turkey.
The legal right of the descendants
of Osman to the Caliphate is undoubt-
edly open to serious question. It is
true that many Moslems, notably
those of Persia, contest these claims.
Millions of Moslems throughout the
world, however, including our own
islands of the Philippines, have a deep
sentimental regard and respect for
the Sultan of Turkey as the leading
temporal monarch of Islam. An in-
teresting recognition of this fact is the
action taken by the United States Gov-
ernment in appealing to Sultan Abdul
Hamid to use his influence as Caliph
to persuade the revolting tribes of
Moslems in the Jolo Archipelago to
accept American rule. There can be
no doubt that Moslems everywhere
have had a genuine pride — a childish
pride, if you will — in the fact that a
Moslem potentate has his palace
where the Imperial Caesars once held
sway.
The overwhelming defeat of the
Turks and the loss of the major por-
tion of their once magnificent empire
has been a bitter humiliation to the
House of Islam. Nor should the revolt
of the Arabs from Turkish rule be
taken too seriously as offsetting in
any sense this powerful Moslem sen-
timent concerning the Caliphate and
Constantinople. Taking into account
the simplicity of character and the
fanaticism of the Arabs, it is not
unlikely that they may experience at
any moment a revulsion of feeling
concerning their fellow Moslems the
Turks, formerly their oppressors and
bitter enemies. There is grave dan-
ger that sooner or later the vast
majority of Moslems would unite in
fierce opposition to any attempt by
Christian Powers to subject the Sul-
tan-Caliph to further humiliations.
It was an evil day for the Turks
when those hardy warriors of the
plains and hills abandoned their tents
to settle down in the palaces of the
Caesars. Constantinople is one of the
loveliest cities of the world, but it
has been the apple of discord between
many nations for centuries, the cause
of many misfortunes, disasters, and
wars. It has been the centre of base
intrigues and corruption. Here the
Turks were enervated and demoral-
ized by Byzantine traditions and by
the worst influences of European
civilization. There is much melan-
choly truth in the opinion expressed
by the author of "Nationalism and
War in the Near East" that "the fail-
ure of the Turks is due to Byzantin-
ism. Their corruption and impotence
were inherited with their national
capital — not inherent in their na-
tional character. . . . Byzantine
civilization was overflowed, not flood-
ed out, by the Turkish invasion;
and all the worst features of the
decadent Byzantine social system
emerged and flourished in the soil
refertilized by new blood. No democ-
racy, no simple virtues, and no sound
vitality could grow in such soil with-
out a more thorough purification than
even Mahomet could give it."
The curse of Constantinople comes,
of course, in the main from its situa-
tion athwart the Straits connecting
the Euxine and the Mediterranean,
both high seas necessary for the use
of many nations, particularly for the
vast Russian Empire. No single
nation could expect to control exclu-
sively this place without incurring
the envy and hostility of other
nations. This magnificent port was
plainly intended by nature to be a
great port of call, like Singapore, or
an important commercial emporium,
like Hong Kong. It was never suited
to be the free, secure capital of an
independent nation.
The freedom of the Straits of the
Bosphorus and the Dardanelles has
long been an imperative necessity, as
well as an abstract right under inter-
national law. This freedom must be
established and guaranteed by the
most absolute and effective measures
that may be devised. Whatever the
differences and mutual jealousies of
the Powers, they seem fairly well
agreed on this fundamental proposi-
tion : the freedom of the Straits must
be assured, and no single nation shall
be permitted to control their use for
its own selfish ends.
Such being the facts and the logic
of the situation, the question whether
the Turks shall be permitted to con-
tinue to reside in Constantinople
becomes of subsidiary importance.
Once the freedom of the Straits isi
effectively guaranteed, its value as a
national capital is destroyed. If the
Turks care to remain under the guns I
of foreign warships and overawed bjj
March 6, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[225
foreign garrisons, they are accepting
restraints and humihations that can
not long be endured. Sooner or later
they will hanker for the seclusion and
the tranquillity of Konia, the old capi-
tal of the Seljukian Turks in the heart
of Asia Minor. (Broussa is far from
an ideal capital, as it also would be
dependent for an outlet on the Sea of
Marmora and the Dardanelles.) The
day will surely come when the Turks
will escape from the spell of ill-fated
Byzantium; when they will see the
situation in its true light, and will
realize that national greatness con-
sists not in empire but in moral
regeneration. Once again they will
return to the plains and hills from
whence they came; and in such a
Hegira will assuredly lie their salva-
tion, their true happiness and wel-
fare.
In the meantime, if by reason of
the ignis fatuus of Constantinople
they are blinded to their true inter-
ests, why should others, in the light
of all the practical considerations
involved, give themselves undue con-
cern? Why dissipate their energies
and influence in a futile agitation, and
lose sight of the true issue which
Lloyd George has properly empha-
sized as the problem of establishing
and maintaining the freedom of the
Straits, and protecting the interests
of the peoples of the Near East?
It should now be evident, in view
of the rivalries and the mutual dis-
trust of the Powers, that the problem
of providing the right kind of man-
dates in Constantinople and the Near
East is excessively difficult, and over-
shadows all other considerations. If
one could only feel sure that their
main concern was truly the freedom
of the Straits and the welfare of the
peoples of that part of the world,
there would be much less cause for
anxiety. In fact, under such condi-
tions, the American people might
even be induced, by a high sense of
obligation to render a great disin-
terested service for mankind in gen-
eral as well as for these unhappy
peoples in particular, to undertake a
general mandate over Constantinople
and Asia Minor. The attitude of the
Powers, however, leaves too much
reason to fear that they have not
accepted wholeheartedly those gener-
ous principles advocated by the
United States in this war, and that
it would be futile and unwise for us
to attempt a mandate where our
efforts would be foredoomed to fail-
ure.
It is impossible to avoid the un-
happy conclusion that the preoccupa-
tion of the Powers over the division
of conquered territories, and the
establishment of new spheres of influ-
ence in accordance with the archaic
and utterly vicious principle of bal-
ance of power, threatens a lamentable
failure to solve the Eastern question.
The key to its solution would seem to
lie in the establishment and main-
tenance of the freedom of the Straits ;
and with this accomplished, it mat-
ters little whether or no the Turks
are suffered to remain beside the
Golden Horn.
Philip Marshall Brown
The Case of Sir Oliver Lodge
'T'HE conspicuous exhibits in the
-*• "case" of Sir Oliver Lodge are
the posters six feet high announcing
lectures upon "The Structure of the
Atom" and "The Evidence for Sur-
vival" and the streams of auditors
filling well-paid seats to listen to a
"scientific" message. The popularity
betokens no sudden renascence of in-
terest in exact science ; nor is the per-
suasive oratory of the physicist the
magnet that draws dollars and de-
votees. It is the author of "Ray-
mond" and not the professor of
physics at the University of Liver-
pool that is speaking. The atom en-
ters the best society through the
patronage of "spooks."
Prestige is potent. Surely if a dis-
tinguished physicist, trained in the
niceties of the laboratory and the logic
of scientific evidence, is convinced
that the living communicate with the
dead, the testimony must be pro-
foundly convincing. The obvious fact
is strangely ignored that, for the one
exceptional scientist who subscribes
to the reality of such communication,
there are hundreds of equal authority
who would violently resent the impli-
cation that they might be tempted to
draw conclusions as to the nature of
the universe from the testimony of
"mediums" trafficking upon human
credulity. Let no venturesome entre-
preneur suppose that he can repeat
this platform success by importing a
still more eminent physicist, whose
prestige might, indeed, assemble a
modest audience at Harvard or Co-
lumbia University, but who would
hardly fill Carnegie Hall in New York
or the Academy of Music in Philadel-
phia. Prestige is potent ; but the will
to believe is more so. They combine
in the "case" of Sir Oliver and his
audiences.
The scientific student of the belief
in spirits places the phenomenon in
the primitive stages of human think-
ing. Sir Edward Tylor tells us that
"the received spiritualistic theory
belongs to the philosophy of sav-
ages" ; that a North American Indian
transferred to a spirit-seance in Lon-
don with its "raps, noises, voices, and
other physical actions, would be per-
fectly at home in the proceedings."^
Andrew Lang regarded the study of
these "psychological curiosities" of
persistent belief "as a branch of
mythology or folklore." Podmore,
the historian of modern spiritualism,
calls the belief less an hypothesis or
an explanation than "the instinctive
utterance of primitive animism." And
yet in the twentieth year of the twen-
tieth century the same order of be-
lief, based upon the same discredited
type of evidence, but couched in more
learned language, sways the minds of
men who live richly in a world built
upon the discoveries of science; by
whom the spirit that created the tele-
graph and telephone, aeroplanes and
motor cars, "wireless" and X-rays,
aseptic surgery and preventive medi-
cine, is forsaken in pursuit of a cult
of revelation by mediums plying a
questionable trade among the intel-
lectual slums of civilization.
For the ordinary every-day mind
holding such beliefs at arm's length
or playing with them as the fash-
ionable toy of the hour, with no dis-
ciplined standards of consistency, and
226]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 43
slight responsibilities of reputation,
there is nothing seriously discredit-
able— though much that is deplorable
— in the lapse; for such minds fol-
low the torch-bearers and are blinded
by the incandescent filament of pres-
tige. What is pardonable for the fol-
lowing is not so for the leaders of
thought. Nor can the tribute which
we gladly pay to our cousinly col-
leagues coming to us under the mis-
sion of science be permitted to silence
the protest against the mental con-
fusion and darkening counsels of ob-
scurantism which follow the trail of
Sir Oliver across the American con-
tinent.
The peculiar aggravation of the
"case" is the trivial irrelevance of the
evidence upon which a professor of
physics announces a subversive dis-
pensation, which, if true, would con-
tradict every principle of his science
and relegate his laboratory to the
scrap heap of an abandoned intellec-
tual habitation. For Sir Oliver offers
the same threadbare evidence, stale
and unprofitable. The mingling of
physics and psychics is most amaz-
ing:
The fact that a photograph can be clearly
recognized when the medium has only seen
the person clairvoyantly on the other side of
the veil is suggestive, since it seems to show
that the general appearance is preserved-;-or,
in other words, that each human body is a
true representation of personality.
Sir Oliver ventures into biology
with the same confidence. He speaks
of the similarity of "the ideas about
inheritance usually associated with
the name of Weissmann, and the in-
heritance or conveyance of bodily
attributes or of powers acquired
through the body, into the future life
of the soul." So, when spirits return
in the incoherent disclosures of the
seance room, the man of science ob-
serves how far they "inherit" or "con-
vey" their acquired characteristics.
"Future existence may be either
glorified or stained, for a time, by
persistence of bodily traits." Fur-
thermore, it is found that, although
bodily marks, scars, and wounds are
clearly not of soul-compelling and
permanent character, yet for pur-
poses of identification, and when re-
entering the physical atmosphere for
the purpose of communication with
friends, these temporary marks are
reassumed." How does Sir Oliver
reach these positive deductions?
From the inspired revelations of
mediums, accepted on their own pre-
tensions as experts in the physics and
biology of the future world. Weiss-
mann and his followers have a preju-
dice in favor of controllable experi-
mentation upon transmission of traits
through successive generations of liv-
ing animal or plant forms ; Sir Oliver
prefers the simpler method of clair-
voyance to reveal the laws of spirit
transmission. But Sir A.Conan Doyle,
whose training both as a physician
and as a detective should give him a
higher expert rating, says that in the
future world we are all of an age, the
young growing older and the old
growing younger until a democratic
equilibrium of appearance is reached.
These discrepancies might be embar-
rassing if spirits and those who com-
municate with them felt it obligatory
to carry the impedimenta of logical
baggage on their journeys. Sir
Oliver does not wish to be troubled
with explaining these matters when
he reaches the world with which he
now communicates. He gives no-
tice:
As a digression of some importance, I ven-
ture to say that claims of thoughtless and
pertinacious people upon the charitable and
eminent, even here, are often excessive: it is
to be hoped that such claims become less trou-
blesome and less effective hereafter; but it is
a hope without much foundation.
So long as mediums control the tele-
phone-book of the "hereafter," there
is little outlook for peace. For it is
plain, as Dr. Furness, the genial
Shakespearean, used to say, the most
difficult task for a logical mind is to
take these matters seriously.
The citations are relevant to show
what manner of thinking and what
standards of evidence Sir Oliver em-
ploys in support of his thesis. Are
these reasonings those of a man of
science in any other sense than they
reflect the apologetics of a mind that
retains a vestige of logical conscience,
but for the most part wanders wher-
ever it listeth ? The conclusions must
be made to appear reasonable and
learned, and the argument modelled
after the patterns of the fabric that
science weaves. But the result is a
travesty, a grotesque degradation,
pernicious because it may influence
minds inexpert in distinguishing be-
tween truth and nonsense, between a
poem and a parody.
Let us test Sir Oliver's acumen in
simpler fashion. Ten years ago New
York and other American cities were
similarly aflutter, but not with
learned theories and platform deliv-
erances ; for the central figure of the
excitement could neither read nor
write, nor speak any other language
than the Italian of her class. But she
had spokesmen in plenty and with
ample prestige : Lombroso and Mor-
selli in Italy, Richet and Flammarion
in France, and a group of eminent
observers in England, including Sir
Oliver Lodge. Mr. Carrington de-
voted a book to the "case" of Eusapia
Palladino and said : "Eusapia is gen-
uine; but she is, so far as I know,
almost unique." "The whole evi-
dential case for the physical phenom-
ena of spiritualism" rests with her;
if "nothing but fraud entered into
the production of these phenomena,
then the whole case for the physical
phenomena would be ruined — utterly,
irretrievably ruined." The piece de
resistance of Eusapia's performance
consisted in the lifting, "levitation by
spirits," of a very light table which
she carried with her for the purpose.
When unknown to her, two witnesses
were smuggled under the table and
saw her foot levitate, and when with
proper control of her hands and feet
nothing happened, while with lax
control the spirits gave most satisfac-
tory performances, the case of Palla-
dino collapsed ; but Mr. Carrington is
now publishing a "psychical" journal
for the further record of the rare
powers of future Eusapias.
Did Eusapia deceive all Europe and
did she succumb only to the shrewd
Yankee mind? By no means. Pro^
fessor Le Bon saw the trickery in
Paris; Dr. Moll and Dr. Dessoir (Ger-
mans, be it whispered) saw through
Eusapia in Berlin; Professor Sedg-
wick, Dr. Hodgson, Mr. Myers —
though inclining to belief in some
form of supernormal powers — were
convinced that Eusapia was fraudu-
lent. But Sir Oliver wrote: "I am
therefore in hopes that the present
decadent state of the Neapolitan
woman may be only temporary, and
March 6, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[227
that hereafter some competent and
thoroughly prepared witness may
yet bring testimony to the continued
existence of a genuine abnormal
power in her organism."
Is this the utterance of a science-
trained caution or of the will to be-
lieve despite the unwelcome trend of
the evidence?
The case of Sir Oliver does not
stand alone. Sir Richard Crookes, a
fellow-physicist of like distinction,
testified to seeing a medium sitting in
the air supported by nothing visible,
offered spirit photographs as evi-
dence of survival, inferred the exist-
ence of an "hitherto unknown force"
from the fact that a medium affected
a balance with which apparently he
had no contact — to mention only a
few of the accredited miracles of a
physical nature. Alfred Russel Wal-
lace had a like faith in the genuine-
ness of several forms of mediumistic
performances, and, in addition, re-
garded the neglect of phrenology as
one of the scientific sins of the nine-
teenth century. The list could be ex-
tended not indefinitely, but consider-
ably. The phenomenon is a puzzling
one; for we associate with the effect
of a professional training a general
robustness of logical vigor, a thor-
ough saturation of the mind in all its
vocations with the habits of rigid evi-
dence and critical caution. We as-
sume a consistency of mental habit,
and in that assumption seemingly go
astray. We must make room for the
existence of minds streaked with ra-
tionality but not uniformly pene-
trated by the stabilizing quality ; we
must consider reserved areas of prej-
udice and predilection in which ideas
flourish and convictions are cher-
i iahed with slight regard to their rec-
'onciliation with the dominant logi-
cality of the rest of one's beliefs. If
such products of our complex psy-
chology are common, though presum-
;ably in less momentous phases of the
I mental character, why should they
tflot occasionally occur among profes-
jSional men of science, and now and
jthen among the ablest of them? It
is plainly not the "physical" but the
personal bent of Sir Oliver that is
responsible for the amazing conclu-
nons to which he commits himself.
bringing to their statement the
formulating skill which results from
the professional side of his men-
tality.
It would seem extravagant to speak
of a divided personality, because that
type of psychological chasm runs
deeper and invades the emotional re-
sponses in more pragmatic types of
conduct. And yet the emotional ele-
ment in the will to believe is the es-
sential common factor. In the pres-
ence of strong emotion in these
straining times, so tragically reen-
forced by the calamity of bereave-
ment on a world-wide scale, compos-
ure is difficult and reason seems a
frail support. To see life steadily
and to see it whole is no easy consum-
mation, when the most cherished
values have been trampled upon and
the closest ties broken. Unreason is
rampant in the political world; its
invasion of the scientific domain is
not surprising.
It is characteristic that the conclu-
sions for which such feeble and
pitiable evidence is advanced and ac-
cepted always appeal to a strong per-
sonal wish. Change the stake but a
little, and the intensity of the emo-
tion pales. One may discuss the hy-
pothesis of telepathy quite compos-
edly; the overwhelming evidence of
exact experiment is that it does not
exist. The presumption in favor of
it is part of the same predilection,
has the same anthropological flavor
as that in favor of the belief in spirit
intercourse; but its animus is closer
to the intellectual pursuit. It is less
hazardous to take a chance on its
occasional and sporadic occurrence;
and the most ardent believers in its
possibility use the telegraph no less
regularly when they wish to convey
messages with some reasonable as-
surance of their delivery. Telepathy
does not penetrate the emotional na-
ture and play havoc with the integ-
rity of social relations and the secur-
ity of a logical conscience. Naturally,
those inclined to credit "occult"
forces are hospitable to both hypoth-
eses; and it has been assumed by
some psychic researchers that spirits
may use telepathy, while Maeterlinck
ascribes the power to exceptional
horses. The satisfaction attaching to
such beliefs is real, and when not too
dearly purchased is an indulgence
which strong minds can stand. But
rationality is too precious an asset
to be complacently exposed to such
temptation.
The social menace is twofold : it in-
clines sober minds to speculate in
supernatural forces as though they
were regularly listed on the stock
exchange of sound beliefs; and it
sends all sorts and conditions of men
and more sorts and conditions of
women to visiting mediums and flirt-
ing with "ouija" boards, to the un-
dermining of their none too stable be-
liefs in the rectitude of nature and
the solidarity of human experience.
All the interests of sanity — medical,
educational, religious, and broadly
humanitarian — have a like stake in
opposing the momentary assault upon
rationality, and marshaling against
it the institutional resources of press
and pulpit and platform, academic
and civilian. The coinage of the
mind can not be debased with impun-
ity. At credulity's
booth are all things sold.
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold.
Joseph Jastrow
Correspondence
"The Human Cost of
Living"
To the Editors of The Review :
I am wondering, after reading the har-
rowing tale of "The Human Cost of Liv-
ing," whether John knows also that to
get his electric light a certain process
has to be gone through wherein women
have to sit in a room at the steady tem-
perature of 110 degrees?
This I have been told by one who pro-
fesses to know whereof she speaks. Their
shifts must be short — but even so!
On the other hand, I really should like
to know what John can do about it, and
whether, unless he can do something
about it, it is valuable or wise to depress
and even torment his soul with the
knowledge.
Can anything be done about it that
will not overturn our material civiliza-
tion? Of course these workers are real
heroes — every one with a heart for
humanity must realize that — but are
they not open-eyed and voluntary heroes?
They must know beforehand the risks
they are to take, and, therefore, consider
that the compensation repays them for it
228]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 43
— they can hardly be so altruistic as to
wish to give John his light simply
because he wants to have it.
Anyhow, what can John do about it?
B.
Arlington, Mass., February 18
[Mr. Colcord made it clear that much
can still be done to better the working
conditions of labor. Eds. The Review.]
Industrial Welfare Work at
Akron
To the Editors of The Review :
The "welfare work" of the Goodyear
Tire and Rubber Company is well worthy
of attention by students of industrial
conditions. A seven-storied clubhouse
as the centre of welfare activities is
nearing completion, at a cost of about a
million, it is said. The first floor pro-
vides a gymnasium 100 by 172 feet, and
a theatre seating 2,000, with stage 40
feet broad and of still greater depth.
The second floor has community room
for men, library, music rooms, etc., with
dormitory rooms for 300 men. There
are rooms for the "Industrial Assembly"
(Senate and House) on the third floor,
the greater part of which, however, is
given up to domestic science rooms, rec-
reational rooms, and dormitories, for
women. Of the remaining four floors,
one provides cafeteria service for 8,000
employees, and the other three house the
"Goodyear University" and the moving
picture department, where films eluci-
date the various processes of manufac-
turing rubber products. In the base-
ment are lockers, bowling alleys, rifle
ranges, etc. Two papers — a monthly and
a tri-weekly — are published for em-
ployees, but have also a wide circulation
outside.
The company aids and encourages em-
ployees to own their own homes, finan-
cing them on a system of monthly instal-
ments proportioned to wages or salary,
and at the end of five years the home
purchaser who has persisted gets a bonus
from the company of one-fourth the cost
of the property. The welfare work is
managed by a central committee of rep-
resentatives from each department of
the plant, working under a written con-
stitution. Some thirty organizations,
literary, athletic, musical, dramatic, etc.,
are under its direction. For outdoor
sports a large athletic field is provided,
and there is also a children's playground,
with instructors on duty during the
summer months, for the children of em-
ployees. A nursery is provided where
mothers working in the factory may
leave their babies under competent care
during the day.
If we were to ask one of the 25,000
Goodyear employees how so much work
of this kind can be accomplished, he
would probably explain it by "the Good-
year spirit," which a former official once
defined as "a feeling of satisfaction that
radiates through, and is of mutual benefit
to, both men and management, brought
about by the earnest efforts of both par-
ties to please and support each other."
This spirit is attained by cooperation, in
all things pertaining to the work of the
plant, from its general management
down, and the prospects are that its
achievements will be even greater in the
future, as the experience of years points
the way.
Grace Orb
West Lafayette, Ind.,
February 20
The High-Handedness of the
Anti-Saloon League
To the Editors of The Review:
The attempt of the Anti-Saloon League
to convey the impression that the citizens
who are protesting against the iniquitous
Volstead Law, or attacking the validity
of the Eighteenth Amendment, are coun-
tenancing law-breaking or disrespect for
the Government, is a clever trick, but one
that will not work. The Anti-Saloon
League is not yet the Government of this
country, though it thinks that it is.
There are millions of sober, temperate
men and women who believe that they
have a natural and inalienable right to
decide as to what beverages they shall
drink, and they resent the assumption
that a band of self -constituted reformers
have any right to dictate to them in a
matter relating solely to their personal
tastes. They favor action thoroughly to
test the validity of the Eighteenth
Amendment, and, if that effort fails, to
bring about its repeal. In so doing, they
are just as good, just as law-abiding, and
just as true Americans as the men and
women who have forced upon the coun-
try a measure that directly violates the
letter and spirit of the Declaration of
Independence, and, we believe, also the
Constitution of the United States.
The violent abuse with which the Anti-
Saloon League has assailed all those, in-
cluding the Vigilance League, who pro-
test against the action of Congressmen
and State legislators who had no man-
date from the people on this issue, is
proof that they are at least doubtful as
to whether on a popular vote they would
have received a majority. The test of
the true spirit of Americanism is loyalty
to the principle of personal liberty,
which is the cornerstone of American
political liberty, and it is a new and un-
American doctrine that would deny to
free citizens of the United States the
right to test the validity of a law or Con-
stitutional amendment, or to seek its
repeal.
E. J. Shriver
Chairman Executive Committee,
The Vigilance League
New York, February 28
The Power of the Refer-
endum
To the Editors of The Review :
The significance of the efforts of Gov-
ernor Milliken of Maine to line up the
States whose Legislatures voted to ratify
Constitutional Prohibition against Rhode
Island lies in the fact that out of 44
possibilities he has only announced 26.
Does this not indicate a cooling off of
sentiment in the remainder? The Gov-
ernor of Vermont not only refused to
cooperate but expressed the hope that
Rhode Island would win her case. In
Maryland a red-hot fight for "rescission
plus a referendum" is now in progress.
Moreover, the list of 26 includes sev-
eral States where the referendum has
been invoked. The Governor of Califor-
nia, for instance, may find that he has
joined the movement without the author-
ity of his people.
Before long the Ohio referendum case
will be decided by the United States
Supreme Court.
Provided it holds that the people are
part of "the Legislature," if the State
Constitution, as interpreted by the State
Supreme Court, so ordains, there may
result favorable decisions for a refer-
endum in California, Washington, Ne-
braska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Michigan,
and New Mexico.
These States, in that event, will not
have voted as yet upon Constitutional
Prohibition. For, if the people can
legally take part in the Legislative act, it
is not yet complete. So it is quite possible
that a considerable number of Americans
will have an opportunity, after all, to
record their views on Constitutional Pro-
hibition, even if the New York and
Massachusetts Legislatures now in ses-
sions refuse to grant referendums.
A decision by the Supreme Court in
the Ohio case may wake them out of
their trance.
As to Constitutional Suffrage, the
Oklahoma Legislature gave what is
called "a Legislative recognition" to the
referendum in that State by omitting the
"emergency measure clause" after the
lower house had first insisted upon it.
If, including Ohio and Oklahoma, the
suffragists succeed in obtaining 36 Statt
Legislatures for the amendment, will the
Secretary of State ignore the referen
dums as he did on Prohibition in issuinj
his proclamation? Or will fear of possi
ble legal complications as affecting thi
approaching Presidential election giv
him pause and cause him to reverse th
Prohibition precedent and await witl
patience the coming authoritative rulin;
on this question by the Supreme Court
The latter would seem to be the wise
course.
Optimist
New York, February 29
March 6, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[229
Book Reviews
Jeremiad and Jumble
Liberalism in America. By Harold Stearns.
New York : Boni and Liveright.
The Intellectuals and the Wage-Earners.
By Herbert Ellsworth Cory. New York :
The Sunwise Turn.
AMERICAN liberals are a rather poor
sort, according to Mr. Harold
Stearns. They acquiesced in conscrip-
tion; they allowed thennselves, either
through timidity or through the seduc-
tion of office, to become a part of the
war machine and to help along the mon-
strous evils that developed during the
period of conflict — hysteria, bitterness,
persecution, imposture, false propaganda,
and everything. Fortunately, however,
from Mr. Stearns's standpoint, not all
of the liberals were of this weak fibre.
A saving remnant of Sir Bediveres have
stood guard till now, and will stand
guard in the wild hour coming on. For
a tempestuous time is just ahead of us
— social revolution with a strong proba-
bility of much bloodshed.
It would be profitable to learn just
what this liberalism is and with what
groups it is to be identified. But the
reader will hardly be satisfied with what
is furnished him. Liberalism apparently
is not a doctrine, nor are doctrines its
primary concern. It is rather a "philoso-
phy" which embodies a "respect for the
individual and his freedom of conscience
and opinion," a "temper and attitude of
tolerance," a dependence upon facts and
upon reason as their interpreter. Still,
though it stresses reason, it does not
overlook "the drive of passion of con-
viction." It is a well-bred "philosophy."
"It is urbane, good-natured, non-parti-
san, detached. It is in a way frankly
'above the battle.' "
The observant reader will labor hard
in his effort to discover any existent
group in which these qualities are con-
spicuous. He will labor yet more strenu-
ously in his effort to find their ex-
emplification in Mr. Stearns's volume.
Liberalism, he will conclude as he turns
the last page, may be all of these things ;
but the volume itself is anything but an
exhibit in support of the thesis. Of tol-
erance for a contrary opinion, and of re-
' spect for him who holds it, there is
usually none. The things set down as
facts are, as a rule, either disputable
things or else the opposite of things
known by any well-informed person to
'be true. There is small exercise of rea-
son and much emotional excitation.
1 There is a piling up of aggressive as-
sertion, with sweeping and uncritical
generalizations. In some pages the
breathless rush of words mounts (or de-
scends, as you please) into' mere rant.
The temper throughout is violent, parti-
san, and belligerent. The book as a
whole is an interesting example of the
highly modern thing called intellectual
radicalism (though why intellectual it
is hard to say), with its swirl and rush
of extreme and unbased opinions on
every conceivable subject.
It is a serious intellectual weakness,
we learn on page 12, to be unfair to
one's opponent. This weakness, however,
is revealed more than once in the book,
and nowhere more strikingly than in the
treatment (pp. 111-12) of certain Ameri-
can Socialists who left their party be-
cause of its attitude on the war. Noth-
ing in the book reveals the slightest
understanding of the psychology of the
American people as a whole regarding
the war, or of the psychology of any
particular group — even his own. It is
but natural, therefore, that, in the fury
of his partisanship, the author can see
no "integrity in the possessor of an op-
posing view. The motive that deter-
mined Mr. Walling, Mr. Russell, and Mr.
Spargo was the "natural desire to be
quoted and popular." In Mr. Spargo's
case he goes further. The book "Bol-
shevism" seems to him, "on the face of
it, dishonest and unfair." The stupidity
and falseness of the first judgment, the
flippancy and ignorance of the second,
are obvious enough to any sincere per-
son; but the offensiveness of both is
made more glaring by reason of the
author's high-flown pretensions to the
alleged liberal virtues.
When one comes to the chapter on
"Leadership," one knows what to expect.
Whatever else it may contain, it is sure
to include a tribute to Nicolai Lenin.
The mind of emotional radicalism is
fashioned of contrarieties. When it
sings the praise of tolerance, of reason,
of respect for the individual, of free-
dom of conscience, speech, Fi"ess, and
assemblage; when it anathematizes mili-
tary conscription, the regimentation of
labor, government by executive decree
and the like, the observant reader
senses what is coming next. It is a
paean to that chief modern exponent of
intolerance, fanaticism, and repression,
Lenin. And sure enough, on the second
page of the chapter it begins. At first
it is a bit tentative and cautious — per-
haps an illustration of that liberal
"method of approach" elsewhere extolled.
"It [the war] produced practically no
leaders among the men of affairs except
possibly Lenin. . . . Even Clemenceau
has been, for all his stubbornness and
refreshing reactionary directness, more
of a dictator than a leader." So the
Clemenceau who ruled by a majority
of an elected chamber and who any day
might have been overturned was a "dic-
tator," while the Lenin who has ruled
by the bayonet is a "leader." But this
is only the beginning. A little further
on (pp. 204-5), and behold the apotheosis!
Of misstatements of simple fact there
are too many to chronicle. But one won-
ders just how, with the figures in front
of him and carefully set down, the author
can assert (p. 59) that the increase in
railway mileage in 1910 over the mile-
age in 1860 — a matter of eight times —
is "almost one hundred times." There is
something here to prompt the reader to a
curious speculation regarding the au-
thor's mental habits. But still more will
such speculation be induced by a con-
sideration of the author's readings from
history and his estimates of present and
future conditions. Nearly everything in
the United States is wrong, it appears,
and has been so for more than a cen-
tury. The Civil War was unnecessary
and could have been avoided had the
Abolitionists kept quiet. It has left in
its wake, moreover, a fearful train of
horrors — the negro problem. Federal
supremacy, the imminence of a national
smash-up, materialism, and a miscellane-
ous assortment of minor ills. The recent
war — at least America's participation in
it — was also needless, and its effect has
been only to pile Pelion upon Ossa in
the shape of further horrors. The hopes
aroused by it have all been dissipated,
and chaos lies just around the corner.
For the emotional radical to find every-
thing wrong in the present is conven-
tional enough ; to see the future doubtful
and threatening is not uncommon; but
to find past and present equally bad and
to forebode the future as worse is a new
turn in social meteorology. The author
must at least be credited with a novel
contribution.
With much tall talk, and no little
sentimentality, Mr. Cory offers his blend
of psycho-analysis, Bolshevism, I. W.
W.-ism, Federalism (otherwise Plural-
ism), Marxism, guild Socialism, benevo-
lent sabotage, and a number of revolu-
tionary kickshaws that happen to be
lying around. It is a marvelous synthe-
sis, piled high with a jumble of hetero-
geneous objects in the foreground and
with limitless horizons. It is the very
latest word in revolutionary divination,
and for a few weeks at least it ought to
close the field against rival entries from
the ultra-radical coteries.
True to type, it contains the conven-
tional revolutionary paean to liberty and
the complemental laudations of Lenin.
While it excoriates the sabotage of the
rascally bourgeoisie, it idealizes prole-
tarian sabotage as a thing "that moves
progressively towards truth, beauty,
love." The measures taken by demo-
cratic States to protect themselves con-
stitute repression; the far more vigorous
measures taken by the Soviet oligarchy
to maintain itself are merely instances
of "self-discipline." Fanatical absurdi-
ties of this sort crowd the volume. There
is to be said for it, however, that it is
free from the detestable smartness that
280]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 43
penades so much of current revolution-
ar>' print and that it shows evidences
of study, however preposterously the
gleanings from that study have been
applied. I hope that it will be widely
read; for there is need for all to know
what fantastic speculation is constantly
issuing from the revolutionary fold.
Among thinking persons the book will
prove its own best antidote.
W. J. Ghent
A Catholic Critic of Sinn
Fein
Some Questions of Peace and War, with
special reference to Ireland. By Rev.
Walter McDonald, D.D., Prefect of the
Dunboyne Establishment, St Patrick's
College, Maynooth. London : Burns and
Gates, Ltd.
PRACTICAL statesmen are not much
given to quoting books by profes-
sors. So there may well have been a
flutter of curiosity in the British Parlia-
ment when, during a recent speech
about Home Rule, Mr. Lloyd George held
up a little green brochure fresh from the
press, and insisted that honorable mem-
bers should listen to long paragraphs by
Dr. Walter McDonald. Honorable mem-
bers would no doubt prick up their ears,
and the suspicious among them would
fancy that these extracts had appealed to
the Premier less through their intrinsic
merit than through the support they lend
to the new Irish bill. Beyond doubt it
was good debating to cite a Maynooth
professor for the view that Sinn Fein
has garbled the records of the past, that
historically there never was any such
thing as an Irish "nation," united and
fully independent, and that the claim of
nationality, in the only sense which mat-
ters, can be advanced with at least equal
force on behalf of the Protestants in the
northeast comer of Ulster. Those who
might be stimulated to read the book
would find in it an indictment of the
prelates who said that no conscription
law could be rightly applied to the Irish
people without Ireland's consent, and
would be impressed by the fact that an
authorized teacher of candidates for the
priesthood will admit no strength in such
a plea. The sponsors of a bill which
aims to unite the warring extremists on
either side might naturally welcome the
help of a Catholic doctor of divinity who
says that Sir Edward Carson acted as
every statesman in Europe or America
would do in similar circumstances,
urged by a similar conviction.
But, although the book has these obvi-
ous uses of which so dexterous a de-
bater as Mr. Lloyd George has been quick
to avail himself, it would be most un-
fair to call its author a mere propa-
gandist for a party programme. In
what he has written there are some
notable features of permanent and timely
value for the elucidation of his subject.
As befits his profession, Dr. McDonald
summons his readers to look at Ireland's
case in the light of a history not only
sympathetic but impartial, and in the
light of an ethic not only insistent but
intelligent. Thus, the book is in part
historical and in part critical. Two
sources of mistake are vigorously ex-
posed : first, the idea that the Home Rule
problem can be solved by burrowing into
the past and claiming a restoration of
the "independent" status which Ireland
lost some centuries ago at the hand of
English invaders acknowledging no prin-
ciple higher than force; second, the idea
that an abstract formula like "self-de-
termination," used without any scrutiny
of circumstance or any forecasting of
probable results, is sufficient by itself to
define the regime under which a country
shall be governed. Both these specious
arguments have had immense vogue, and
Dr. McDonald subjects both to a mordant
analysis which does credit to his power
in the science of applied ethics. He
raises such points as these : whether Ire-
land ever was united and independent;
whether she has not many times re-
nounced, at least by implication, her
separate status; whether there are not
numerous cases in which "nationhood,"
with the approval of the whole world,
has been forfeited without "acquies-
cence;" what sort of community is to be
recognized as a national self, and whether
Ulster can not urge this right as against
the rest of Ireland just as fairly as Ire-
land can urge it against Great Britain.
Passing to some ethical issues of the
Great War, Dr. McDonald asks how those
who approve of wars waged in a good
cause can help approving also of a draft
law essential to military success. Since
it is wrong to begin a fight where there
is no chance of winning, must not those
who have willed the end will also the
means? How could Ireland escape this
common burden of the Empire unless her
people could plead conscientious objec-
tion to all war as such — a plea surely
among the very last which historical evi-
dence can make good ? She can not treat
the Imperial Parliament as a constitu-
tional authority when it legislates to her
own taste, and denounce it as a usurping
aggressor when it legislates otherwise.
All this, and much more like it, is ad-
mirably to the point. To exempt Ireland
from conscription was no matter of inter-
national right; it was a counsel of expe-
dience, in view of that deplorable es-
trangement for which British rulers in
days gone by are so much to blame, and
whose consequence British rulers of the
present have still to bear. That new
term, "self-determination," in which
President Wilson has crystallized the
mood of a new time, involved the in-
evitable risk of a word which may be
tortured in contradictory directions. It
is an excellent working formula, but
language is at best no more than approxi-
mately expressive, and no state in Eu-
rope has had its place fixed at the Paris
Conference by either historical inquiries
or abstract rules pursued to the complete
neglect of existing facts.
In his criticism of Sinn Fein Dr. Mc-
Donald has had no difficulty in proving
that the history on which his opponents
rely with such confidence is at best un-
certain, and that some general maxims
which they quote can quite as well be
used against them. But, what is really
more important, he makes it clear that
from neither of these sources, with
whatever degree of literal exactness they
may be understood, can an answer to our
present problem reveal itself. What con-
cerns us now is neither antiquarian re-
search nor manipulated abstractions, but
a resolute facing of comparative values
for the future.
Those, however, who base Ireland's
claim to self-government upon what
Matthew Arnold so well called the fact
of "the incompatibles" can endorse a
great deal of what Dr. McDonald has
said without agreeing with his conclusion
that the northeast corner has just the
same special right that belongs to the
country as a whole. Splitting up into
fragments can not go on indefinitely.
Level-headed Irishmen do not demand
Home Rule just because they are in-
fatuated about "historical nationhood";
they rather make much, sometimes too i
much, of historical nationhood because
they discern the need for Home Rule.
Not because Niall of the Nine Hostages '
ruled over a united Ireland in the fourth
century or Brian in the eleventh, and not
because the order established by these
ancient worthies was never willingly
abandoned by any generation of their
descendants, do they insist that a regime
which has broken down before our own
eyes shall be replaced by a regime which
can stand. Niall and Brian and the rest
are in truth as shadowy figures to nine-
tenths of the discontented Irish now as
they can be to Dr. McDonald, and the
practical solution is as little dependent
on his scientific denials as on Mr. Dc
Valera's sentimental enthusiasms about
that cloudland of romance.
Thus, when we speak of "incompati-
bles" we must face the incompatibiHtj
in the north. The question of Ulster is
like that of conscription, a problem o
expedience and generosity. One ma;
agree that the people of the northeas
corner, differing — some of them — fror
the rest of Ireland in race, creed, an^
mentality, are entitled to a legislatur
with local powers subordinate, as Di
McDonald himself insists, to a geucn
Irish Parliament in Dublin. But a cri
cial point arises in defining the princip!
on which the two areas are to be stake
out. Again and again Dr. McDonal'
March 6, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[281
speaks of Ulster "Protestants." Is it
possible that we are to apply just the
test of differing creeds? Is there to be a
barrier between contrasted faiths, such
as modern Europe has learned to look
upon with horror? Are we to stereotvpe
by statute that wretched antagonism to
which Ireland already owes so much of
her distress? Are we to provide a con-
stitutional guarantee for that persisting
religious hatred whose softening has
been so far the ideal of all good men? I
defy any one to find these homogeneous
districts of Ulster; for let us be thank-
ful that in every county there are those
of both creeds who will not admit with-
out a struggle this monstrous plan for
religious segregation. As a Protestant
Nationalist who spent thirty years of
his life in that northeast corner. I can
testify to having known multitudes of
my own race and creed who would be
glad of any other arrangement whacever
rather than one which would subject this
robust minority in Antrim and Down to
a purely Carsonite legislature in Belfast.
Are men like Lord Pirrie — a Protestant,
and for years by far the largest employer
of Belfast labor — to be refused the right
of self-determination? They differ at
least in that interesting point called
"mentality" from the swearers to a Car-
sonite covenant. Are scrutineers to go
from house to house, presenting the al-
ternative of the Westminster Confession
of Faith and the Decrees of Trent, so
that a zigzag line may be traced on the
basis of the worst possible distinction
for founding a polity? In Belfast alone
we should have many a case of two
women grinding at the same mill of
whom one should be taken and another
left. Mr. Lloyd George seems to have
some such holy inquisition in mind. Let
us hope that the good sense of Parlia-
iment will make short work of this in the
committee stage of the coming bill.
Fancy a proposal to harmonize Ontario
and Quebec by "breaking up some of the
present counties," putting the Protes-
tants of Quebec into an expanded On-
tario, and the Catholics of Ontario into
an expanded Quebec!
Dr. McDonald's answer, no doubt,
iwould be that cases of special hardship
are inevitable, for, as he says, "minori-
ties must suffer." Is not this a good rule
for Ireland as a whole? A northeast
legislature, based on that geography
which guides us in all other places, with
ipowers narrowly defined, and admitting
pf quick fusion with the legislature of
ithe south as the logic of events may
Iprescribe, seems to be the best practical
Way out for Ulster's difficulty. But there
nust be no gerrymandering of the areas,
^nd it does seem unfortunate that Dr.
McDonald should have bewildered us all,
jn a book otherwise conciliatory to con-
ititutional folk of every side, by denying
ill fault in Sir Edward Carson's scheme
of intimidating Parliament by arms. We
read with amazement that Sir Edward
was justified by the right of self-deter-
mination! Is it not Dr. McDonald him-
self who has taught us not to take that
rubric too seriously, not to apply it with
mechanical literalness, but to weigh and
estimate and compare consequences?
Who is to decide how the balance in-
clines? Sir Edward Carson says he be-
lieves only in the Imperial Parliament;
and did not this Parliament, after long
debate, decide the Home Rule act of 1914
to be fair? Dr. McDonald is fond of put-
ting conundrums to the Irish bishops;
can he say how Ulster could consistently
take up arms to defeat an act passed at
Westminster, alleging as her ground that
only Westminster can be relied upon for
just legislation?
Herbert L. Stewart
Among Our Americas
A Man for the Ages. By Irving Bacheller.
Indianapolis : The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Rebels : Into Anarchy and Out Again. By
Marie Ganz: In Collaboration with Nat
J. Ferber. New York: Podd, Mead and
Company.
The Mask. By John Cournos. New York:
George H. Doran Company.
IT has been the fashion for reviewers
to treat Mr. Bacheller with some-
thing like good-humored contempt, or,
let us say, affectionate condescension.
What we have held against him most,
probably, is that he has quietly ignored
certain inhibitions of the literary hour.
He has not chosen to assume, with the.
best people, that air of skeptical remote-
ness, that slightly lifted shoulder and
slightly wry smile, which now mark good
form in the humorist — except, of course,
the humorist of a shamelessly popular
order. Mr. Bacheller is not afraid to
wear his heart on his sleeve, sees no rea-
son for not being amiable and sympa-
thetic. He has not thought of concealing
either his old-fashioned smiles or his
old-fashioned tears from professional
reviewers or other superior and sophisti-
cated persons. And who shall say that
he may not have his appeal for the
"highbrows" of later generations ? There
are current signs of reaction against the
ultra-knowing and you-can't-fool-us atti-
tude of an already disintegrating Geor-
gian age. The best people are rediscov-
ering the Dickens whom the people have
never forgotten: rediscovering him as a
fellow-being whose "unabashed senti-
mentalism" marked his kinship with the
lave. It is suspected that you can't get
the most fun or even the deepest satis-
faction out of peering at life through
narrowed eyelids under a wearily toler-
ant brow. Perhaps the Latest Unpleas-
antness, with its revelation of primitive
faults, has driven us to seek also the
primitive virtues of swelling heart and
outstretched hand which the clever ones
have never been able to make quite
absurd.
It is possible and even tempting for
professional reviewers to get rid of a
book like this one of Mr. Bacheller's
with a tolerant smile and a shake of the
head and an "all very pretty, but too
pretty" wave of the hand. But it may
be as just and should be as profitable to
take the author's intention and lend our-
selves as far as we can to his effect. Let
us grant that he has been consistently a
sentimentalist in a period which has re-
fused its official countenance to sentimen-
talism. Beyond doubt he has rasped the
string pitilessly at times. And a genera-
tion which prides itself upon having out-
grown Mrs. Stowe and Bret Harte — yes,
and Mark Twain — has by no means with-
drawn its ear from the author of "Eben
Holden" and "D'ri and I." One thing it
could not if it would ignore — the
intensive Americanism of his mate-
rials and their handling. His portrait
of Lincoln, in this latest story, may be
accepted as neither better nor worse
than other idealized likenesses of that
great realist. His chronicle of the pio-
neering America of the thirties and for-
ties is a performance of real freshness
and power. We recall Hamlin Garland's
recent interpretation of the Westward
pioneers. With all its sympathy and
fidelity to detail, his picture was touched
with melancholy ; it presented the pioneer
as, on the whole, a pathetic though neces-
sary sacrifice upon the altar of civiliza-
tion. Mr. Bacheller's mood is character-
istically different. His pioneers escape
none of the hardships of their calling,
but do themselves in some sense realize
the promised land. Samson Traylor of
the mighty thews and the merry heart is
a true type and more than a type. The
obscure call which sets him upon a long
Westward trail from the Vermont vil-
lage of his birth to the Illinois village
of his destiny will not be denied. There
is an empire building in the West; he
must be there to help; and help he does,
with his thews and his laughter and his
shrewd Yankee brain. Nor does he fail
to share the prosperity of the new land.
. . . Lincoln is a figure already established
in the imagination of the world. Mr.
Bacheller could do no more than throw
it into relief against its natural back-
ground and give us some echoes of the
familiar voice. I shall remember this
book for its original portrait of Samson
Traylor and his fellow-pioneers rather
than for its capable projection of the
well-known features of Honest Abe.
Meanwhile the world has continued
flowing toward the Occident. Traylor's
West has become East and his East West
to new races of pioneers. Quite recently
a new literature has sprung up; a record
of the peoples who have left the known
trials of Europe for the vague blessings
of America; and of how they have fared
232]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 43
here. Two striking examples of this lit-
erature are before us at the moment.
Both are plainly documentar>' in charac-
ter, though cast in the form of fiction.
Both are stories of Jewish immigrants
and of what the New World does for
and to them. They have little else in
common. "Rebels" is a vigorous and
straightforward narrative; "The Mask"
is a lettered and sophisticated commen-
tary on certain facts put in evidence. As
its sub-title indicates, "Rebels" is not on
the whole a document of extreme radi-
calism— thanks, as it appears, to the
shocks of war. The story of Marie Ganz
has, in substance, been repeatedly told in
recent fiction. She is the daughter of a
Galician Jew who has come to America
to make a place for his wife and chil-
dren. He plies his pushcart alone until
he has saved enough to bring his family
over to his wretched corner in the
New York ghetto. There begins the
long struggle with hunger, cold, and
sickness, ignorance and the pitiless
law. The white plague of the tene-
ments presently carries off the father.
Marie, the oldest child, must leave school
to help her mother keep the family alive
and the poor "home" intact. Eviction,
the terror of the ghetto, is always mena-
cing. Somehow they rub along. Marie
grows up, makes friends among the
young revolutionaries of the city. Their
bitterness against want and against
riches expresses itself in all ways from
the preaching of the sober doctrines of
the old Socialism to the open waving of
the red flag of violence. Marie's initia-
tion comes about through her personal
experience in the sweat-shops of the
East Side. From a leader of strikes she
becomes an advocate of force. She tries
to shoot the younger Rockefeller as a
protest against the Colorado "atrocities,"
and against the capitalist system as a
■whole. Then comes the war. Her first
impulse is to side with the pacifists and
obstructionists, her former comrades.
But her chief friend, her "pal," an edu-
cated man, turns her thoughts and her
gratitude for the first time towards the
land that has, after all, in some measure
protected and developed her. She sees
the larger issues involved, and joins her
neighbors of the ghetto in their zealous
enlistment in the cause of America and
of the world. And, the war over, we see
her preparing to "go back into the old
fight to better the lives of our people, but
there is to be no more violence, no more
bitterness or hate." In this glowing
mood of service and of good hope the
narrative ends.
"The Mask" is of very different mould
and temper. Our immigrant here is a
Jew of the middle class. But he seeks
America as an asylum after his "better
days" are over. Chance and irony turn
him towards the "City of Brotherly
Love." There he finds no friendly hands
outstretched; there, as elsewhere, is a
ghetto in which his people may huddle
at their risk. There is to be encountered
a new poverty and a deeper squalor and
fresh humiliation at the hands of a free
people. Beyond free schooling for the
children, there appears none of the
boasted benefits of "the melting-pot."
The family, and despite his outward
Americanization, not least the boy, John
Gombarov, remain unmelted and unas-
similated. The boy, we gather (and here
the veil of the autobiographer is care-
lessly worn), is, in the long run, by no
means impressed with the superior cul-
ture or opportunities of "the new world."
Much of the story is told by way of frag-
mentary reports of the conversations, or
monologues, of the man whom years
later this boy has become. He then lives
in London, prefers London to all other
cities, discourses eloquently of her per-
fections. She is "the chastely outlined
queen, silver-girdled by the Thames, of
the kingdom of creative chaos, beside
whom Paris is an obviously beautiful
woman, and New York a parvenu and a
harlot." As for Philadelphia, she is "a
dowdy housewife, who might be charm-
ing and respectable if she did not so neg-
lect herself." John Gombarov, having
had neither beauty nor loving kindness
revealed to him in the "City of Brotherly
Love," has willingly proceeded from her
and from the America that contains her,
to a richer civilization on his side of the
seas. He has won wisdom from her:
"But that," he says, "is because the ex-
•perience came after my boyhood years in
the Russian woods, and the contrast made
America seem like a hell to me. Once
you recognize your environment as hell,
you can use that hell's fire to set your
imagination aflame. Hell is always im-
agination. It was only this clash be-
tween the inner and the outer world
which saved me. And in this clash the
wood god triumphed over Pluto." So
the wood god flutes it in a London res-
taurant, by the lips of one who has
learned in America and elsewhere to
wear "the mask." Gombarov's mask,
"with its subtle contours of repose and
irony," is, we gather, the best thing he
has won from experience.
H. W. BOYNTON
War and Discipline
A Private in the Guards. By Stephen Gra-
ham. London : Macmillan & Company.
THIS book, the work of a well-known
writer who served two years as a pri-
vate in one of the most rigidly disci-
plined regiments of the British army, has
fluttered the dovecotes of England not a
little, provoking lively discussion in the
press, the inevitable letters to the Times,
and sundry questions in the House of
Commons. The prevalent idea that Mr.
Graham meant it as a deliberate attack
on the British methods of military train-
ing is (we believe) quite mistaken. For
the miracle of the book is that the super-
sensitive author seems to have convinced
himself that the more or less "brutal"
practices he describes are essential to the
turning out of a good soldier. "The
sterner the discipline, the better is the
soldier, the better the army," is Mr. Gra-
ham's opening sentence. The attack, if it
exists, is on war and militarism in them-
selves, not on what Mr. Graham con-
ceives (erroneously, as we may hope) to
be their inevitable concomitants. And it
bears no mark of rancor.
Few readers of Mr. Graham's previous
books would have been astonished if he
had turned out a really conscientious
C. 0. ; fewer still will find it strange that
he was not among the volunteers in the
early stages of the war. He says of him-
self he was "of a Christian temperament
and more ready to be killed than to kill."
As a sergeant put it: "You're too soft."
When, however, the call came to men of
his age, he decided (doubtless after a
soul-searching struggle) that he could
take no step to evade the common lot of
British manhood. He chose, too, to take
his medicine in its bitterest form, join-
ing the Scots Guards, supposed to be the
most pitiless "factory" for breaking
down the civilian and building him up
again as a soldier. The training at
"Little Sparta" (Caterham) had in se-
verity probably no parallel short of
Potsdam. He steadfastly refused all op-
portunities of a commission or even of a i
lance-corporal's stripe.
An immense gulf seems to separate the man
who wrote from the man who shoulders the
rifle. It is as if he had died . . . and then
been born again as a soldier. Each new man
posted to the battalion is posted to the his-
torical and spiritual inheritance of the bat-
talion also . . . the spirit is born of many suf-
ferings and endless patience.
It would almost seem as if Mr. Gra-
ham's career in the British army was
really his first intimate contact with the
ordinary man of the twentieth century.
In his intercourse with his beloved Rus-
sian peasants he had certainly faced an
extremity of physical discomfort that
would have daunted most men ; but all i
this happened in a mystical twilight bor-
derland of primitive humanity where it
was possible for the poet to walk, head
erect, in a continuous atmosphere of
haze and glamour. Among the "Jocks"
he had to face the real thing. His funda-
mental antipathy to war led him (as it
has led so many others) to deny the pos-
sibility of any fine shades in the methodj
of carrying it on, and so (by a natura
step) to accept all the pitilessness oi
training as inevitable. His logic seem.'
to be that war is so unspeakably horribli
that horrible methods alone can make it:
instruments efficient. These "brutali
ties" he has probably tended unconj
(Continued on page 234)
March 6, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[283
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Far Away and Long Ago
Is an extraordinarily interesting record of the response
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284]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 43
(Continued from page 282)
sciously to exaggerate, taking (e. g.) a
too literal and serious view of the "con-
ventional" side of much of the vile lan-
guage used in handling recruits. Per-
haps, too, he misses some of its coarsely
"humorous" intention. Mr. Graham's
enthusiastic esprit de corps and almost
naive belief in the superiority of the
Guards facilitate his acceptance of their
extraordinarily ruthless system of train-
ing; but the success of other units,
trained on milder and more modem lines,
gives us some right to hope that this
phenomenal severity is merely a bastion
of outworn tradition. Records captured
on the field show that (at least in one
section and at one period) the Germans
ranked a Territorial Division as their
most formidable opponents, with Domin-
ion and Kitchener formations in the
second and third places. One would cer-
tainly like to believe that ultimate
success was in large part due to the
superiority of more humane and less
mechanical treatment of the private
soldier.
As a book this shows Mr. Graham at
his best — perhaps as a sadder and a
wiser man, who has added knowledge of
the common world to his insight into the
spiritual mysteries. The description of
the Joy Dance at Marchiennes, the spiri-
tual interpretation of military ritual,
the characterization of the various N. C.
O.'s, the march into Germany behind the
pipers, are all pure delight. Americans
will find many interesting references,
chiefly complimentary, to the American
members of the battalion. The author
has, of course, much to say of the Brit-
ish officer, the verdict, on the whole, being
favorable as to his gift of leadership
and his cordial understanding with his
men. He has no sympathy for the view
that he is really less useful than the N.
C. O. His remarks on the chaplains are
also significant.
As might easily be guessed, Mr. Gra-
ham's anomalous position somewhat puz-
zled his chums. Some of his officers had
read his books; he was entrusted with
the preparation of the Battalion Records ;
he gave lectures; he was called out of
the ranks to be presented to the King.
One barrack friendship was based on
the fact that the other man remembered
waiting on Mr. Graham at a fashionable
dinner. One day he sat at table beside
an English princess; the next he was on
sentry-go at Buckingham Palace, meas-
uring his to-and-fro marching by re-
peating Gray's Elegy — two lines up and
two lines back again.
Mr. Graham does not gloze over the
horrors of war, and some of his inci-
dents are gruesome indeed. There is no
flavor of Kiplingesque rhetoric about
him, but he can write that "no matter
what blunders our leaders made, the
common soldier always felt the Cause
was good." He has no illusions as to
where the real guilt lay ; he does not be-
long to the six-of-one and half-a-dozen-
of-the-other school. His account of how
the British hate of the German melted
away under the rays of peace is signifi-
cant.
"How do you account for it?" I asked the
sergeant. "If any hated the Germans more
rutlilessly than others, it was you." "Well, I
don't know; they just knock us off our Gawd-
damned feet."
The first chapter, on Discipline, is a
noble piece of English prose, well worthy
of general reading. It is hardly fair to
mutilate it by quotation, but this pas-
sage is characteristic:
If we had all understood Christianity as
Tolstoy understood it, Germany would have
won. If we had all been merely brave and
gone out to fight moved by the Spirit, we
should probably have lost. These facts we
knew, and aUhough the seeming defeat of the
ideal might have been more glorious and even
more serviceable to humanity as a whole than
the prolonged conflict, we chose to fight Ger-
many in Germany's way What our men
of all ages, professions, and temperaments had
to go through to become soldiers ! And then
how stern and choiceless the road to victory
and death I
J. F. M.
The Run of the Shelves
SURVEYING the welter of the world.
Professor Leacock says:
"This is a time such as there never was
before. It represents a vast social trans-
formation in which there is at stake, and
may be lost, all that has been gained in
the slow centuries of material progress
and in which there may be achieved some
part of all that has been dreamed in the
age-long passion for social justice"
(P 13).
The problem could hardly be more
succinctly or correctly stated. What we
call "Western civilization" has to find
some way whereby it may contrive to
retain the material fruits of the "indus-
trial revolution" and at the same time
establish a state of reasonable content-
ment on the part of the many stratified
constituent parts of the industrial or-
ganization. Such a state of contentment
can result only when it is founded upon
a general recognition that the existing
order corresponds to the dictates of
"social justice." It is manifest that we
are very far at present from entertain-
ing any such idea concerning the "exist-
ing order" — therefore the problem is to
discover wherein the "existing order" is
wrong and wherein we are wrong in our
ideas with regard to it. This is the sub-
ject of Mr. Leacock's book, "The Un-
solved Riddle of Social Justice" (Lane).
We are to-day in a position somewhere
between that of the "Manchester School"
and that representing the Socialist idea.
Professor Leacock rejects both the
"Manchester School" and "Socialism" as
exemplars of the ideal social order, the
former because it has demonstrably
worked badly, and the latter because it
will not work. "On either side," he says,
"is on the brink of an abyss. On one
hand is the yawning gulf of social
catastrophe represented by Socialism.
On the other, the slower, but no less inev-
itable, disaster that would attend the
continuation in its present form of the
system under which we have lived.
. . . Somewhere between the two lies
such narrow safety as may be found"
(p. 124). He sees certain things that
should be done. The state must see that
there is work for all who are able and
willing to do it, and society must bear
the burden of supporting the sick and the
infirm. Recognizing the moral value of
human personality. Professor Leacock
rejects Malthusianism in all its forms
and the extreme proposal of eugenics.
He demands for every child born into
the world equality of opportunity. The
principle of the minimum wage follows
logically upon that of a moral worth in
personality, as does that of legislative
regulation of labor hours. But "the
chief immediate direction of social effort
should be towards the attempt to give to
every human being in childhood ade-
quate food, clothing, education, and an
opportunity in life. This will prove to
be the beginning of many things." These <
words are the closing sentences of his ■
book.
It is sound common sense doctrine that
he preaches, and for that reason it will
be popular with but few people in these
days of emotional "thinking." The
Bourbon will curse him for a "radical,"
the radical will bark "reactionary!" at
him, the "scientific" person will scoff at
his notions of "moral worth" in human
personality. But, if the world does win
through, it may very well be in some
such way as that to which he points.
The latest number of the Paris semi-
monthly, the Mercure de France, offers
further evidence of the solid way in
which this interesting periodical, after
a thirty years' struggle, has finally es-
tablished itself in public favor, thanks
chiefly to the fine business capacity oi
its editor, M. Alfred Vallette, who sacri-
ficed his career as an independent
writer in order to devote all his tira<
and energy to the Mercure. Before 19K
each issue consisted of 224 pages, whicl
were reduced to 192 during the war; bu
henceforth, beginning with the curren
number, there will be 288 pages. M
Vallette states that though the Mereur
now offers the public about one-thir
more matter than its principal rivals i
France, it will continue, in the futur
as in the past, to do this at a cheapc
rate than these rivals.
March 6, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[285
New Issue
$2,400,000
The Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co.
Six Per Cent. Three -Year Secured Gold Notes
Daled December 1. 1919.
Due December 1, 1922.
Redeemable at the option of the Company, as a whole or in part, at any time on thirty days'
notice, at 101}^ on or before December 1, 1920, at 101 on or before December 1, 1921, and at
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The follovuing information is summarized from a letter signed by Mr. Charles D. Jones,
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Property : The Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company owns the gas and electric generating and
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capacity of 120,000 K. W. The Company is now installing and equipping a third unit of
30,000 K. W., which will give an installed capacity of 90,000 K. W.
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Earnings : Income applicable to interest charges is equal to over three and one-quarter times
the requirements on the total funded debt of the Company.
The Company has one of the longest dividend records of any corporation in the United
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62 Cedar Street
New York
Unlocking the Great
Lakes
rHE problem of opening a thorough-
fare from the Great Lakes to the
^a is one that has appealed to the imagi-
Ution of farsighted Americans and Ca-
lidians for several generations. It has,
I deed, been partially solved by succes-
ve enlargements of the St. Lawrence,
lelland, and Sault Ste. Marie canals, and
! the Erie canal and its branches, but
ie governing depth of the St. Lawrence
;nals is to-day only 14 feet, and of the
'ie 12 feet, while the draught of mod-
ern lake freighters now exceeds 20 feet,
and they are more than twice the length
of most of the existing locks. The exist-
ing canals on the St. Lawrence, and be-
tween the lakes and the Hudson, are, in
fact, only adapted to the smaller lake
craft and barges.
At Sault Ste. Marie, the Poe lock, and
what are known as the Third and Fourth
locks, on the United States side, and the
Canadian lock, have respectively lengths
of 800 feet, 1,350 feet, 1,350 feet, and 900
feet, and depths of 22 feet, 241/2 feet, 241/2
feet and 22 feet. The channels in St.
Mary's River have been excavated to 21
feet. The large lake vessels can, there-
fore, pass freely between Lake Superior,
Lake Huron, and Lake Michigan, and
improvements in the channels in the St.
Clair River, Lake St. Clair, and the
Detroit River, have also carried the deep
waterway down to the foot of Lake Erie.
Here Canada has at present a canal with
25 locks, each 270 feet long and with a
depth of 14 feet, and is now building the
Welland Ship Canal, which is to have 7
lift-locks each 800 feet long and 25 feet
deep, with provision for increase to 30
feet. With the completion of this canal,
the Great Lakes will be opened for large
craft from the head of Lake Superior to
the first rapids on the St. Lawrence.
236]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 43
There will then remain only the effective
enlargement of the St. Lawrence canals,
or the canalization of the river, to open
a way for large lake craft or ocean-going
vessels between Duluth and the Atlantic
seaboard, the Canadian Government hav-
ing already deepened the ship channel
below Montreal to 30 feet, and work now
being well advanced on a 35-foot channel.
At a public hearing before the Inter-
national Joint Commission in the sum-
mer of 1918, the Canadian Solicitor Gen-
eral urged on behalf of his Government
the desirability of the two neighboring
countries uniting in a cooperative scheme
of development of the Upper St. Law-
rence in the interests of navigation and
power, and shortly afterward two mem-
bers of the Canadian Cabinet went to
Washington to suggest similar action
directly to the United States Govern-
ment. Nothing was done at the time,
probably because of the overwhelming
demands of war emergency measures,
but in March, 1919, Congress requested
that the International Joint Commission
should investigate the practicability and
cost of creating a deep waterway for
ocean-going ships between Lake Ontario
and Montreal, and, after some negotia-
tion between the two Governments, the
whole problem has been now referred to
the Commission. This body, as noted in
a recent article in the Review, is com-
posed of three Americans and three Ca-
nadians, and is charged, among other
important duties, with the investigation
of just such questions as this, more or
less vitally affecting the interests of the
people of the two countries.
Public sentiment toward the proposed
development seems to be, on the whole,
rather markedly favorable. It is, perhaps,
obvious that this should be so in Canada,
although the long-standing agitation for
the development of an alternative route
to Montreal from Georgian Bay by way
of French River, Lake Nipissing, and
the Ottawa River still has many warm
advocates, and Western Canadians are
somewhat loath to support any project
that might interfere with the develop-
ment of the Hudson Bay route; but one
could not so readily anticipate a favor-
able verdict on the United States side of
the boundary for a waterway which must
necessarily find its outlet through for-
eign territory. The fact seems to be,
however, that outside the State of New
York, where public sentiment naturally
views with a degree of suspicion any
undertaking that might interfere with
the success of the State's own water
route to the sea, the feeling towards the
proposed deep waterway is remarkably
friendly. A very aggressive Association
to support the project was organized
some months ago under the name of the
Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Tidewater As-
sociation, with headquarters at Duluth;
it is said already to have the official
endorsement of fourteen States: Illinois,
Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana,
Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South
Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Colo-
rado, and Nebraska. A similar body
has since been formed on the Canadian
side under the name of the Canadian
Deep Waterways and Power Associatior;,
with headquarters at Windsor, Ontario.
At the meeting of the National Rivers
and Harbors Congress held in Washing-
ton in December the deep waterways
scheme was discussed very fully from
both the navigation and water-power
standpoints, and Mr. A. T. Vogelsang,
First Assistant Secretary of the Interior,
devoting himself entirely to the latter
point of view, brought together some
extremely interesting and significant
figures as to the incidental value of the
waters of the Upper St. Lawrence when
harnessed for the production of power.
It may be conveniently noted here that
the reference to the Commission contem-
plates four different general schemes or
methods of improvement: (a) by means
of locks and navigation dams in the
river, or, in other words, by canalizing the
river; (b) by means of locks and side
canals similar to the existing canals;
(c) by a combination of the two preced-
ing methods; and (d) by means of locks
and power dams. The engineers ap-
pointed by the two Governments will
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Another Letter
Winona, Minn.,
December 29, 1919.
THE REVIEW,
140 Nassau St.,
New York.
Gentlemen : —
We need such papers as this seems to
be. It is sane and dignified. Refutes very
logically some of the dangerous radical
stufif that is printed.
Wishing you a prosperous and long
career, I am
Truly yours,
$5 a year
Please mention The Review in writing to advertisers.
m
March 6, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[287
prepare plans and estimates for each of
these alternative schemes, and, on the
basis of their reports, supplemented by
information obtained at public hearings
and otherwise, the Commission will de-
cide and report which of these schemes
will be the most practicable, most eco-
nomical and in the best interests of the
people of the two countries.
As Mr. Vogelsang points out, the
State of New York on one side and the
Province of Ontario on the other are par-
ticularly interested in the possible de-
velopment of power from the Upper St.
Lawrence, while the other States border-
ing on the Great Lakes are more directly
interested in the creation of a deep
waterway which would enable ocean-
going steamers to ply freely between
lake ports and ocean ports.
To appreciate the probable importance
of a deep waterway from the Great Lakes
to the sea, it is necessary to have some
idea of the phenomenal growth of com-
merce on the Great Lakes. In 1850 the
entire volume of freight on the Great
Lakes amounted to about 25,000 tons,
carried by a handful of small-draught
vessels. In 1916 there were 37,852 pas-
sages of vessels through the Detroit
River, with a registered tonnage of over
76,000,000, carrying one hundred million
tons of freight of an estimated value of
something over $1,000,000,000. These
totals were slightly reduced in 1917 and
1918, owing to causes arising out of the
war, but there are already indications
that they will be greatly exceeded within
the next few years. What proportion of
i:his enormous traffic, many times greater
;;han that annually passing through the
Suez Canal, would find its way to and
'rom the seaboard by way of the St.
L,awrence is a moot point on which there
ire very wide differences of opinion. But
lis a large percentage of both eastbound
ind westbound traffic is at present sub-
ect to transshipment at Buffalo and
)ther ports on the lower lakes, there
vould seem to be more than sufficient
raffic available for a route that would
nable shipments to be made without
ireaking bulk to offset the cost of the
reposed waterway.
L. J. B.
' Books and the News
Mr. Wilson
yEW books are written about an
. American President which are not
ritten by admirers. The opponents ex-
ress themselves in speeches, in articles
i newspapers or periodicals; the books
■e written by friends. The bound vol-
jnes about President Wilson fill about
ilf a shelf in the average library, and
obably there is not one which he would
it read with pleasure. The same holds
true of the larger number of volumes
which have collected about Mr. Roosevelt.
He was subjected to attack which for
bitterness makes all that has ever been
said about President Wilson sound like
a symphony of praise, but only a trifle of
it got between the covers of bound vol-
umes. In two full shelves one may find
only one or two insignificant volumes of
abuse.
The following books about the Presi-
dent are all recent ; many of them are by
foreign writers. Campaign biographies,
and the faithful press-agent work of Mr.
Creel, are not mentioned:
H. Wilson Harris's "President Wilson"
(Headley Bros., 1917) is a little out of
date now, but it is interesting as an
English commentary upon American pol-
itics, and as a biography which has been
drawn upon by two or three other
writers, English and European. A.
Maurice Low can hardly be classed as a
foreigner; his "Woodrow Wilson; an
Interpretation" (Little, 1918) is a skillful
defense of Mr. Wilson's foreign policy.
A brief book, with one English view is
William Archer's "The Peace President"
(Holt, 1919). Daniel Halevy's "Presi-
dent Wilson" (Lane, 1919) has been
translated from the French by Hugh
Stokes. It represents a French opinion
probably more favorable than that of the
average European writer. A Swedish
admirer, who responds to the religious
appeal, is Lars P. Nelson, author of
"President Wilson; The World's Peace-
Maker" (Norstedt, Stockholm, 1919).
Two American books, both published
in 1916, when an election was approach-
ing, yet hardly to be called campaign
biographies, are Henry J. Ford's "Wood-
row Wilson; the Man and His Work"
(Appleton, 1916) and Eugene C. Brooks'
"Woodrow Wilson as President" (Row,
Peterson, 1916). Of these, Professor
Ford's is the more important; one of
the best biographies published up to
that time. Professor Brooks' is a fat
volume, fortified with Mr. Wilson's
speeches.
Professor George D. Herron wrote, in
1917, "Woodrow Wilson and the World's
Peace" (Kennerley), a series of essays
during the war, and, of course, without
reference to the Peace Conference. Mr.
Ray Stannard Baker, author of "What
Wilson Did at Paris" (Doubleday, 1919)
was formerly one of the writers whose
method in approaching the President
was to:
Weave a circle round him thrice
And close your eyes in holy dread.
But there is not so much of this in his
present little sketch. He makes such
statements as that the President con-
sulted freely with his advisers, but he
makes them calmly. It is the book of an
idolator, but it is an interesting book.
Edmund Lester Pearson
A Short History of Belgium
A
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It tells how Belgium became a nation
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Her Part In
The Great War
Written by a Belgian historian LEON
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INTRODUCTION TO THE
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By ARTHUR PEARSON SCOTT, As-
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It is a comprehensive explanation of the
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*2.00; postpaid, $2.15
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THE NEW ITALIAN SERIES
Edited by Ernest H. Wilkins. This is a
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238]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 43
What Theodore Roosevelt and the Kaiser talked about
ten years ago is told in the Colonel's own words, in the
March number of Scribner's Magazine. He calls the
Kaiser "A curious combination of power, energy, ego-
tism, and restless desire to do, and seem to do, things";
and adds, "there were many points in international
morality where he and I were completely asunder."
^ John Fox's last novel, "Erskine Dale — Pioneer," con-
tains a remarkable horse race in this number. ^ Gen-
eral Charles H. Sherrill recently visited Korea and
Shantung. He says in the March Scribner's that the
United States should try to see the Japanese point of
view. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson is portrayed sym-
pathetically by his very old friend. Sir Sidney Colvin.
^ The Turkish situation and Armenia are discussed by
Major E. Alexander Powell. ^ Professor Laughlin says
that a change in the state of mind of the laboring man is
necessary for a true solution of the Labor Problem.
Q Judge Stafford has an eloquent plea for the college
man in public service. ^ A country governed by United
States marines, Haiti, is pictured by Horace Ashton.
^ The stories in the March number of Scribner's Maga-
zine are by Leonard Wood, Jr. (a son of the General),
Gordon Arthur Smith, and Ralph D. Paine, all vigor-
ous, manly writers. ^ Henry van Dyke in his third
"Guide-Posts and Camp-Fires" in the March Scrib-
ner's discusses national and individual selfishness, with
a preachment about the unseen Silent Partner. ^ Dis-
tinguished writers deal with important subjects in all
numbers of Scribner's Magazine.
Please mention The Review in writing to advertisers.
THE REVIEW
Vol. 2, No. 44
New York, Saturday, March 13, 1920
.^1
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment 239
Editorial Articles:
'Idealism" at Its Worst 241
The Protest Against the Eighteenth
Amendment 242
Fighting the Symptoms 243
What Has Come of "Blood and Iron" 244
Welfare or "Hell-fare"? 245
What Constitutes a Poem? 246
Bolshevism in Holland. By A. J. Bar-
nouw 247
The Troubles of the "Politicians'
Union." By Edward G. Lowry 248
Poetry:
On Record. By Richard Burton 249
Germany's Future Relations with East-
ern Europe. By Dr. Paul Rohrbach 250
Organization in Scientific Research.
By James Rowland Angell 251
Correspondence 253
Book Reviews:
Roosevelt's Imperishable Youth 255
All Sorts of Adams's 255
War-Time Reactions 257
Lessons from the Progress of Science 258
The Run of the Shelves 259
Of Woodpiles. By Robert P. Utter 260
Music :
The Birthday of the Infanta— D'Er-
langer's "Aphrodite." By Charles
Henry Meltzer 261
Drama :
Problem-Plays in New York. By O.
W. Firkins 262
The Advertisees. By Weare Holbrook 264
Books and the News:
Turkey. By Edmund Lester Pearson 266
'T'HE President's letter to Senator
■■■ Hitchcock is interpreted on all
sides as designed to make the treaty
the paramount issue of the Presi-
dential campaign. But there is only
one way to make it the paramount
issue. If Mr. Wilson were him-
self the candidate, he could unques-
tionably keep it in the foreground
of people's thoughts. But even
then it would not be the control-
ling factor in the election. It might
be paramount among the declared
Issues, but there would be an issue
that would transcend all those con-
tained in any platform. That issue
would be the reelection of Mr. Wilson.
We find it impossible to imagine a
majority, or anything distantly ap-
proaching a majority, of the Ameri-
can people deliberately imposing upon
themselves another four years of
Wilsonian autocracy. The treaty
issue can not be paramount without
Wilson, because he alone can give it
life; and it can not be paramount
with him because he himself would
overshadow it. He would carry it
down to ignominious defeat, not be-
cause the people want to defeat it, but
because they have had enough of him.
CENATOR JOHNSON seems to
•^ have a real grievance against the
Minnesota primary law and its ad-
ministration. The law permits the
holding of a primary any time be-
tween the hours of 2 P. M. and 9 P. M.,
an arrangement amply elastic for al-
most any abuse which the secret pur-
pose of machine politicians might
devise. The Minnesota Republican
State Committee has set the Presi-
dential primary for the single hour
from 7:30 to 8:30 p. M., March 15,
with the gracious permission to
county chairmen to extend the period
an additional half hour. Senator
Johnson's comment is, "In plain lan-
guage this is no primary at all, but an
endeavor by the organization in con-
trol to disfranchise the Republicans
of Minnesota." The criticism in this
case is just, but it does not follow
that political juggling of this kind is
altogether responsible for the poor re-
sults, so far, of the. primary system.
In fact, this very juggling of so much
of our primary legislation is only an-
other proof of that lack of intelligent
popular interest in nominations with-
out which no primary system can ob-
viate the difficulty of getting the
right sort of men into public office.
nPHERE are welcome signs that the
-■- American Legion is making an
earnest effort to discover where it
stands on the "bonus" question. Just
as it was no solution of the matter
last November to put it up to Con-
gress to decide, so it is no solu-
tion of the matter now for Congress
to say in effect, "The country is
too poor to accommodate you just
now, but later on, when we have a
little more money to spend, you have
only to apply again, and then see
what we'll do for you !" The Legion
must decide now whether it is out
for itself (or, rather, whether it is
going to allow itself to be dominated
by an element which is out for all it
can get for itself) , or prepared wisely
and energetically to strive for the
realization of the fair promise which
presided over its inception. Only if
it clearly chooses the latter course
will its organization be anything but
a menace to the country. Already, it
may be noticed, the chief priest of
high protectionism in the House is
of all people the most convinced that
the "bonus"— the whole "bonus"—
must and will be granted at once.
'pHERE is nothing like figures to
■*■ give an air of finality to an argu-
ment, and nothing like figures to trip
their own proponent up if not used
with becoming care. We find the fol-
lowing sentence in last week's Nation,
concerning the return of the railroads
to private management :
According to Mr. George P. Hampton, direc-
tor of the Farmers' National Council, there
must be an increase in freight rates of from
25 to 40 per cent., and that will result in an
increase in the cost of living of about $200 a
year per family.
Whether this $200 represents the
figuring of the Nation or of Mr.
Hampton, is a little uncertain, but the
Nation apparently accepts it, in any
case. Let us look at it: $200 per
family means a total increase in liv-
ing cost of about $5,000,000,000. Set-
ting off one-third for extra profits
taken by dealers on the score of in-
creased freights, the freight carriers
would have $3,333,000,000 left, in
round numbers, or just about what
the figures of the railroad administra-
tion give as the grand total of freight
receipts for 1919. To make the
Nation's- figures fit into the actual
facts of freight receipts, we must as-
240]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. U
sume that for every dollar added in
freight charges, there would be added
a charge of about five dollars to the
consumer. But what pleasure would
there be in editing a journal of opin-
ion, and upholding unlimited freedom
of speech, if one were not free
enough to make such an assumption
as that?
TF strong measures against the
■'■ Turks are justified by the recent
massacres in Marash, there should
never have been any question of len-
iency towards them. For the late
outrages were only child's play com-
pared to the wholesale extermination
of more than half the Armenian
people which was perpetrated during
the war. This policy of fits and
starts, determined by Turkish provo-
cation and submission rather than by
principles of international justice, is
bound to defeat the ends which the
Entente professes to have in view.
The Turks, from long experience,
know exactly how to steer their de-
vious course against these intermit-
tent blasts of western indignation.
They will humbly submit and promise
to mend their ways, well knowing
how easy it is to placate a group of
Powers which desire nothing better
than to be placated, as each is afraid
lest the problem how to dispose of
Constantinople after the expulsion of
the Sultan should lead to interna-
tional friction more dangerous to
the rest of Europe than any patched-
up compromise with the Sublime
Porte.
fpHE article by Dr. Paul Rohrbach
■■• which appears in this week's issue
of the Revieic is valuable and illumi-
nating, not only because it gives the
German point of view, but because it
sets forth a number of fundamental
facts of the political and economic
situation in Eastern Europe that can
not be dodged, despite the unpleasant
conclusions to which they point. Un-
erringly he tears the mask from the
legend of the Greater Poland and
shows how completely doomed to fail-
ure must be the efforts to build up a
buffer state between Germany and
Russia within the boundaries of the
Poland of 1772. Such a state would
contain elements of weakness of such
a character that they would undoubt-
edly lead eventually to a Fourth Par-
tition.
r\R. ROHRBACH'S analysis of the
■■--' present attitude of Russians
toward Germany is undoubtedly accu-
rate. On the other hand, his inter-
pretation of certain other factors in
the Russian situation shows some
noteworthy misinformation. He ex-
aggerates the proportion of non-Rus-
sian elements in the Russian Empire
and the extent of their separatist
nationalism. Especially is this the
case with reference to the Ukraine.
His conclusion that Great Russia,
shorn of her border Provinces, will
continue to exist as a sort of peasant
republic seems to be the result rather
of his desire than of a careful study
of the history and psychology of the
Russian people. In this matter, the
writer falls into the all-too-common
error of assuming to voice the senti-
ments of the inarticulate peasant
masses. What is only too true is that
the Balkanization of Eastern Europe
has created a series of petty States
which, while they may maintain the
outward semblance of political inde-
pendence, must, sooner or later, in-
evitably fall under the economic
domination of Germany.
Recalling Dr. Rohrbach's profound
studies of Russia, and the fact that he
has in the past been one of the great-
est exponents of German expansion,
particularly in the East, one is led to
inquire whether he is entirely candid
in the statement of his belief that a
Russia now broken up will not regain
its unity and power. He can scarcely
have recanted so quickly, and his
present views can not be regarded
apart from his well-known and fre-
quently expressed opinions. Dr.
Rohrbach knows better than anyone
else that only a powerful Germany
could overcome the natural forces
making for cohesion in Russia. Find-
ing herself incapable of achieving this
dismemberment by force, does it not
seem likely that Germany will at-
tempt it by keeping alive the fires of
dissension and separatism? The
propagation of such ideas in the
Allied countries, therefore, may not
1
be wholly foreign to Dr. Rohrbach's
purpose.
JPXCELLENT progress has been
^ made by the Woman's Roosevelt
Memorial Association in the work of
restoring, and opening to the public
use, the Roosevelt birthplace at 28
East 20th Street, New York. The
house, together with number 26, next
door, has been purchased, and plans
for making of the two a single monu-
mental building which shall perpetu-
ate the atmosphere of an unpreten-
tious city home of the middle of the
last century are well under way. Be-
tween the spacious Colonial mansion
of George Washington and the pio-
neer cabin of Lincoln there is room
in America for such a shrine as this ;
not a place for losing oneself in a
reverent "O altitudo!" — Roosevelt
himself would be the last to desire
that — but a place amid whose books
and portraits citizens of all ages may
take heart of grace to search yet more
deeply into what it means to be an
American. Some money is still de-
sired, to complete the work of resto-
ration and to provide for mainte-
nance. Opportunities for the country
to purchase so much potential good
for so little present cash are not
many. Contributions may be sent to
the Woman's Roosevelt Memorial As-
sociation, No. 1 East Fifty-seventh
Street, New York.
A N interesting and novel suggestion
-^*- in President Lowell's recent an-
nual report was that of the inaugura-
tion of some system by which teachers
at Harvard may be relieved of at
least a part of their classroom duties,
for a year or more, for the express
purpose of preparing for publication
the results of their special studies.
He gives warning, however, in mak-
ing the suggestion, that the number
thus helped to write must be very
limited, and that the humanly imper-
fect wisdom which is alone avail-
able for making selections is sure to
result in many disappointments. Fur-
thermore, resources are not limitless,
and if departments insist on multi-
plying courses, relief from teach-
ing in order to promote production
will hardly be a possibility.
March 13, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[241
"Idealism" at its
Worst
rpHERE is a great deal of fine senti-
■■■ ment in Mr. Wilson's letter to
Senator Hitchcock. There is even a
great deal of really moving language.
But there is not a trace of recognition
of the duty w^hich is laid upon him by
the situation that he actually con-
fronts. Not one ray of light does the
letter shed on the question whether
our country and the vv^orld would be
better off if the treaty were ratified in
the only way in which it can be rati-
fied, or if the treaty were rejected.
And that is the only question which,
as President of the United States in
this month of March, 1920, he is
called upon to decide.
The assertion is, indeed, made with
an abundance of rhetorical emphasis
that America would do better to keep
out altogether than to go in with res-
ervations. But on what kind of
grounds does the assertion rest?
There is not one of them that can
stand a moment's calm examination.
iThe President tells us, for instance,
ithat he is compelled to act as he does
; because otherwise he "could not look
the soldiers of our gallant armies in
the face," since "it was to this cause
the cause of Article X !] they deemed
'hemselves devoted in a spirit of cru-
saders." Everybody knows that, so
ar as regards all but a minute frac-
ion of our two million fighting boys,
his is pure balderdash.
' Take, again, what the President
s about the attitude of the Allied
ions :
must not be forgotten. Senator, that this
'e constitutes a renunciation of wrong am-
n on the part of powerful nations with
m we were associated in the war. It is
;o means certain that without this article
such renunciation will take place.
body proposes to cut out Article X,
far as "renunciation" is con-
.-^rned. In so far as the Article pro-
'ides that the members of the League
lall respect the territorial integrity
nd political independence of all its
embers, no reservation that has
n proposed in the Senate weakens
le obligation in the least. It is only
relation to the means to be used
this country to preserve that in-
i ity and independence that the res-
ervations are of any effect. If the
Allied Powers are really on the watch
to fly at one another's throats, as the
President so strongly implies, and if
their pledge to refrain from so doing
is in itself worthless, the degree of
protection afforded by a blanket
promise that the United States will
force them to desist — a promise which
the President admits must depend for
its performance upon the will of the
American Congress at the time —
must certainly be but a slender reli-
ance. Our country's participation in
the League— Article X, or no Article
X, reservation or no reservation —
would, in the nature of things, be a
mighty factor in averting such evils ;
but if it were not so in the nature of
things, it would not be made so by
the presence or absence of a phrase.
Mr. Wilson says that, with Article
X weakened, the League of Nations
"might be hardly more than a futile
scrap of paper, as ineffective in op-
eration as the agreement between
Belgium and Germany which the
Germans violated in 1914." Surely
this is a most unfortunate parallel.
It was not owing to any defect in the
wording of the treaty guaranteeing
the neutrality of Belgium that that
document became "a futile scrap of
paper." If the League is not backed
by the spirit of the nations that com-
pose it, the letter of the Covenant
will be quite impotent to make it a
potent reality.
The President is not content with
failing to say a single word calcu-
lated to illuminate the subject, or to
clear up the practical difficulties of
the situation that confronts him. He
hits right and left at real and imagi-
nary enemies. He tells us that "every
imperialistic influence in Europe was
hostile to the embodiment of Article
X in the Covenant of the League of
Nations." This will be news to at
least the majority of the American
public. In Mr. Ray Stannard Baker's
panegyric on "What Wilson Did at
Paris," a little book chiefly devoted
to showing the difficulties which the
President overcame, we find nothing
about opposition to Article X. Was
England opposed to it ? Was France ?
Did either of these countries, or any
of their statesmen, entertain so des-
perate a longing to snatch territory
from their fellow members of the
League that for the sake of the op-
portunity to do so they wished to
refuse the protection of their own ter-
ritories which Article X undertook
to provide?
Coming nearer home, Mr. Wilson
indulges not only in a peculiarly con-
temptuous characterization of reser-
vationists in general, but, towards
the end of his letter, takes pains to
make an especially vicious dab at the
mild reservationists. "I can not un-
derstand," he says, "the difference be-
tween a nullifier and a mild nullifier."
Such is the recognition which he
gives to a group of men who have
labored in season and out of season
to save the treaty with as little im-
pairment as possible. Both from the
standpoint of intellectual merit and
from that of a respect for the decen-
cies of human relations, there is in
this short and easy dismissal of the
mild reservationists a strong re-
minder of the President's recent be-
havior toward Secretary Lansing.
The President does not absolutely
declare that he will reject the treaty
if the Senate ratifies it with reserva-
tions that are not to his liking. He
comes as near that as possible with-
out actually saying it. It is conceiv-
able that the letter is a last desperate
effort to preserve Article X without
serious reservation, and that having
made this effort the President will, if
the treaty comes before him, still
regard the question open. This seems
extremely improbable; yet it is not
absolutely out of the question. If the
Democratic Senators could rise to the
height of their duty, they would do
what they think is right and let the
President shoulder the responsibility
for the final fate of the treaty. We
earnestly hope that this may yet hap-
pen, improbable as it seems. If it
does, Mr. Wilson will be confronted
with one of the most awful responsi-
bilities that any man has ever faced.
May that love of righteousness, and
that lofty sense of duty, which he
constantly protests so solemnly, pro-
tect him, not against the \\ickedness
of the outside world, but against the
promptings of his own arrogant self-
sufficiency !
242]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 44
The Protest Against
the Eighteenth
Amendment
THE protest against national pro-
hibition by Constitutional Amend-
ment has begun to assume large
dimensions. The first important sign
of it was the Ohio election in Novem-
ber. Shortly after this came Rhode
Island's manful and impressive asser-
tion of the fundamental principles of
our Federal Government. Governor
Edwards' aggressive campaign, vig-
orously followed up after his installa-
tion in office, next attracted the atten-
tion of the country. In his message
to the New York Legislature at the
beginning of this year. Governor
Smith gave a leading place to his pro-
posal of a State referendum on the
subject. The town elections in Ver-
mont and Massachusetts last week
showed, as many town elections in
New England had done in November,
the existence of a strong sentiment
of dissent from the prohibition re-
gime. And finally there comes the
prospective inquiry at Albany into
the methods of the Anti- Saloon
League, which bids fair to focus the
attention of the nation upon an aspect
of the story which may not unreason-
ably be accounted as important as
any.
To the Review these signs that the
nation is awakening to the serious-
ness of the issue, even if too late for
any immediate practical result, are
extremely welcome. In one of the
first editorials that appeared in this
journal, we gave expression to our
sense of the injury that had been
done to the Constitution of the United
States, and to the whole spirit of
American institutions and American
life, by the adoption of the Eighteenth
Amendment. It may not be amiss to
quote here one short passage from
that editorial :
Unlike many of our State Constitutions, the
Constitution of the United States has hitherto
been the embodiment only of those things
which are essential either to the marking out
of the structure of our Government or to the
preservation of fundamental human rights.
Such an instrument can command, and
throughout our history has commanded, the
loyal devotion of a great people. It is in-
conceivable that this feeling could have been
built up for a document which undertook to
impose upon the people in permanency — to
withdraw from the operation of the ordinary
processes of majority rule — specific statutes
undertaking to control the daily lives of a
hundred million people scattered over the ex-
panse of a continent. As much as one pro-
vision can do to lower the standing of the
Constitution of the United States, the Eight-
eenth .'Amendment has done. If there were
nothing else to be said against it, this alone
would be an objection whose gravity can hard-
ly be overestimated.
When Rhode Island entered her suit
before the Supreme Court we felt
that, even if her action accomplished
no juristic result, it would do "an
important service in at least showing
the country that the Eighteenth
Amendment was not being accepted
without serious protest." To our
mind the most distressing feature of
the whole story of that amendment
was the manner in which it was put
through — the country standing idly
by, as if this were routine legislation,
instead of the most vital change in the
character of our institutions since
their formation, and one which only
a few years ago every normal Ameri-
can would have seen to be wholly
repugnant to their spirit. In con-
nection with Rhode Island's protest
we said:
Not since the formation of the Union has so
gross an injury been done to the character
of American institutions. For the injury has
been threefold. It has struck a blow at the
very life of the idea of State autonomy in State
affairs, and has made easy the path of every
agitation that may arise in the future for the
concentration at Washington of power over
any matter of local concern which the itch
for regulation may seize upon as its next
victim. It has swept away whatever was left
of authority in the idea of the liberty of the
individual to lead his own life in his own
way, subject to respect for the right of others
to do likewise. And last but not least, it has
immeasurably lowered the standing of the Con-
stitution of the United States by imbedding
into its substance a mere police regulation,
and entrenching it behind those safeguards
which were designed for the preservation of
the nation and the protection of the essentials
of liberty.
Some very good people say that it
is wrong to protest. The amendment
having been adopted by Congress and
the requisite number of States, they
urge, it ought to be quietly accepted
by all good citizens. To the testing of
its validity by the Supreme Court,
they of course do not seriously object ;
but beyond that, they insist, nothing
should be done. In so far as these
objections relate to any unlawful
practices we entirely agree with the
objectors. But vigorously to subject
to every lawful test the validity of
the amendment and of the laws en-
acted for its enforcement, we con-
sider to be not only the right, but
the duty, of those whose convictions
are like ours. Nor is that all. The
principles themselves of which the
amendment is a violation should be
asserted and reasserted on every le-
gitimate occasion. It is a misfortune
to the country that this issue should
be injected into our national politics
at all ; but the blame for that misfor-
tune rests upon those who, in their
fanatical pursuit of a single object,
were regardless of all other consid-
erations, and upon those who either
through thoughtlessness or through
supineness allowed them to nave their
way.
Many opponents of the Eighteenth
Amendment have laid chief stress
upon the claim that it is not approved
by a majority of the American people.
This is a point which, so far as we
can remember, the Review has never
so much as mentioned, and certainly
one upon which it has laid no stress.
Much might be said of the way in
which Congress, and Legislature after
Legislature, has acted upon this great
question. In a large number of in-
stances members voting in the af-
firmative have reflected neither their
own convictions nor any mandate
from their constituents. • But that is
not the main point. It matters not
whether fifty-one millions or forty-
nine millions of the people of the
United States are opposed to drink
We should consider it just as wronj
for fifty-one millions as for forty
nine millions to impose upon tb
whole people of the United States
and to imbed into their organic law
this iron rule.
If we are to remain a free peoplt
the majority must instinctively fe(.
that there are some things which
has no right to impose upon t\
minority. There have unquestionab!
been times when a majority of tl'
voters of this country have felt, (
could with a little agitation have bet
made to feel, that the Catholic Chun
was a terrible danger to the natiO;
Of those who have been of this mil I
a large proportion have been p(f
sessed with the conviction that ts
Catholic Church was profoundly i-
imical not only to the temporal but l>
March 13, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[243
the eternal welfare of the people. No
anti-Catholic movement, however —
though there have been many of them
— has made great headway. The
First Amendment to the United
States Constitution, the amendment
protecting religious freedom, was a
recognition at once of the possibility
of such attempted proscription and of
its wrongfulness ; but it would be a
mistake to suppose that our chief pro-
tection from such evils has been in
the written injunction against them.
It has lain in the instincts and tradi-
tions of the people themselves. But,
such as it is, the protection of the
First Amendment will, as our expe-
rience with the enactment of the
Eighteenth has shown, be swept away
easily enough by any great tide of
popular prejudice, real or factitious,
if we lose our sense of the rightful-
ness of those restraints which the
majority should gladly and of its own
free will respect.
There is one more aspect of the
case upon which it is important to
speak at this particular juncture.
The investigation of the Anti-Saloon
League at Albany may amount to
nuch or little; it may clear the
League of the specific accusations
nade against it, or it may confirm
hem. All this remains to be seen.
But everybody knows that, whatever
he precise character of the methods
)ursued by the League, their effect
las been intimidation, moral and
olitical, on a grand scale. Its agents,
nd especially the most conspicuous
if them, William H. Anderson, have
|onstantly flaunted in the faces of
jiiose who opposed, or those who hesi-
lited, the power of the churches as
leing the foundation of the power of
le League. Anderson himself has
■ted and spoken like a ruffian. He
IS not disguised the terrorist char-
pter of his tactics. It was not upon
|?rsuasion of the minds of legisla-
rs, but upon the threat of evil con-
.quences to themselves that he
"iefly relied for the attainment of
end. Unless the good people of
Y churches, for whom he has pro-
Rsed to be spokesman, believe in the
(ctrine that the end justifies the
' 'ans, or unless they are blind to the
i)ral degradation which submission
to such threats involves, they can not,
in so far as he has truly had their
backing, absolve themselves from the
guilt of having helped to bring about
what they regard as a good end by
abhorrent means.
It is not the first time that good
people — the good, religious people of
a whole country — have done such a
thing. An infinitely more intense
religious fervor swept all England
into a frantic agitation of which the
leader was an infinitely worse ter-
rorist. Between the zeal of the pro-
hibition campaign and the frenzy of
the "Popish plot" crusade there is
only the resemblance that there is
between a headache and a raging
fever. Between the terrorism of
Anderson and the bloodthirsty crimi-
nality of Oates there is only the
resemblance that there is between a
misdemeanor and a frightful crime.
But all of Protestant England was
swept into the tide of the Popish plot
madness. Those who think that the
Eighteenth Amendment must in-
fallibly be right because all the "good
people" are for it, would do well to
think of the error into which the good
people of England fell, with far
greater unanimity, in the days of the
Popish Plot and Titus Oates.
Fighting the Symp-
toms
The proposed statute that will make hoard-
ing unlawful is aimed to prevent the with-
holding from the market of necessary food-
stuffs and also the destruction of food when
the purpose of destruction is to enhance the
price or restrict the supply.
THIS sentence from a special mes-
sage sent by Governor Smith to
the New York Legislature is typical
of a great deal of the well-intentioned
but futile effort that has been made
for many months to bring down
prices, or "the cost of living." With
the last part of it no fault can be
found. The destruction of food for
the purpose of enhancing its price is
a practice which, in so far as it may
exist on a large scale, it would be per-
fectly proper for the law to repress.
That it does exist on a large scale
we have seen no trustworthy evi-
dence; but this is simply a question
of fact. On the other hand, the idea
that "hoarding" should be made un-
lawful rests on an error of principle.
There are, indeed, some kinds of
hoarding which it may be to the pub-
lic interest to forbid; but ordi-
nary hoarding of foodstuffs, by per-
sons whose business it is either to
produce or to buy them for the pur-
pose of selling at a profit, is a process
which it is to the public interest to
permit to take its own course.
There are two types of hoarding,
extreme opposites of each other, which
may constitute a serious public evil.
Where there is monopolistic control,
or an approach to it, the withholding
of supplies from the market may be
so managed as to give to the manipu-
lators an extortionate profit which
could not otherwise be obtained.
This evil, in so far as it exists, should
be attacked through the means which
the law provides for the prevention
or the curbing of monopolies. At the
other extreme there is the possibility
of hoarding for private use, a prac-
tice which may conceivably result in
the withholding from consumption,
at a time of real or supposed scarcity,
of large supplies when nothing in the
condition or prospects of the market
justifies such withholding. When
there is reason to fear that such a
thing will happen on a sufficient scale
to be of serious public concern, regu-
lations like those which from time to
time have been adopted in regard to
the sale of sugar to consumers are
desirable and efficacious.
But it is to neither of these ex-
tremes that the agitation against
hoarding is usually directed. It is
aimed simply at hoarding as such;
and it is not only useless, but posi-
tively injurious. The man who with-
holds supplies from the market at a
given time because his trained judg-
ment leads him to believe that the
price of the commodity in question
will be higher at a future time, as a
natural result of the free play of
supply and demand, is doing not an
injury but a service to the public. If
his calculation is correct, he will
make his profit by selling what he
has withheld, at a price higher in-
deed than he could have got in the
first instance, but lower than the
price which, had he not previously
244]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 44
withheld a portion of the supply,
would have prevailed in the market
at the time of still greater scarcity
when he makes his sale. In the case
of perishable commodities, it is true,
the consideration of actual destruc-
tion of them comes in and may justify
special measures. But this must be
regarded as the exception and not as
the general rule. Judging from the
newspaper summary of the bill to
which Governor Smith refers, that
particular bill appears to be care-
fully drawn, and not in violation
of the principle we have laid down;
but many bills, and many administra-
tive acts, have ignored that principle,
and popular opinion is in line with
Governor Smith's apparent belief
that it is a good thing simply to
"make hoarding unlawful" and to
"prevent the withholding from the
market of necessary foodstuffs." It
is much safer for the public to take
the chances of injury from the mis-
calculations of professionals who, if
they hoard unnecessarily, do so at
their peril, than from the mistakes
of legislators who by a cast-iron rule
prevent hoarding which may be emi-
nently desirable.
The great source of relief to which
we must look, in all those matters
that press most heavily upon us in
these days of high cost of living, is
the increase of supply, the increase
of production. To strike at the symp-
tom when and where we see it may
afford a relief to our feelings, but
it does nothing toward effecting a
cure. On the contrary, it is very apt
to aggravate the disease. The attempt
to fix the price of milk is a conspicu-
ous instance of this vain endeavor
to get rid of the trouble by fighting
the symptoms. If the distributers
are charging extortionate rates
under cover of monopolistic control
of the field', something ought to be
done about that ; but, though the sub-
ject has been up for years in the
State of New York, and though every
opportunity has been given for ex-
posing the facts, it has not yet been
shown that the profits of the dis-
tributers constitute any considerable
percentage of the price that con-
sumers have to pay for milk. Re-
cently the attack has turned largely
toward the farmer producers; but
here, too, the corresponding facts, at
least so far as public knowledge is
concerned, are conspicuously absent.
Simply -to decree lower prices, with-
out any assurance that the requisite
amount of milk is going to be pro-
duced and delivered at those prices,
is to scratch the scab in the hope of
healing the wound.
The same kind of thing has been
going on in regard to the housing
situation. It is all right to prevent
sharp practices by which individual
landlords, or go-betweens, take ad-
vantage of the ignorance, or the
exceptional difficulties, of particular
tenants; no doubt many individual
cases of injustice and hardship have
been thus prevented or relieved. But
as a means of lowering rents in gen-
eral, profiteer-hunting is worse than
useless. If 'the supply of housing con-
tinues to be short of the demand
at existing prices, landlords will get
higher prices, because there will be
thousands of people willing and able
to pay them. And in the meanwhile,
such encouragement as there may be
to builders — speculators, if you will
— in the existing high rents is seri-
ously diminished by every threat of
repressive measures, and even by the
odium which the constant cry of
"profiteer" places upon them. There
is another injury, too, perhaps quite
as important. There are possibilities
of improving the housing situation —
not by penalizing profits, but by
diminishing expenses. The emer-
gency quite justifies special exemp-
tions from tax burdens for all new
projects of housing for the poor and
for people of moderate means. But
legislative proposals of this nature
fail to receive the attention which
they ought to get, because of the
diversion of interest to futile schemes
and to idle denunciation. When you
stray off on a false track you are
not merely as badly off as if you had
stood still, you are much worse off.
For the time and energy which you
have been spending on this aimless
wandering might, if properly em-
ployed, have got you at least some-
what nearer to the goal toward which
you had fondly imagined yourself to
be tending.
What Has Come oi
"Blood and Iron"
p E PRESENTATI VES of the Schles-
-'-'■ wig and Holstein organizations,
together with members of various po-
litical parties, proclaimed on March 2
the emancipation of Schleswig-Hol-
stein from Prussia and the establish-
ment of a new State. This is an in-
teresting piece of news, affording an
object lesson in political history. Nc
matter whether this declaration of
independence takes effect or not, the
fact that a large group of representa-
tive citizens of the old Elbe Duchies
have voiced a desire to sever their
connection with Prussia is in itselj
important enough to call for com-
ment. The action of these men pro
claims to the world that Bismarck's
immoral policy of "blood and iron'
can not build lasting empires.
The possession of Schleswig-Hol
stein was for Prussia of vital impor
tance, as it would give her control o|
the coast and of the harbor of Kie"
the only one which could be made int
a maritime base for the Prussian flee
which Bismarck was planning t
build. A long and patiently con
ducted policy of intermittent intrigui
negotiation, and armed force led t
the coveted result. The Austro-Pru
sian war with Denmark was the fir
move in this skilfully conducted can
paign. Bismarck's ally did not i
tend to fight the Danes "pour le R
de Prusse" ; Austria posed as a chai
pion of outraged German rights, ai
hoped to add a new member to t'
"Bund." On August 1, 1864, t
King of Denmark ceded all his rigli
to the Duchies of Holstein and Schl' •
wig to the Austrian Emperor and t i
King of Prussia. By the treaty I
Gastein, of the following year, H^
stein was placed under Austri .,
Schleswig under Prussian rule, It
Kiel, with Friedrichsort, was prcJ-
sionally ceded to Prussia as a mi'i-
time station. Bismarck never loo d
upon this treaty as a permanent f-
tlement. But he waited for a prelct
to substitute Prussian rule for le
newly established condominium. T is
was given him by Austria it.'^ft
which on June 1, 1867, publishc a
March 13, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[245
declaration to the effect that it
wished to let the "Bund" decide the
future status of the two Duchies.
Bismarck denounced this as a breach
of the treaty of Gastein, which con-
sequently had ceased to have any
binding force on Prussia. He or-
dered Prussian troops to march into
Holstein. The Austrian forces of oc-
cupation retreated without giving
battle, thus leaving the King of Prus-
sia sole and absolute master in both
Duchies. Prussian despotism as-
serted itself at once : the convocation
of the Holstein States at Itzehoe was
repealed, all political societies were
disbanded, several papers suspended.
■ With iron alone Bismarck, this
time, had achieved his end. But
streams of blood were to be spilt in
the impending war with Austria,
which was, indirectly, the outcome of
Prussia's act of usurpation. And
now, after sixty years of Prussian
rule, after having shared for half a
century in the greatness and the glory
of Bismarck's Prussia, the people of
the two Duchies appear to be still so
little devoted to the usurper as to
wish for a severance from the king-
dom.
Welfare or "Hell-fare"?
pERTAIN activities of the Good-
^ year Rubber Company for the
welfare of its employees were de-
scribed by a correspondent in the
Review last week. This is but one
|of the many instances in which man-
lufacturing concerns have deemed it
wise to devote large sums of money
and the energy of trained and well-
ipaid officials to work of this kind.
The movement is not new in its
fundamental character, but it has
leached an extent and a systematiza-
;ion hitherto unknown. It has been
Warmly approved by public opinion,
JDut the more radical labor leaders
'luestion its motives, hold it up to
"idicule, and endeavor to turn against
t the laboring men who, with their
vives and children, receive its bene-
its. Parodying the name by which it
s commonly known, they have ma-
ieiously characterized it as "hell-fare
vork," and even Samuel Gompers has
mblicly repeated the jibe.
In the case of Mr. Gompers, let us
hope that this was no more than a
momentary lapse of judgment under
the stress of the steel strike. Those
who launched the epithet, however,
had a more logical reason for their
attitude. Having in view, not such
an improvement in wages and condi-
tions of work as will make the work-
man prosperous and contented, but a
fundamental revolution eliminating
the private ownership and manage-
ment of productive industries alto-
gether, they judge of "welfare work"
only as it tends to promote or retard
the overturn of existing institutions.
If it were found to inculcate a dis-
contented and revolutionary state of
mind, their attitude at heart would
be that of welcome, though good
strategy would forbid them to say so.
The fact that it meets with their dis-
approval is a tribute to its success.
In establishments where such work
has been intelligently and liberally
carried on, with sincere effort at gen-
uine cooperation with employees in
selection of activities to be undertaken
and in management, laborers are more
prosperous and contented, strikes or
friction of any kind is less frequent,
and agitators from without or within
are at a discount. This normally
means an improvement in quantity
and quality of the average output per
unit of labor, an avoidance of the loss
occasioned by strikes, and, therefore,
a return to the company of at least a
considerable portion of the cost — in
some cases probably a net financial
profit of considerable importance.
But the agitator seizes upon this fact
to arouse prejudice against the work
as mere selfishness, as though it were
not permissible for the employer to
benefit his employees except at the
cost of actual loss to himself.
Another line of attack is that this
work is paid for out of the workman's
wages, and to the detriment of his
right to seek his welfare in his own
way. But the laborer can have this
freedom at any moment, by giving up
his position and taking employment
with some company by which no wel-
fare system is maintained. Inciden-
tally, he will discover in making the
transfer that wages average no higher
in industries which spend no money
on welfare work. The criticism,
however, comes almost wholly from
the outside. We have yet to learn of
a case in which the employees of any
great industry carrying on a well-
managed work of this kind have met
together and said to the manage-
ment: "Sell your welfare buildings
and equipment, close your athletic
fields and parks and children's play-
grounds, abolish your savings bu-
reau with its attendant bonusfes to
persistent depositors, drop your as-
sistance to would-be home owners,
dismiss your physicians and nurses,
and in place of it all divide pro rata
among us in wages the same propor-
tion of the cost as we now get out of
the income of the plant exclusive of
this work."
At bottom, such work is simply one
of the ways of creating conditions
favorable to a profitable operation of
the plant. An ill-adjusted workman
and an ill-adjusted piece of ma-
chinery are alike harmful to such
operation, and time and money spent
in better adjustment are as rational
in the one case as in the other. The
human as well as the mechanical side
is always present, and the most skill-
ful technical care of the latter can not
bring the best results if the social,
moral, and economic welfare of the
former are going awry. It need not
be argued that on the human side the
problems of the manager are more
delicate, the opportunities for harm
through tactlessness and lack of un-
derstanding more numerous. Wel-
fare work is not wholly a matter of
altruism, as we have already shown;
but though it must be made in gen-
eral to pay its own way, the highest
success will be attained only by a
management which shows a genu-
inely sympathetic spirit. Modern
thought is recognizing more and
more the inherent difference between
a man and a machine, and the growth
of attention to the personal welfare
of employees is one of the most evi-
dent marks of that recognition. It
is a movement that merits hearty en-
couragement from all except those
who find in its tendency to promote
stability and contentment in indus-
trial circles a stumbling-block to
their plans for revolution.
246]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 44
What Constitutes a
Poem?
CRITICS of the past have striven
for a satisfactory definition of
poetry, by stating the positive ingre-
dients which it must contain. But
the literary market-place has continu-
ally refuted them by paying good
money for "poems" minus any one,
or all, of the qualities enumerated in
these proffered definitions. In this
day of anti-everything which in-
volves a must, either in literature or
in life, the idea has arisen of getting
at the matter the other way round,
by eliminating the various qualities
which are not necessary, thus arriv-
ing at the irreducible minimum.
Rhyme, of course, was never a sine
qua non, though if used at all, a cer-
tain degree of regularity has been
considered necessary. Even this
must no longer holds, as witness any
number of our newest poets, skipping
from vers libre to verse in the ankle-
fetters of rhyme from one line. to the
next.
Of course, the very term, "vers
libre," implies the kicking out of
metrical regularity ; but it may creep
in again at any crevice of line, page,
or poem, and a passage that might
have fallen in faultless cadence from
the lips of Tennyson himself may sud-
denly tumble you off, in the middle of
a sentence, upon a declivity of vocal
jags and crevasses in comparison
with which "bumping the bumps" at
Coney Island is a nerve-soothing rec-
reation. Martial borrowed the germ
of this trick from the Greeks, in his
occasional Latin scazontics, or stum-
blers ; but he kindly trips you up only
once to the line, and after the second
or third fall you foresee the danger
and brace yourself, like the circus
girl in the heels-over-head automobile
stunt. The most you can claim now
for metrical regularity as a poetic in-
gredient is that a sample now and
then, dropped in with a carefully
guarded air of insouciance, is not nec-
essarily fatal to a poet's reputation.
Has length of line any vital rela-
tion to poetry? A variation of from
eight to twelve syllables did not sug-
gest either rejection or revision of
a "sonnet" offered a year or two ago
to so careful a periodical as Art and
Archaeology; and the free sonneteer-
ing spirit of our great Mexican bor-
der State, we were assured not long
since by a student of poetic tenden-
cies among the Texans, has even cut
the wires of the fourteen-line barrier.
If the inspiration of boundless cow-
pastures swells the outburst to nine-
teen lines, or a sudden raid of Vil-
lista bandits cuts it short at nine,
who has the authority to tell the free
American citizen that it is any the
less a sonnet for either reason? As
to length of line in general, Walt
Whitman long ago pushed its possi-
bilities out into regions where only
an Einstein may safely range, while
at the opposite extreme, the very
High Priestess of the temple of
Twentieth Century muses has shown
that the one word Damn, with the aid
of an exclamation point, will fill all
requirements. We are forced to the
conclusion, then, that with the mod-
ern poet length of line, as well as the
regulation or non-regulation of its
vocal ups and downs, is as v/hoUy at
the discretion or non-discretion of the
individual writer as the cut or non-
cut, the dress or un-dress, of his or
her hair or beard. Even capital
letters at the beginning of lines, sen-
tences, and proper names are non-
requisites, as the Dial, in its new and
exclusive devotion to art and letters,
proceeds to show by example, though
the same authority shows that the
capital is not to be despised merely
as such, by allowing it to head a few
harmless prepositions in the pro-
cession.
We say "procession" with some
misgiving, for the word may be taken
as implying that the author intends
the reader to begin at the physical
beginning of these particular poems
and read through in regular order to
the physical end, an assumption pos-
sibly altogether too conventional. We
had almost said that this order in
reading would enable one to get at
the thought of the poems better, but
this would imply that thought is a
necessity in poetry. Now the whole
campaign of the most modern mod-
ernists has had the primary object of
clearing away every barrier that may
hamper the freedom of the poetic
impulse. But the requirement of
genuine thought has always been a
far more hampering restraint on
poetic impulse than any of those mere
conventionalities of form to which the
boot-toe of the modernist has been
so vigorously and successfully ap-
plied. Are we then to sacrifice the
fruits of victory already in our grasp
by leaving poetic HohenzoUernism in
possession of its one really powerful
stronghold, the requirement that
poetry must (odious, imperialistic
word!) really mean something? No,
must me no musts!
And so the attempt to get at the
essential substance of poetry through
definition by elimination finally
breaks down, just as did the earlier
efforts to define it by positive charac-
teristics. We may be sure of no more,
perhaps, than that a poem is some
undefinable thing (thanks to the lan-
guage-builders for the non-commit-
tal vagueness of that word thing!)
which its author can sell on Mount
Vernon Street, Boston, or West Thir-
teenth Street, New York, or some-
where between. We had almost called
it "an aggregation of words," rather
than a "thing," but the haunting sus-
picion arises that the one-syllable
line already quoted in full in a pre-
vious paragraph might, under suit-
able conditions of modern poetic in-
spiration, become an entire poem in
itself. If poetry shall follow such a
course as this, there will be a mani-
fest conservation of ink and paper,
but it will be necessary to work out
some scheme of pecuniary compensa-
tion by emotional intensity rather
than by linear measure.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Corporation
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolv Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars a year m
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England,
Copyright, 1920, in the United States <-/
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Avres O. W. Firkins
A. J. Barnouw W. n. Johnson
Jerome Landfield
March 13, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[247
Bolshevism in Holland
A CCORDING to recent despatches
^ from Holland, the Netherland
Government is enforcing a rigid con-
trol of the frontiers so as to prevent
the intrusion of Bolshevist agitators
from Germany. The unrest in the
country must be pretty serious if the
authorities have recourse to preven-
tive measures of suppression, as po-
litical tradition in Holland is opposed
to official discrimination between na-
tive and alien, and betv^^een desirable
and undesirable foreigners. Even
during the war, when there was rea-
son for the Government to be on its
guard against the intrigues of for-
eign spies and agents, free access to
the country was subject only to a
few limitations of simple formality,
and no protests from watchful citi-
zens in the border districts, alarmed
, at the traffic that was allowed to go on,
^ could avail against the rooted aver-
sion of the authorities to rigid inter-
: ference with the liberty of interstate
communication.
This extremely liberal conception
of the duty of hospitality was
frightfully abused by Russian and
German refugees and deserters. In
return for the safety and shelter
which Holland afforded them, they
sowed discord and discontent among
the natives. Even the man at the
head of the bureau for relief to Rus-
sian prisoners of war in Germany,
whom the Government allowed to ex-
port large quantities of foodstuffs
which the Dutch themselves were
badly in need of, was, early this year,
placed under police control, being
strongly suspected of abetting secret
Bolshevist propaganda. However,
this agitation by foreigners would
have been of little avail to the cause
'jf communism in Holland, if they had
bot found a soil already fertilized for
!:he cultivation of Trotskian doc-
':rines. The gravest danger to the
fcountry's recuperation from the un-
liettled war conditions and its undis-
furbed economic development is not
he alien but the native agitator, who
ipeaks to the worker in his own tongue
md with a thorough knowledge of
he country.
First among these is Mr. David
Wijnkoop, an Amsterdam Jew of a
fiery, impetuous temperament, a
great orator with a strong hold on
the masses. He is the Dutch counter-
part of his Russian comrade Trotsky,
whom he resembles even in outward
appearance, and a faithful henchman
of his Moscow alter ego in the spread-
ing of the latter's international prop-
aganda. Before the war he was, as
a politician, the laughingstock of the
country, the butt of jocose criticism
whenever he formulated his absurd
demands on behalf of a negligible
flock of followers. But the war, with
its privations and unemployment,
was the making of Mr. Wijnkoop. He
is a political war profiteer. In Am-
sterdam, always a hotbed of radical-
ism, he carried it over his opponent
of the Social Democratic Labor Party
at the July elections of 1918, and with
him two other Communist lead-
ers were preferred by the elec-
torate for a seat in the Second
Chamber.
Here they were given a platform
from which they could address the
entire nation, as their parliamentary
speeches — and they are among the
most voluble orators — are faithfully
reported by the daily press. The
three together form an isolated group
in Parliament. They profess to de-
spise the legislative body o.f which
they are members, and abuse their
high office to denounce that capital-
istic system under whose liberal rule
they have obtained the right to ex- .
pound their doctrine in Parliament.
Their criticism being exclusively de-
structive, they contribute nothing to
the legislative work of the House.
But their presence there has, indi-
rectly, a fatal effect upon its proceed-
ings: some Social Democratic Labor
members, afraid lest Mr. David Wijn-
koop should take the wind out of
their sails, are tempted to outbid him
in revolutionary demands, Mr. Troel-
stra, the leader, being the chief advo-
cate of this competitive policy. Wijn-
koop, with his sarcastic sallies
against his irritable rival, ridiculing
his inconsistent, half-hearted adher-
ence to the teachings of Marx, knows
exactly how to exasperate the other
into the formulation of demands
which go far beyond what more mod-
erate labor leaders, such as Schaper
and Albarda, recognize as the legiti-
mate maximum.
But the floor of the Second Cham-
ber is not the only platform from
which the Communists can address
all classes of society. The Church is
also open to their propaganda. The
Reverend Schermerhorn, Minister of
the Dutch Reformed Community in
Nieuweniedorp, the centre of a pros-
perous agricultural district north of
Amsterdam, is an ardent believer in
the tenets of Bolshevism. He is a
powerful preacher and attracts many
a churchgoer who, though averse to
his doctrine, wishes to listen to his
eloquence. "Take as much liberty as
you can get" is one of his maxims,
and portraits of the revolutionary
"dominee" with these words under-
neath are circulated among his ad-
mirers. When last year the Amster-
dam police came upon the track of a
gang of bomb manufacturers and
munition smugglers, they found this
portrait as a wall decoration in the
criminals' den. The preacher, of
course, had nothing to do with these
militant anarchists, but the incident
shows what close affinity there la
between unrestrained idealism and
crime.
More balanced minds than the fiery
pulpiteer are the two scientists who,
by their membership on the Execu-
tive Board of the Communist Party,
lend an academic dignity to its doc-
trine. They are Dr. Pannekoek, a dis-
tinguished astronomer, and Dr. Man-
noury, professor of mathematics in
the Municipal University of Amster-
dam. The support which Communism
receives from these two prominent in-
tellectuals may have a deeper and
wider influence than the sermons of
the Reverend Schermerhorn. Though
they may carefully abstain from
bringing propaganda into the lecture
room, the fact of their approving the
Communist doctrines can not fail to
impress the susceptible minds of
young admiring pupils. And as these,
at the completion of their studies,
are scattered all over the country,
248]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 4
the ideas of their masters are im-
perceptibly spread among the intel-
lectual milieus of even the smallest
towns.
Still, the Government would make
itself unpopular if it deemed this
a reason for depriving them of
their chairs and the university of
their learning. The present conserva-
tive Cabinet, apparently alarmed at
the spread of Communist thought,
took just recently an exceptional step
to prevent the promotion of one
of these Communist professors. Dr.
Pannekoek had been proposed by the
trustees of Leiden University for
appointment to the vacant chair of
astronomy in that city, and the Gov-
ernment by refusing to appoint him
on the ground of his political convic-
tions exposed itself to severe criti-
cism by the entire Left of the Second
Chamber and the principal organs
of the liberal press. The Amsterdam
Handelsblad, a paper which has
never betrayed any leanings towards
Socialism, declared itself in agree-
ment with Dr. Van Ravesteyn, one of
the three Communist members of
Parliament, in asserting that, gener-
ally speaking, in the appointment of
educational functionaries, political or
religious considerations should have
no weight. There might be some
reason for deviating from this gen-
eral principle in the case of a vacancy
in the department of law or eco-
nomics, where the appointee is ex-
pected to teach a doctrine and ideas
to which a Communist candidate is
confessedly opposed, but no such con-
sideration could be valid in the case
of Dr. Pannekoek. The heavens are
his field of research, and his claim to
distinction in that domain of science
can not be impaired by whatever
radical views he may hold concern-
ing sublunary affairs. Freedom of
thought and speech is dear to the na-
tion, and it will uphold it even when
that freedom must be granted to
those who aim at the overthrow of
its established institutions. Because
of native impatience and distrust of
control, the people are apprehensive
of greater danger resulting from the
abuse of the power to suppress such
freedom than from the abuse of the
freedom itself.
Into this league of the politician,
the preacher, and the pedagogue for
the establishment of the communistic
state enters, as a fourth ally, the poet,
the greatest among the living poets
of Holland. Mrs. Henriette Roland
Hoist will live in the people's memory
when the names of her male co-mili-
tants shall have passed into oblivion,
and her poetry is the monument by
which posterity will be reminded of
a revolutionary phase in the nation's
peaceful history. She has written
other things than verse, propa-
ganda literature for the enlighten-
ment of the masses, a history of revo-
lutionary action, a biography of
Rousseau. But poetry is her true
domain.
If Communism can be justified
in the eyes of the intellectual elite
of Holland, it is as the source of
inspiration for the most powerful
verse of modern Dutch literature.
She is a past master in moulding her
vigorous thought into plastic lan-
guage. In her latest volume of verse,
"Verzonken Grenzen" (Submerged
Bounds), she has surpassed all her
previous work. The disillusion of
modern man and the promise of a
better world are her theme. Between
the dream and the deed our lives are
divided. Dreams can not lift the
world to a higher plane, and when
we are active the beauty of the dream
vanishes. There is no escape from
this disillusionment except by the
self-sacrifice of love, the only deed by
which the dream can be realized.
Blessed the man who goes to the sacri-
fice,
In him dream and deed are reborn into
one.
Man must dare to die for the dream
of the communistic millennium, go
through the ordeal of bloodshed and
revolution, that the next generation
may live united by a common love,
in which all the barriers that hatred
now raises between man and man
shall be submerged. It is the symbol-
ism of the Gospel translated into
terms of latter-day Communism. In-
stead of the One Man who died on the
cross, it is the holocaust on the barri-
cades that must bring peace on earth
and good will among men.
A. J. Barnouw
The Troubles of th<
"Politicians' Union"
THE present demoralization of all goi
ernmental activities at Washingto
makes a situation that lends itself 1
moralizing. Even before Mr. Wilson s
peremptorily sacked Mr. Lansing tl;
pace of routine administration was sic
enough and efficiency was at low ebl
The President's flare-up will not quicke
or hearten those who remain. No Cab
net officer or other underling will dan
except in the most chastened and cii
cumspect way, attend to any aflfairs c
state that require initiative and entei
prise. So it befalls that this harbo
and refuge and centre of politicians i
given over to discussion of politics.
The game of politics, like the game c
chess, while intricate and susceptible o
many variations, is governed by fixe
and ancient rules and conventions. ;
Persian chess master having no languag
but his own, and no contact or aquainj
ance or understanding or even fair
knowledge of the western world, coul
yet come to Washington, Georgia, an
there in the shade and repose and peae
of that fine old town meet and play th
local expert in the perfect ease and se
curity of a meeting on thoroughly know:
ground. With the chessmen arrangei
between them the players would kno^
without a spoken word or any othe
channel of communication what to di
next. The Georgia villager might sooi
find himself in' closer mental communioi
with the Persian than with any of hi:
neighbors.
Politicians among us are set apar
like that. Many of them, a great many
too many of them, follow the game foi
a livelihood. They become professional!
in their engrossing vocation. Politics ii
the only game that has no penalties ol
suspension or disbarment for fouls anc
unfair practices. There are no rules
against gouging and biting and scratch'
ing and hitting below the belt. Mer
seek to rise, to attain temporary ag-
grandizement and office, to overcome
their opponents by any guile or subter
fuge. In their old age they are erabit
tered and their lives are ashes in theii
mouths. Their days of activity are spen
in the vain pursuit of illusions and no
in solid achievement. In the end the:|
are "lame ducks" who must be "takei;
care of," or if they fall out of the gam'
inopportunely when their old cronie
and associates are not in power, they g
back where they came from and "n
sume the practice of law."
Their daily life is one of appallin
transitions. On one day it takes thn
or four messengers to conduct them i
proper state from the entrance of the
offices to their desks and relieve the
March 13, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[249
of hat and coat. To see the great man
appointments have to be made well in
[ advance through a reluctant secretary,
and the time of audience is restricted.
It may be that the next time you see
I him he will be hanging precariously on
' the rear platform of a street car and
j oh! so eager to talk about anything and
I as long as you like. The heavy curse
1 that hangs over the "ins" is that sooner
I or later they will be "outs," and the one
' hope that sustains the "outs" and pre-
I vents them from giving way to despair
and going to work to earn a living is
that presently a turn of the wheel will
bring them "in."
As a chronicler of the Washington
scene, my days were spent seeking out
the notables and being besought by the
ex-notables. One favorite device for
"getting one's name in the papers" in
other days when the President's office
was a centre of activity was to come to
Washington in the off-season while Con-
gress was not in session and pay a visit
to the White House "to confer" with the
Executive on this, that, or the other thing
that was uppermost in people's minds. It
was a cheap and sure way to get the
news back home. "Conferring with the
President" is one of the oldest sure-fire
I tricks of the trade. It has virtually
ifallen into disuse at this juncture.
I Being what they are, and permeated
Iwith the instinct for their guild, the
ipoliticians resent the intrusion of ama-
teurs and persons with new ideas and
inew plans. They hate anything new
llike the very devil. They can not cope
iwith it. They like established and
ifamiliar issues such as the tariff. They
like to deal with other professionals.
They disliked intensely the prohibition
:ontests in the States a few years back,
joecause "you never can tell which way
j:he darn thing is going to cut." State
jights between the "wets" and the
i'drys" spoiled the alignment of the more
or less docile electorate. The profes-
inonals always more or less distrusted
'Roosevelt and Hughes, and Wilson, too,
(vhen he first emerged. What the politi-
|:ian always wants to know of any new
nan who is brought forward "to pander
0 the moral sense of the community" is
vhether he will "recognize the organi-
|ation." It is the same instinct and
jnotive that leads to a demand on em-
iiloyers for a recognition of the union.
jl'he politicians are strongly unionized.
1 am indebted to Mr. William Bayard
lale, who is, perhaps, not now remem-
ered as one of the earliest "authorized"
iographers of Woodrow Wilson, for an
ceount of the scene when the question
f "recognition" was first put to the
merging President of Princeton:
On Tuesday, July 12, 1910, a number of
|entlemen gathered in a private room of the
i ankers' Club, 120 Broadway, New York, to
iquire of Mr. Wilson whether he would allow
his name to be presented to the New Jersey
Democratic State Convention. At that meet-
ing were present Robert S. Hudspeth, national
committeeman for New Jersey; James R.
Nugent, State chairman ; Eugene F. Kinkead,
Congressman ; Richard V. Lindabury, George
Harvey, and Milan Ross. But one practical
inquiry was made of Mr. Wilson ; it was
voiced by Mr. Hudspeth and was in substance
this:
"Doctor Wilson, there have been some politi-
cal reformers who, after they have been elected
to office as candidates of one party or the
other, have shut the door in the face of the
Organization leaders, refusing even to listen
to them. Is it your idea that a Governor must
refuse to acknowledge his party organization?"
"Not at all," Mr. Wilson replied. "I have
always been a believer in party organizations.
If I were elected Governor 1 should be very
glad to consult with the leaders of the Demo-
cratic Organization. I should refuse to listen
to no man, but I should be especially glad
to hear and duly consider the suggestions of
the leaders of my party. If, on my own in-
dependent investigation, I found that recom-
mendations for appointment made to me by
the Organization leaders named the best pos-
sible men, I should naturally prefer, other
things being equal, to appoint them, as the
men pointed out by the combined counsels of
the party."
Such fluid, changing times as these
daze the politicians. They don't know
what to do. Particularly they are at a
loss to meet the projection of such figures
as Hiram Johnson and Herbert Hoover
into the scene. Johnson knows the con-
ventions of the political game but will
never abide by them. He doesn't consort
or league himself with professional poli-
ticians. He does not number himself
among them, nor do they claim him. He
has been in politics and in office since
1910, not because but in spite of the
politicians. He has been getting him-
self elected by going directly and in
person to the voters in his own State
and telling them what he would do if
given power. When elected he has kept
his promise and done what he said he
would do. Now he is offering himself
for the Presidency on the same terms
without the aid or through the offices of
any "organization." The managers of
his party do not want him. They can't,
as they put it, "do business" with John-
son. They think they have him headed
off, for as they say, "He may have the
votes but he hasn't got the delegates."
They mean that politicians must nomi-
nate Presidents before voters can elect
them.
But the horrid fear and spectre that
makes the politicians so nervous and
jumpy these days is that the voters may
insist on nominating as well as electing
a President. That is why the projec-
tion of Mr. Hoover is so baffling and
bewildering. They can't make head or
tail of the posture in which he has put
himself. They dislike him because they
fear him, and they fear him because they
can't understand him. Not for a min-
ute do they believe Hoover is not a can-
didate. The more frequently he repeats
that he is not seeking the nomination
the surer they become that he is put-
ting over some new "deep stuff." And
it is both pathetic and amusing to see
them nosing about trying to find
"Hoover's press bureau." They are sure
that he has one concealed some-
where about these precincts where "sen-
timent" is being manufactured for him.
They can't understand why any man
should be talked about for the Presi-
dency, as Hoover is being talked
about, unless he is actively foment-
ing the whole movement. The Low-
den boom, the Wood boom, the Hard-
ing boom, the Palmer boom, the Cox
boom, they can understand. In each
case there is clearly visible and appar-
ent all the apparatus — the press agent,
the managers, the Western headquarters,
the Eastern headquarters — in fine, the
candidate's organization. The whole
apparition is familiar to the politicians.
It's the sort of thing they understand.
But they can not understand why such
diverse journals and channels of public
opinion as the Saturday Evening Post,
the New Republic, the Review, the
World, the Springfield Republican, and
Life should all at once be found saying
in various ways appreciative, friendly
things about Hoover, unless Hoover has
some dark, mysterious underground
organization applying pressure and stim-
ulating sentiment. That all of these
editors should have come separately to
the belief that Hoover is worth serious
consideration for the Presidency simply
on his record of accomplishment and his
character and capacities, as they have
been revealed since 1914, passes their
understanding. The politicians won't
nominate Hoover unless they have to^
but they can be made to name him if the
pressure of public sentiment is strong
enough.
The wary, timorous, stupid creatures
will do in the end, as they always do,
whatever aroused opinion demands of
them. Meanwhile they talk politics and
con over the stale chicane of their ancient
and outworn subterfuges. Washington
is dull and flat, and they make it duller
and flatter.
Edwaed G. Lowby
Poetry
On Record
T WOULD not hand a baby face,
J- Smooth and unscarred, to God on
high.
And say: "Hereon You will find no trace
Of living, now I come to die."
No, battered up and down the ways,
I give Him back this proof of me;
Record of keen, tumultuous days.
Life's scars, for man or God to see!
Richard Burton
250]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 44
Germany's Future Relations with
Eastern Europe
AFTER the collapse and dissolution
of the Russian Empire, the Entente
Powers found themselves faced by the
problem of how they could create a new
system of forces which might act as a
check on a reviving Germany. Having
once recovered from her enormous
losses, Germany would, in the long run,
derive great advantage from the fact
that her immediate neighbor in the east
was no longer a great power of the first
order. The Entente policy naturally de-
manded, as a substitute for this loss,
that Poland should be made as strong
as possible. If, however, the Polish
State remained limited to the ethno-
graphic boundaries of its nationality, it
would only be a secondary Power, little
more important than Rumania. The
Entente requires a strong Poland, and
to that end German territories must be
added to it in the west, Ukrainian land
in the south, and a white Russian area
in the east, so that the size of Poland
should be doubled and her population
increased by fifty per cent, beyond the
extent ethnographically justified. If the
present Polish claims were to be satis-
fied, the future Poland would contain
seventeen to eighteen million Poles, two
million Germans, six to seven million
Ukrainians, several millions of white
Russians, an indefinite number of Lithu-
anians, and four to five million Jews.
The aggrandizement of Poland, how-
ever, though an end in itself, is part
also of a larger scheme, the exclusion
of Germany from Eastern Europe by the
formation of a barrier of Germanophobe
States running from the Baltic to the
Adriatic and the Black Seas. France
and England are at one in supporting
this policy, but they are actuated by dif-
ferent motives: England hopes thereby
to exclude Germany from the Russian
market, France to prevent a political
alliance between Russians and Germans
which might jeopardize the Entente's
victory.
The Entente policy with regard to
Russia is handicapped by a general
ignorance of conditions in Eastern
Europe. A better knowledge would have
saved its statesmen from the mistake of
believing it possible that Russia, barring
the recognition of an independent
Poland and Finland, could be restored
in its entirety under a democratized
Tsarist Government. The attempt to
bring this about by supporting the mili-
tary campaigns of Kolchak, Denikin,
and Yudenich was doomed to failure
from the outset. It was based on two
fundamentally wrong assumptions, one
being that the dismemberment of Rus-
sia into its component nationalities could
be undone again, the other that a
democratized Tsarist rule would be wel-
come to the bulk of the Russian nation
and even to the alien nationalities. Not
until the new East-European States have
become established on a firm and lasting
foundation will people in West-Euro-
pean countries and the United States
cease to believe that Russia ever was
an internally unified realm. The Rus-
sian world empire has always carefully
concealed the fact that Eastern Europe
was populated by a great variety of
nations and tribes, of which the great
Russians or Muscovites formed only 47
per cent. Fifty-three per cent, of the
inhabitants of Tsarist Russia were not
of Great Russian stock. The most im-
portant of these alien peoples, the Finns,
the Esthonians, the Letts, the Lithu-
anians, the Poles, the Ukrainians, the
Georgians, the Armenians, have realized
their craving for a national independ-
ence, and it seems a psychological and
political impossibility that they should
ever voluntarily be reunited with Mos-
cow. And to coerce them into a reunion
by violence is not in the power of Soviet
Russia.
The alleged loyalty of the bulk of the
Russian peoples to Tsarism has not stood
the test of the late anti-Bolshevik cam-
paigns. The failure of Kolchak and
Denikin was largely due to the people's
refusal to support them. In the rear of
both armies followed the landowners
whom the peasants had expelled, and
demanded restitution of their land, their
cattle, and everything the peasants had
robbed them of. When Denikin pene-
trated into the Ukraine he was at first
hailed by the peasants as a deliverer
from Bolshevist requisitions, but when
the returning landovraers claimed not
only the value of the poultry stolen two
or three years before but also the value
of the eggs which the hens were reckoned
to have laid during that time, the
peasants began to realize that Denikin
brought no change for the better. The
expelled landowners in the Ukraine were
Great Russians, who had been in pos-
session of the land ever since the
Ukraine was forcibly brought under the
rule of Moscow; so a national element
added strength to the agrarian and social
motives counteracting Denikin's enter-
prise. The peasants know that the chief
issue is the land problem and that a
success of the Tsarist generals would
have meant a restoration of the landed
gentry, and a return to the old social
order. To that old order they are bit-
terly hostile. It is a grave mistake to
expect loyalty to the Tsar from the Rus-
sian peasants. Nicholas II and his Min-
isters, believing in their loyalty, granted
the peasantry the right to vote when
they drafted an electoral system for the
first Duma in 1905. The result was a
Duma with a radical majority of peasant
deputies elected on a platform in which
the chief plank was the surrender of all
land in Russia to the peasants, if pos-
sible, without any compensation.
As to the chief aspects, therefore, of
the future of Eastern Europe there
can be little doubt: (1) The dissolu-
tion of the old Russian Empire will be
permanent, and attempts to restore it
by force, though they might have a
short-lived success, will only tend to
establish the new order on a firmer basis;
(2) the largest of the future East-
European States, Great Russia or Mos-
cow, will most probably assume the
status of a peasant democracy. It is
less easy to make a forecast as to the
duration of Bolshevist rule. It car
hardly be permanent, as it is the dic-
tatorship of a minority, and even of i
small minority. Eighty per cent, of th«
Great Russian population are peasants
and these will have nothing to do wit!
Bolshevism. Soviet Russia consists, as
it were, of two separate areas, a Bol
shevist one, which is limited to the largt
cities and the control of the railways,
and an agrarian one, which has relapsec
into the most primitive economic con-
ditions, without manufactures, ever
almost without iron. A dozen sewing
needles, the only iron implement the
peasant absolutely needs, can not be
bought for less than a hundred rubles,
Of the middle classes in the cities little
is left, as part of them have emigrated
and the rest have become pauperized
and decimated by diseases and starva-
tion.
In nearly all parts of the former Rus-
sian Empire the Entente is very unpopu-
lar. Especially towards France the
people's feelings are bitterly hostile, and
the English are feared and distrusted
It is generally believed that the Entente
is responsible for Russia's downfall
Among the better educated elements oi
the Russian masses the idea of a unior
with Germany is very popular, not £
political or military union for an aggres
sive policy of revenge, but an economic
and cultural alliance. The Russians
have come to realize that the gulf be
tween their own mentality and that ol
the western peoples can never be bridged
and that, in spite of their aversion t(
the Germans, which was very pro
nounced before the war, they have mon
in common with them than with any othe
European nation. Before the war th
Russians used to complain that thei
country was being exploited by German;
by means of an extorted commercis
treaty. But now one can hear them sa;
March 13, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[251
that the British and French schemes
with regard to Russia are worse than
exploitation and amount to downright
plunder. It is no secret in Russia that
the British Board of Trade has recom-
mended a plan for a general State insur-
ance of all goods to be exported to
Russia. The English manufacturer
naturally distrusts the uncertain condi-
tion of affairs in Russia, and objects to
his bearing the risk of the export. This
insurance scheme, it is thought in Rus-
sia, is meant to act as a check on future
German competition. The Russian offi-
cers who belonged to the former army o'f
Colonel Avalov-Bermondt, who made the
abortive attempt to enlist 20,000 German
soldiers for his projected march against
Moscow, say quite openly that the En-
tente did not permit the Germans to join
Avalov's forces for two reasons, Eng-
land being afraid lest that military
campaign should open a Russian-German
trade route, and France foreseeing the
growth of a Russian-German alliance out
of this joint armed action. Both appre-
hensions have no real foundations, as
far as Germany is concerned. Both the
people and the Government in Germany
are too passive to conceive such far-
reaching political schemes. But this
Russian talk is significant of the pre-
vailing feelings among the Russians, and
helps one to understand the anger of the
French Colonel who, according to a dis-
patch from a Swedish journalist, had an
interview with one of Avalov's officers,
in which he bitterly complained of the
Russian people who, he said, seemed to
know only one feeling, that of hatred
against France.
Germany's future position in Eastern
Europe, therefore, will not be decided
by any definite schemes now on foot, but
by the existing facts, both political and
ethnographical, and by the prevailing
sentiments of the Russian people. Not
even Poland will probably be able to
persist economically in her hostile atti-
1 tude towards Germany. The intensity
^ of national contrasts in Poland and the
! peculiarities of the Polish character will
I soon create a very unsettled state of
I affairs in that country. Poland as it has
j been set up by the Entente will never
1 form a stable element in the future East-
I European system. With the Czecho-
slovak State, in spite of the resentment
I felt among Germans on account of three
millions of their countrymen being forced
I into Czechoslovak citizenship, Germany
jmust also, sooner or later, enter into
close economic relations. The Czechs
[are on three sides surrounded by Ger-
man territory, through Germany they
must keep in touch with the rest of the
j world, the German language is for them
jthe medium by which they acquire their
knowledge of western culture. Neither
can Hungary and Jugoslavia exist
permanently without economic and cul-
tural relations with Germany. Their
history and geographical position pre-
clude a lasting estrangement. In the
Hungarian and Slav territories of the
former Dual Monarchy German has for
centuries been a second vernacular; it
is too firmly e.stablished to be suddenly
and arbitrarily replaced by another lan-
guage. Neither Eastern Middle Europe
nor Eastern Europe proper is able to
exist without a close relationship to Ger-
many, to German commerce, to German
industries, to German intellect. The
attempt to make English-French inter-
ests and culture prevail in those parts
is doomed to failure for the simple rea-
son that the East European peoples will
never take to them. It is a common
error to think that French is the
favorite foreign language of the Rus-
sians. It was that only among court
circles and the aristocracy. When the
Russian businessman, the scholar, the
official learned a foreign language, it
was, in four out of five cases, German.
Before the war Russians loved to pre-
tend that they knew no German, but they
understood it quite well all the same. In
the days of German militarism much
harm was done to German interests in
Russia by German "Schroffheit" and
"Schneidigkeit." But these are ill man-
ners of the past. A change also in the
German mentality will help to open up
a peaceful way towards the East.
Dr. Paul Rohrbach
Berlin, January 7
Organization in Scientific Research
ORGANIZE research? Why you
might as well try to organize the
production of poetry, or sculpture, or
painting! It can't be done, and if it
could, it oughtn't to be!" Thus spoke
a very clever and intelligent friend of
mine, whose opinions tend strongly
toward the indicative and imperative
moods, with only the rarest sprinkling
of subjunctives. And I suspect that his
opinion, while ludicrously untrue as to
the facts, is shared by many of our intel-
ligentsia to whom research is identified
with the occasional epoch-making dis-
covery which they visualize to themselves
as the inspiration of some solitary genius.
The mere term "organization" smacks
to them of repression and coercion, sug-
gests the strait-jacket and the boss,
and other unpleasant things well known
to be hostile to initiative and individual-
ity. But let us consider the situation.
Merely to satisfy one's instinct of
pugnacity, it would be gratifying to take
up the gauntlet cast down by my dogmatic
friend, and to note how many great
works of plastic art have in a fair sense
been made to order. Even the poet
laureate has been known to rise to an
occasion requiring celebration in verse.
But time fails to pursue this trail,
and, moreover, the completeness of the
analogy of research with creative art
may be called in question. At all events,
it is for us to come at once to grips
with scientific research and the condi-
tions of its effective prosecution.
As a noted botanist says: "Science
has thus far progressed by purely guerilla
modes of warfare. It is time that it
organized and conducted its campaign
as intelligently as do other human inter-
ests." If one thinks of such organization
as implying a director-general of re-
search who doles out to each individual
his particular job in the programme,
then undoubtedly the result would be
disastrous. Intrinsic intellectual interest
would inevitably be slighted and snubbed,
enthusiasm and energy would be sapped,
and in place of vigorous and fruitful
endeavor we should have a process of
purely mechanical time-marking. But,
fortunately, there are quite other
methods of securing the desired end
which avoid most, if not all, of these dif-
ficulties.
Let us suppose that a group of the
leading men in a given field of science
get together and survey the most urgent
needs or the most promising possibilities
in their own line of work; suppose they
outline a general inclusive programme of
research which affords opportunity to
pursue the most varied interests, and
still to knit them all into one central
project; suppose, finally, that invitations
be issued to a group of competent scien-
tists to participate in such a programme.
There is nowhere any coercion, no one
takes part who does not desire so to do,
and no one suffers under any restrictions
save those of his own imposing. But
the result of such a cooperative under-
taking is inevitably more inclusive in the
breadth and thoroughness of its achieve-
ment than the wholly uncoordinated
efforts of the same group. Nor is this
assertion a matter of mere opinion. It
was proved to be true over and over
again in the war, and in other nations
as well as among ourselves. Such
methods speed up research, and produce
far more symmetrical and conclusive
results. This is one of the things which
the National Research Council, represent-
ing as it does in its membership all the
great scientific societies of the country,
is successfully undertaking. It involves
simply a voluntary programme of scien-
tific men for enlarging, energizing, and
expediting their own productivity, with
a consequent gain for society as well as
for science.
But let us return a moment to my
friend and his conception of research
252]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 44
as something wholly esoteric, individual-
istic, and inspired.
No doubt there are individualists in
science, as in art, and even in business —
men who make personal contacts with
difficulty or not at all. Some of these
men are geniuses, but most are not. They
are simply folk who have to make their
human contribution, large or small, as it
may be, in their own peculiar way. They
must be largely neglected in any coopera-
tive programme. But it would be a
gross perversion of the historical facts
to assume that all the seriously useful
contributors to science, even all the
geniuses, are of this type. Quite the con-
trar>' is the case. And moreover, the
natural sciences have for several gen-
erations been at the point where they
could advantageously employ in their
advancement research capacities extend-
ing all the way from that of a Newton
or Darwin down to the freshest tyro
with the ink not yet dry on his doctor's
degree. Organization is the clue, and
the only clue, to securing some approach
to a full-interest return on the intellectual
capital represented by these very diverse
abilities. In a well-conceived general
programme of research, place can be
found for even mediocre ability, which,
if left to itself, is certain, for the most
part, to be sterile. As a matter of fact,
much of the best research in the great
scientific laboratories has emanated from
the planning of the master at the head,
who throughout a long period of years,
perhaps, guides and directs the research
of his disciples with the result that
knowledge of the highest value accrues
from the integrated work of men, many
of whom if left unguided would have
produced little or nothing and even that
of an accidental and incidental charac-
ter, sustaining no significant relations to
the main currents of scientific progress.
One should not be confused in think-
ing of this situation by assuming that
such cooperative research as we have
been discussing need tend toward purely
practical issues. The direction which
such investigation takes rests on wholly
other considerations. Scientists may in
a given instance decide that for the
moment the most urgent need is re-
search in a field of applied science. But
they well know and fully appreciate that
only in pure science are the revolutionary
discoveries to be made, and that no one
can predict in advance whence such a
discovery may come nor what its impli-
cations may be. A discovery in the
physiology of the organic cell may revo-
lutionize the conceptions of physics and
chemistry. There need, therefore, be no
fear that if scientists work in more inti-
mate contact with one another than
heretofore they will, in consequence, tend
to neglect the interests of pure science.
Still more convincing as to the needs
and possibilities of organization in scien-
tific research are considerations regard-
ing the problems set by society and the
conditions of modern life. Many of the
most important issues confronting the
contemporary community inevitably in-
volve for their solution the cooperation
of scientists in quite distinct fields.
Illustrations without number will sug-
gest themselves. For example, sewage
disposal is in part a problem for the
sanitary engineer, in part for the chem-
ist, in part for the bacteriologist, in part
for the expert in soil ftrtilizers or in the
industrial utilization of end products.
No one individual is or can be a compe-
tent investigator in all these directions.
The problem of improvement in fuels and
their use is similarly in part a question
of geology, in part one of chemistry, in
part one of engineering, to say nothing
of the economic aspects of the issue.
Public health questions generally involve
the bacteriologist, the hygienist, the
epidemiologist, the chemist, the engineer,
etc. These are not fictitious illustra-
tions. They are drawn from actual
practice, and exhibit some of the simpler,
rather than some of the more compli-
cated, requirements. Often the State or
the city calls together such a group to
study its own special practical problems,
but no agency has hitherto attempted to
assume any general leadership in secur-
ing cooperative attack upon the under-
lying fundamental scientific issues in
such problems without regard to any
immediate practical exigencies. Here
again, the National Research Council is
offering its services and bringing to-
gether, by the voluntary action of rep-
resentatives of our leading scientific
societies, groups of competent investi-
gators to attack such problems. If left
to the accidents of individual initiative,
they are likely to be indefinitely post-
poned, and just because they involve so
wide a range of scientific interests.
Obvious are the opportunities for coop-
eration among State and Federal scien-
tific agencies, among the great private
research institutions and the like.
A very conspicuous field of cooperative
endeavor in applied science is met in the
case of the smaller industries. The great
industrial corporation can afford its own
research laboratories, and many have
such. But the small producer can not
afford such a luxury. There is, however,
no reason why he should not join with
other firms in his line of work and estab-
lish conjointly a central research labora-
tory, to the support of which each
contributes ; or if that form of procedure
be impracticable, these groups may
employ scientific men working in their
own laboratories to undertake such
research as is required. Plans of these
types have already gained headway both
in En<Jland and in the United States, and
the National Research Council is giving
such aid as it can.
By no means the least important aspect
of the whole case is the producing of
trained personnel for research. Broadly
speaking, the universities are the only
agencies from which such personnel is
now derived. Moreover, they serve a
double function in producing the larger
part of the research in pure science at
the same time that they train research
personnel. It is well understood, and
requires no further emphasis, how exten-
sively many of these institutions have
been raided by business and industry as
an aftermath of the war, in which it
was suddenly discovered that the occa-
sional college professor has a tangible
economic value. But it is impossible to
exaggerate the disaster which will over-
take our entire national programme in
science, if there be not prompt steps
taken to attract and retain for the
academic profession a fair share of men
of the highest ability.
Quite apart, however, from this mat-
ter is the problem of securing a more
rational distribution of research facili-
ties. As matters now stand, the larger
universities tend to expand into every
field of research with relatively little
regard to the conditions in other insti-
tutions. The temptation is to make each
institution a university in a somewhat
literal sense. Now, it requires only the
most superficial knowledge of the con-
ditions in science to recognize that some
forms of research are eminently appro-
priate in one institution and grotesquely
inappropriate in others. One would be
hard put to it to justify the development
of marine engineering in a region hun-
dreds of miles removed from any navi-
gable water; and with several large
medical schools in a community of mod-
erate size, the establishment of another
could hardly be viewed as judicious.
Nevertheless, this is exactly the sort of
thing which has been going on, and
which will go on indefinitely unless our
university authorities get together and
arrive at some kind of gentleman's
agreement, if it be nothing more formal,
which will prevent the dissipation of
financial and scientific energy repre-
sented by the present practices.
It is absurd to have every university
attempt unlimited varieties of research
work. The wastage in material equip-
ment is unjustified, and it is quite impos-
sible in this generation at least to secure
the necessary calibre in the scientific men
needed to provide so many institutions
with competent directors of research
and trainers of fresh personnel in every
department of science. There must be
cooperation and organization here if
wholly unwarranted wastage and ineffi-
ciency are to be avoided.
All things considered, therefore, we
may safely conclude that research can
be organized in ways which exercise only
beneficial influences on initiative, that
March 13, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[258
without such organization our science
will remain in the condition of mediaeval
industry, that by improving the methods
already employed the boundaries of
knowledge may be pushed forward with
unprecedented rapidity, and finally, that
for the solution of certain types of prob-
lems, organization is wholly indispen-
sable.
For the realization of such ends, the
National Research Council was created.
It has just received a very generous
endowment, which will allow it in per-
petuity to carry forward and develop the
efforts it has already initiated to provide
such a mobilization of research talent as
may best contribute to the welfare of the
nation in times of peace, and be ready
at a moment's notice for the nation's
defense in time of peril.
James Rowland Angell
Chairman,- National Research Council
Correspondence
Mr. Lansing's Statutory
Rights
To the Editors of THE Review:
Let me congratulate you on your edi-
torial on the Lansing incident. In all
the discussion of this question, it seems
to be assumed that the President has
complete power over his so-called Cabinet
officers. It seems to be the general im-
pression that, as the President nominates
the head of a department and can remove
him at pleasure, he is peculiarly the
instrumentality of the Executive and
that his rights and obligations are as
the Executive may require.
The assumption that Cabinet officers
derive their powers solely from the
President is erroneous. Even his power
to appoint them is qualified by the
requirement that the Senate shall con-
sent, and his power to remove is to some
extent shared by Congress, which can
at any time impeach a delinquent head
of a department, and thus remove him
from his position.
The head of a department has a statu-
tory office with statutory rights and
obligations. The official status is cre-
ated by the Constitution itself, and the
power to determine the duties of a
department head is delegated to Con-
gress, and not to the Executive. Neither
by statute nor by the Constitution does
the Cabinet officially exist. It is a mere
colloquial term.
The Constitution (Art. I, Sect. 8)
gives to Congress the power
to- make all laws which shall be necessary and
proper for carrying into execution the fore-
going powers and all other powers vested by
this Constitution in the Government of the
United States, or in any department or officer
thereof.
Under this grant of power, the depart-
ments, whose executive heads constitute
the so-called Cabinet, were established by
Congress. Thus, it is provided by R. S.
Sect. 199:
There shall be at the seat of Government an
executive department, to be known as the De-
partment of State, and a Secretary of State,
who shall be the head thereof.
Similar provisions are made for the
other departments of the Government,
and Congress prescribes by various
statutes the respective duties allotted
to these departments, and the rights and
obligations of the officials connected
therewith.
Secretary Lansing, therefore, did not
owe his office to President Wilson. He
did owe his nomination to that office to
the President and his final appointment
to the Senate, which confirmed it. He
had an official status, which Congress
had created, and he had rights and
duties which Congress prescribed. No
one could question that the illness of
the President in any respect impaired
the right, power, and duty of the Sec-
retary of State to continue in the ad-
ministration of his department. The
President, however, contended that the
Secretary of State in the discharge of
his statutory duties could not confer
with the heads of other departments in
a so-called session of the Cabinet with-
out the consent of the President, even
though the President were unable to
give his consent. Of all Mr. Wilson's
extraordinary manifestations of one-
man power, this is easily the most inde-
fensible.
While each department of the Govern-
ment has its own province, yet coordina-
tion between them is required, as their
duties overlap. The balance wheel is
the Department of Justice, and nearly
all the department heads, other than the
Attorney General, would find it difficult
to disciiarge their duties unless they
could confer with the Attorney General
with respect to their legal obligations.
Congress compels the Attorney General
to advise the departments, when re-
quested by their executive heads. This
generally involves conference and cooper-
ation. If the Secretary of State had the
right to confer with the Attorney Gen-
eral, without the request of the Presi-
dent, then it follows that he had an
equal right to confer with any other
department head whose cooperation was
necessary in the discharge of his duties.
Thus, no department can function with-
out the cooperation of the Treasury
Department. If two heads of depart-
ments can confer in the discharge of
their statutory duties, without asking
the permission of the President, it must
follow that all could do the same. If
this right and duty of cooperation exists
when the President is not disabled, a
fortiori it exists in the event of his dis-
ability.
The opposing theory is due to the fact
that, in the popular mind — and appar-
ently in Mr. Wilson's idea of the Con-
stitution— the Cabinet has an official
status as such and that its decision car-
ries with it a collective influence as such ;
but, as I have said, the Cabinet is, from
a legal standpoint, non-existent. Each
department head has a power which is
limited to his own sphere of usefulness,
and is defined by statute, and the heads
of departments can not collectively take
any action that would have any greater
legal force than that which each head of
a department takes separately, except
where otherwise specifically provided.
Thus, if a Secretary of State were to
take a certain action which in itself was
legal, no court could nullify his action
because the Cabinet was of opinion that
it was inexpedient. In any legal pro-
ceeding, no cognizance could be taken
of the Cabinet, as such.
The executive head of a department,
therefore, is something more than a
mere automaton of the President. He
is a servant of the Government, with
rights, duties, and limitations prescribed
by Congress and not by the President.
If Congress requires him to do a certain
act or to refrain from doing a certain
act, and such command or injunction is
within the legislative powers of Con-
gress, then the Cabinet officer must obey
the command or respect the limitation,
without regard to the wishes of the
President. Thus, if Congress were to
pass a law forbidding the Secretary of
the Treasury to compromise a claim
against the United States except after
conference with and by the advice of the
Attorney General, the President would
be powerless to direct his Secretary of
the Treasury to compromise the claim
in any other way.
All this is so trite and obvious that its
statement would be the idlest superfluity
had not the President gravely called into
question the power of the members of
his so-called Cabinet to confer with each
other. Undoubtedly the joint meeting
of the heads of the departments, which
collectively we call the Cabinet, while
having no Constitutional or even statu-
tory status, has acquired in the practical
administration of the Government an
unofficial status, and, therefore, it may
be open to fair question, as a matter of
official etiquette, whether the heads of
the departments, except in an extraordi-
nary emergency, could, on their own
motion, jointly meet as a Cabinet with-
out discourtesy to the President. If the
President had rested his complaint
against Mr. Lansing upon a question of
courtesy, more could be said in justi-
fication of his contention ; although, even
then, the contention is surprising that,
with the President stricken by a serious
malady, the so-called Cabinet could not
meet to determine what the public inter-
2.>4]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 44
ests required. The President, however,
did not rest his complaint upon a ques-
tion of etiquette or courtesy; but con-
tended that the meeting of the Cabinet
without his knowledge and approval —
although he was then incapable of either
knowledge or approval — was a violation
of our form of government, and suffi-
ciently grave to justify the summary
removal of a Secretary of State. Its
unsoundness can be tested by an extreme
illustration.
Suppose that the Cabinet of the United
States, in time of war, became convinced
that the President of the United States
was conspiring with the enemies of his
country and that for this and other grave
misdemeanors was justly subject to
impeachment, and let us suppose that
the facts with reference to the Presi-
dent's dereliction, which fully justified
his removal, lay exclusively in the knowl-
edge of the various heads of departments.
If, under these circumstances, the Cabi-
net met formally, reached the conclusion
that the President should be impeached
and removed, and communicated their
joint judgment to the Congress of the
United States, what Constitutional pro-
vision would be violated? Indeed, would
they not, under the assumed circum-
stances, simply discharge an undoubted
duty that they owed to their country?
James M. Beck
New York, March 8
How to Meet the Revolu-
tionist
To the Editors of The Review :
In your issue of February 28, the edi-
torial entitled "Hillquit on the Socialist
Programme," presents the urgent ques-
tion. What is to be done as to the Social-
ists and their revolutionary propaganda?
One difficulty encountered is the
adroit use of language found among
professional Socialists. The language of
the Socialist agitator to his "proletariat"
audience may probably be received in a
different sense from that which he
assigns to it if called to account by con-
stituted authority. The terms "mass
action," "direct action" and "revolution,"
used repeatedly in Socialist writings, are
illustrations.
Mr. Hillquit himself is hardly the type
of "proletarian" for whom the social
"Revolution" is advocated. His success-
ful law practice of 27 years and his resi-
dence on Riverside Drive are not an
obvious identification with the "ex-
ploited" labor masses. It is not sur-
prising that his announced definition of
Socialism falls short of that current in
Russia, and expressed by other leaders
of the Socialist party in this country
and in the manifesto of that portion of
the Socialist party in this country
(claiming to be a large majority in
numbers) which set up a separate organi-
zation less than a year ago. The "Revo-
lution" once loosed, it would be idle to
expect it to stop at the limits assigned
by Mr. Hillquit. Any answer to the
problem of what we should do requires
the best thought of our wisest and
most experienced leaders. The following,
however, are suggested as lines of action :
1. Let us clearly understand and see
to it that the public understands the dif-
ference between Reform and Revolution.
They are sharply differentiated by
Socialists themselves, but a lack of com-
prehension of this distinction is respon-
sible for ill-considered action by senti-
mentalists. In the manifesto and pro-
gramme of the Communist party of
America, which in August, 1919, sepa-
rated from the titular Socialist party, and
claims to have taken more than two-
thirds of its membership, we find the
following :
Participation in parliamentary campaigns,
which in the general struggle of the proletariat
is of secondary importance, is for the purpose
of revolutionary propaganda only. Parliamen-
tary representatives of the Communist party
shall not introduce or support reform meas-
ures.
In the fundamental Communist Mani-
festo of Marx and Engels occurs the fol-
lowing reference to one class of activi-
ties which they differentiate from their
own objectives:
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of
redressing social grievances in order to secure
the continued existence of bourgeois society.
To this section belong economists, philanthro-
pists, humanitarians, improvers of the condi-
tion of the working class, organizers of charity,
members of societies for the prevention of
cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole
and corner reformers of every imaginable
kind.
And elsewhere it states:
The Communists disdain to conceal their
views and aims. They openly declare that
their ends can be attained only by the forcible
overthrow of all existing social conditions.
In the manifesto of the Communist
International adopted at Moscow in
March, 1919, bearing, among others, the
signatures of Lenin and Trotsky, appears
the following:
Decades of organizing and labor reformism
created a generation of leaders most of whom
gave verbal recognition to the programme of
social revolution but denied it in substance.
They were lost in the swamp of reformism
and adaptation to the bourgeois state.
And again:
Socialist criticism has sufficiently stigmatized
the bourgeois world order. The task of the
International Communist party is now to over-
throw this order and to erect in its place the
structure of the Socialist world order.
2. With a knowledge of what the
"Socialist world order" means, let us
encourage and promote social and eco-
nomic reforms. Much has been done
through legislation respecting child
labor, hours of labor, factory legislation,
tenement legislation, workmen's compen-
sation, etc. More remains to be done.
The world war leaves us in a state of
world-wide unrest, perhaps on the thresh-
old of a new era; there is a spirit abroad
that challenges established traditions
and the conditions demand wide vision
and wise and far-reaching plans.
3. Even as we give our earnest sup-
port to wise reforms, we should infiexi-
bly combat the noxious revolutionary
propaganda. However fair its promises,
it inevitably unchains terror and social
chaos. Promote in every proper way the
spirit of holding fast to the funda-
mental guaranties and securities upon
which our Government and social struc-
ture have been built. Let us not be fear-
ful of changes that will improve and
strengthen, but let the changes be step
by step. True progress consists in hold-
ing to what we have until we have tried
out that to which we propose to change.
4. Let us purge our civic bodies,
schools, churches, and other organizations
of the poisonous and destructive propa-
ganda of revolution. Easy-going toler-
ance and lax indifference have allowed
the propagandists of these doctrines to
insinuate themselves into what should
be the temples and citadels of our social
structure. Let us supervise those who
instruct and develop the thought of our
children, and those of riper years as well,
and if they are false prophets, let us
brand them as such. Side by side with
this attack upon those who menace our
institutions, let us provide wholesome
teaching for those whose energies may
now be misdirected and ill-spent. Afford
an outlet for the natural zeal of the
reformer which will make him a sup-
porter of our Government and institu-
tions, not an ally of their enemies.
5. Let us also firmly exclude the aliens
who come here to preach sedition. The
effort is now organized on a large scale.
Lieutenant Kliefoth, a former attache of
our Embassy in Russia, is quoted as stat-
ing that the Committee on Propaganda
and the Suppression of Counter Revolu-
tion spent in the past year 400,000,000
rubles for propaganda, printed in every
known language. Lenin's foreign policy
was based, he said, on foreign propa-
ganda and world social revolution. As
to alien agitators who have already ob-
tained or hereafter may obtain admis-
sion, through our ignorance of their real
character and motives, let us provide a
swift and certain return to their home-
land, and let it be made clear that this
will be done with all who thus abuse our
hospitality.
Herbert Barry
New York, March 3
March 13, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[255
Book Reviews
Roosevelt's Imperishable
Youth
Theodore Roosevelt : An Autobiography. New
^'ork : Charles Scribner's Sons. '
THE spirit of adventure and the spirit
of domesticity, good things in them-
selves, are perfect as correctives to each
other, and the perfection of their union
and the fruitfulness of that perfection
are abundantly manifest in this mus-
cular and spirited autobiography. These
two elements so shaped and colored the
man that politics remained for him from
first to last the superb adventure, and
patriotism itself took form as the exten-
sion of marital and fatherly care to a
widened household. There is an incipi-
ent outlaw in every adventurer; there is
a potential dictator in every parent; it
was curious that the exemplar, Theodore
Roosevelt, whose life-formula might be
summarized as the application of courage
to disinterested ends on a world-scale,
should have become the illustrator of
both tendencies.
He was in some respects a most demo-
cratic person ; he valued manhood apart
from class or wealth. He would have
embraced Theodore Roosevelt in blouse
and sweater; he would probably have
embraced Theodore Roosevelt in blanket
or loin-cloth. He loved the other man of
his type; what he could not love or see
was the other type. He thought, with
some reason, that he lived a very good
life himself, and his object as patriot,
like his object as father, was to distrib-
ute that form of life in the utmost
possible abundance through the widest
possible area. He was a man-breeder,
man-feeder, man-builder. When he was
President he wanted to do something to
season the savorless and stupefying life
of laborious women on the farms. This
is more than paternalism; it is grand-
motherliness. It evokes a smile possibly,
but, on the absolute genuineness of Theo-
dore Roosevelt on this side, its conclu-
siveness is exhilarating. Demagoguesand
hypocrites are not mindful of this sort
of hardship; they hear only the moans
which can be distilled into bravos.
The danger, the drawback, in all this
lay in the subjection to things. The sub-
jection is natural to mankind. The boy
in his playground, the man in his work-
shop, are actualists; what society feebly
tries to do in the brief interval of so-
called higher education is to call geome-
try with its line, algebra with its letter,
language with its tvord, law with its
rule, logic with its formula, science with
its class, to chasten or counterpoise the
domination of the brute thing. This edu-
cation Theodore Roosevelt, to all appear-
ances, needed and lacked. He was
graduated from Harvard University, he
studied law, and he had acquirements
and versatilities on which stress is duly
and affectionately laid. But his relation
to things remained elementary; he could
not gain a second point of view. Efficient
at an age when other men are fumbling,
he was rigid at an age when other men
are pliant. The gods drive their bar-
gains with the best of us, and perpetual
boyhood was the price paid by Theodore
Roosevelt for imperishable youth. Hence
a nature that is always, in the French
phrase, on "le premier plan." Culture in
the sense of modulation — the sense in
which every chord in a man's being is
audible with a difference in every other
chord — is not the property of his mind.
In style his fist is always powerful, but
the hand is not versatile or supple, and
there is no trace of his ownership of a
musician's ear. His remarks on books,
while sensible enough, are not so good as
the remarks of an energetic mind on a
subject that skirted its own field ought to
be. Of individuality in character he
seems to have had little sense. The cer-
tificates of efficiency which he deals out
in lavish abundance with fraternal pleas-
ure are curiously alike in their matter
and their diction. Men to him became
largely tools; he knew the difference
between a good and a bad tool, but the
distinctions between good tools were
negligible. The sense of humor which
enables a man in a sort to pursue and
overtake, to waylay and circumvent, him-
self, was not found in high quality or
large amount in Theodore Roosevelt.
Something of this elemental, boyish char-
acter is visible in the plunge from deed
to deed, the rebound from task to task,
which marked his hurried, eager, impro-
vised career. His fight for righteousness
was a form of Roughridership; he was
the moral raider, the Prince Rupert, the
Morgan, the Mosby, supreme in the inspi-
ration of a charge, less certain in the
sinuosities of a campaign.
The "Autobiography" of Theodore
Roosevelt may be viewed in a double
aspect. On the one side, it is a strong,
bright, simple book, a saga, a chanson
de geste, with altered settings and prop-
erties. On another side, the side of the
author's unconscious self-revelation, it
has the effect of profound and artful
satire, the work of a Swift or Pascal
or Voltaire. The author is simple, but
the book — or Nature behind the book — is
cunning. When, on pages 250-1, we find
Theodore Roosevelt as Lieutenant-Colonel
rescinding the act of a major-general,
and escaping the penalties of that vio-
lated discipline which he enforced for
smaller offenses on lesser men, we can
not but shudder at the peril to the Repub-
lic latent in the puissance of a man
capable of the presumption of that deed
and the nonchalance of that confession.
The same quality is evident in milder
form in the quiet bitterness of the fre-
quent allusions to the failure of his "suc-
cessor" to carry out the Rooseveltian
policies where they bruised, or seemed to
bruise, the Constitution. Theodore Roose-
velt was so much the thrall of the con-
crete that the notion that a word could
stand between a good man and a good
act was to him incomprehensible and
monstrous. It never occurred to him to
ask himself seriously if the same word
that stands between a good man and a
good act to-day may not stand between
a bad man and a bad act to-morrow. He
could not understand that an unselfish
act might be wrong; he felt his ovm acts
to be thoroughly unselfish, and he ac-
cepted that artless guarantee of their
virtue. This temper of mind is primitive,
and its association with powers so ex-
traordinary and with aims so magnani-
mous gives to his own case that subtlety
and ironic point which was so curiously
wanting in his own view of the world
and himself.
All Sorts of Adams's
The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma.
By Henry Adams. With an Introduction
by Brooks Adams. New York: The Mac-
millan Company.
iy|R. AUGUSTINE BIRRELL, in one of his
■'■'•'• scoffing moods, speaks disrespectfully of
poor Francis Horner because he "maintained
an atmosphere," whereas if he had been asked
what he had done since he was breeched, he
could only mutter something about the cur-
rency. That artificial atmospheres have been
maintained we do not deny; but, after many
years, they acquire permanency, and posterity
accepts the verdict of contemporaries as final.
That an atmosphere has surrounded the elder
members of the Adams family is certainly
true, and we do not think it should be dis-
pelled ; nor did we think it likely that at this
late day any attempt to dispel it would be
successful.
We must say, however, that by the
publication of this book Mr. Brooks
Adams has seriously disturbed this
atmosphere. So far as he himself was
protected by it — not that it was in his
case very impenetrable — he has com-
pletely dissipated it. The world had for-
gotten that he was a violent devotee of
"free silver"; but he takes this oppor-
tunity to renew his vituperation of the
"gold bugs," and to drag Henry Adams
into the extinct controversy. He be-
moans his pecuniary losses in the panic
of 1893 — brought on by the agitation in
which he was active — but as no one but
himself was to blame, his sufferings
arouse more contempt than pity, for,
after all, he did "crawl in with the
bankers on the rise." He had better let
oblivion do its kindly work.
That he did not deserve to keep an
atmosphere is also shown by the title of
this book. We took it up anticipating
pleasure if not profit in getting Henry
Adams's views on democracy. We have
been disappointed. Whatever views on
this subject Henry Adams may, have else-
256]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 44
where expressed, he expresses none here.
He discourses on views of the universe
in general, and the philosophy of history
in particular, but he has nothing to say
of the degradation of the democratic
dogma, or of the democratic dogma
itself. Nor do we find that Mr. Brooks
Adams increases our knowledge of these
subjects. He allows himself 122 pages
of discursive lucubration, and spares
Henry Adams less than 200 pages; but
to offer this matter under the title he
has given it is to practise a deception
on the public worthy only of the late
P. T. Barnum.
Dr. Holmes, we believe, maintained
that to reform a man you must begin
with his grandparents. Proceeding on
this theory Mr. Brooks Adams under-
takes to explain Henry Adams in terms
of his grandfather, John Quincy Adams.
We confess that we do not understand
the explanation. It may be that "what
is most remarkable is the persistence of
the same cast of intelligence in the
grandfather and grandson, the scientific
mixed with the political, which made the
older man reject with horror a scientific
theory forced upon him by circum-
stances, which the younger man has
accepted, if not with approbation, at
least with resignation, and at so rela-
tively short an interval of time." The
laws of heredity are, it is true, some-
what obscure, but why the same cast
of intelligence should produce such con-
tradictory results is passing strange, if
not past belief. Other explanations are
offered which might be reduced to coher-
ency with patient study, but the game is
not worth the candle. Possibly the
phenomenon is caused by the Adams's
atmosphere.
To sweep aside the atmosphere in
which John Quincy Adams has been com-
fortably shrouded appears to us as an
act of gross impiety. The "old man
eloquent" really amounted to something;
he was conceited, but that does not excuse
his grandson for using him as an illus-
tration of the proverb, "seest thou a man
wise in his own conceit? there is more
hope of a fool than of him." Why
should attention be called to the fact that
the grandfather declared that if his
"conceptive power of mind" had been
greater, his "diary would have been,
next to the Holy Scriptures, the most
precious and valuable book ever written
by human hands," and he "would have
been one of the greatest benefactors" of
his country and of mankind. He would,
"by the irresistible power of genius and
irrepressible energy of will and the favor
of Almighty God, have banished war and
slavery from the face of the earth for-
ever." He concluded with the prayer:
"May I never murmur at the dispensa-
tions of Providence." After his politi-
cal downfall, according to his grandson,
he never did much else but murmur.
With the result, if not the purpose, of
writing down his grandfather an ass,
his grandson submits extracts from his
diary, some of which we quote. They
do not suggest heroism, and make us
skeptical as to what the diary might have
been, even with the special favor of
Almighty God. "I was up at three and
again at four, and wrote on the arrears
of this diary from that time till seven.
... I passed a night of torture, with a
hacking and racking cough, and feverish
headache. ... I went to bed at nine
and was up with fits of coughing at 11, at
1, at 3, and at 5 this morning, and finally
lay till near 6 utterly dispirited. . .
I ate nothing the whole day." The lapse
of 80 years has deprived these events of
interest, and what they have to do with
the "heritage of Henry Adams" — unless
he was subject to fits of coughing — is
conceivable only by the "conceptive power
of mind" possessed by Mr. Brooks
Adams. Our own theory of "heritage" is
that John Quincy Adams was somehow
derived from Louis XIV. After the
overwhelming defeat at Ramillies, that
monarch exclaimed : "Has God then for-
gotten all that I have done for him!"
When John Quincy Adams found that his
political theories failed in practice, he
considered (according to his grandson)
that he had been betrayed by his God.
The failure of God to support him in
his policy of constructing highways and
canals through the national Government
caused him even to doubt the existence of
a supreme being. Such incapacity to regu-
late the affairs of this country in accord-
ance with the Adams's ideas showed that
God was really unfitted for his position.
The poor old man was disappointed, em-
bittered, and broken in health; but why,
as Mr. Birrell somewhere observes,
"should the universe be stretched upon
the rack because food disagrees with
man and cocks crow ?" But God is merci-
ful. He spared the old man knowledge
of what his grandson was going to do
to his remains. Had he foreknown it,
any murmur at the dispensations of
Providence would have been blotted out
by the Recording Angel.
John Quincy Adams was, in the opin-
ion of his grandson, "the most interest-
ing and suggestive personage of the early
nineteenth century," and Henry Adams
in his philosophy "certainly one of the
most so of the present century." We
do not understand this stinted praise of
Henry; although, as it incidentally
appears that he found Brooks a bore,
there is room for conjecture. It is
understood that the "Education" has
been read, or partly read, by a great
many people. We are not confident that
all these readers could give a clear
statemert of the principles of education,
as a result of their labors, but it is rea-
sonable to suppose that they found Henry
Adams an interesting and suggestive
personality. Such they may find him
here. His essays, to be sure, have
nothing to do with Democratic Dogma.
One is entitled "A Letter to American
Teachers of History." The other is "The
Rule of Phase Applied to History."
Those who are concerned to reconcile the
mechanical theory of the univei'se with
the existence of a vital principle, Sir
Isaac Newton with Sir Oliver Lodge, and
who succeed in their attempts, may pos-
sibly develop a philosophy of history sat-
isfactory to themselves from these essays.
To others it may not be satisfactory.
For neither a history nor a philosophy
based on the meditations of the anthro-
poid ape a hundred thousand years ago
deserves attention. This being is repre-
sented as employing his time, not in
cracking nuts, but in considering the
problem — "How long could he go on
developing indefinite new phases in re-
sponse to the occult attractions of an
indefinitely extended universe?" Even
if the problem is "the same as that
addressed to the physicist-historian of
1900"; especially if he foresaw that in
1921 "thought will reach the limit of its
possibilities," and that "only a few
highly trained and gifted men will then
be able to understand each other," we
are sure that this ancestor of ours,
although illiterate, knew enough not to
spend his time over a riddle that after
a hundred thousand years was to get no
better answer than this. He probably
tried hard to understand his brother apes
and was proud of his progress ; but if he
had known that this was to be the long
result of time he would have been dis-
couraged at the start.
"You may be sure," Henry Adams tells
the American Historical Association,
"that four out of five serious students
of history who are living to-day have,
in the course of their work, felt that
they stood on the brink of a great gen-
eralization that would reduce all history
under a law as clear as the laws which
govern the material world." At the
same rapid progress in history which
has been made during the last fifty years,
another half century would carry his-
torians over this "brink," our author
tells us. He doubts if this rate can be
maintained. "If not, our situation is
simple. In that case we shall remain
more or less where we are." This is
sound reasoning, and as most terrific
results will follow to church, and state,
and property, and society itself if history
is to continue its progress, we insist that
it must remain where it is, "be the same
more or less."
On the brink of one generalization
the author not only has stood but has
fallen over. "Man has always flattered
himself," he tells us, "that he knew —
or was about to know — something that
would make his own energy intelligible
to itself, but he has invariably found, on
March 13, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[257
further inquiry, that the more he knew
the less he understood. ... He knew
nothing at all! . . . No one knew any-
thing." This is mere dogmatism. The
author may speak for himself as to the
limits of his own knowledge; he may
possibly generalize correctly concerning
anthropoid apes; but he has no right to
measure the intelligence of his fellow
creatures by his own ignorance.
The world has listened with equanim-
ity, so far as it has listened at all, to
warnings of philosophers as to the final
crack of doom. One tells us that it is the
height of imprudence not to see that —
after some preliminaries — "the inevitable
death of all things will approach with
headlong rapidity." Our author inclines
to this view, but at first he allows us
time to get used to it, if that is any
comfort. "Man and beast can, at best,
look forward only to a diversified agony
of twenty million years"; but it is mis-
erable comfort to know that "at no
instant of this considerable period can
the professor of mathematics flatter him-
self or his students with an exclusive or
extended hope of escaping imbecility."
Still, this leaves a ray of hope to that
large part of our race that has always
despised mathematics and questioned the
pretensions of its professors; but this
ray is quickly extinguished. For an-
other authority says, "An insane world
is looked forward to by me with cer-
tainty in the not far distant future."
Yet even the most stolid of mankind
may be startled to hear that the "catas-
trophe of civilization" is so near at hand
as 1921. This date is indicated by the
career of the comet of 1843, which is
shown by an illustration to have whisked
around the sun in twelve hours and flown
off into space. Now a comet "resem-
bles Thought in certain respects, since,
in the first place, no one knows what it
is, which is also true of Thought, and
it seems in some cases to be immaterial.
... If not a Thought, the comet is a
sort of brother of Thought, an early con-
densation of ether itself, as the human
mind may be another, traversing the
infinite without origin or end, and
attracted by a sudden object of curiosity
that lies by chance near its path. If
such elements are subject to the so-called
law of gravitation, no good reason can
exist for denying gravitation to the
mind."
With this basis, by using the law of
squares and some conjectures which
space does not allow us to present, the
conclusion is reached that Will and Rea-
son "must submit to the final and funda-
mental necessity of Degradation."
In a review of Mr. Pinmoney's poems.
Punch says of the most consummate of
them, "Here we have the whole philoso-
phy of life and the life hereafter summed
up." As this poem also contains in a
compendious form the whole of Henry
Adams's philosophy, we present it for
the use of readers whose time is valuable:
"Man comes
And goes.
What then?
Who knows?"
D. McG. Means
War-Time Reactions
The Call of the Soil. By Adrien Bertrand
(Lieutenant Chasseurs Alpins). Trans-
lated by J. Lewis May. New York : John
Lane Company.
The Judgment of Peace. By Andreas Latzko.
Translated by Ludwig Lewisohn. New
York : Boni and Liveright.
The Secret Battle. By A. P. Herbert. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Up and Down. By E. F. Benson. New York:
George H. Doran Company.
WAR-TIME reactions and experiences
are not for the moment of burning
interest to most of us. Being no longer
agrope among them we should more or
less frankly like to put them out of mem-
ory for a time. Yet it is certain that
their best records are still to come. Most
of the immediate literature of the war
was, and had to be, shortsighted, frag-
mentary, and often hysterical, whether
with rage or with pity — when it did not
cultivate a protective nonchalance, and a
kind of hard tonelessness of style, also
protective.
"The Call of the Soil," in French
"L'Appel du Sol," won the Goncourt
prize in 1916. Already it is a little quaint,
like, say, a motor-car of that date. It is
a story of the emotional order. Like
Berger's "Ordeal By Fire," and many
other French war novels, it expresses
the triumphant merging of individual
will and destiny in the service of France.
Without going afield in pursuit of larger
ideals — the preservation of civilization or
democracy, or the vindication of an uni-
versal brotherhood — it is content to exalt
love of country. It finds in patriotism a
motive sufficient to justify if not the war,
certainly the French citizen's part in it.
The Frenchmen of the story, whatever
their rank, or their personal characters,
willingly die for France: "the power
which guided them all was the call of
the soil of France." To those who have
faith in the validity of this species of
■ sacrifice, the horrors of war do not cease
to exist, but may be accepted like the nat-
ural horrors of whirlwind or earthquake.
It is only those who see no meaning in
war who gloat over its monstrous physical
cruelties to the individual . . . This
is not an infallible distinction, after all,
as witness "The Test of Scarlet," by
W. Coningsby Dawson, than which noth-
ing more naturalistically sanguinary or
more romantically sanguine has come
out of the war. But it will hold in the
main.
Witness "The Judgment of Peace,"
by Andreas Latzko, a Teuton who
significantly inscribes this work "To
Remain RoUand, my great compatriot in
the love of Man." His earlier war novel
was acclaimed by all those who set the
hatred of war above the love of anything
whatsoever — or rather identify it with
the love of humanity. That an Austrian
officer in war-time should express so viv-
idly, so furiously, his loathing for war
and for the militarist spirit which
brought the world to this war, was, to
put it vulgarly, nuts for the pacifists.
"Men in War" was indeed a fine and
impassioned utterance of that saeva
indignatio of the humanitarian which so
ruthlessly visits itself upon all who are
not professionally humanitarian. Latzko
is an eagle of peace. The air winces
under the buflFeting of his wings, and
echoes with a cry that might be curse
or blessing. "The Judgment of Peace"
does not release us from the bloody tur-
moil of "the front."
Here, as was the case in the war-
fiction of Barbusse and Duhamel, are
pitilessly exposed the squalor and the
agony of forced marches, of trench life,
of useless raids and unmeaning brutali-
ties. Here, to the confusion or incre-
dulity of non-Teutonic readers, are va-
rious incidental allusions to "atrocities"
on the part of the Allies, all the more dis-
turbing for being so unstressed. Ill-
treatment of prisoners at French hands
is alluded to as a matter of course, and
as for the wounded : "With the hands of
a veritable hangman the hate-maddened
French staff surgeon had probed his
wound and torn off his bandages. The
attendants of both sexes had done their
best to equal their commander in patri-
otic zeal until his vigorous organism had
remained victorious and the hated boche
had ceased spitting blood and was dis-
charged." How familiar this would
sound with the substitution of "Prus-
sian" for "French"! However, there is
solace for the other side in the picture
of the devoted French Sister, who gives
her tears as well as her tireless care to
the dying German officer, while his
wounded comrades curse him as a traitor
for not playing the stoic to the end.
. . . Shrill above the author's hatred
of war as a crime against humanity rises
that familiar note of rage against war
for its indifference to the precious indi-
vidual. Why should anyone so unique,
so inviolable as I myself be thrown into
the cauldron?
In a very different temper "The Secret
Battle" is a study of the injustice of war
to the individual. Being the work of a
cultivated Englishman, it has the re-
straint of the famous public-school tra-
dition. It wishes to betray too little
rather than too much feeling. Its man-
ner is tense with sympathy, but its
matter approaches dryness. Its theme
is the tragic fate of an ardent young
Briton entangled in the meshes of the
258]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 44
military system. He eagerly offers him-
self to England at the beginning of the
war, with God knows what dreams of
heroic service and its attendant glory.
At Gallipoli he serves his bitter and dis-
illusionizing apprenticeship in the drab
trade of modern warfare. His valor is
at first unquestionable, but his fortitude
is not proof against the long strain of
perilous service and the determined
enmity of certain "superior" officers, the
one a martinet, the other a slacker, in
whose black books chance and malice
have placed him. His nerve is broken
before a wound sends him home. There,
on his recovery, he is urged to accept
a safe post. But his doubt of himself
drives him back to the front, and this
time chance and malice make short work
of him. Now the author does not base
upon this incident an indictment of war-
fare so much as record it for what it
may be worth. "This book is not an
attack on any person, on the death pen-
alty, or on anything else, though if it
makes people think about these things,
so much the better. I think I believe in
the death penalty — I don't know. But
I did not believe in Harry being shot.
. . . That is the gist of it; that my
friend Harry was shot for cowardice —
and he was one of the bravest men I
knew."
Mr. Benson's "Up and Down" is a
study of lighter tone and texture, but it
is in no trivial sense of the term that
we may call it a comedy of two friends
in war-time. May, 1914, to April, 1917,
are its containing datea The scene
shifts from Italy to England and back.
The older person is (approximately) Mr.
Benson himself; the younger a clever
and indolent individualist who is per-
fectly happy in his Italian villa, means
to live there always, and speaks of Eng-
land as an unpleasant place from which
he happens to have escaped. In July,
1914, the older friend is in England, and
as the war cloud gathers he has a letter
from the younger, in which he calls
himself "a denationalized individual."
He thinks he might fight for Italy — but
how could he take arms against Germany,
who "taught 'mankind how to think"?
He thinks England ought to be able to
keep out of it, though it will be "particu-
larly beastly" there, "with all these dis-
turbances going on." Why doesn't his
friend pack his comb and his toothbrush
and come back to Alatri ? Then in a few
days come the facts of England's entry
into the war and Italy's declaration of
neutrality — and on their heels a letter
from our young dilettante, which says
simply, "Of course we had to come in
when Belgium was invaded. ... By
the way, if it is true that we are sending
an Expeditionary Force to France, just
send me a wire, will you?" So perishes
the denationalized one, while a patriot is
born for England. . . . The rest of
the book is of less firm texture. The
younger friend serves, and dies, though
not at the front; and thereafter, by
agreement, communicates fragmentarily,
through a medium, with the older
man.
Upon this episode Mr. Benson bears
not too heavily. He believes it possible
that on occasion we may be "brought into
connection not with the soul of the de-
parted, his real essential personality, but
with a piece of his mere mechanical in-
telligence." ... "I believe the door
between the two worlds not to be locked
and barred; certain people — such as we
call mediums — have the power of turn-
ing the handle and for a little while set-
ting this door ajar. But what do we get
when the door is set ajar? Nothing that
is significant, nothing that brings us
closer to those on the other side. If I
had not already believed in the perma-
nence and survival of individual life, I
think it more than possible that the accu-
rate and unerring statement of what was
in the sealed packet might have con-
vinced me of it. But it brought me no
nearer Francis." All of which is worth
the consideration of both the bulls and
the bears of the spiritualistic, or spirit-
istic, or psychical exchanges of the hour.
H. W. BOYNTON
Lessons from the Progress
of Science
The Whole Armour of Man. By C. W.
Saleeby. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott
Company.
THE war-like title of this book was
suggested no doubt by the author's
experiences in the great war, but the
conflict that he has in mind is the strug-
gle between man and his adverse environ-
ment. The armor with which man must
gird his loins is the knowledge furnished
by the progress of science. At the end
of the book, and in a way as a summing
up of the whole truth of the matter, the
author quotes almost with reverence the
noble address delivered by Pasteur some
thirty years ago, a message in which he
declared his belief that "Science and
peace will triumph over ignorance and
war." To this belief the author is glad
to give his enthusiastic adherence in
spite of the untoward events of recent
years.
The book consists for the most part of
a series of papers and addresses previ-
ously published or delivered and brought
together in this volume in a somewhat
haphazard form. The author apologizes
for this loose arrangement on the plea
that the urgency of the matter treated
did not ptymit time for the composition
of an "organic volume." Hence the selec-
tion and publication of miscellaneous pa-
pers which cover the whole field of sani-
tation and preventive medicine, with
something to spare, since he throws in
such things as tributes to Carrel and to
Horseley and disquisitions upon the
evils of speculation and the solution of
the world's wheat problem. In spite of
this heterogeneity and much repetition,
the volume is most readable. The author
has a wide knowledge of the biological
sciences, which, if not always accurate
in details, is sufficiently sound in general;
and, added to this, he has in high degree
the gift of expression. His English is
vigorous and epigrammatic. The latter
quality is possibly too much in evidence.
The author at times seems to succumb
to the temptation to air this gift, as,
for example, in his "slams" against the
ancient and honorable game of golf,
which he characterizes as "not a game
but a treatment."
The conservative scientist lacking a
personal acquaintance with Dr. Saleeby
will infer from his writings that he be-
longs to that group of whole-souled re-
formers whose virtuous enthusiasm may
make them at times uncertain guides,
but there can be no doubt that he pos-
sesses to an unusual degree the art of
popularizing scientific knowledge. It is
a rare gift. The writings of most re-
formers, especially in matters of public
health, are likely to be deadly dull, even
though tricked out with a good deal of
yellow science. In this country we need
very much men who possess the gift to
arouse our reading public to a realiza-
tion of the extraordinary opportunities
now available in the application of the
results of science to the prevention of
disease and death. Dr. Saleeby's breezy
essays, although written especially for
the British public and applicable in de-
tail only to the conditions there prevail-
ing, are entirely pertinent in general to
the conditions existing in this and other
civilized countries. In such matters we
are all in the same boat. The author is
very savage with the English as con-
trasted with the Scottish public, and par-
ticularly with the English politicians, on
account of their alleged contempt for
science. He finds evidence for this accu-
sation, of course, in the conduct of the
war.
He attempts to stimulate his fellow
countrymen by pointing out how much
better such things are done in France or
in this country. But, so far as we are
concerned, it is to be feared that the
compliment must be passed back to him.
In sanitary methods and in social eco-
nomics we must award first place to-
Great Britain, and the book under re-
view gives sufficient evidence, perhaps,
for this belief. They have a Minister
of Health, whom we have not, and the
things done, together with the things
contemplated, as set down in this book,
are of a kind to provoke envy as well
as congratulations.
March 13, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[2.59
The Run of the Shelves
THE dramatic editor of the Indian-
apolis News, Oliver M. Sayler,
visited the theatres of Moscow and Pe-
trograd in the winter of 1917-1918. His
book, the "Russian Theatre Under the
Revolution" (Little, Brown and Com-
pany), is said to give "the first complete
record in English of the foremost dra-
matic movement of our time." In that
winter Russia was staging a revolution.
A visitor who should choose the moment
when a man's house was on fire to inspect
his cameos would not be a commonplace
person. The exhibitor of cameos under
those circumstances would likewise be
exceptional. Mr. Sayler found his the-
atres. Escape from the Russian Revo-
lution, which seems impracticable in
Paris or London or New York, appears
to be entirely achievable in the stalls and
boxes of the Small State Theatre (con-
servative), which plays Shakespeare and
Schilling and Hugo, of the Moscow
Art Theatre (liberal), which features
Tchekhov, and of the Kamerny Theatre
(radical), which plays Kalidasa and
Synge and Goldoni and Calderon and
Beaumarchais and Benelli (of the
"Jest"), and, to the unspeakable delight
of the ihapsodic and phosphoric Mr. Say-
ler, Oscar Wilde's "Salome." A country
which can maintain a literary art at the
summit of histrionic perfection at a
time when famine pinches and discord
reddens its capital is a country to whose
possibilities it is difficult to fix a bound.
For part of this miracle — that is for
the unsuipassed artistic merit of the
acting — we are obliged to trust to Mr.
Sayler's word. His sincerity is unques-
tionable, but his temper runs to hyper-
'bole. Moreover, he has the theatrical
field in Russia for the moment all to him-
self— a dangerous privilege. No for-
eigner is by to check him up, and we
suspect him of a tendency to that en-
largement of vision and speech to which
human nature is prone in the absence
of challengers. Monopoly always raises
the price of its own wares. His criti-
cism is not daunted by his evident igno-
rance of the Russian language. In the
point of analysis he is easily satisfied.
For the acting at the Moscow Art
Theatre his formula is "spiritualized
realism." Spiritualized realism, at the
first glance, would seem, like sentimen-
tal or mystic realism, to involve a con-
tradiction in terms. Realism is uncolored
fact, and spirituality and sentiment and
mysticism are all colorings. Very pos-
sibly the point is answerable. No wise
man will declare war on a phrase, any
more than he will capitulate to one. But
should not Mr. Sayler have given us
something more than a phrase to make
war on or make peace with? Sometimes
his remarks (see page 78) reveal that
artlessness with which sophistication is
now and then so strangely companion-
able. In spite of all doubts and deduc-
tions, Mr. Sayler's book should be read
by all students of contemporary drama.
If it is not a striking history, it is a
spirited and curious novel.
Poe has found much warmer admirers
abroad than at home. American critics,
from his own day to yesterday, invari-
ably spill a bit of gall in the honey. For-
eign recognition, says Brownell, rewards
to a disproportionate extent the merits
that espe3ially appeal to foreigners. In
the case of Poe, these merits, not-
ably the single-eyed preoccupation with
beauty, wese of a sort which goes
straight to the heart of Frenchmen in
particular. Baudelaire, perhaps the only
other poet in the world who was Foe's
euphonic equal, put Poe's verse into mar-
velous French ; and Frenchmen have ever
since been charmed by his genius and
shocked by his own country's callous
ingratitude.
A new book by M. Andre Fontainas
("La Vie d'Edgar A. Pee": Mercure de
France) is a biography of Poe, not a
study of his writing. It is an enthusi-
astic retelling of his pathetic and often
noble life, involving a passionate attack
on his traducers. Poe was the only cham-
pion of art for art in his country and
genoi-ation. Hence, it was inevitable that
the Philistines, the materialists, the
pieachers, the reformers, all they who
love dollars, decorum, or doctrines more
dearly than art, should have misunder-
stood him, disliked him, attac!;ed him,
especially in view of his proneness to
attack first. It is probable that few
Americans can even yet read such a study
as this of M. Fontainas with full appre-
ciation, since most Americans are still
enrolled in one troop or the other of the
army against which poor Poe tilted sin-
gle-handed. To most of us it makes little
difference — since by his zealous biogra-
pher's own admission he was discharged
from one magazine for drunkenness —
whether or not he was dismissed a second
or third time for a similar offense. We
admire his genius, disapprove of his
irregularities, regret sincerely that we
have been inclined to exaggerate them,
and take national pride in a detail which
has apparently made no great impression
on his French champion — the fact that,
whatever his personal life may have been,
and though utterly bare of didacticism,
his writings, prose and poetry, are abso-
lutely clean and pure. But for all our
Philistinism, we can see that M. Fon-
tainas has written a valuable book, accu-
rate, abreast with the most recent dis-
coveries, and pleasant to read. If we had
been given our choice we should have
preferred that the twenty-five pages given
ove- to the sentimental poems of Poe's
friend, Mrs. Whitman, had been devoted
to a continuation of the, to us, much more
interesting main subject in hand. Other-
wise, the book is well-planned and skil-
fully executed.
In compiling the volume "Great Artists
and Their Works by Great Authors"
(Boston: Marshall Jones Company),
Professor Alfred Mansfield Brooks has
hit on an excellent idea. Excluding, in
the main, artists' utterances, and giving
rather little from professional art critics,
he gleans general literature for com-
ments on art in general, the particular
arts, or individual artists and master-
pieces. Thus he brings together for the
use and pleasure of the art lover many
significant passages which would other-
wise escape him. So far as it goes, the
book is acceptable, but the principle of
selection seems pretty casual, and the
omissions are disquieting. If it was
worth while to collect a number of
Goethe's rather commonplace observa-
tions on art, surely such real critics as
Lessing, Winckelmann, and Schopen-
hauer should have been considered. The
French list is blank as regards Diderot,
Gautier, Taine, and Zola, not to mention
the notable romantic, Baudelaire. On the
English side why lug in Lord Leighton
and George Clausen, when Rossetti,
W. E. Henley, and R. A. M. Stevenson
are ignored? To substitute in a second
edition extracts from these writers for
the present superabundance of Ruskin
would remedy its somewhat parochial
flavor.
"Lettres d'un Soldat" (Paris: Chape-
lot) first appeared in 1916 and has gone
through several editions. It immediately
attracted attention in both England and
America, and two separate translations
were brought out in 1917 by two differ-
ent houses and under two different titles.
Here the book was called "A Soldier of
France to His Mother" (McClurg), in
England, "Letters of a Soldier" (Con-
stable) ; and now, oddly enough, a second
London edition, newly translated and
with still another title — "Letters from a
French Soldier to His Mother"— appears
from still another London publisher —
Alexander Moring. It is also surpris-
ing that the present editor and transla-
tor still leaves the authorship of this
book cloaked in anonymity, although it
has been publicly admitted by the family
for a year or more that these remarkable
letters are from the pen of Sergeant
Eugene Lemercier, an artist-soldier of
great talent, killed on the Western front.
Furthermore, his mother, also an artist
and the one to whom the letters are ad-
dressed, is now engaged in making a
selection from all of her son's writings
which will be published next year in
America, accompanied by a biographical
introduction and a number of reproduc-
tions of the artist's best. work.
>60]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 44
Of Woodpiles
WE were walking, the poet and I, past
a low white farm house and a tall
r«d barn. Between the two was a wood-
pile, a noble one, ten or fifteen cords of
■traight, clean maple, hickory, oak, and
birch.
"There's a handsome woodpile for
you!" I exclaimed.
Even as I spoke, I was conscious that
I had said something of the sort before.
The poet had not forgotten it; he turned
a curious eye on me.
"What are you so interested in wood-
piles for?"
I found it hard to explain in a word.
"Aren't you?" I countered.
"No more than in piles of coal," he
returned, and with the word he forfeited
all my poetic faith.
When I got home, I took up the emaci-
ated volume he had given me, and
discovered that he is in the habit of at-
taching a set of rather pale emotions to
characters one seldom meets outside the
appendix to the classical dictionary; I
doubt, for example, whether he is to this
day more than "half assuaged for Itylus"
(whoever Itylus was). My heart doea
not leap up for such as these, but it
warms to a woodpile. If I had ever with
my own hands inducted a ton of coal
from its lair to my hearth and warmed
myself by its heat, I might love a coal
pile as I do a woodpile, but I doubt it — I
think it much more likely that I should
hate it. I have toiled over woodpiles
when the flesh was weary, but the spirit
did not revolt. I have followed steep
trails, and no trails, among the high
snows with a heavy pack from dawn till
"barely time to make camp," and down to
timber-line with every muscle aching. I
should have been glad to spread my
blanket and let someone else rustle the
night's supply of wood, and cook supper.
But in the end, after putting my last
ounce of energy into every log I brought
in, when with a full stomach and a full
pipe I watched the sparks eddy upwards
among the pine tops and the stars, then
the woodpile was not the smallest item
in the sum of self-congratulation over
the day's achievement, and scarcely less
agreeable to contemplate than the fire.
My feeling for woodpiles has a back-
ground with which the poet's experience
did not supply him. I am an amateur if
you like, but I am a veteran. Under pa-
ternal supervision, I began early in life
on a load of cottonwood logs from the
head of the canyon. On them I worked
hard, not for money, but because Jim
Corbett was training just then with a
bucksaw. There are years vacant of
woodpiles between that time and the con-
veyance to me and my heirs of sundry
acres (he the same more or less) of
sprout land on the New England hillside
where I still swing my axe, but always
my devotions have been as steady as fate
would allow. I do not boast of accom-
plishment worth while in itself, but
merely of experience that makes the
woodpile, which to the poet was nothing
more, to me a stimulus to the imagina-
tion and a delight to the eye.
First, doubtless, for its flattering testi-
mony to worthy accomplishment. The
man is not human who, after a day with
the axe, does not smoke his evening pipe
in the presence of his woodpile to esti-
mate in complacence the well-earned in-
crement. In sympathy or emulation his
spirit echoes the experience when he sees
another man's woodpile. To Thoreau, the
feeling was almost enough in itself to
justify the accumulation of firewood. At
the woodpile stage of the process he felt
that he had had all the pleasure he was
entitled to, and for any further glow to
be obtained from his fuel he must render
account in the form of tasks sternly done
in the warmth of his fire. 'Tis the voice
of the Puritan, the word of the miser.
Thoreau is not of the true fraternity of
axe and saw, for the woodpile teaches
no creed of asceticism, but releases its
treasure to whosoever will come. He
was a miser if the accumulation of goods
as a means -became to him in itself an
end. And to borrow a turn from one
who had ever an answer ready for the
Puritan: If to burn mine own wood
freely be a sin, God help the wicked. If
you cut your own wood, your fire can
hardly beguile you to unearned idleness,
and there can be nothing wrong with the
man who in contemplation of his wood-
pile anticipates ease, or before his fire
remembers industry. I like to meet the
sticks on my hearth as old friends, and
to recall former meetings. "I remem-
ber you well," I say to a gummy stick of
wild cherry; "you are more affable than
when I saw you last. I found you diffi-
cult of approach as you stood in the angle
of the wall." Of course, almost any
stick is companionable in the atmosphere
of the fireplace, but those you have
brought up yourself are always the most
so. They are like college students as
their teachers see them, sometimes a bit
difficult when you are licking them into
shape, but warmly responsive as you
meet them later.
In days of exile the woodpile stood
among the fondest of memories. Travel-
ing inland from Brest on a raw January
day, not a few of my shivers were antici-
patory as I saw the woodpiles of Brit-
tany and Normandy, bundles of twigs
that no American would feel that he
could afford to handle except to burn as
slashings, hoarded like counted money
against the winter's firing. In Paris as
I paid seven francs a basket for wood
that at home I should not have wasted
time in cutting except for riddance, and
bumcfl it in a tiny roll-top fireplace, I
fondly dreamed of the woodshed I had so
warmly lined with solid sticks before I
left home. At a hospital camp in Bur-
gundy I saw the only woodpile that looked
real to an American eye. A trainload
of firewood had backed in on the camp sid-
ing, and squads of husky doughboys wer«
pitching it off — the air was thick with
it; it fell in a huge drift nearly as big
as the train. It was poor stuff by Ameri-
can standards, but at least it was cord-
wood, and I took off my hat to the S. 0. S.
with something like my first realization
of how highly France prized our help;
nowhere did I see her burning such wood
to keep herself warm. A few days later
I learned the feel of a French axe.
Three of us out for a walk came upon
a peasant felling a poplar beside a ditch.
We gave him cigarettes, took his axe,
and worked by turns, two talking with
him of his service and his wounds while
one chopped. The axe had a long, nar-
row bit and straight helve; it drove like
a chisel into the narrow cut, wasting
little in chips and stumpage. We met
its owner afterwards on many a white
road thereabout, and always had from
him a cheerful password of the universal
brotherhood of the woodpile.
It was a serviceable axe and a thrifty,
but I missed the sinuous, slender helve
of my own "weapon shapely, naked, wan."
Give me a blade that suggests the con-
cave of a razor, and a helve of at least
twenty-eight inches with no treacherous
cross-grain to weaken its double curve.
An axe like a pendulum has its rhythm
according to its length, and if it does
not suit me I can not keep step with it.
With an axe that fits, a proper stance,
and the right swing, chopping is not
heavy or exhausting work. The feeling
is that of controlling rather than exert-
ing force, like swinging a weight round
your head by a string. After the lift
and poise, a twist of trunk and shoulders
give the axe its planetary motion and
speed; the arms hold it to its arc,
muscles stretched taut by the centrifugal
pull as if they were an extension of the
helve, but neither they nor the grip may
have the slightest rigidity. As in golf,
do not "push" to gain force, but drive
the bit deep by a flick of the wrists at
the end of the stroke. Thus you may
chop all day with a merry heart, laying
each cut to a hair where you want it to
fall, leaving the end of each stick as clean
as if you had sheared it with a single
blow. And when you read in your "red-
blood" novel of what the hero performs
"with a few well-directed blows of his
axe" you will wonder whether the novel-
ist knows as well as you do whereof he
speaks. As you pile the freshly cut
sticks, you become aware that the rows
of upturned ends present a rather odd
view of your wood-lot in cross section;
almost as if you could see your village
with the ends of the houses removed.
Here are the intimate life-histories of
March 13, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[261
the trees revealed in the tale of the con-
centric rings, stories of poverty-stricken
years you never suspected, hoarded
wealth you never knew, healed scars and
hidden wounds, secrets of the birth of
new branches, and revelations of the
means of supporting them from the par-
ent trunk.
Of the wood-lot in winter, normally its
busy season, I have not had full experi-
ence. I know, indeed, the austere joy of
a brilliant morning with the mercury
near to zero, the air twinkling with
snow-sparks, electric to sight and touch,
when even double mittens can not pro-
tect finger-tips from aches as poignant
as ever haunted a tooth — but as Uncle
Everett, my neighbor philosopher, sagely
remarks, "S'long as they keep on a-hurt-
in', you know they ain't relly damaged
much," and you swish your saw prestis-
simo to drive the blood into every last
extremity. Here the woodpile is as ne^t
between its upright stakes as a box of
dominos, till there comes the slow creak-
ing .sled and its "dumb old servitor" to
bear it at a foot pace down the hillside,
down the valley, to the scene of its trans-
lation into ashes and ethereal parts. But
most often I must cut my wood out of
season, in summer when it is heavy with
sap. A morning in a tiny cubicle which
represents "the study" at camp, at monk-
like labor laying words end to end, brings
me to the limit of my endurance. With
axe and saw I retire to my laboratory
where trees too thickly congregate. The
sun slants shafts of powdered gold
through the greenery overhead; the song
of the woodthrush ripples the placid
air; jay and chickadee cock beady eyes
at my proceedings, one squawks derision,
the other pipes companionship. I spy
through the shot-windows of my high
room tiny vistas framed in leaves, the
far curve of a hill's bosom to the north,
or a brush-point of Chinese white repre-
senting a church spire down the valley
to the west. Here in reflective peace I
fell gray birch and redundant maple, or
plot and execute engineering feats to
reduce the trunk of a big blighted chest-
nut. I hear a cautious rustling, and a
terrier's towzled face peers round a lau-
rel bush. He rejoices on me with flying
paws and quivering tail, then retires be-
yond range of the chips. Next come
small bipeds, proprietors and managers
of the dog, and there follow endless tea-
drinking ceremonies with clean chips
and stumps, much sitting on logs and
talking of things in general with obser-
vations on the theory of tittlebats. If
there is the less wood cut, there is the
more left standing.
With the saw as with the axe, "easy
does it," or in Uncle Everett's words,
"It's all right ter try 's hard 's you've a
min'ter, but it ain't no use ter try no
harder than ye kin." "Best recipe I
know," he told me, "ter keep a saw run-
nin' smooth, is ter slip it back 'n forth
through a log a little while every day."
No stick ever pinches his saw, for he
has the only perfect sawbuck, an old
scarred veteran that looks like the vault-
ing horse in the gymnasium, with hick-
ory pegs set solidly in its back to hold
the log as in a mitre-box. Next best is
one you may make but can not buy, with
three X-shaped supports so spaced that
your stick is held firm its whole length
and can not sag where you saw it. If
you would know comfort, make this crea-
ture with legs so long that when you
have set it a foot in the ground for rigid-
ity it is still high enough not to kink
your back. For a saw, get a "one-man
cross-cut" with teeth like a shark's, and
you will find sawing a contemplative rec-
reation, for you may handle your saw as
lightly as a fiddle-bow with no fear of
its sticking, and discharging your bat-
teries of nervous energy in crackles of
profanity.
My fireplaces are genially catholic in
their tastes. I could call over the whole
catalogue of the trees and find scarce
one, however commonly despised for fire-
wood, of which they have not at one time
or another made good use. Of elm, for
example, I have never heard a good word
spoken, but I have had praiseworthy
service from it as a green backlog "to
hold the fire." Its unpopularity is due to
its tough, interwoven fibre which makes
it almost impossible to split, and slow to
season. Of blighted chestnut I have
burned my share or a bit more, and well
I know its skill in high-angle bombard-
ment with incendiary sparks. It does not
suit all moods, for it makes of sitting by
the fire a lively, hilarious game instead
of a period of innocuous coma. Use your
chestnut sticks with discretion; put one
on the fire when you have a caller who
needs periodical awakening — he will talk
fast enough when a cubic inch of red-
hot charcoal lands in his lap, and will
display great agility in hunting sparks
off the rug while you apologize for the
misbehavior of your fire. Of course, the
best wood for other purposes is also the
best wood to burn. Hickory seldom
comes on my andirons, but rock maple is
nearly as good, burning with an intense,
steady glow to a fleecy white ash. But
gray birch, almost useless for anything
else, is the staple of my woodpile when
I go after firewood per se. If it bums
fast, it is also fast to grow and fast to
cut, and to take it out of one's woods is
as good a deed as to weed the garden.
The trouble is that cutting only encour-
ages it; Hydra is a pale figure for its
performances at producing in incalculable
ratio many heads for every one you lop.
Pear, cherry, and apple, when bad luck
in the orchard brings them to the hearth,
make the best of fires, slow-burning, but
with abundant, steady heat. Oak and
ash, butternut and poplar, even tag
alder and pussy willow, I have burned
them all as chance and change have
brought them under the axe, and all,
whatever their faults, give out warmth
and glow, and provide excellent wood-
ashes for garden and lawn.
Breathes there the man who does not
deem himself competent above all others
to manage his fire; who is not jealous of
it as of his honor at the hands of an-
other? So I feel about my fire, and
scarcely less so about my woodpile. To
carry heavy loads of wood with aching
arms from the shed to the study is no
joy, but even when I have the choice, I
do it myself rather than leave it to one
who does not understand the blending of
firewood. He will bring it to me all
green or all dry, all birch or all chest-
nut. The result is either no fire at all,
or else a fire that is about as comforting
as a cocktail made by a man to whom all
bottles look alike. Besides, I like to keep
an eye on my woodpile in its waning no
less than its waxing. Even now I have
more words laid up than cordwood; I
ground my axe yesterday, and I know
where stands a wild cherry tree that is
waiting its chance to corrupt the orchard
with caterpillars.
Robert P. Utter
Music
"The Birthday of the In-
fanta"—D'Erlanger's
"Aphrodite"
THE end of the short season at the
Lexington was more sensational
than important. Apart from two ballets,
by Americans, and some remarkable
singing by Titta Ruffo, Bonci, and others
in old-fashioned operas, it brought the
production (the first performance in this
country) of Camille d'Erlanger's much
advertised "Aphrodite." Before touch-
ing on the work last named, a few words
about the new American ballets.
In "Boudour," Felix Borowski, the
Chicago critic, proved his ability to com-
pose vivacious music for a theme which,
although modified and changed in various
ways, was plainly suggested by the Rus-
sian ballet, "Scheherazade." Technically,
Mr. Borowski did credit to himself. But
he said nothing new.
Vastly more interesting, musically and
in other ways, was "The Birthday of
The Infanta" — a charming and effective
reconstruction, in ballet form, of one of
Oscar Wilde's most fanciful tales for
children. The creator of this very dainty
dance-poem was John Alden Carpenter
(like Mr. Borowski, of Chicago). He
had himself arranged the plot to suit his
purpose, while Adolph Bolm, the Russian,
had devised the dances.
Nothing that our composers have in-
262]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 44
vented has been more satisfying than
"The Birthday of the Infanta," which,
by the by, is Mr. Carpenter's first effort
to write music for the operatic stage.
It gives one hope of even better things
to come — perhaps good operas. The
storj' that it tells concerns the love of
the grotesque and tragic Pedro for the
young Princess, before whom he dances.
To reward him, the Princess sends him a
gift which he construes into a sign of
love. His broken heart and death wind
up the tale. Incidentally, we have light
and amusing dances, quaint pageants,
and costumes such as Velasquez has im-
mortalized. Above all, we have a bur-
lesque bull fight in an improvised Plaza
de Toros and, at the end of the first
scene (there are two scenes in Mr. Car-
penter's witching ballet), a pageant, full
of monstrously hooped skirts and lights
and color.
In his score Mr. Carpenter has ex-
pressed many moods with unusual elo-
quence; some humorous, others dainty,
graceful or tragical. His music has
subtility and elegance. It is sometimes
brilliant, often sad and haunting. The
most serious charge that can be brought
against it (and that must be brought)
is that it is not always really new and
personal. In one episode the composer
quotes Debussy with too much subser-
viency. In another he harks back to the
"Carmen" and "L'Arlesienne" of Bizet.
The success of the whole work was
much enhanced by two stage scenes —
each of them simple to a fault and very
modem — invented by Robert Edmond
Jones. The first showed a conventional
outer court or garden, with a mountain-
ous background. The second gave a hint
of the interior of a gloomy chapel. Each
picture seemed to harmonize with the
moods of Wilde and his interpreter. Each
was a model of unforced and fitting taste.
If stage pictures of themselves could
kill an opera, those which distressed the
«ye in the "Aphrodite" of d'Erlanger
would have been deadly. They were
crude and rude, and very "cheap" indeed.
But they were good enough as accessories
in the performance of a worthless work.
The interest of the public had been
whetted by the high prices charged for
the rather doubtful privilege of hearing
the opera. And mahy who attended the
performance doubtless did so hoping for
scandalous improprieties. Nor can they
have been greatly disappointed. The
operatic version of the story by Pierre
Louys, now familiar to the general pub-
lic in another and much more spectacular
form, through the entertainment now on
view at the Century Theatre, is quite
unabashed and odiously frank. I need
bardly say that it revolves around
Chrysis, the courtesan, who, as the price
of her sophisticated favors, forces Deme-
trics, her lover, to commit murder and
sacrilege. As to details, there are
analogies between "Thai's," "The Jewels
of the Madonna," and "Aphrodite." But,
in the opera of d'Erlanger, things are
far more cynically harped on than in
the other works.
The composer's setting is strangely
futile — a vague and tame rehash of
Massenet and Charpentier, devoid, except
in the long overture, or introduction,
and at moments in the lascivious orgy
served up as a ballet of inspiration. A
Temple scene and a brutal Crucifixion
episode, contrived for the opera, were
omitted. For this most in the audience
should have felt grateful to the Chicago
management. A closing scene — a sort
of epilogue — in which two sister courte-
sans of the seductive Chrysis were seen
sorrowing at her grave, after she had
expiated her ill deeds by drinking poison,
might also have been spared us. It was
rank anti-climax. No analysis of the
music is called for. Only by the least
musical and most debased in taste will it
be remembered, except with weariness.
The one redeeming feature in the per-
formance of "Aphrodite" at the Lexing-
ton was Mary Garden, who sang the diffi-
cult and often exacting role of the ignoble
but quite irresistible heroine with charm
and expression. Miss Garden was a pic-
ture of half-veiled and unveiled loveli-
ness. She had dressed (I use the term
for the sake of decency) the part most
conscientiously. So far as the chief
character was concerned, no one could
grumble.
Edward Johnson, the American tenor,
was less romantic and less lyrical than
he might have been as Demetrios; and,
in a minor part, Marie Claessens sang
impressively.
Charles Henry Meltzer
Drama
Problem -Plays in New York
RACHEL CROTHERS IN "HE AND
SHE"— LIONEL BARRYMORE IN
"THE LETTER OF THE LAW."
IT is very difficult to stage a play in
one's brain. I had read Miss Rachel
Crothers' "He and She" with sympathy,
in 1917; I read it two weeks ago with a
pleasure which my occupancy of a sick-
bed at the moment did not blur. I
thought it a genuine, though chastened
and reticent, stage-play. My surprise
was accordingly great to discover that
on the boards of the Little Theatre the
play visibly blanched and pined. I still
nurse the hope that- the guilt lay in the
cast rather than the play. The actors,
inexpert as a group, saw that the play
was quiet, feared that a quiet play might
drowse, and hallooed and whistled to
keep it awake. The great mistake, how-
ever, lay in the decision of Miss Rachel
Crothers to impersonate her own hero-
ine. The artist and mother which Miss
Crothers, the author, had put into Ann
Herford, Miss Crothers, the actress, was
unable to re-discover or reclaim. Ann
Herford is a sculptor, a shaper of things
with the hands, and I have never known
an acted part that seemed to me
so obviously manipulated. There was
plenty of study and determination ; there
was no substance on which that study and
determination could effectually act. In
the final effect there was something hun-
gry and grasping which belonged neither
to Ann Herford nor, in all probability,
to Miss Crothers, but to Miss Crothers'
convulsive but imperfect hold upon her
part. It is unlucky for "He and She"
that its subject should have been antici-
pated, not in composition but perform-
ance, by one of the eminent stage-suc-
cesses of the season in New York, Mr.
James Forbes' "Famous Mrs. Fair."
Both these plays deal gravely with a
timely and serious problem — the relation
of executive or artistic force in woman
to the claims of motherhood. War-work
in Mrs. Fair's case, sculpture in Mrs.
Herford's, detach the mother tempo-
rarily from the child. The daughters
rush into unimaginable follies, and are
saved in the end by the mothers' pas-
sionate repudiation of every claim except
the claim of contrite and self-spurning
motherhood. This conduct is dramati-
cally sound ; the trouble is that, in seem-
ing at least, the cry of an impassioned
heart in the exaltation of a critical mo-
ment is presented as the final solution
of a difficult and many-sided problem.
You may draw from "He and She" a
thesis that is sound and tame, that in
a conflict between motherhod and art
the claims of motherhood are first. You
may also put its thesis in a form which
is bold, interesting, certainly question-
able, and probably false, that no mother
has the right to be a sculptor. It is not
the first time that the problem-drama
offers us the sorry choice between a sound
but futile generality and a vivid but
untrustworthy particular. To grant the
priority of motherhood in case of con-
flict is not to grant that conflict is inevi-
table. In nine cases out of ten what is
wanted is not heroism, but common sense,
not sacrifice, but wise accommodation.
Drama insists on the tenth case; that is
its right as drama; the tenth case, the
extreme case, is its property. If it wrote
"Tenth Case" over its play, its conduct
would be quite honest and quite harm-
less, but the more it poses as social in-
structor, the harder and harder do such
acknowledgments become. Social science
insists on the middle case, the type-case;
that is its right as social science. What
is left for drama, in its role of social phi-
losopher, to do except to declare that the
extreme case is typical?
(Continued on page 264)
March 13, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[263
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264]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 44
(Continued from page 262)
Miss Crothers proves her theorem by
a special case the particulars of which
aie, of course, absolutely at her own dis-
posal. But even here her embarrass-
ments aie great. The mother sends her
daughter to boarding-school. Miss Cro-
thers, however, has to reckon with an
audience that knows that girls are sent
to boarding-schools by mothers who are
not sculptors, and are very good mothers
indeed. What is left? The sculptor-
mother refuses to let her daughter come
home for the Easter vacation, and in this
invaluable fortnight the Devil and Miss
Crothers get in their work. The girl is
at the school, and we get forward only
on assumption that girls are unsafe in
vacation in the same places and hands in
which they are safe in school-time. But
we are thankful to get forward at all.
The girl's brains have next to be immo-
lated to the thesis, and one regrets that
in a drama which sets out to prove that
friezes are worth less than girls, the
frieze should be excellent and the girl
vapid. I will not follow the case into all
its details ; the difficulties, as I think, are
plain. Miss Crothers herself is less to
blame than the disparity between drama
and social science, the difficulty of ad-
justing an art which is anything but dis-
criminative to the necessities of a science
of which discrimination is the soul. The
trouble lies in the fact that drama, if it
teaches to any purpose, must teach com-
mon sense, and that the business of com-
mcu sense in this unromantic world is
to destroy the occasions for drama.
Eugene Brieux is one of the most hon-
est men alive, and the hope of a decent,
kind, and upright France, which might be
clouded by a perusal of his works, is
rekindled by the thought of their author.
The retort to Brieux's France is — Brieux.
The largeness of his spirit is finely evi-
dent in the hand reached out to America
in "Les Americains chez Nous," from
which the February number of La
France has reprinted a discerning ex-
tract. The man is half artist, half
dramatist, wholly crusader. Such a role
might have made a German, possibly an
Englishman, intolerably heavy; but this
man sprang of a vivacious and dramatic
race, and, if Brieux himself be a trifle
solid, France is sprightly even in Brieux.
He has given himself to the problem-
play with a Dickensian mixture of art-
lessness and energy, and some of his
work reveals the peril of a combination
of drama and science both in the weight
which it takes from science and the
weight which it adds to drama. One
might wish, perhaps, that the scope of
Brieux's attack on social evils had been
less extensive. It is hard to believe that
a man whose work proves that he was
half a novice in his own specialty was an
expert in a dozen other fields. The com-
bination of philosopher and dramatist
may sometimes evade the censure which
either part would severally attract. Has
he defects in knowledge? We excuse
them in a dramatist. Has he blunders
in dramatic art? They are venial in a
philosopher.
Brieux's art is best when simplest; the
"Red Robe," inaptly called the "Letter
of the Law" in the English rendering at
the Criterion, is a play of large area —
and, what is more to be dreaded — ill-
defined frontiers. It is a large, loose,
decentralized attempt to prove that the
French judiciary — impenetrable to gold
— is pervious to every other species of
corruption. Its power is less the power
of a play than of a speech; Brieux is the
prosecutor of the whole judiciary. Nar-
rative of a kind is present, but there is
no current in the narrative; it loses
itself in the exposition as a stream
merges in a pond.
A further difficulty arises from the fact
that there are primary and secondary
interests in the play, and that the inter-
ests which are primary in importance
are secondary in power. At the end a
judge is stabbed by a peasant woman, and
his colleagues, pouring in from the cor-
ridor, exclaim: "Another vacancy."
Murder is subordinated to epigram. It
is as if Brieux had taken up the dagger
reddened by the crime, and slit an en-
velope with the still dripping edge. In
the second act, likewise, a man accused
of murder is examined by a magistrate.
Brieux's eye, the play's eye, is on the
prosecutor, but who can persuade an
audience to look at a magistrate when a
cutthroat, real or supposititious, is in
the field of view? A lighter treatment,
a treatment modeled on that of Gogol in
the "Inspector-General" or perhaps on
that of Le Sage in "Turcaret," would
have been deadlier in the end. Indeed,
in this play, the rare comic strokes are
the strokes of power. In Madame Vagret
a society that eats, drinks, and breathes
promotion is caricatured, and its pas-
sage into caricature completes the proof
of its reality.
An inoffensive and uninteresting cast,
to which Miss Doris Rankin and Mr.
Charles White impart vigor in certain
episodes of peasant life, need not arrest
us in our passage to Mr. Lionel Barry-
more's exuberantly sordid Mouzon. Mou-
zon is a vulgar rascal; the actor's task is
to make him odious, yet keep him toler-
able; and Mr. Barrymore's success in
this ticklish enterprise is considerable.
He made Mouzon despicable, yet pro-
tected him from our contempt. The
original point in Mouzon is that he is
both jovial and stony; or, if the reader
pleases, he is hard and unctuous like a
waxed floor. In the rendering of -this
combination Mr. Barrymore was happy;
he even put shading into a character to
which 'Brieux has not been liberal of
shades. Mr. Barrymore's Mouzon is a
really able performance. Whether abil-
ity spent on such an object is finally
remunerative is a point on which I can
not free my mind from indecision.
0. W. Firkins
The Advertisees
You know them, of course. Every
magazine devotes pages and pages
to them ; you are sure to find some mem-
ber of the family in any newspaper you
may pick up. They are the Adver-
tisees.
It was my good fortune to visit them
during the printers' strike recently.
Many of them were taking their first
vacation in years, and time hung heavily
on their hands. But they were happy,
very happy, so happy that they seemed
not quite — well, you know.
Grandfather met me at the door. As
he opened the door he rattled the knob
proudly and said, "It locks." I remem-
bered that that was the slogan of th«
Yell & Pound Lock Company. (A rival
firm had been campaigning with the
slogan "It unlocks." Grandfather did
not approve of this.)
I had been walking fast. "Rather
warm," I remarked as we entered the
sitting-room.
"Ah, not if you wear Neverich Under-
wear. See?" He rolled up his trousers
to show me. At that moment practically
the whole family trooped down the stairs,
and like a well-trained chorus, shouted,
"So do we! We wear Neverich." Smil-
ing, they surrounded me and started to
undress. I assured them that I could
believe without seeing. And I was re-
lieved when Father slapped me on the
back and exclaimed heartily, "You are
just in time for dinner. Come in and
sit down with us."
I followed him into the dining-room
and took my place at a large table. As
I pulled back my chair to sit down, it
slid from my hand and caromed across
the floor.
"Oh, I should have told you before,"
Mother apologized. "All of our chairs
are fitted with Nobs of Noiselessness.
'They glide.' "
Thinking that I might not believe her,
the rest of the family coasted about the
room on their chairs until I began to
fear a collision and begged them to stop.
With indelible cheerfulness they grad-
ually composed themselves, and a servant
in a handsome livery brought in a silver
tureen and set it on the table. Father
raised the cover and beamed with satis-
faction as the steam floated up. "I eat
Macpherson's Macerated Mushine," he
murmured devoutly. "I also," added
Grandfather, who looked exactly like
Father except that his hair was white.
"I have always used Macpherson's
Macerated Mushine," echoed Baby, who '
(Continued on page 266 >
March 13, 1920] THE REVIEW ^,
THE EQUITABLE
LIFE ASSURANCE SOCIETY OF THE U. S.
120 BROADWAY, NEW YORK
The year 1919 was the most productive in the Equitable's history.
NEW INSURANCE issued and paid for in 1919 $454,839,437
All increase of $i8[,6i5,878 over the previous year.
During the year the Two Billion mark
in Outstanding Insurance was passed
OUTSTANDING INSURANCE, Dec. 31, 1919 $2,270,903,931
An mcrease of $346,365,353 over the previous year.
PAID TO POLICYHOLDERS IN 1919 $73,990,176
97% of the domestic death claims paid in 1919 were
settled within one day after receipt of proofs of death
PAID POLICYHOLDERS Since Organization $1,302,291,677
ASSETS. December 31, 1919-. $599 423 919^
INSURANCE RESERVE $493,390,577 ^=^=^-=
Other Liabilitie... 17,418,765 510,809 342
SURPLUS RESERVES:
For di.tribution to policyholder, in 1920... 17,191 084
Awaiting apportionment on '
deferred dividend poUcie, 54 3 00,085
For Contingencie. 17,123,408 $88,614,577
$599,423,919
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to safeguard business interests. or daughter.
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which can be '"-^ified from time to time to meet under which the total return may be more, but
changing conditions. can never be less than the purchase price.
The following provisions will be added to the policy when desired:
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(a) Premiums will cease, (b) The Insured will receive a monthly in-
come, (c) Ihe beneficiary will receive full face of policy at maturity.
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in case of death from Accident.
A non-cancellable Accident and Health policy completes the circle of Equitable protection.
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Please mention The Review in writing to advertisers.
2661
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 4-1
(Continued from page^ 264)
looked exactly like Grandfather except
that he didn't have any hair.
I was given a large plate of the taste-
less, colorless stuff, and as I was endeav-
oring to choke down a hunk of it I
became alarmed at the apearance of
Aunt Clara, who sat opposite me. 1 had
never seen any one so haggard and
emaciated; her skin was yellow and
there were dark circles about her eyes.
For a moment I expected her to faint,
but she summoned strength enough to
reach for a glass of water. Dropping
a blue pill into it, she gasped "Before,"
and drank. Immediately her cheeks grew
pink and plump, her gray hair turned to
gold, and crying "After!" in a trium-
phant tone, she dashed to the sideboard
and wrote a testimonial.
Cousin Ralph was late. He came in
just as Baby was pleading, "More
Mushine, please. And be sure that it is
Macpherson's. Seven thousand eminent
physicians state that it can not harm the
growing child."
Ralph dashed into the room with his
face half lathered, and a safety razor in
his hand. When he saw me he grinned
and shouted, "It shaves!" All the
family applauded ; Ralph says such clever
things, and he has appeared on the back-
cover of every magazine in the country.
"My dear," said Grandmother to little
Bobby, "you may run the Simpo Wash-
ing Machine. 'A child can operate it.' "
"Oh, thank you," said little Bobby,
"and may I develop my power and per-
sonality in ten days, if I be good?"
Grandmother's reply was interrupted
by a confusion in the hall. Edythe, the
eldest daughter, the beauty of tfe
family, entered and flung her arms about
Father.
"Why, darling," Father exclaimed.
"What's the matter?"
"I asked for a tube of Molar Sun-
shine."
"Naturally," commented Father. "We
use no other brand."
"But this brute, this scoundrel, offered
me something he said was 'just as good.'
He tried to sell me a substitute!"
"Good Lord!" Father jumped to his
feet in anger. "It's a crime against your
honor and your copyright! The fiend!
I'll get him for this."
Murmuring something about "the
unwritten law," he started for the door,
brandishing a revolver.
"Be careful with that gun !" I cried.
He stopped and turned to me with the
same benevolent smile he had worn a
few moments before. His old habit had
conquered his new passion.
'"There's no danger with this revolver,"
he explained. "It's a Hitt & Missen
Automatic, and it's perfectly safe. You
can jiggle the trigger. 'It won't shoot.'
For sale at all dealers."
Weare Holbrook
Books and the News
Turkey
ONCE more the Turkish Empire seems
to be drawing back into Asia, and
again its claws cling around Constanti-
nople. Will our Allies permit this? Can
the American Executive, whose prestige
is so diminished, prevent it? The
severest indictment of Turkey can be
found in the histories of Armenia (some
of which were named in this department
of the Review on l^vember 1, 1919),
but a few books on Turkey will be inter-
esting now. Many of them are by
writers influenced by the romantic charm
of the East, or by the amiability of the
people they knew, and these, if read
alone, without the antidote of history —
especially the history of Armenia— 4o
not lead to clear thinking on interna-
tional politics. One may be too far from
a country and its people to see the truth
— or too near. Witness a number of
learned gentlemen in America who were
unable to see anything evil in the events
in Belgium in 1914-15, be:ause they
viewed affairs through a prismatic glass
created for them by an hour or two at
the Kaiser's luncheon table, where the
food was evidently good and the Imperial
host most condescending. So the roman-
tic writers upon the charm of the Orient
must be salted with the bitter salt of
historical fact.
A brief history of Turkey is Stanley
Lane-Poole's "Story of Turkey" (Put-
nam). A longer, older work is the "His-
tory of the Ottoman Turks," by E. S.
Creasy, which derives from the learned
German, von Hammer Purgstall. Two
commentaries upon recent history are
F. G. Aflalo's "Regilding the Crescent"
(Lippincott, 1911), concerning the re-
sults of the revolution prior to the great
war, and E. F. Benson's indictment,
"The Crescent and Iron Cross" (Doran,
1918).
For the history, family life, and religion
of the Ottomans, as well as of other
races in the Turkish Empire, there is Sir
Edwin Pears's "Turkey and Its People"
(Methuen, 1911). The writings of Lucy
Garnett upon Turkey are important.
They include "Turkish Life in Tovra
and Country" (Putnam, 1904), "The
Turkish People" (Methuen, 1909), for
the social and domestic life, and "Tur-
key of the Ottomans" (Scribner). In
"Turkey and the Turks" (Pott, 1911)
Z. D. Ferriman describes the people, their
life, and customs. Stanwood Cobb takes
a favorable view in "The Real Turk"
(Pilgrim Press, 1914). Sidney Whit-
man's "Turkish Memories" (Scribner,
1914) tells of his visits to Turkey be-
tween 1896 and 1908, with historical
chapters for that period, and comments
upon the land and the people.
Two famous stylists have described
Constantinople — Edmondo De Amicis in
his "Constantinople" (Putnam) and
Theophile Gautier in a book with the
same title. Both books have been ren-
dered into English. Three recent writers
upon the Sultan's capital are H. G.
Dwight, whose "Constantinople, Old and
New" (Scribner, 1915), is interesting
and well illustrated; W. H. Hutton, who,
in "Constantinople: the Story of the Old
Capital of the Empire" (Dent, 1900),
has written a brief, and attractive his-
tory (it is in the Medieval Towns
Series), and Alexander Van Millingen,
whose "Constantinople" (Black, 1906) is
also notable for colored pictures by War-
wick Goble. Art, architecture, history,
and travel are combined in Anna Bow-
man Dodd's "In the Palaces of the Sul-
tan" (Dodd, 1903).
Edmund Lester Pearson
Books Received
FICTION
Aranha, Graca. Canaan. Translated from
the Portuguese by Mariano J. Lorente. In-
trod. by G. Ferrero. Four Seas Co. $2 net.
Bain, F. W. The Substance of a Dream.
Putnam.
Brooks, Charles S. Luca Sarto. Century.
$1.75 net.
Daviess, Maria T. The Matrix. Century.
Hewlett, Maurice. The Outlaw. Dodd,
Mead.
Hutten, Baroness von. Happy House.
Doran.
MacNamara, Brinsley. The Clanking of
Chains. Brentano's.
McKenna, Stephen. Sheila Intervenes.
Doran.
Miln, Louise J. Mr. Wu. Stokes. $1.75
net.
■ Serao, Matilda. Souls Divided.
BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
Asian, Kevork. Armenia and the Armenians.
Macmillan. $1.25.
Boswell, A. B. Poland and the Poles.
Dodd, Mead.
Firkins, O. W. Jane Austen. Holt. $1.75.
Pepper, Chas. M. The Life and Times of
Henry Gassaway Davis. Century. .
Van der Essen, Leon. A Short History of
Belgium. Univ. of Chicago Press. $1.50 net.
DRAMA AND MUSIC
Huneker, James. Bedouins. Scribner. $2
net.
GOVERNMENT AND ECONOMICS
Brasol, Boris. Socialism vs. Civilization.
Scribner. $2 net.
Goricar, Joseph, and Stowe, Lyman Beecher.
The Inside Story of Austro-German Intrigue.
Doubleday, Page.
Keynes, J. M. The Economic Consequences
of the Peace. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Lippman, Walter. Liberty and the News.
Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Lynd, Robert. Ireland, A Nation. Dodd,
Mead.
Montgomery, R. H. Excess Profits Ta.x
Procedure, 1920. Ronald Press.
The American Labor Year Book, 1919-1920
Vol. III. Edited by Alexander Trachtenberg
Rand School of Social Science. $2 net.
York, Thomas. Foreign Exchange : Theor;
and Practice. Ronald Press.
LITERATURE
McFayden, Donald. The History of thi
Title Imperator Under the Roman Empire
University of Chicago Press.
<^
:\
THE REVIEW
Vol. 2, No. 45
New York, Saturday, March 20, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment
267
Editorial Articles:
What Kansas is Doing About Labor 269
The Stock Dividend Case 271
Irish Surprises 272
Russia's Substitute for "W age
Slavery" 273
Experimental Allegiances. Part I. By
W. J. Ghent 275
The Plight of Russian Peasants. By
Jerome Landfield 276
The Erzberger-Helfferich Trial and the
Aftermath. By Christian Gauss 277
Correspondence 279
Book Reviews:
Republicanism in China 281
A Treatise for the Man in the Shop 282
L'Affaire Caillaux 283
Three Ways of Looking at Ireland 284
The Run of the Shelves 285
The Company Stores at Lawrence. By
Staff Correspondent 286
Church Unity. By Theologian 287
Drama:
Percy Mackaye's "George Washing-
ton" and St. John Ervine's "Jane
Clegg." By O. W. Firkins 288
Music:
David Bispham's Memoirs. B y
Charles Henry Meltzer 289
Educational Section 290
Books and the N-ews: Woman Suf-
frage. By Edmund Lester Pear-
son 294
D Y the time this issue of the Review
*^ reaches our readers the treaty
mil probably have arrived at the
;inal stage of failure in the Senate,
jrhat faint possibility which, tv.'o
veeks ago, we pointed out has not de-
veloped, as indeed there was little
•eason to hope that it would. On
leither side of the quarrel has there
)een manifested any trace of that
argeness of mind which befits the
ssue, and for the lack of which the
'ountry has been dragged through an
xperience upon which one can not
leflect without a feeling of shame al-
|tiost as deep as of regret. It ought
jiot to be necessary for the Review to
ixplain that in saying this we do not
Impute low aims or dishonest pur-
;|ose to those whose position was at
jither extreme or in the middle,
jl'^hat we do mean is that, from what-
ever standpoint the subject may be
viewed, those upon whom the duty
chiefly rested of bringing matters to
some kind of tolerable conclusion in
a reasonable time fell shockingly far
below any respectable standard of
statesmanlike conduct. The Presi-
dent's arrogant and offensive atti-
tude, and his failure to bring to bear
upon the question any resources
either of argument or of conciliation,
form one side of the picture. The
meaningless shiftings of position, and
the absence of the essentials of lead-
ership, on the part of Senator Lodge
form another side, on which it is
hardly pleasanter to dwell. There
were deeper elements in the case, to
be sure. The discussion of these may
be postponed until the final result has
actually been recorded. In the mean-
while, one can but be filled with mor-
tification at the story so far as it has
gone, while cherishing a faint glim-
mer of hope that the end of it may
prove other than now seems certain.
npHE ease and swiftness with which
-*- the counter-revolution at Berlin
was put through has proved to be no
evidence of its strength. The plot
was evidently well engineered, and
was carried out with all the advan-
tage of the discipline and skill which
the Prussian militarists have so abun-
dantly at their command. But they
seem once more to have underesti-
mated the power of the human fac-
tors against which they are arrayed.
If, as seems highly probable, they
counted on powerful support from
the Socialist extremists who hated
the moderate Ebert regime for rea-
sons opposite to their own, they have
been disappointed in their sinister
calculation. In the chief German
states other than Prussia they en-
countered immediately the resistance
of the established Governments. As
for the masses of the German people
in general, it seems clear that they are
ready to use against the Junkers the
weapon of the strike, a weapon pe-
culiarly powerful in the present eco-
nomic condition of Germany. As we
go to press, the indications are that
the Ebert Government will put up an
uncompromising fight, with the pros-
pect of a speedy dislodgment of the
usurpers.
"AN overdue attempt" the Junker
-'^ party's coup d'etat was called in
the proclamation issued by the new
Government. Overdue it may have
been from the standpoint of internal
politics, for the militarists might
have made an even more successful
haul, perhaps, in the troubled waters
of last year's labor unrest, when the
Spartacans seemed not averse to an
alliance with the reaction. But in
the light of the international situa-
tion the adventure seems rather im-
mature than overdue. Dr. Kapp and
his associates chose a most inop-
portune moment for what he calls
"the laying of the foundations for the
economic resuscitation of Germany."
This is the voice of the incorrigible
Prussian. At the very time when,
partly under the impression of urgent
representations of both the authori-
ties and the press in Germany, the
British and Italian Premiers, under
protest of thair French colleague,
draw up a plan for the economic res-
cue of the Empire, the bankrupts an-
nounce to the astonished world that
they will resuscitate themselves. The
manifesto of the Supreme Council is
impertinently scorned as a superflu-
ous act of unsolicited generosity.
Thus that "most influential leader-
ship" which, according to President
Wilson, has of late gained "ascend-
ancy in the counsels of France" is
entitled to a frank admission, by
those who accused it of militaristic
aims, that events in Berlin have jus-
tified its insistence on military pre-
paredness against a revival of Prus-
sian militarism.
268]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 45
IT'OR that is what this revolution,
•■■ if it should be maintained or re-
vived, will come to. Cheap promises
to "use every effort to maintain inter-
nal and external peace," gratuitous
phrases about "the vital interest to
foreign countries not to have a Govern-
ment in Germany which in any way
could or might endanger the peace of
Europe," can not delude anyone as to
the real purposes that these "Umstiirz-
ler" have in view. A Government
headed by the founder and former
president of the "Vaterlandspartei"
is bound to initiate, sooner or later,
a policy of revenge. That outspoken
character is, indeed, also its great
weakness. For to the non-Prussian
German it means a resumption of
Prussia's military and political lead-
ership, and the other states are not at
all inclined to support a policy for
whose success that hated supremacy
is a conditio sine qua non. "Attempts
to separate from the Empire," the
new Government immediately found
it necessary to announce, "will be
dealt with by court-martial as high
treason."
■I7VERYTHING is going well with
Ej
the Turk. Lloyd George's threat
of drastic measures to be taken at
Constantinople appears to have been
an empty word, having no other
effect than heightened self-confidence
for the Porte. Syria, which was to
receive a French protectorate as a
blessing from Allah, has proclaimed
her independence, and takes to the
blackmail policy of demanding her
recognition from the Powers under
threat of joining the Turkish Nation-
alists under Mustapha Kemal, if she
does not get her wish. The Christian
population in Jerusalem protests
against the Zionist invasion, and
seems ready to support the Moham-
medans in their agitation against the
severance of Palestine from Syria.
In Mesopotamia plans are said to be
on foot to proclaim the country a
state, which, under the regency of a
younger brother of Prince Feisal,
now King Feisal of Syria, is to form
a joint Government with the latter
country. The revolution in Berlin
has brought the associates of Enver
Pasha and Talaat Pasha into power
again, and causes France to concen-
trate all her watchfulness on the fur-
ther development of affairs in Ger-
many. And meanwhile the Premiers
of the three great Powers are pa-
tiently waiting for the opinion of
Washington on their decisions with
regard to the Sublime Porte.
TT is reported that Congress will
^ this year abandon the free distri-
bution of seeds. The apartment
dweller will no longer receive his five
tiny packets — beets, usually, and let-
tuce, and marigolds, were there not?
We forget the others. But there was
always the touching request that in
return for its bounty the Government
would dearly like to know of our suc-
cess with the little seeds. We, too,
always felt a desire to know what be-
came of them. We trust they fell on
good ground, and that the earth was
made fruitful and glad by their
power. But of course we never did
know what ultimately happened to
the contents of the waste basket.
Congress no doubt regrets the dis-
continuance of the practice; it loves
to give things away. Perhaps it is
trying to console itself for the lost
seeds by taking an interest in a bonus
for the ex-soldiers.
Seed distribution began with the
laudable motive of aiding in the test-
ing and introduction of new or im-
proved varieties of useful plants.
This was a perfectly legitimate aim,
but the development of agricultural
experiment stations, both national
and state, furnished a far more ef-
fective instrument. Deprived thus of
its one possible reason for being,
seed distribution from Washington
sunk rapidly into one of the pettiest
of all pilferings of public funds for
the purpose of making the folks back
home think that their Congressman
had not forgotten them. In just
what remote corner of the country
the game any longer has the prag-
matic sanction of "working," no one
has been able to find out ; and yet the
farce has gone on. One of the bless-
ings of an intelligently organized na-
tional budget system should be its
facilities for discovering and check-
ing a multitude of treasury leaks of
this kind.
'T'HERE will be no general strike in
-*• England to force nationalization
of the mining industry, not just yet,
as Mr. Veblen would put it. Last
week, 524,000 miners voted in favor
of such a policy, and 346,000 against
it. The miners agreed, however, to
abide by the decision of the Trade
Union Congress, to be rendered the
following day. In this body the
miners' demand for "direct action"
was presented by their Secretary,
Mr. Hodges, and opposed by J. H.
Thomas, leader of the railwaymen,
Thomas Shaw, Secretary of the tex-
tile workers, and John R. Clynes,
President of the National Union of
General Workers, and former Food
Controller. Tom Mann supported
Mr. Hodges. In the vote immediately
following, cast by the delegates in
attendance, who held proxies for the
entire membership of their local
unions, the general strike lost by the
overwhelming majority of 2,820,000
in a total vote of 4,920,000; in other
words, those who took the conserva-
tive side of the question immediately
at issue outvoted the radicals by
nearly four to one.
W7"E have no very full report of the
'' discussion which led up to this
vote, but cabled extracts from the
speech of John R. Clynes are signifi-
cant. "The man who would most wel-
come direct action," he said, "is not
at this conference, but is in Downing
Street. If we announce a general
strike, the Premier will give us a gen-
eral election, in which we would find
our class rent in twain, while the
other classes would be united to fight
what would be called this aggressive
move by labor." The issue in such a
contest, he predicted, would be the
conduct of the laboring classes them-
selves, and not the question whether
nationalization would work an im-
provement in industry. "Force, as it
has been proposed to employ it," he
added, "is not a British but a Prus-
sian characteristic."
When a speech of this kind is sus-
tained by almost a four-fifths vote,
it is evident that the British laboring
classes are in no mood to seek nation-
alization of industry at the cost of
violent revolution. In choosing, as
March 20, 1920]
THE UEV1E^V
[269
they did by a second vote, to work
for nationalization through ordinary
political methods, they voluntarily
assume the burden of proving to the
I majority of British voters that it is
I wise. And in the open and protracted
discussion thus insured, they of
course assume the risk of having it
■ proved to the satisfaction of a very
large portion of their own number
i that it is unwise. This is genuine
democracy in action, and gives prom-
I ise that England may settle down to
the work of post bellum reconstruc-
tion with some assurance of indus-
trial stability and prosperity.
nPHE vogue of evolution was sup-
-'- posed to have put an uncompro-
mising "never" into the old saw that
"history repeats itself." North Da-
kota's Commissioner of Immigration,
however, who has been in the East
hunting up prospective citizens for the
realm of the Non-Partisan League,
tells a story to the contrary. League
politics has gone back to the simplic-
ity of primitive Rome. Like Cincin-
natus when summoned to the dicta-
torship, Lynn J. Frazier was at home
at the plow, wholly unsuspicious of
any impending change of fortune,
when men came to tell him that he
had been nominated to be Gov-
ernor of his State. We are not told
whether, like Cincinnatus, he was
first enjoined to send his wife back
to the house for his toga, that the
news might be received in raiment
sufficiently dignified for its impor-
tance. But Virgil's nudus ara — plow
naked — is a detail of Roman simplic-
ity a little too exacting for one who
has to plow in the blasts that come
down from Medicine Hat over the
plains of North Dakota. And for still
other reasons Governor Frazier's
friends can not afford to press the
parallel too closely. Cincinnatus was
once more called away from his plow,
this time to quell by force an upris-
ing of the discontented masses, then
known as "plebeians." A little study
of the original sources may convince
Governor Frazier that it will be
well to switch the Cincinnatus par-
lallel of his nomination at the first
javailable sidetrack. The Roman
farmer who could get his name into
the official calendar in the days of
Cincinnatus was altogether too indi-
vidualistic and aristocratic to hold
the respect of the socialistic Non-
partisan Leaguers, if once they find
him out.
'T'HE smallest newspaper in the
-■- world is called Better Times. It
is a monthly magazine, rather, with
illustrations, special departments, the
whole apparatus, in fact, "and are to
be sold," as the bibliopoles put it, for
half a dollar a year. Its aim is to
keep the public aware of the work of
the Neighborhood Homes of New
York. Settlement work comes to the
present problem of "Americaniza-
tion" with thirty years of experience
behind it. The public should accept
the modest and highly proper invita-
tion to examine the work of the Set-
tlements in this and other fields.
W7"ITH this issue, the Review initi-
ates a special Educational Sec-
tion. It has for its purpose careful
discussion of the manifold educational
tendencies which are observable
throughout the nation to-day. Like
the good democrats they are, the
American people, having done their
duty in the conflict of arms, now turn
with renewed enthusiasm to the one
institution which can safeguard their
future — education. The impulse is
commendable, but it harbors a dan-
ger which, if not seen, may produce a
mass of disillusion comparable to that
which political "idealists" are already
beginning to experience from having
built up hopes of an entirely new
world emerging from the war. Edu-
cation is now relied upon to create
simon-pure Americans. It is charged
with propaganda which may set our
teeth on edge, if it is not checked by
common sense discussion. In its
Educational Section the Review
plans, by means of collaborators
throughout the country, to keep in
touch with the new impulses. It de-
sires to promote the effort to increase
and vivify instruction, both of youth
and of adults, but at the same time to
help to keep education within the
bounds which it must respect if it is
to be a truly vital and wholesome
force in our life as a nation.
What Kansas is Doing
About Labor
T^HE police strike in Boston made
■*■ GovernorCoolidgea national figure.
The crisis in Kansas, brought about by
the great bituminous coal strike, has
made Governor Allen a national fig-
ure. Between the two situations, as
well as between the proceedings of
the two governors, there were strik-
ing points of resemblance. In both
cases the vital interests of the com-
munity were acutely menaced. In
both cases the head of the State
planted himself on the paramount
rights of the commonwealth, and ap-
pealed with signal success to the sup-
port of the great mass of its citizens.
In both cases the lesson was im-
pressively taught that no group, how-
ever strong its apparent position,
can, in an American State, achieve
its end by methods which arouse the
resentment of the great body of
right-minded citizens.
But the problem with which Gov-
ernor Allen had to deal was incom-
parably broader and more complex
than that which confronted Governor
Coolidge. In Massachusetts the issue
was that of the supremacy of govern-
ment in a domain which belonged
unquestionably and exclusively to it.
In Kansas it was necessary to assert
the jurisdiction of the government in
a field in which its functions are of
limited application^ — to extend them
beyond their usual bounds on the
ground of imperious public necessity.
Governor Allen did not hesitate. The
people were not to be allowed to
starve and freeze while the mine
owners and the mine workers were
fighting out their differences. As a
temporary measure he obtained
through the courts the power to op-
erate the mines; and to prevent the
recurrence of similar evils he pro-
cured from the Legislature the pass-
age of a bill establishing a "Court of
Industrial Relations," with powers so
broad that, if it shall prove a success
in practice, no such disturbance of
the life of the people can again be
possible.
Both phases of this remarkable
stor" are worthy of the most serious
270]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 45
attention. It is worth noting in the
first place that Governor Allen, in
his writings and speeches on the sub-
ject, clearly recognizes that there was
wrong on both sides in the coal dis-
pute itself. The miners had a just
grievance — as the Review has stated
all along — in that holding them to
their war contract long after the real
close of the war was grossly inequi-
table and based on the worst kind of
technicality. On the other hand, the
demands of the miners themselves
were utterly unreasonable. But the
thing that was intolerable was their
attempt to extort what they wanted by
a threat designed to intimidate not
the mine owners but the whole people
of the State and of the country. What
made Governor Allen's achievement
so splendid was the promptness with
which he asserted the paramount
rights of the public, and the effective-
ness with which he marshaled in sup-
port of them the voluntary efforts of
thousands of stalwart Kansans. It
would be hard to find a more inspirit-
ing picture of patriotic energy, and
cheerful sacrifice, than that presented
by the host of young men from town
and country who responded to the
Governor's call. They at once began
operating the mines, flooded and dis-
mantled as many of them were, in
the midst of bitter winter weather.
It took but a few days of this to bring
the miners to their senses. Within
two weeks the strike was over. The
example is one that will long remain
a landmark, a guide to the people of
every State in the Union.
The establishment of the Court of
Industrial Relations raises questions
that are more difficult. As an experi-
ment, it will undoubtedly prove of
great value. Its object is broadly
stated in the following declaration:
It is hereby declared and determined to be
necessary for the public peace, health, and
general welfare of the people of this State
that the industries, employments, public utili-
ties, and common carriers herein specified shall
be operated with reasonable continuity and
efficiency in order that the people of this
State may live in peace and security and be
supplied with the necessaries of life.
The chief means by which this object
is to be attained is the substitution
of the decisions of the court for the
methods of the strike and the lockout
in the settlement of disputes in the
industries coming within its scope.
There is nothing in the law that in-
terferes either with labor organiza-
tions or with collective bargaining;
but neither the strike nor the lockout
can be resorted to. If the parties
can not settle their differences by
mutual agreement they must refer
them to the court. The law makes
no provision for arbitration. On the
contrary. Governor Allen assigns as
perhaps the chief reason for the es-
tablishment of the court the ineffi-
cacy of arbitration, which he feels
that experience has shown to be in-
capable of bringing about just and
stable settlements. "Arbitration,"
he says, "holds no guaranty of justice
to either side," and adds :
When each side appoints an arbitrator and
these two select a third party, this umpire rnay
do one of three things: He may join one side
or the other and obtain a partisan decision, or
he may dicker back and forth and obtain a
temporary compromise which does not satisfy
either side.
On the other hand, the Court of In-
dustrial Relations "represents gov-
ernment, with all its pledge of
justice."
If one inquires as to the principles
by which the new court will be guided
in its decisions, one finds little in the
way of an answer except that it will
be governed by the principles of
common sense. It will feel its way.
It will try to settle each case in such
a way that plain men will feel that
it has given a "square deal" to both
sides — or rather all three sides, labor,
capital, and the public. The three
members of the court are to be ap-
pointed on the same principle as the
members of any court are appointed,
not as representatives of any side,
but simply as men pledged to do what
is right. The result will be watched
with keen interest. Kansas will be
doing what our Federal system has
enabled so many of our States to do
in so many directions — working out
an important experiment within her
ovm borders, the trying of which on
a national scale would involve great
difficulties and enormous risk. The
rest of us should look on with every
wish that the experiment may, either
directly or through the lessons that it
will teach, prove a great contribution
to the solution of the labor problem.
But to acclaim it, in advance of ex-
perience, as being manifestly the key
to the situation, would be rash in the
extreme.
"Jubtice" is an easy word to say,
but a very difficult word to define.
Governor Allen's enthusiastic reli-
ance on the analogy between the de-
cision of civil and criminal cases by
judicial process and this proposed
settlement of labor disputes by judi-
cial process overlooks an essential ele-
ment. It is true that the time was
when individuals used to fight out
issues which now everybody leaves to
the courts; but the justice which the
courts mete out does not consist in
an assignment to each party of what
the court thinks is naturally his due,
but in a determination of what the
law commands. When a court de-
cides that a certain piece of property
belongs to A and not to B, it does
so on the basis of contracts, or title
deeds, or the like. When A sticks a
knife into B, the court does not in-
quire whether he stuck it no deeper
than his grievance justified, but
whether he did it at all. Of an en-
tirely different nature are those
questions which come up in the chief
labor disputes. The work that this
new court will have to do will, after
all, be essentially of the nature of ar-
bitration.
It does not in the least follow that
the court will be a failure. On the con-
trary, the more it confines itself to
that modest function, and the less it
attempts to dispense anything like
abstract "justice," the more likely it
is to succeed. We must wait and see.
When New Zealand introduced com-
pulsory arbitration, and for a num-
ber of years after, that country was
pointed to as the pioneer that was
blazing the way for the rest of the
world to the goal of industrial peace.
All that has gone by; and now here
is our own progressive Kansas basing
her new departure chiefly on the fact
of the failure of the New Zealand
idea. In this there need be no dis-
couragement, but sensible men must
see in it a warning. Let us watch
Kansas with hope and with friendly
interest, but let us keep our heads.
And in the meanwhile, the best of
good luck to Governor Allen, a right-
minded, stout-hearted, and level-
headed American!
March 20, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[271
The Stock Dividend
Case
^HE reasons why a stock dividend
can not justly be regarded as in-
ame are stated with such lucidity
id force by Mr. Justice Pitney, who
Blivered the opinion of the Supreme
pourt, that the first feeling one must
ive in reading that opinion is a feel-
of wonder that the decision was
ide by a five-to-four vote. That
eling, however, is considerably mod-
Sed when one notes the character of
le two dissenting opinions. The
opinion delivered by Mr. Justice
Brandeis, and concurred in by Mr.
Justice Clarke, controverts the con-
clusion of the majority that stock
dividends are not in any true sense
income. But that is not the case with
the dissenting opinion delivered by
Mr. Justice Holmes and concurred in
by Mr. Justice Day. On the contrary,
the first sentence of the short para-
graph which constitutes the whole of
Judge Holmes's dissenting opinion is
as follows: "I think that Towne v,
Eisner, 245 U. S. 418, was right in
its reasoning and result, and that on
sound principles the stock dividend
was not income," Accordingly, upon
the question whether stock dividends
r<willy should be regarded, "on sound
principles," as income there is no dis-
sent from the opinion of the Court
except on the part of Judges Brandeis
and Clarke. We shall endeavor
briefly to indicate the grounds of the
decision, and to discuss the objections
made to it in the two dissenting
opinions.
So far as the decision is concerned,
it is needless to do much more than
make a few quotations from Judge
Pitney's opinion. In the case of
Toivne v. Eisner the Supreme Court
had decided that stock dividends were
not income within the meaning of the
law as it stood at that time (1916).
The Revenue Act of September 8,
1916, made a change in the law, de-
signed to bring stock dividends with-
in its definition of income. In the
case decided last week the crucial
question was whether, under the Six-
teenth Amendment to the United
States Constitution, Congress had
power to tax such dividends as in-
come. The Court adheres to the
view it took in the case of Towne v.
Eisner, "not because that case in
terms decided the Constitutional
question, for it did not; but because
the conclusion there reached as to the
essential nature of a stock dividend
necessarily prevents its being re-
garded as income in any true sense."
Nevertheless, in view of the impor-
tance of the matter, and of the subse-
quent legislation by Congress, the
Court not only reviews the argument
in the previous case, but enters,
afresh into its merits.
A few extracts will suffice to give a
clear impression of the basis on which
the decision in both the cases rests :
A stock dividend really takes nothing from
the property of the corporation, and adds
nothing to the interests of the shareholders.
Its property is not diminished, and their inter-
ests are not increased. . . . The proportional
interest of each shareholder remains the same.
The only change is in the evidence which
represents that interest, the new shares and
the original shares together representing the
same proportional interest that the original
shares represented before the issue of the new
ones. . . .
In short, the corporation is no poorer and
the stockholder is no richer than they were
before. . . .
The essentia! and controlling fact is that
the stockholder has received nothing out of
the company's assets for his separate use and
benefit; on the contrary, every dollar of his
original _ investment, together with whatever
accretions and accumulations have resulted
from employment of his money and that of
the other stockholders in the business of the
company, still remains the property of the
company, and subject to business risks which
may result in wiping out the entire investment.
Having regard to the very truth of the mat-
ter, to substance and not to form, he has re-
ceived nothing that answers the definition of
income within the meaning of the Sixteenth
Amendment.
It is impossible, of course, to do jus-
tice in a brief space to the whole ar-
gument; but there is one more point
of great interest which we can not
omit. The case against the Court's
view rests essentially upon an ignor-
ing of the difference between income
accruing to the corporation, and re-
tained by it as part of its assets, and
income actually put into the hands
of the shareholder. On this point the
Court says, among other things:
We must treat the corporation as a sub-
stantial entity separate from the stockholder,
not only because such is the practical fact but
because it is only by recognizing such separate-
ness that any dividend — even one paid in
money or property — can be regarded as in-
come of the stockholder. Did we regard cor-
poration and stockholders as altogether iden-
tical, there would be no income except as the
corporation acquired it; and while this would
be taxable against the corporation as income
under appropriate provisions of law, the in-
dividual stockholders could not be separately
and additionally taxed with respect to their
several shares even when divided, since if
there were entire identity between them and
the company they could not be regarded as
receiving anything from it, any more than
if one's money were to be removed from one
pocket to another.
In opposing the view of the Court
Judge Brandeis makes not a frontal
attack but a series of flank move-
ments. His argument is of a compli-
cated nature, but it is safe to assume
that he regards as its piece de re-
sistance what he puts forward at con-
siderable length, and with a good deal
of a flourish, at the beginning of his
opinion. The point of this argument
is that it has been customary in the
past for corporations to adopt, with
apparent indifference, as *iiough they
were substantially identical, either of
two methods in issuing new stock.
One is that of the stock dividend, by
which the new stock is distributed
pro rata to shareholders according to
their existing holdings. The other is
to give the shareholder the option of
taking his pro rata amount of the
new stock or a cash dividend equal
to the par value of that amount of
stock. "Whichever method was em-
ployed," says Judge Brandeis, "the
resultant distribution of the new
stock was commonly referred to as a
stock dividend" ; the fact being that,
as a rule, the stock was worth so
much more than par that the cash
option was hardly more than a for-
mality. Until the Federal Income
tax made a difference between the
two methods they were regarded in
practice, says Judge Brandeis, as sub-
stantially identical; and from this
circumstance he draws the inference
that the stock dividend must be re-
garded as income.
But the conclusion does not follow
from the premises. Corporations, in
adopting either one method or the
other, were not concerned with draw-
ing any distinction regarding the
classification of the dividend as in-
come or not income. The fact that
they treated the two things alike —
granting that it is a fact — has no
force whatever in determining the
question. So far as that mere cir-
cumstance is concerned, it might as
272]
THE REVIEW
[Vol.
No. 45
logically be argued that because stock
dividends are not income cash divi-
dends are not income, as that because
cash dividends are income stock divi-
dends are income. Neither conclu-
sion would be justified ; the point has
to be determined by consideration of
the real nature of the facts, and not
by the action taken by corporations
or anybody else in transactions which
did not involve the point at all.
There is only one more point of
which we can take notice in Judge
Brandeis's discussion. He says:
It is argued that until there is a segregation,
the stockholder can not know whether he has
really received gains; since the gains may be
invested in plant or merchandise or other
property and perhaps be later lost. But is
not this equally true of the share of a partner
in the year's profits of the firm or, indeed, of
the profits of the individual who is engaged
in business alone?
It is difficult to believe that so acute
a thinker as Judge Brandeis can have
put this forward as a serious conten-
tion. The gains of an individual,
and even of a member of a partner-
ship, belong to him, and it is not in
any way the concern of the law what
he may do with them. The gains of
a corporation belong to the corpora-
tion, and do not accrue to the indi-
vidual until they are distributed. He
has no way of claiming control over
them. If they are lost, they will be
lost not by him, but by the corpora-
tion. And, what is also to the pur-
pose, but what Judge Brandeis does
not in any way refer to, those gains
are taxed as income of the corpora-
tion, while the gains of an individual,
or of a member of a partnership,
can not be taxed except as his per-
sonal income, partnerships not being
legal entities subject to taxation.
Judge Holmes's dissent rests on an
entirely different ground. As we
have already said, he admits that "on
sound principles" the stock dividend
is "not income." His dissent rests
exclusively on a broad interpretation
of the Sixteenth Amendment itself.
He says:
The known purpose of this Amendment was
to get rid of nice Questions as to what might
le direct taxes, and I can not doubt that most
I>eople not lawyers would suppose when they
voted for it that they put a question like the
present to rest
On the other hand, the Court states
its view of the Sixteenth Amendment
as follows:
A proper regard for its genesis, as well as
its very clear language, requires that this
.Amendment shall not be extended by loose
construction, so as to repeal or modify, ex-
cept as applied to income, those provisions of
the Constitution that require an apportionment
according to population for direct taxes upon
property, real and personal. This limitation
still has an appropriate and important func-
tion, and is not to be overriden by Congress
or disregarded by the courts.
Judge Brandeis's dissent is, in our
judgment, invalid because it does not
stand the test of sound logic. In
Judge Holmes's dissent the issue is
not one of logic, but of good sense
and sound public policy. Is it right
to call a thing income which is not
income, simply because of a supposed
intention of "most people" to get rid
of "nice questions as to what might
be dire:t taxes"? Would not the nat-
ural way to get rid of all such "nice
questions" have been simply to repeal
the clause of the Constitution for-
bidding (except by apportionment
among the States) the imposition of
direct taxes? If, as the Court declares
in its opinion, "this limitation still
has an appropriate and important
function," is it sound policy to de-
stroy that limitation by the rough-
and-ready process of brushing aside
the distinctions upon which it rests?
Irish Surprises '
'T'HE Government of Ireland bill
-*- has a "bad press" in the country
which it is meant to benefit and pac-
ify. That is the best reception which
could befall it. Praise on one side
and detraction on the other would
rouse a suspicion of partiality on the
part of the British Government.
Unanimous disapproval, on the other
hand, is the highest commendation
any Home Rule proposal could meet
with in Ireland. Lloyd George had
no illusions as to the welcome his new
Bill would receive. In the course of
his speech in the House of Commons
on December 22, 1919, he said:
"Looking around I find no section
that can accept anything except the
impossible. There is no section in
Ireland who will stand up and say:
'We accept this,' or 'we accept that,'
except something which you can not
put through."
The sudden volte face of Sir Ed-
ward Carson must, therefore, have
come to him as a pleasant surprise!
The motive which Sir Edward is
quoted as having given for his change
of attitude does not seem altogether
convincing, for it leaves one impor-
tant fact out of account. "It must
be remembered," he said, "that the
Home Rule act of 1914 is on the
statute book, and unless an amend-
ing measure be passed, it will auto-
matically come into force the day
peace is officially declared, and then
Ulster would be placed under the
control of the Dublin Parliament."
In other words, of two evils he chose
the lesser one. But when the act of
1914 was placed on the statute book,
Mr. Asquith, with the assent of the
Irish Nationalist members of the
House, gave an undertaking that it
should not be brought into operation
until an act of Parliament had been
carried dealing with the peculiar posi-
tion of Ulster. It was, therefore, not
so much a choice between the act of
1914 and the present bill, but one be-
tween the two birds in the bush
which he might catch with that prom-
ised act of Parliament and the one
bird which the present bill places in
his hand.
The features that recommend the
bill to the Carsonites will naturally
make it an object of suspicion to the
Nationalists. The attitude of Sinn
Fein can not be materially affected
by Ulster's acceptance or rejection of
the proposals. They demand the im-
possible, regardless of the conse-
quences which the realization of their
wishes might have for the Empire.
To every fair-minded outsider it must
appear as a matter of course that
England can not possibly agree to an
absolute severance of Ireland from
the United Kingdom without reck-
lessly jeopardizing her own existence.
The experience of the late war has
shown what would be the fate of
Great Britain, if, with an independent
Irish Republic at her very door, she
would have to defend herself against
an enemy's submarine fleet, which
could use the Irish coasts as a mari-
time base. Sir Horace Plunkett, in a
recent speech in which he assailed
the Government's proposals, did the
American people the justice of repre-
senting them to his audience as in
ISIarch 20, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[273
favor of "as large a measure of self-
government as is consistent with the
military safety of the British Empire."
This estimate of public opinion in
America is doubtless correct. The
average Englishman has a differ-
ent impression. The active German-
Irish propaganda for Sinn Fein has
created the belief abroad that the
United States is a hotbed of anti-Brit-
ish agitation. That evil force, which
was Germany's accomplice in the big
crime, continues, quite openly now
and undisturbed, its sinister work
for the estrangement of the two great
English-speakingnations. Sir Horace,
in the speech from which we have
quoted, told as "a matter of personal
knowledge that, from 1911 onward,
the Prussian Government was organ-
izing the German-Irish alliance in
American politics with the view of the
coming attack on the world's free-
dom."
These words are worth putting on
record as coming from an Irishman
who, though no Sinn Feiner and
opposed to all plans for an Irish
republic, is an ardent patriot and an
advocate of Home Rule for his coun-
try. From the short summary of his
speech that has appeared in the press
it is not sufficiently clear what his
chief grievances are against the new
bill. One is the privileged position
which Ulster would command, it
being made "a virtual mandatory over
Ireland without responsibility." Sir
Edward Carson's support of the bill
seems to add force to this charge.
But it may be brought against any
Home Rule scheme which does not
propose an absolute surrender by the
Imperial Government of all its pow-
3rs. Sir Horace evidently fears that
|the Ulstermen, under the leadership
pf Sir Edward Carson, thanks to the
jfavored position which their loyalty
|;o England secures them with the
London Government, will control
he execution of the reserved powers
n Ireland.
There certainly is some ground for
■his fear; but for a patient, sick to
|leath, to refuse the experiment of a
[lew treatment because of the possible
jlanger to his health, is not the way
jo get better.
Ireland is, indeed, rapidly ap-
proaching a crisis in its chronic
illness. "It is obvious," said Ian
Macpherson in the House of Com-
mons on March 5, "that we are up
against a tremendously dangerous
situation," and he added, by way of
illustration, that "the Sinn Fein had
at least 200,000 men prepared to com-
mit murder at any hour of the day
or night." There may be gross ex-
aggeration in the oratio pro domo
of the Chief Secretary for Ireland,
but even if one-hundredth of that
number were a more correct esti-
mate, he would still be justified in
characterizing the situation as grave.
The aims of Sinn Fein are only nega-
tive. They know that their indepen-
dent Irish Republic is a castle in the
air, which even American money can
not help them to build. But, their
own scheme being impossible, they
want to make any other plan impos-
sible too. If they were in earnest
about their Irish Republic they would
not employ assassins to lay its foun-
dations. It is the usual tactics of all
revolutionary minorities. Not being
able to rule by right, they try to over-
rule the right of others by a reign of
terror. The results of the recent
municipal elections in Ireland have
shown that Sinn Fein, of a total num-
ber of 322,244 of valid votes, polled
only 87,311. If the total poll of
Labor, which is mainly Republican,
be added to that number, the total
Republican vote is less than 145,000,
or a good deal less than half the coun-
try's total poll.
The Unionists have taken the
first step towards a reconciliation.
The Nationalists might spare their
unhappy country endless misery if
they would follow that example and
submit to v/hat they call the insult
that Ireland should be given a start
on self-government instead of the full
measure of Home Rule which they
desire. The bill oflFers to a divided
Ireland the means of setting up di-
vided legislatures, but paves the way
for both parts to unite at what time
and to what extent they choose. The
very prospect for both parties of
being able to discuss their common
internal affairs without the interfer-
ence of their present ruler should be
an inducement for the Nationalists to
accept any plan which made such
freedom possible.
However, their opposition to the
bill is not likely to subside, the less
so since they have received the un-
expected support of Mr. Asquith.
Asquith naturally prefers his own
Home Rule act of 1904 to the bill
now before the House. But it is
strange to find him reject the latter
because of its plan for a dual govern-
ment, as he himself, in 1914, con-
ceded the justice of the Unionist de-
mand for an Amendment act provid-
ing for separate legislative treatment
for Ulster.
In the exciting game of politics
strange surprises will happen. Who
could have foretold that a Home Rule
bill for Ireland would be opposed by
the Homeruler Asquith and receive
the support of the leader of the Irish
Unionists?
Russia's Substitute for
"Wage Slavery"
'T'HANKS to extremely industrious
-'- propaganda, the idea has been
very widely spread among Amer-
ican workingmen that the Soviet
Government of Russia is a work-
ingman's government. It is not fair
to assume, perhaps, that the more in-
telligent workmen and trade-union
leaders believe this. But there can
be no question that the rank and file
of labor is convinced that Lenin and
Trotsky, exercising a "dictatorship of
the proletariat," are acting as trus-
tees for the power seized by the
workers. Furthermore, they have
had set before them roseate pictures
of the labor Utopia which has been
brought about by the communist ex-
periment in Russia.
At the same time the propagandists
hit upon a clever plan to prevent the
enlightenment of the workman on
this subject. They convinced him
that all the reports derogatory to the
Soviet Government, or exposing the
failure of the Communist system,
were lies circulated by the capitalist
press, a press paid by the capitalists
as a means of protecting their own
interests. The result was that all
the best sources of information were
virtually closed to American work-
274]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 4.5
ingmen. If a man came out of So-
viet Russia, no matter what his ex-
perience or reliability, and told the
simple story of the ruin wrought by
Bolshevism, he was set down as the
hired tool of the hated capitalist.
But if a man like Arthur Ransome,
or Isaac Don Levine, whose relations
with the Bolsheviks were only too
well known, came out with stories
whitewashing the Soviet Govern-
ment, though the stories continually
contradicted themselves and were on
the face of them lacking in credibil-
itj% they were exploited by the radi-
cal press and believed by the duped
workingmen.
During all this time, the most
damning evidence against the tyrants
at Moscow was contained in their
own official decrees and newspapers.
But now there has been put out by
them a document, which, if it is care-
fully read by American workingmen,
must completely disillusion them.
This is the Soviet Government's Code
of Labor Laws, published in Soviet
Russia in its issue of February 21.
To be sure, this Code makes some
pretense at protecting the laborer
and assuring to him some of the ad-
vantages for which labor everywhere
has been agitating, such as the eight-
hour day, disability and unemploy-
ment insurance, the right to labor,
and the protection of women and
children in industry. All of these ad-
vantages, however, are carefully cir-
cumscribed so that they can be sus-
pended at any time by the higher
authorities under the plea of neces-
sity. In reality, the Code introduces
labor serfdom of a sort far more
tyrannical than even the peasant
serfdom of half a century ago.
Article I of the Code provides that
all citizens of the Russian Socialist
Federated Soviet Republic between
the ages of sixteen and fifty, unless
incapacitated by injury or illness, are
"subject to compulsory labor." This
is the keynote to the whole Code,
and the other sections, no matter how
disguised in the wording, are merely
provisions for carrying this tyranny
into effect.
So, for example, each workman is
assigned to a specific group or cate-
gory, with corresponding wages, by
the higher authorities, and he is re-
quired to carry a labor handbook in
which must be entered his name in
full, his category, when he goes to
work, when he is paid, when he is
absent, or when he is changed to
other employment. It is, in fact, a
sort of labor passport, an instrument
of oppression to which no American
laborer would submit for an instant.
He must produce it on all occasions
when demanded by the authorities,
and the entries in it must be coun-
tersigned by his employer.
The laborer is bound to his job
and can change from one employment
to another only by permission of the
authorities. Furthermore, he is not
allowed to earn any extra pay under
any pretense whatsoever while work-
ing at his job, and any remuneration
so received must be deducted from
his regular pay. Under the guise of
the enforcement of the right to work,
careful regulations provide for the
assignment of laborers to their jobs,
and especially for the distribution of
the unemployed.
Ostensibly provision is laade for
the trades unions and works councils
to have a hand in determining con-
ditions of labor, wages, etc., but these
are all subject to the approval of the
higher Soviet authorities. Anyone
who has read Mr. H. V. Reeling's
account of his personal experiences
in connection with the present trades
unions in Russia will realize that
these bodies are in no sense repre-
sentative of the workers, but are
dominated entirely by the Commis-
sars. It is interesting also to note
that the works councils have been
abolished.
It is not only from the standpoint
of labor that the Code is interesting.
It also throws a light on other aspects
of Soviet theory and practice. In the
section dealing with rules for the de-
termination of disability for work
and the payment of sick benefits to
wage earners, it is provided that the
resources of the local hospital funds
shall be derived:
(a) From obligatory payments by enter-
prises, establishments and institutions employ-
ing paid labor.
(b) From fines for delay of payments.
(c) From profits on the investment of the
funds.
It is evident, therefore, that the hated
institution of capital and interest,
against which Lenin and Trotsky ful-
minated so violently, is now recog-
nized as a necessary part of their
system.
To one who has followed the previ-
ous Bolshevik propaganda addressed
to labor in other lands, the question
insistently presents itself as to why
this Code of Labor Laws should be
published at the present moment.
The reason for putting into effect
such a Code is evident. The Bol-
shevik experiment m Communism
has failed and its industrial system
is unable to produce. Partly this is
due to the lack of fuel and raw mate-
rials, as well as to the breakdown in
transportation. But according to
official statements of the Bolsheviks
themselves, one of the greatest of all
difficulties has been the labor prob-
lem. It is therefore to put an end
to labor troubles, and to put out of
the heads of labor all pretensions to
rights and liberties, that the Code
was adopted. Why it was published
abroad just at this time is less evident,
but it seems reasonable to assume
that it is addressed not to working-
men but to capitalists, and that the
intention is to assure the latter that
they can now invest their money in
Russian enterprises in full confidence
that there will be no strikes or other
difficulties with labor. In other
words, the Soviet Government, fac-
ing utter economic collapse, and beg-
ging the capitalists of foreign coun-
tries to come in and save the situa-
tion, off'er, as a special inducement,
to provide slave labor.
THE REVIKW
A weekly journal^ of political and
ffeneral discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Corporation
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars a year in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright, 1920, i» the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harrv Morgan Ayres O. W. Firkins
A. J, Barnouw W. II. Johnson
Jerome Landfield
Maich -20, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[275
Experimental Allegiances
(in two parts — PART ONE)
FOR several years I have been striv-
ing to attain a workable under-
standing of the theory of the state
known variously as Pluralism, Fed-
jralism, Administrative Syndicalism,
ind the Federationism of Experi-
mental Allegiances. I have lingered
curiously over the pages of Mr. Gra-
ham Wallas's"The Great Society" and
of Mr. Harold J. Laski's "The Prob-
lem of Sovereignty" and "Authority
in the Modern State." I have never
failed to read the occasional exposi-
tions of the theory in the columns of
the Ne^v Republic, sometimes anony-
mous, but usually signed by Mr.
Laski, Mr. Herbert Croly, or Mr.
Walter Lippmann. The faint fore-
■ihadowings of the theory appearing
in the Nation at various times during
:he last year and in the Dial during
ts twelve-months' fling in the me-
ropolis as an exponent of intellectual
•adicalism, have not escaped me. I
lave read them all, but I am still dis-
atisfied with my progress toward a
ounded comprehension of this blend
if theory, doctrine, and vision. In
he belief that somewhere there may
e some other person — some forlorn
nd baffled brother — who has striven
s hard, with results as incomplete
nd unsatisfactory, and who, seeing,
lay take heart again, I set down this
ecord of steps taken in the sands of
ndeavor.
Mr. Laski is by common consent
ne protagonist, the chief pleader, of
lie cause. In the columns of the
''ew Republic and elsewhere, from
me to time, he pays tribute to Mr.
rely and Mr. Lippmann as worthy
i)adjutors. But the reciprocal trib-
i:e from Mr. Croly and Mr. Lipp-
ann to Mr. Laski is always the
;ore glowing and expansive, and it
)ints to the chieftainship of the
luse in a way that is unmistakable.
I a day when, particularly in the
ild of radical journalism, there is so
:uch questioning of motives, detrac-
()n and sharp accusation, this fre-
tiient public exchange of encomiastic
I urtesies stands out as a wholesome
and altogether admirable survival of
more spacious times.
Mr. Lippmann concedes {N. R.,
May 31, 1919, p. 148) that the theory
is not a popular one. All the stupen-
dous labor Mr. Laski has brought to
its formulation, and all that the New
Republic has done for its propaga-
tion, have not availed to dispel the
reigning prejudice against it. Of
"Authority in the Modern State" and
of Mr. Laski he writes:
Dealing with matters which, if called by the
names used in current headlines would arouse
a fury of partisanship, arguing for a theory
'liat is widely and deeply resented, he has pro-
tected his argument from the dust and heat of
the outer world, from the anger of opponents
and the clamorous approval of advocates, by
the expedient of enormous scholarship. . . .
The learning in which his ideas are contained
is so vast and so recondite that I imagme even
the sleuth-hounds of Mr. Easley will hesitate.
What "the sleuth-hounds of Mr.
Easley" will do in the matter I can
not guess. But I suspect that if they
hesitate (to attack Mr. Laski, I pre-
sume Mr. Lippmann means) the
cause of the hesitation will be found
not so much in the brave show of
vast, enormous, and recondite schol-
arship as in the difficulty of determin-
ing exactly what Mr. Laski is about.
That he has "protected his argument
from the dust and heat of the outer
world" seems evident enough. But I
suspect that the "protection" is more
or less an involuntary one, and that
the "expedient of enormous scholar-
ship" is no expedient at all. Why,
anyway, a pleader should seek to
"protect" his argument, I do not
understand; one would naturally
suppose that the main business of
propaganda is to get itself dissemi-
nated— from Severn to the sea and
to all its shores the wide world round.
By locking itself up in an academic
vocabulary, fortified with a tremen-
dous bibliography, it would seem
merely to suppress itself.
No, the "protection" that encases
Mr. Laski's argument seems to me
largely that of unintelligibility. One
may admit the scholarship — if by the
word is meant the learning which en-
ables him to cite innumerable pas-
sages from many volumes of forgot-
ten lore which have only a conjectural
relation, if any, to the subject in
hand. But something more than
scholarship (in this narrow sense) is
needed for exposition ; and that is the
ability to set down, out of its accu-
mulated stores, an understandable
statement. Mr. Laski deals largely
in abstractions, which may mean a
number of things, and in generaliza-
tions so sweeping that sometimes they
mean nothing. He hurries along with
a copious rush of words — often un-
considered words, they seem to me —
and the breaks in his sequences are
sometimes so complete as to make one
wonder what possible relation a cer-
tain sentence can have with the one
on each side of it. He finds an enor-
mous number of "obvious" things,
some of them so obvious as to be
banal and others the obviousness of
which I have to reject; and he finds
so great a number of "fundamental"
things as to make one wonder if he
is not frequently mistaking some part
of the superstructure for the founda-
tion. I do not say that there may not
be others who fully comprehend him,
despite Mr. Lippmann's testimony to
the invulnerability to friend and foe
alike of the armor in which his argu-
ment is encased. I say only that, so
far as I am concerned, Mr. Lipp-
mann is in this one matter approxi-
mately correct.
When Mr. Laski writes (A. M. S.,
p. 386) , "For the obvious fact is that
men will not peacefully endure a sit-
uation they deem intolerable," I
think I understand. The statement
seems to me to embody a simple
thought simply expressed. Its obvi-
ousness seems conspicuously obvious,
and as a datum of political science it
seems to me one on which Bolshevik
and anti-Bolshevik, Christian and
Mohammedan, atheist and deist,
Judge Gary and Mr. Gompers,
President Wilson and Senator Lodge
could all cordially agree. But when
he writes {ibid., p. 385-86, "It ['the
movement towards administrative
syndicalism'] is not a revolt against
authority but against a theory of it
which is, in fact, equivalent to servi-
tude," I confess that I am baffled. I
can not comprehend how under any
circumstances, in the world as we
now know it, servitude may be equiv-
276]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 4.)
alent to authority or even to a theory.
When further he writes (ibid., p.
188), "Certainly if there is one truth
to which all history bears witness it
is that unity is the parent of iden-
tity," I am worse than baffled; I am
tantalized by a fair, round abstrac-
tion which seems to mean something,
but may mean anything or nothing.
I could cite, if to do so were to the
purpose, hundreds of such examples.
But not always is Mr. Laski so
futile or so unintelligible. In his re-
view of Professor Giddings' book on
the State a year ago and of W. F.
Willoughby's recent book (N. R., Jan.
7, 1920, p. 175) he has expressed him-
self in an "unprotected" way. The
manner in both cases is arrogant,
hoighty-toity, intolerant, and unfair;
but at least there is some definiteness
of substance. Further, and more to
the matter in hand, is a statement in
the New Republic for May 31, 1919
(the issue from which the Lippmann
passage above is taken) in which
he gives us something sufficiently
clear and definite to afford us a start-
ing point. Mr. Lippmann indites his
glowing eulogy of "Authority in the
Modern State" and then pauses.
After all, there are some further con-
siderations. Is it all so simple as it
seems? May not Pluralism create
new evils, or restore the old ones in a
new guise? "In attempting to sub-
stitute coordination for hierarchy,"
he writes, "the result may well be a
new hierarchy. And the reason is
that since a man can not give equally
steady allegiance to two authorities,
he will end by exalting his immediate
allegiance." He is troubled, and he
suffers a momentary lapse of faith.
Will Mr. Laski come to grips with the
matter, solve it, and reconfirm the
faith of a disciple?
Mr. Laski will ; and obligingly and
courteously he does so. That is, he
responds. He fails utterly to meet
the question, but he does something
as well. He sums up, in fairly con-
crete terms, uncabin'd, uncited, and
unencased, what he is trying to mean
by the Federationism of Experimen-
tal Allegiances. From this statement,
with help from other expositions by
the three coadjutors, one may get
something like the following:
"Personality is a compex thing, and
the institutions — religious, industrial,
political, in which it clothes itself —
are as a consequence manifold." Hu-
man beings give allegiance, in vary-
ing degrees, to these institutions.
They constantly experiment with new
allegiances. The sovereign state de-
mands a paramount allegiance to
itself. The individual may or may
not grant this demand. He may in-
stead yield his paramount allegiance
to an organization — local, national, or
international — such as a church, a
trade-union, a secret society, or a
political party. The sovereign state
is sometimes unable to enforce its
demand, and by insistence may wreck
itself. What society needs, in accord
with its institutions and its psychol-
ogy, is a system of coordinated and
federated allegiances. "The plural-
istic state is an endeavor to express
in terms of structure the facts we
thus encounter. ... It destroys, if
you like, the sovereign state, that it
may preserve the personality of
men."
All this is, in a sense, simple enough.
It is merely an introduction to our
old friend, Group Autonomy — older
than Karnak or Cnossos, old as the
first rude association of primitive
men. It has a new vocabulary and a
new bibliography — and little else.
But these autonomous groups are to
be federated, and the matter is no
longer simple; for in what manner
and to what degree they are to be
federated there is little to show in
all the writings of Mr. Laski, Mr.
Croly, and Mr. Lippmann. On this,
the crucial point in any social scheme,
the expositors are nebulous or self-
contradictory. On the matter of
keeping allegiances coordinated and
at par, which lately has troubled Mr.
Lippmann, there is an utter absence
of exposition. In the earlier days
of his discipleship Mr. Lippman was
more positive. He acknowledged the
dilemmas, but he proposed an heroic
remedy. "The dilemmas themselves
have to be abolished," he wrote {N.
R., April 14, 1917, p. 316), "and
forms of cooperative allegiance de-
vised." How? Even in his more
confident days he did not know. "We
have as yet," he then said, "only the
vaguest notions as to how this is to
be done." The other members of the
firm, as I shall later show, are no bet-
ter off. If during the intervening
three years this vagueness has to any
degree been clarified, the evidence has
not yet been confided to the printed
page.
W. J. Ghent
[To be concluded next week]
The Plight of Russian
Peasants
WITHIN a brief cablegram, received
last week from Harbin and scarcely
noticed in our press, there is contained
a story of pathetic heroism that deserves
the attention and admiration of working-
men in all lands. The cablegram relates
simply that thirty thousand Russian
workmen and peasants from the Urals
and Western Siberia, who formed a
division in the anti-Bolshevik army, and
who, it was feared, had been destroyed
by the Bolsheviks since the defeat of
Admiral Kolchak, had succeeded in cut-
ting their way through the enemy forces
and marching two thousand miles to
Verkhne-Udinsk. The story of these
fighting workmen is one of the romantic
episodes of the war. They were chiefly
the laborers of the Izhevsky and Vod-
kinsky works in the neighborhood of
Perm. Last June, by resolution of the
Ural Trade Unions, they sent a mission
of four of their members to inform the
people of England concerning conditions
in Russia and of the Russian working
classes. This mission was sent by the
Unions themselves, without funds from
other sources, and after great difficulties
it finally reached England in December.
It consisted of Upovalov, the president of
the Vodkinsky Union of Metal Workers;
Strumilov, a director of the Metal Work-
ers' Union of Perm; Zhandarmov, vice-
president of the Federated Trades
Unions of the Ural, and Menshikov,
member of the Executive Committee of
the Izhevsky Union.
The statements of the delegates in
which they explain the reasons why the
peasants and workmen of the Ural re-
gion rose against the Soviet rule are
clear and definite.
The Bolsheviks established their ])ower by'
bayonets and broke the strength of peasants
and workers, broke the Constituent Assem-
bly, which was elected on the principle of uiii
versal. direct, equal, and secret voting; broke
all the societies of a democratic nature, sue!
as the Zemstvos, that self-governing bo{l>
elected by universal, direct, and secret voting
The Bolsheviks ruthlessly, like autocratic gen
darmes, killed all labor, political, and Social
ist organizations ; throttled the labor pres'
and finally established by decree the dawn n
their own Tsarist Socialism. Who split ii]
March 20, l!>-2()]
THE REVIEW
[277
the reserve funds of the trade unions? The
Bolsheviks. Who split up the trade unions as
a class? By whose orders were all strikes
put down by force of arms, amid plentiful
executions? It was the Bolsheviks who broke
the cooperative societies and converted their
shops into Communist stores.
The Bolsheviks promised the working people
peace, bread and freedom. Actually, in place
of peace, they gave civil war, which destroyed
all manufactures and stained the country with
blood; in place of freedom — prison, exile, and
the firing squad; in place of bread — famine
and the grave.
So it was that, having drunk to the full
the cup of humiliation and tasted this red-
bayonet Socialism, the Izhevsky and Vodkin-
sky workers recognized that further life of
this sort was impossible, and, though without
weapons, and armed only with the armor of
right, with only their blistered hands to fight
with, united in spirit, to a man they rose
against the oppressors, and, by virtue of their
strength of will, snatched the rifles from the
hands of the Red Guards and began the
battle for citizens' rights and the freedom of
the Russian people.
It was this division of workmen sol-
diers that bore the brunt of the Bol-
shevik attack last summer when the
forces of Kolchak, without munitions
and undermined in the rear, crumbled,
and it was this division, faithful to the
end, that covered the great retreat. Now,
after untold privations and sufferings,
they have, like another Ten Thousand,
fought their way through to possible
safety. It is to such sturdy champions
of liberty that the new Russia must look
hopefully when it is possible again to
face the tasks of reconstruction. This
episode is the best answer to those who
would decry the qualities of the Russian
peasants, and who would judge by the
present supremacy of the Bolshevik
minority that they were incapable of or-
ganized patriotic resistance and political
self-assertion.
Jerome Landfield
The Erzberger-Helfferich Trial and
the Aftermath
ON Saturday morning of last week the
cables brought the news of the ver-
dict in the suit of Mathias Erzberger,
until recently Secretary of State for Fi-
nance in the German Republic, against
Karl Helfferich, former Vice-Chancellor
and Secretary of State for the Interior
and for Finance in the time of William
II. Helfferich, a pronounced reactionary,
was condemned to a nominal fine, three
hundred marks and costs, yet he left the
courtroom amid prolonged applause; and
the trial amounted virtually to a con-
demnation of the plaintiff, for Erzber-
ger had sued for slander and defamation
of character, and Helfferich's fine was
imposed, not on this count, the judge
stating that Helfferich had acted from
"patriotic motives," but because he had
"shown hatred" in his persecution of the
plaintiff.
The same evening brought the news
of a reported and seemingly unexpected
coup d'etat by the German reactionary
parties, the details and effects of which
must for a time remain somewhat vague.
The American press in general had paid
but little attention to the Helflferich-
Erzberger controversy, regarding it
' more or less as a private quarrel between
politicians; whereas there is a close con-
nection between the two events.
I Helflerich's attitude, which differs
little, if at all, from that of the counter-
revolutionists, may be briefly stated as
follows: Germany was not defeated
through the military superiority of the
Entente and the United States. She met
disaster through her own internal dis-
sensions, especially the unpatriotic atti-
tude of the Social Democrats and those
who, like Erzberger, sided with them,
particularly in the crisis of 1917. This
crisis, which forced Bethmann-Hollweg
out of office, gave Prussia universal suf-
frage, and passed the famous Reichstag
Peace Resolution, broke down the "Burg-
friede," or truce of parties. On that
occasion the Reichstag for the first time
showed itself strong enough to prevail
against the Emperor, Chancellor, and
General Staff. From that time on, the
Reichstag continued to undermine the
power and authority of William II and
of the German General Staff, which had
been the secret of Germany's strength.
The multiplication of stupid activities
and pretensions by this incompetent
Reichstag finally overthrew the German
Empire and brought Germany to her
present pass.
The feeling of Helfferich and his class
is much less severe against the Social
Democrats than against Erzberger and
what following he may still have. The
Social Democrats were an evil to which
the old regime had been accustomed, and
their status had been formulated once for
all when William II on a famous occasion
characterized them as "enemies of the
Fatherland." From them nothing, there-
fore, had been expected. It had sur-
prised no one that as the prospect of
a German victory became more and more
remote they should have protested more
and more vehemently against the old
regime. Ebert and Noske had always
done this, and after the armistice had
merely run true to form. They had
balked at voting the war taxes in July,
1917, and had worked consistently to
bring about parliamentary government.
It was to have been expected that, after
the revival of Socialistic hopes following
the Russian Revolution of the spring of
1917, they would favor the Reichstag
Peace Resolution. Indeed, they were its
earliest advocates. Yet in the eyes of
the reactionaries they could not have suc-
ceeded either in passing the Peace Reso-
lution or in introducing parliamentary
reforms without the assistance of other
parties. It was, therefore, more repre-
hensible to support a Social Democrat
than to be one, for to countenance such
outlaws not only gave them political
standing but also a cachet of respecta-
bility. Hence Erzberger's position as
arch-villain in that tragedy, The Junkers'
Overthrow.
It was excellent political policy, from
the reactionary standpoint, to attack
Erzberger. The move promised success,
since as a personality he was, beyond
doubt, the weakest spot in the Govern-
ment's armor. The question of finance
in Germany being particularly pressing,
if it could be proved that the head of
the Treasury was himself dishonest, self-
seeking, and a war profiteer, all eco-
nomic policies of the Republic would be
discredited.
It seems that Erzberger was a suffi-
ciently astute politician to realize the
weakness of his position. If the verdict
has in essence gone against him, he can
at least urge in extenuation that unwill-
ingly he came to sue. Helfferich, in his
three volumes of "Der Weltkrieg," which
has been very widely read in Germany,
made statements that no respectable poli-
tician could allow to pass unchallenged.
Yet Erzberger remained silent. Helf-
ferich then published a pamphlet "Down
with Erzberger," and has since improved
every opportunity to insult him in pub-
lic. Erzberger was probably forced by
his colleagues to take action and, shortly
after it was instituted, to withdraw from
the Cabinet. The pamphlet, which re-
views Erzberger's career, was read at the
trial, and easily made him, not Helfferich,
appear as the defendant in the suit.
Hence the charges, which seem to have
been virtually substantiated, not only
have resulted in a personal triumph for
Helfferich, but carry the implication that
Erzberger's colleagues in the Government
are likewise condemned. This assump-
tion is, I believe, unfair to men like
Ebert and Noske, who in their political
life have acted consistently, and, on the
personal side are respected.
Much which can only now be disclosed
had been happening behind the scenes
unknown to the Reichstag generally and,
of course, to ourselves. At the begin-
ning of April, 1917, Emperor Charles,
Empress Zita, and Count Czemin ap-
peared at the German General Head-
quarters at Kreuznacht and suggested
peace. They made it plain that Austria's
position was exceedingly serious. Not
only did they talk of peace, they even
suggested ■ important cessions of terri-
278]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 45
tory. The Emperor and Empress and
their Minister evidently returned home
with the conviction that it was hopeless
to obtain any concessions from the Ger-
man General Staff. Shortly after, on
April 14, a personal aide of Emperor
Charles delivered to Emperor William a
letter written in his own hand which
was accompanied by a memoir from
Oeunt Czernin to the following effect:
Austria-Hungary's clock was running
down. Morale was bad and the revolu-
tionarj- danger was increasing. The raw
materials for war munitions were giv-
ing out and Arnerican intervention had
rendered the situation still more acute.
French, English, and Italian offensives
were to be expected. "Before America
can destroy the military situation for us
we must make a far-reaching and de-
tailed proposal of peace and not shrink
from making eventually extensive and
grievous sacrifices." Undoubtedly Eng-
land and France were likewise tired, and,
though the ruthless submarine warfare
would not be decisive, the statesmen of
the Entente would ask themselves
"whether it was expedient and wise to
carry on this war d outrance or whether
it was not more statesmanlike to cross
golden bridges if these were built for
them by the Central Powers. In that
case the moment had come for far-reach-
ing, painful sacrifices by the Central
Powers." These included, on Germany's
side, the cession of Alsace-Lorraine, and
on Austria-Hungary's part the giving up
of the whole of Galicia and the Trentino.
Austria-Hungary could not possibly look
forward to another winter's campaign,
and it was feared that such a campaign
might likewise bring about in Germany
political changes which the responsible
defenders of the dynastic principle must
consider as more serious than a poor
peace negotiated by the monarchs.
The Emperor and German Headquar-
ters refused to take so serious a view of
the situation, because of the promising
aspect of developments in Russia and
also because of an alleged remark of
Ribot's to the Italian Ambassador to the
effect that France was bleeding to death.
On German policy the most serious
immediate effect of this communication
was to arouse that bitter feeling against
Austria which was to become more and
more pronounced as the war progressed.
Czemin's memoir, like the visit of the
Imperial pair to German Headquarters,
proved unavailing for reasons that can-
not here be discussed. Evidently the
German militarists either were confident
of a victory or believed that peace over-
tures would be made by the Entente.
The developments in which Erzberger
was to take so large a part came, there-
fore, as a most unexpected shock. The
parties of the Left were to prove "un-
grateful" and were to demand more than
the Emperor had promised in the way
of reforms in the Prussian system of
elections. Also, a political cross-current
set in; LudendorfT, Hindenburg, and the
reactionaries demanded the removal of
von Bethmann-Hollweg as Chancellor,
whom the Left seemed quite willing to
keep. In the Main Committee of the
Reichstag the Social Democrats, with
Ebert and Noske taking prominent parts,
demanded a peace resolution announcing
a programme of "no annexations." At
this point Hindenburg and Ludendorff,
growing impatient, sent in their resig-
nations to take effect immediately unless
von Bethmann-Hollweg were dismissed.
The storm would have been weathered,
Helffer.ch believes, but for the fact that
Erzberger of the Catholic Centre party
joined with the Social Democrats and
brought them an unexpected accession of
strength. He painted an exceedingly
dark picture of Germany's prospects. It
is impossible to analyze in detail his ac-
tions in this crisis, and it is simplest to
believe that he was improving the occa-
sion to fish in troubled waters. He had
been particularly close to von Bethmann-
Hollweg and the German Foreign Office.
Yet he suddenly turned against the
Chancellor and was instrumental in his
dismissal, as well as being the most im-
portant factor in the passage of the
Peace Resolution. In the general tur-
moil the further reform of the Prussian
system of elections was also carried. All
of these measures were effectea against
the will of the Emperor and his Govern-
ment. They were the most important
concessions ever forced from him, and
clearly indicated that his authority was
beginning to wane. This undermining
of the Imperial and military authority is
quite properly regarded by the German
reactionaries as the beginning of the
end. Erzberger symbolized to them
everything that is reprehensible in the
new parliamentary regime. As he was,
in addition, one of the plenipotentiaries
who negotiated the armistice with Foch,
he is regarded as one of those most re-
sponsible for the peace.
It will hardly assist us in our attempt
to understand the present psychology of
a large wing of German opinion to con-
sider Erzberger, as has sometimes been
done, a disinterested lover of peace
and a thoroughgoing republican. Helf-
ferich's charge that the German Repub-
lic's Minister of Finance frequently
directed his political activities to his per-
sonal financial advantage must be taken
seriously. Erzberger's support of the
Peace Resolution was the more un-
expected because of his previous attitude.
He had in September of 1914 presented
to von Bethmann-Hollweg, to von Tir-
pitz, von Falkenhayn, and others a pro-
gramme of annexations which was
excessive, even from the German stand-
point. It included not only the annexa-
tion of the Flemish and French coast.
but also the English islands of the Chan-
nel, as well as the French mining fields.
Helfferich accused him of having ac-
cepted bribes in the form of directorates
and other considerations from corpora-
tions whose interests he was to further
in the Reichstag and in cases in which
he acted as referee. Erzberger admitted
having received a hundred thousand
marks as a director in Thyssen's Iron
and Steel Works. It was charged that
he was paid this sum to purchase his
influence for the companj, and that in
advocating the annexation of the French
ore basins he was merely rendering his
quid pro quo. It is probably true that
Erzberger resigned after the passage of
the Pepce Resolution, though under what
circumstances and for what reasons it
is impossible to say at present.
Erzberger has also been accused of
making unlawful use of Czemin's con-
fidential memoir to Emperor William II.
It was through him, according to Helf-
ferich, that news of Austria's desperate
situation reached Germany's enemies.
On this count, certainly, Erzberger must
be acquitted. Czernin had intended that
his memoir should be seen only by the
two Emperors. At the time of Emperor
Charles's visit to Headquarters and of
his letter to William II, Austria's situa-
tion was certainly desperate. Charles
knew that he must make peace. His
experience at German Headquarters
made it impossible to entertain much
hope of success from the "military mas-
ters of Germany," and both Czernin and
Charles felt that if they were to obtain
any result whatever it must be through
the Reichstag. It was only natural that
they should have attempted to act
through the Catholic Centre party, and it
has since been disclosed that Erzberger
received his copy of the Czernin memoir
through no less a person than the Em-
peror Charles himself. It was given him
to use, the only injunction being that he
should not reveal the source from which
he had obtained it. Since at the same
time the Emperor had written the well-
known Prince Sixtus Letter and had sent
Count Mensdorff, his former Ambassa-
dor at London, to Switzerland to estab-
lish contact if possible with representa-
tives of the Entente Powers, it could
hardly have been a secret in Entente
circles that Austria was decidedly weary
of the war and that her clock had "very
nearly run down."
It is undoubtedly true that Erzberger
was an exceedingly important factor in
bringing about peace and in establishing
the parliamentary regime in Germany.
We may regret that his personal char-
acter seems to be so far from admirable,
for it is useless to blink the fact that
his overthrow will, temporarily at least,
do much to increase reactionary senti-
ment in Germany.
Christian Gauss
JNIarch 20, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[279
Correspondence
Loose Talk Within the
Church
To the Editors of The Review:
Turning from your thoughtful edi-
torial on "Religion and the World's
Need," in the Review of February 21, I
happened to pick up a copy of the
Churchman of the same date, wherein is
reported an address before "the younger
clergy of the metropolitan district" by
the Rev. J. Howard Melish, of Brooklyn.
Here are some of the things he said :
Mark my word the time is at hand when
men who speak as I speak, unwilling to com-
promise on the subject of the inherent rights
of the laboring man, will be thrown out by
the Church which is demanding suppression
and end of free speech in this free Republic.
... Is the Church's purpose a partisan one, or
does it exist for religion? Is it to be but-
tressed by the rich and then used to exploit the
poor? ... As it is now, some men who are
living on interest, rents, and coupons — and
still not producing — are getting the cream.
Until that sort of thing is brought to an end
it is the Church's business to see that we are
always on the edge of revolution.
"Mr. Melish took his seat," says the
reporter, "amid prolonged applause, al-
though several present were heard to say
that they were in some respects directly
opposed to the speaker's conclusions."
Talcott Miner Banks
Williamstown, Mass., February 21
Keynes and Dillon
To the Editors of The Review:
It does not appear to be realized by
the general reading public that the two
most ambitious and most entertaining
volumes on the peace treaty which have
thus far appeared — those of Mr. J. M.
Keynes and of Dr. E. J. Dillon — are seri-
ously untrustworthy in their statements
of fact, and even in their accounts of the
provisions of the treaty. Both writers
set out with a manifest determination
to prove that the treaty was conceived
in sin and born in iniquity; that, under
some hypocritical concealments, it repu-
diates most of the terms of the armistice
agreement; and that, in essential mat-
ters, the principles and programme of
President V/ilson were set aside. Mr.
Keynes, it is true, has done a useful ser-
vice in urgiij.g — as others have done —
that the framers of the treaty overesti-
mated Germany's power of economic
recovery under the conditions proposed,
and that, in the general interest of
Europe, many of the economic clauses
require revision. But his attack upon
the treaty is much more sweeping than
this; and many of his other strictures
upon it, especially on the score of good
faith, are based upon misstatements or
omissions of pertinent facts. As for
Dr. Dillon, one is tempted to surmise
that he regards his conversations with
eminent personages in Paris during the
Conference as absolving him from the
tiresome task of reading the final text
of the treaty; at all events, he presents
singularly erroneous accounts of some
of its most important provisions.
I give some examples of these inaccu-
racies :
1. By the clauses which reserve to
the Allied Goveinments the right to take
property of German citizens or corpora-
tions in ceded territory, "a wholesale
expropriation of private property is to
take place," says Mr. Keynes, "without
the Allies affording any compensation
to the individuals expropriated." In
Alsace-Lorraine, for example, "the prop-
erty of the Germans who reside there
is now entirely at the disposal of the
French Government without compensa-
tion, except in so far as the German
Government itself miy choose to afford
it" (italics mine). In point of fact, the
treaty makes provision for compensation
to all Germans whose property is taken.
Only by a breach of faith on the part of
their own Government can they fail to
receive such compensation. By Art. 297
(1), "Germany undertakes to compen-
sate her nationals in respect to the sale
or retention of their property, rights, or
interests in Allied and Associated
States"; and by Art. 74 the same pro-
vision is applied specifically to Germans
in Alsace-Lorraine who may be dis-
possessed. Expropriated property, more-
over, is to be used primarily to pay pri-
vate debts owed by Germans to citizens
of Allied countries through an interna-
tional clearing office; if any balance re-
mains and is retained by an Allied Power,
it is to be credited to Germany on the
reparation account.
2. As an example of the perversion of
the plain meaning of the Fourteen Points
through "sophistry and Jesuitical exe-
gesis," Mr. Keynes points to the clause
making Danzig a free city, with the
proviso that it shall be included within
the customs frontier of Poland and that
its foreign relations shall be conducted
by the Polish Government. Yet this
clause merely translates into the con-
crete Point 13, which required that "the
Polish State shall have free and secure
access to the sea." This requirement, it
is manifest, could not be effectually and
lastingly realized by leaving the mouths
of the Vistula in German hands; nor
could it be realized by establishing a com-
pletely independent port, with its own
customs system and the power to make
commercial or other treaties on its own
account. Under the treaty the town
becomes self-governing, but with restric-
tions indispensable if Poland's access to
the sea is to be really "free" and really
"secure." Mr. Keynes's complaint seems
to be that the Allies kept faith with the
Poles.
3. "Clemenceau brought to success,"
says Mr. Keynes, "what had seemed to
be, a few months before, the extraordi-
nary and impossible proposal that the
Germans should not be heard." That
the German delegates were not "heard,"
in a physiological sense, is true. It is
not true, as the reader would naturally
suppose, that no hearing was given to
their side of the case. They were in
Paris for some seven weeks; during the
whole of this time they were busily
engaged in drafting and laying before
the representatives of the Allies a
voluminous series of notes in criticism
of the treaty-draft, and in submitting
counter-proposals traversing the entire
field of the peace settlement. All these
communications were received, published,
considered, and answered in detail; and
some alterations in the treaty were made
in consequence, the most important being
the provision for a plebiscite in Upper
Silesia. The objections to the holding
of a series of public oral debates (in
three or four languages) between the
Allied and the German delegates were
surely obvious and sufficient.
4. Both Mr. Keynes and Dr. Dillon
represent the arrangement concerning
the Saar Valley as (in the words of the
former) "an act of spoliation and insin-
cerity"; and both, in order to prove it
such, give misleading accounts of the
provisions of the treaty. The reason
officially given for the arrangement is
that it was made "as compensation for
the destruction of coal mines in the north
of France and as part payment towards
the total reparation due from Germany."
Mr. Keynes, however, charges that this
explanation is disingenuous. For, he
asserts, "compensation for the destruc-
tion of the French coal mines is pro-
vided for elsewhere in the treaty." "As
a part of the payment due for repara-
tion, Germany is to deliver to France
7,000,000 tons annually for ten years,"
these deliveries being "wholly additional
to the amounts available by the cession
of the Saar or in compensation for
destruction in Northern France." If
these statements were accurate, they
would, doubtless, convict the framers of
the treaty of a deliberate attempt to mis-
lead the public. But it is Mr. Keynes
who misleads the public. The clauses to
which he refers merely give France for
ten years an option for the annual pur-
chase, at the market price, of diminish-
ing quantities of coal from Germany.
The maximum (27 million tons) possi-
ble in any one year under the option
about equals the 1912 output of the Nord
and Pas de Calais mines ; after five years
the deliveries can not exceed 60%, and
may fall to about 25% of that amount.
These clauses provide an offset for
France's future loss in coal production,
but they manifestly propose no repara-
tion whatever for the malicious destruc-
280]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 45
tion of the mines themselves, or for the
loss of their output, or of that of the
iron mines of Briey, during the past five
years. Moreover, France is not assured
of the fulfillment of this option. For the
treaty provides that if the Reparation
Commission "shall determine that the
full exercise of these options would inter-
fere unduly with the industrial require-
ments of Germany, the Commission is
authorized to postpone or to cancel deliv-
eries." And, as Professor Haskins has
already pointed out, Mr. Keynes else-
where seeks to prove that these clauses
are an illusion, since it is impossible for
Germany to furnish the coal required;
so that his own arugments go to show
that the Saar Valley provisions alone
afford France a substantial guarantee
of compenstion for the ruin of the
greater part of her coal-mining industry.
It becomes, in truth, increasingly evi-
dent that they give almost the only
security for prompt reparation, of any
kind, that France possesses.
Dr. Dillon, however, asserts (what Mr.
Keynes apparently implies) that the pur-
pose of the clauses relating to the Saar
Valley was less to obtain reparation than
to mask a design of eventual annexation.
"For fifteen years," he writes, "there is
to be a foreign administration there, and
at the end of it the people are to be
asked whether they would like to place
themselves under French sway, so that a
premium is offered for French immigra-
tion into the Saar Valley." But by Art.
34 "all persons, without distinction of
sex, more than twenty years old at the
date of the voting, resident in the terri-
tory at the date of the signature of the
present treaty," will be entitled to vote in
the plebiscite of 1934. No other class of
voters is provided for; and no extension
of the suffrage beyond the class thus
defined could be accomplished without
the vote of a majority of the Council of
the League of Nations. Nor can it be
assumed that the League will disregard
the plebiscite. There is therefore no
likelihood of annexation to France four-
teen years hence, unless the present pop-
ulation of the district then desire it.
Why the believers in "self-determination"
should wish to withhold from this popu-
lation, at the close of the existing tem-
porary arrangement, the privilege of
determining freely their future alle-
giance, is difficult to see. Dr. Dillon still
more grossly misrepresents the facts
when he repeatedly asserts that the
treaty "makes over the German popula-
tion of the Saar Valley to France at the
end of fifteen years as a fair equivalent
of a sum of money payable in gold."
What he means to convey by this is that
if Germany fails to repurchase the
mines, the district and its inhabitants
will be transferred to France. The
treaty in its final form contains no such
provision.
5. The confiding reader of Mr.
Keynes's book could gain no other im-
pression than that President Wilson's
part in the Conference was essentially a
passive one; that he gradually surren-
dered the substance of almost all the
principles which he had previously so
eloquently enunciated, content if only, by
ingenious glosses and interpretations,
some verbal show of conformity with
the "Fourteen Points" were maintained.
And Dr. Dillon quotes with approval the
words of an American journalist: "Cle-
menceau got virtually all he asked.
President Wilson virtually dropped his
own programme and adopted the French
and British, both imperialistic." The
easy verifiable truth of the matter is
that, while the treaty, as might have
been expected, was made possible only by
concessions on the part of all concerned,
the concessions obtained by Mr. Wilson
were of far greater significance than
those which he yielded and that, but for
his tenacity of purpose, the treaty would
be immensely different from what it is,
and incomparably more "imperialistic."
A too easy plasticity is scarcely the fault
with which the members of the Confer-
ence are most likely to reproach Mr. Wil-
son. It is indubitable that, up to April 6,
the French delegation demanded the
restoration of "the frontier of 1814,"
i. e., the actual annexation of the Saar
district; and that on the morrow of the
President's sending for the George
Washington this demand was withdrawn.
It is also a matter of official record, in
the report of the Commission de la Paix
of the Chamber of Deputies, that until
the middle of March the representatives
of France insisted that all German ter-
ritory on the left bank of the Rhine
should willy-nilly be separated from the
German Empire. The Government ex-
plained to the Committee of the Chamber
its reluctant abandonment of this demand
on these grounds, among others: "That
it had been objected that, without vio-
lating the principles adopted on Novem-
ber 4, 1918, as the basis of the peace
[i. e., the Fourteen Points], it was im-
possible to separate from Germany five
and a half million Germans with a
plebiscite — which, moreover, if held,
would result in favor of Germany;" and
that "for these reasons certain govern-
ments refused to associate their troops
[indefinitely] in the occupation" of the
Rhineland or "to recommend to their par-
liaments the breaking of the bond be-
tween Germany and the left bank of the
Rhine." It was, however, only after
President Wilson's suggestion of the spe-
cial treaties with England and the
United States, as an alternative guaran-
tee for the security of France against
German aggression, that the French Gov-
ernment finally yielded the point.
Now these two French demands, for
which M. Clemenceau seems to have
fought with all his skill, resourcefulness
and pertinacity, were obviously the
supreme danger-points of the Confer-
ence. Their acceptance would have
meant a clear repudiation of the princi-
ples of settlement agreed to by the Allies
before the armistice; it would have made
probable, and justifiable, a German irre-
dentist movement of the most formidable
proportions; and it would have been in
the highest degree threatening to the
peace of Europe. In this crucial issue,
it was not Mr. Wilson who yielded the
essentials of his position. This fact
alone compels one to regard both Mr.
Keynes's and Dr. Dillon's picture of the
President's role in the negotiations as
little better than caricatures. There
are many other facts, easily ascertainable
by any unbiased student of the treaty
and of the history of the Conference,
which justify the same conclusion. Like
all clever caricatures, Mr. Keynes's pic-
ture has its touches of verisimilitude; but
in the main, it can most charitably be
described as a brilliant exercise of the
creative imagination. But the public, it
is to be feared, cares much more for
brilliant exercises of the creative imagi-
nation than it does for facts.
Arthur 0. Lovejoy
Baltimore, Md., March 6
[As regards the facts mentioned in
Professor Lovejoy's last paragraph, the
reader is referred to an article in the
Revieiv for December 20, 1919, by Mr.
Frederick Moore, who attended the
Peace Conference, and who holds a very
different opinion as to the amount oi
the President's yielding. — Eds. The Re-
view.]
Fuel in Germany
To the Editors of The Review :
In noting your issue of December 27
last under the heading of "Impresssions
from Hungary," I was surprised at the
following statement : "Germany, to the
writer's positive knowledge, is the only
country on the continent where the sup-
ply of fuel is adequate, and the factories
are working day and night."
No statement could be farther from
the truth. During the latter part of
last year I was in Germany for about
four weeks, and I was unable to make
my purchases because of the fact that
there was no paper to be had, on account
of lack of fuel. In one factory, in Nlirn-
berg, they were fighting desperately to
keep the boilers going by using a com-
bination of the poorest grade of coal,
wood, and peat, and after I got to Paris
I received word that the factory had
closed down on account of this supply
having become exhausted, and that they
could not predict when they would re-
sume.
W. J. Lowenstein
Atlanta, Ga., March 5
lAIarch 20, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[281
Book Reviews
Republicanism in China
Modern China: A Political Study. By Sih-
Gung Cheng. Oxford; Clarendon Press.
IN Part II of this volume Mr. Cheng
has dealt with China's foreign rela-
tions, extraterritoriality, tariffs, eco-
nomic concessions, and foreign invest-
ments, but, with regard to these topics,
has furnished no considerable informa-
tion not already available in other works.
In Part I, however, which deals with con-
stitutional developments in China, he has
presented a new and valuable account
of recent political events in his country,
an account which, besides being inform-
ing, raises questions which deserve some
discussion because in the answers to them
will appear not only an explanation of the
happenings in China of the last few
years, but a basis for judging whether a
rapid development of constitutional and
republican institutions in that country
may be expected in the near future.
It has now been more than eight years
since the Manchu monarchy was over-
thrown and a government, republican in
form, established in its place. During
these years, the domestic situation in
China — not to speak of her foreign rela-
tions— has gone from bad to worse. As
yet it has been found impossible to put
into force a permanent constitution. The
so-called "Provisional Constitution," hur-
riedly drawn up and promulgated early
in 1912, and admitted by every one to be
seriously defective as an instrument of
government, is still in force as the
fundamental law of the Republic. Twice
the attempt has been made to reestab-
lish the monarchy : the first time by
Yuan Shih-Kai, and the second time by
the bandit general, Chang Hsun, who
actually succeeded in maintaining the
deposed Manchu boy emperor upon the
dragon throne for something over a week.
Twice the Parliament, without a shadow
of constitutional warrant, has been dis-
solved by Presidential mandate, and, at
the present time, most of the southern
and southwestern Provinces refuse to
admit the de jure character of the new
Parliament at Peking or the legal title
to office of the President elected by it.
Instead-«-in form if not in substance —
they give their allegiance to a body sit-
ting at Canton which claims to be com-
posed of a majority of the members of
the old twice-dissolved Parliament. At-
j tempts, continuing for nearly two years,
I have been made to compromise the differ-
ences between the Canton and Peking
Governments, but as yet without success.
Meanwhile, there has been a stead-
ily increasing domestic demoralization.
The control of the Government at Peking
over even those Provinces which acknowl-
edge a nominal allegiance to it has almost
disappeared; the civil authorities have
not been able to control the military
forces (the second dissolution of the Par-
liament by President Li Yuan-Hung was
directly due to military threats) ; the
construction of railways and other pub-
lic works has been at a standstill; and
the national revenues have been wholly
inadequate to meet even primary gov-
ernmental needs, with the result that re-
peated foreign loans have been a neces-
sity, and these having been obtained in
large measure from Japan have carried
with them concessions not only economi-
cally onerous, but politically dangerous.
In short, as yet the Chinese people have
not been able to give substance and full
constitiitional operation to their repub-
lican form of government, but have been
forced to endure a progressive breakdown
of their civil administrative services, to
see their northern and southern Prov-
inces at war with each other, and to sub-
mit, as they did in 1915, at the time of
Japan's Twenty-One Demands, to serious
inroads upon their sovereignty and in-
tegrity as an independent nation.
Beyond doubt China has been greatly
hindered in her efforts to develop con-
stitutional government and to give real-
ity to republican principles, by the con-
stant interference of Japan in her do-
mestic affairs; but, in addition, it is evi-
dent that the Chinese people were far
from prepared by previous political expe-
rience and long-established conceptions
of law and government for the plunge
which, in 1911, they took into the
troubled, if stimulating, waters of de-
mocracy. This is a matter which de-
serves some discussion in view of the
statement so often made that the Chi-
nese people were peculiarly qualified for
the republican experiment by reason of
the extent to which, for many genera-
tions, they had practised self-government
in their local affairs, and because of the
essentially democratic character of their
social and economic life.
The truth is, paradoxical as it may
seem, that it has been precisely because
of these facts that the Chinese have
found it difficult to maintain an effective
central government founded upon a
democratic basis. In the first place,
republican or representative government,
to be successful, must rest upon a con-
stitutional basis; that is, it must be a
government of laws and not of men.
Now this very idea of government by
uniform, imperative law, as opposed to
personal authority, has, in tlie past,
played a peculiarly small part in Chinese
notions of rule. It has been said by one
of the most philosophical of the writers
upon Chinese history (Meadows) that
"of all races that have attained a certain
degree of civilization the Chinese are the
least revolutionary and the most rebel-
lious." By this statement the author evi-
dently means that the Chinese have ever
laid emphasis upon the personal charac-
ter of their rulers and have consistently
maintained their right to rid themselves
of emperors or provincial governors as
well as of lower public officials by whom
they have conceived themselves to be
oppressed or under whose rule they have,
for any reason, failed to prosper. But
not until 1911 did they show any desire
to change the forms of government under
which they lived. Personal rule they
understood and seemed to prefer, and,
having got rid of an incompetent or
tyrannical ruler, they were satisfied to
replace him with another ruler, with
equal powers, from whom they might
hope to obtain more beneficent govern-
ment.
Again, in the adjustment of their per-
sonal differences, the Chinese were not
accustomed to resort to law, as the west-
ern world understands that term, or to
tribunals maintained by the state. Dis-
putes between members of a family or
clan were settled by the heads of the
family or clan. Controversies between
inhabitants of the same villages, or be-
tween the villages themselves, were set-
tled by the "village elders," who owed
their station and authority rather to
tacit recognition of merit than to formal
election by the villagers. Differences
between merchants were almost always
settled by the guilds, of which practi-
cally all the merchants were members.
And, finally, even when there were orders
issued by the political authorities, the ob-
ligation to obey was conceived to be a
moral or rational, rather than a political
or legal, one. It is true that these orders
were issued as commands, and often had
attached to them the admonition "trem-
blingly obey," but, in fact, they were com-
monly prefaced by argumentative state-
ments which indicated that they were
intended to be persuasive in character;
that is, to appeal primarily to the reason
and sense of moral obligation of the per-
sons to whom they were directed. In this
important respect, then, the Chinese were
not, by their past practices and political
philosophy, prepared for that rigid rule
of law which a constitutional regime
imports and which is a prerequisite to a
Government which is to be legally as
well as politically responsible to the gov-
erned.
In the second place, and closely con-
nected with the first point, the Chinese
in the past had been habituated not so
much to self-government as to doing
without government at all. It has been
seen that the Chinese were wont to make
comparatively little use of the judicial
branch of their Government. The legis-
lative branch meant even less to them, as
they found the substantive rules of con-
duct in custom rather than in statute
law. And as for the executive branch,
they demanded very little of it. To the
central Government they were willing to
282]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 45
pay their very moderate taxes, but from
it they expected little beyond protection
against foreign aggression, and a few
public works of too great magnitude for
local undertaking, a general direction of
state examinations for entrance to the
public service, occasional aid in cases of
great crop failures, floods, or other dis-
asters, and protection against banditry
when this evil became too serious to be
met by the local authorities. And of their
local Governments the Chinese people
asked almost nothing — no administration
of such local affairs as sanitation, edu-
cation, fire protection, road building, and
the like. Even as to local police protec-
tion, only a minimum was expected.
Thus it happened that in many of the
villages long periods elapsed during
which, except the collection of taxes or
the recording of land transfers, no dis-
tinctively governmental functions were
exercised from one year's end to another.
The third respect in which the ground
in China had not been prepared for rep-
resentative government — and here an-
other seeming paradox appears — was
that the Chinese constituted such a
socially and economically democratized
people that there did not exist clearly
defined classes or interests upon which
political representation might be based.
This was a feature emphasized by Dr.
Frank J. Goodnow in an important mem-
orandum which, as constitutional ad-
viser, he submitted to the President of
China.*
Finally, and perhaps the most impor-
tant of all the circumstances which have
made the republican experiment pecu-
liarly difficult to the Chinese people, has
been the lack of a politically effective
national patriotism. No people have
been more proud, and, in many respects,
justly proud, of their civilization and
national attainments than the Chinese,
and few peoples in the world have been
more clearly entitled to be deemed and
treated as a single nation when viewed
from the standpoint of an ethnic and cul-
tural homogeneity reinforced by a long
and unbroken history of political unity.
But this feeling of national oneness had
not, prior to the revolution of 1919, led to
a patriotism that had made the Chinese
willing to sacrifice individual, or family,
or local interests to those of a national
character. The Chinese were, and are,
not without idealism, but they also have
a very keen conception of what is of
direct and immediate practical value to
themselves. And thus, obtaining almost
nothing for themselves from their cen-
tral Government, and viewing, indeed,
their political rulers in a peculiarly de-
tached manner as concerned with matters
with which they, the mass of the people,
were not personally concerned, they were
♦Later published in the American Political
Science Review, VIII, 541.
not willing to make considerable sacri-
fices in their behalf or in behalf of the
political organization which they repre-
sented and operated. Politically, as well
as economically and socially, their pri-
mary allegiance had always been to the
family, the clan, or the village. The
result was that, even prior to the revo-
lution of 1911, the control which the
central Government had been able to
exercise over the Provinces and their
lesser administrative divisions had al-
ways been a precarious one. Since the
revolution that control has been almost
non-existent. Because of this the cen-
tral Government has been unable to ob-
tain adequate revenues, and this in turn
has tended to demoralize their admin-
istrative services and to place them at
the mercy of the foreign Powers to whom
they have had to resort for loans.
A false impression would be left, how-
ever, if it were not pointed out that,
upon the credit side of the political
ledger, there are important and growing
items which, if allowed to increase, with-
out foreign interference, may be ex-
pected, in time, to overcome the debit
entrise which have been spoken of. The
mere fact of having a government that,
in principle, is based upon the will of
the governed, has had an enormously
quickening effect upon the minds of the
Chinese people. The remnants of the
old antipathy to things western are dis-
appearing with increasing speed. The
idea that governments exist in order to
advance, in an affirmative manner, the
welfare of the whole people, and not sim-
ply to provide places of profit to those
who happen to occupy the seats of power,
is rapidly making its way. Government
has become a matter of public discus-
sion, and its acts are subject to a sus-
tained, even if not as yet, in many in-
stances, an effective public criticism. A
true general will with reference to mat-
ters political is developing; the people
are more and more tending to think na-
tionally— a point that is of importance
from the international as well as from
the national point of view. And, in this
connection, it is significant that, despite
the contest and even open warfare that
has existed between the northern and
southern Provinces, there has been
evinced upon neither side a desire that
the solution should be found by dividing
the country into two independent States.
With the further development of means
of communication and transportation
this national solidarity, thus strikingly
exhibited, will inevitably become more
and more manifest. The Japanese, by the
attacks which they have been constantly
making against the territorial rights of
the Chinese, are doing much to hasten
the development of this national patri-
otism, for, uncomplimentary though it
may be to the races of men, it seems to
be a fact that a sense of injury or danger
from an outside source is the most ef-
fective of all forces in creating a strong
national feeling. If then, it be true, as
has sometimes been asserted, that a cen-
tralized, energetic Chinese state will be
a menace to Japan, or, at any rate, will
render impossible the realization by her
of certain of her ambitions, Japan, from
the practical point of view, has been pur-
suing during recent years a highly inex-
pedient policy toward her neighbor.
W. W. WiLLOUGHBY
A Treatise for the Man in
the Shop
The Flow of Value. By Logan Grant Mc-
Pherson. New York: The Century Com-
pany.
MR. Mcpherson's subject is of such
high importance that it is a pity
he lacks an ingratiating style. Who could
read the following without effort: "The
ratio to the dollar of man-hours— that
is, the wage of the employee — is deter-
mined by interrelations between the
supply of and the demand for effort of
the quality he is capable of applying
toward the production of final utilities;
and the ratio to the dollar of final utili-
ties is determined by the interrelations
between the supply of and the demand
for final utilities of the respective kinds
which find expression in the proportions
of man-hours applied that final pur-
chasers pay for final utilities of the
respective kinds." Other passages quite
as tedious could be quoted from the work
before us. They impair the effective-
ness of what is in many ways a very
valuable treatise.
Mr. McPherson is justly entitled to
this mild censure because it is obvious
that his aim is to reach the man in the
shop and the factory. That his inten-
tion is to be elementary is disclosed by
his opening paragraph, in which he
imagines the effect which our earthly
affairs would have on a man from Mars.
The presumption is, of course, that the
man from Mars is utterly unfamiliar
with the course of things in this world,
but is the personification of that intelli-
gence which enables him to perceive,
prompts him to inquire, impels him to
logical conclusion. Our author attempts
to outline certain phases of human exist-
ence as they would have appeared to the
Martian at any time during the years
which preceded the outbreak of the war
of 1914. This is not the way an economic
writer would present the situation to
economic thinkers; it is, however, one
of the best ways to present it to those
who are about to begin to think eco-
nomically.
Mr. McPherson may be said to think
aloud. We participate in the whole men-
tal process by which he reaches the
conclusions here embodied. Economics,
supposititiously the driest of subjects, is
March 20, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[288
related to the commonest and most neces-
sary facts of life. The commonest facts
of life, however, are the most instinctive
facts and the ones which the ordinary
mind cares least to think about. The
difficulty of proving the obvious is, after
all, what makes economics trying to
most persons. Now, it is the obvious
that Mr. McPherson is trying to prove,
and perhaps we are a trifle unfair in
calling him hard reading.
We hasten to add that we can recall
no one who has been more successful in
proving the obvious. Essential to prop-
erty is the application of human effort,
which first brings into possession that
in which there is property, and the put-
ting forth of effort, when necessary, to
protect the rights of property in that
which has been brought into possession.
Such effort is primarily exerted by the
person in protecting his rights. The
right to property is not only the right
to hold, use, and dispose of that in which
a person has property, but also to hold,
use, and dispose of that which is pro-
duced through the utilization of that in
which he has property. Man not only
uses and disposes of forms of matter,
but he uses and disposes of measures of
force. The very use and disposition of
matter necessarily involves the use and
disposition of force. The results of his
efforts are due as much to the applica-
tion of force as to the matter to which
force is applied. The right to property
in the force which man directs to his
ends has an implied recognition in the
law. In the sense that a man has the
right either to use or to dispose of the
right to use the force thereof, he has
property in his body and his brain.
This is a common-sense deduction
from the facts of experience and from a
study of the mental constitution of the
race. But the fact that it is common
sense may not enhance its value in a
revolutionary period, when the fact of
individual ownership of matter, includ-
ing gray matter, is generally questioned.
Mr. McPherson declares, however, that
the written law has defined the rights to
property in matter, though it has not as
yet fully defined the rights to property
in force. There is lack of general recog-
nition of the fact that to the mental
effort of those who direct and coordinate
the application of force, is due the pro-
duction in greater volume than otherwise
would be possible of the things that men
use and consume. "It is not only the
concrete things in which a man or a
business organization has property that
conduce to the most effective production
of things and services that meet the
wants of humankind, but in greater
measure the brains of those who give
that arrangement to these concrete
things which enables their most effec-
tive utilization, and so direct and co-
ordinate the application of force to them
and through them that the most effec-
tive result is obtained."
Such is the theme of the present work.
The development of the theme involves
much minute investigation of the
promptings and processes of human
nature. Effect is traced back to cause;
step by step the genesis and development
of prices, wages, and profit are noted.
"Toward meeting his wants," says Mr.
McPherson, "man utilizes matter in vast
aggregates, in manifold combinations,
and in minute subdivisions. He utilizes
force in mighty currents and in infini-
tesimal pulsation." And he tells us
why and how. He deals with "utilities,"
showing why they come into being and
how they are diffuped. The exchange
of utilities connotes "want," and in eco-
nomic phraseology "want" signifies not
only that a person desires a thing but
that he has that in exchange for which
it may be obtained. Similarly, in eco-
nomic parlance, "demand" signifies the
offering of that in return for which that
which meets a "want" may be obtained.
The value of the present work lies in
the clearness with which the fact is
developed that all commodities and ser-
vices are the product of human effort,
and that the greater the production as
compared to the effort the greater will
be the supply, and thus the greater the
well-being of every individual. The
vigorous enforcement of this truth at a
time when the world seems bent on a
hunger strike is a real service.
L' Affaire Caillaux
The Enemy Within. Hitherto unpublished
details of the great conspiracy to corrupt
and destroy France. By Severance John-
son, special investigator and correspond-
ent at the Peace Conference. New York :
The James A. McCann Company.
THIS lamentable work reveals for the
first time, if we may accept the pub-
lisher's announcement, "the ramifications
of the vast conspiracy to destroy France"
and "points out that the fate from which
France escaped may befall the United
States." These are praiseworthy objects.
Caillaux is at the present moment on
trial for treason during the war; it is
well that we should know something of
his career, his associates, and the charges
brought against him. The book is la-
mentable because it defeats its ends by
illiteracy and sensationalism.
The book contains a number of un-
doubted facts; it might be possible for
a reader well acquainted from other
sources with the history and politics of
France for the last ten or fifteen years
to compile from it a fairly accurate ac-
count of I'affaire Caillaux. But these
facts are presented in such disorderly
fashion, so blended with fiction, so un-
balanced by reason of omissions, that
they must inevitably fail to carry weight
except with minds already as assured as
the author's of Caillaux's guilt. For Mr.
Johnson has no doubts whatever in this
matter. He assumes from the beginning
not only that Caillaux was in secret cor-
respondence with German agents and
statesmen during the war — very prob-
ably the fact, although it yet remains to
be judicially proved — but also that even
before the war he was the "Arch-Ger-
man conspirator (p. xv), planning to be-
come the Lenine of France" and build-
ing up a party "to set France aflame
with a Bolshevist revolution as soon as
Berlin gave the command."
It will be useful, in view of the ex-
aggerations and distortions of this un-
happy book, to state briefly what is
known and what is merely suspected of
Caillaux. His pro-German sympathies
are nothing new nor st.-ange. As far
back as 1911 he advocated a policy of
mutual concessions and a good under-
standing with the old enemy of France,
as opposed to Clemenceau's policy of the
Entente Cordiale with England. As Pre-
mier he negotiated over the head of the
French Ambassador in Berlin a treaty
which in return for Germany's recogni-
tion of France's position in Morocco
ceded to the Empire a large part of the
French Congo. There can be little doubt
that Caillaux's policy was dictated by
financial considerations. The long con-
tinued hostility between France and Ger-
many and the ever-increasing cost of ar-
maments was imposing on France a
greater financial burden than Caillaux
believed she was able to bear. A finan-
cier to the finger-tips, this seems to have
been the only aspect of the rivalry that
he considered, and there is no reason to
doubt that he was sincere in his belief.
His great influence with the Socialist
parties in France sprang also, strange as
it may seem, from his financial policy.
His advocacy of an income tax by way
of shifting to the bourgeoisie the burden
of taxation made him as popular with
the Socialists as he was detested by the
respectable middle-class. He held the
position of Minister of Finance under
various Premiers, and was generally ac-
knowledged as unrivaled in his knowl-
edge and skill in this field, so much so
that even to-day one hears voices in
France asserting that only Caillaux can
solve the financial problems confronting
the country. Forced out of public life
in 1914 by the scandal of his wife's mur-
der of Calmette, editor of Le Figaro, he
was still represented in the war-cabinet
from 1914 to 1917 by his faithful hench-
man Malvy, who was continued in his
post as Minister of the Interior to pla-
cate the large and powerful Socialist
groups which had in the past followed
Caillaux. As the war took on its long
and indecisive aspect of trench-warfare,
Caillaux seems to have resumed, natu-
rally in profound secrecy, his policy of a
rapprochement with Germany. There is
284]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 45
little doubt that directly or indirectly he
was in touch with German agents and
statesmen, seeking to secure a statement
of such German terms as would make
it possible for a war-wearied France to
conclude peace, with or without the con-
sent of her English ally. In Italy, in
particular, his conversations with vari-
ous Italian politicians were so pessimis-
tic as to the successful prosecution of
the contest by arms that it is believed
that the Italian Government was de-
terred from ordering his instant arrest
only by the fear of the bad effect of
such an action on her ally, France.
Meanwhile, a daring and scandalous
defeatist propaganda sprang up in
France itself. A group of adventurers
flooded the country with journals, tracts,
and handbills calling for peace at any
price, and actually appealing to the troops
in the trenches to turn their arms against
a Government that persisted in prolong-
ing the war. That this propaganda was
financed by German gold there is no
longer any shadow of a doubt, and the
chief traitors, Bolo, Duval, and Lenoir,
have already paid the extreme penalty.
How far was Caillaux connected with this
treasonable attempt? That is exactly
the question which remains to be an-
swered at his trial. All that is certain
is that his creature, Malvy, who as Min-
ister of the Interior was bound in duty
to keep watch upon and suppress any
such propaganda, not only failed to sup-
press it, but actually maintained friendly
relations with one of its leaders, Alme-
reyda of the pacifist Bonnet Rouge, and
repeatedly interfered with the military
police in their attempts to break up and
punish the gang.
Finally, in 1917, after the terrible
losses of the French offensive early that
year, the situation grew impossible. It
became plain that if the army was to be
held to its task its morale must be de-
livered from pacifist propaganda and
must be assured of a Government as
determined as its own leaders, Petain
and Foch, to continue the struggle to the
bitter end. Malvy was driven from
office and later tried and condemned —
not, be it remarked, for treason, but for
dereliction of duty. Clemenceau was
called to power, and one of his first acts
was to initiate a thorough investigation
of the defeatist movement. The band
of wretched traitors whom Malvy had at
least shielded were brought to trial and
convicted, and Caillaux himself was
arrested and imprisoned, in January,
1918. He has remained a prisoner ever
since. Why was he not brought at once
to trial? Nothing could have given bet-
ter proof to the world of the determina-
tion of France to crush domestic treason
than the conviction and punishment of
so well known a figure in international
politics. The only plausible answer
seems to be that the French Government
was altogether uncertain of being able
to convict him of actual treason, and
believed, no doubt correctly, that the ac-
quittal of Caillaux would do more harm
than his trial could do good. Circum-
stances have changed now; the acquittal
of Caillaux will hardly cause a ripple on
the sea of international politics. In the
spring or summer of 1918, it might well
have sufficed to overthrow the only Gov-
ernment capable of leading France to a
victorious conclusion to the war.
Three Ways of Looking at
Ireland
Irish Impressions. By G. K. Chesterton.
New York : John Lane Company.
The Soul of Ireland. By W. J. Lockington,
S.J. New York ; The Macmillan Com-
pany.
Elizaueth.vn Ulster. By Lord Ernest
Hamilton. New York : E. P. Dutton and
Company.
EACH of these three books has an
interest of its own; they represent
three types of mind which are occupied
just now with Irish affairs. We know
what to expect from Mr. Chesterton:
vividness, color, wit, epigrams often a
little strained but not seldom such as
make one catch one's breath and wonder;
clear-cut antitheses — sometimes cut too
clear to correspond accurately with situ-
ations that are complex and confused,
but always a stimulant to thought, and
not least arousing when they are most
provoking. And it is the true Chester-
tonian humor that greets us. in these
"Irish Impressions." G. K. C. paid his
first visit to the Green Isle two years
ago, and came back with his mind full
of Irish romance and of well-intentioned
Anglo-Irish blundering. He has set it
all before us.
Everything he saw gave him food for
reflection, and most of the things he
seems to have seen — after his own habit
of seeing — in contrasted pairs. There
are two monuments near each other in
Dublin, one to a hard-faced old monarch
of German descent, which is fast falling
into neglect, the other to the thriftless
but lovable poet, Clarence Mangan, which
is tended with affectionate care. Mr.
Chesterton may be trusted to look at
these together, and to point the moral
about Irish temperament. He draws our
attention to such facts as that the English
think of people individually, while in Ire-
land they are considered in families — •
never Murphy or O'Sullivan, but always
the Murphys and the O'Sullivans. Some-
where in the records of Grattan's Par-
liament he has unearthed a rather nasty
illustration of this habit. It seems that
in those hot days an orator while de-
nouncing his opponent in the House
caught sight of the sister of his enemy
in the Ladies' Gallery. He at once burst
into his peroration, invoking wrath upon
the whole household of them "from the
toothless old hag who is grinning in the
gallery to the white-livered poltroon that
is shivering on the floor!" It consoles
one's wounded national pride to remem-
ber that this happened in the Anglo-Irish
Parliament of the English pale.
Mr. Chesterton tells how he went on
a mission to stimulate recruiting in
1918, and how he found that the gross
mistake had been made of sending "el-
derly English landlords" to carry on this
campaign in the south and west of Ire-
land. He whets an appetite, which he
will not gratify, by saying that it would
be too cruel to "recount their adven-
tures." He drives home his own favorite
lesson against Socialism by describing
a road along which he passed, and which
on its left side showed a modern estate
lying waste, while on the right side peas-
ant proprietorship was successfully gar-
nering the harvest. And he has stories
for us about "Belfast and the religious
problem" which set the capital of Ulster
in a most unkind similitude with Berlin.
We must not take everything he says
too seriously; for, if we did, Mr. Ches-
terton would feel that he had said it
wrong. But even when he jests there is
a background of sober meaning. He
rather neatly says of himself: "My life
is passed in making bad jokes, and see-
ing them turn into true prophecies."
Father Lockington's book is quite dif-
ferent, and a critic who does not belong to
the author's faith must not dissect too
minutely a work that is in essence one of
Catholic devotion. The "soul of Ireland"
is for this writer to be found in Irish
fidelity to the ancient worship, and he
presents us with a moving scene of
priests and nuns, of the festival of
Corpus Christi and the cloisters "lit by
the soft glow of the tabernacle lamp,"
of the long years of martyrdom for con-
viction and the innate joyousness which
the Church sustained in her children
throughout their trials. Even those who
stand outside the sacred circle for which
he writes and who can not share the
glowing devoutness of his symbolism
must be moved by the enthusiastic ten-
derness with which this Jesuit priest
idealizes the land of his ministry.
If there is genial humor in Mr. Ches-
terton and poetic pathos in Father Lock-
ington, the reader must not expect much
of either spirit in the brochure by Lord
Ernest Hamilton. It is in cold facts
that this historian has endeavored to
specialize, and he often makes them so
cold as to excite suspicion that he has
given us those half-facts which are the
most misleading things of all. If mere
hard work could produce a good history,
Lord Ernest Hamilton would have done
very well indeed, for beyond doubt he
has been industrious, though his labor
is rather of the kind which makes a Blue
Book or a catalogue. It is a dull thing
that he has given us, but not without its
March 20, 1!)2()]
THE REVIEW
[28.5
value. Tale follows tale about the mis-
deeds of Shane O'Neill and Hugh Roe,
and other Irish chieftains, whose deplor-
able addiction to strong drink the author
dwells upon again and again with most
decorous regret. He does not fail, in-
deed, to chronicle some corresponding
defects in the English and Scottish set-
tlers of the period, and it is but fair to
say that his record of the efforts to
Anglicize Ireland under Elizabeth has
brought together in compact form much
that is of antiquarian interest, not easily
accessible to the general reader else-
where. The chief fault of his work is
his obvious inability to think himself
back into an environment and a mode of
life quite different from that of the year
1920; so that he has produced a criti-
cism of Irish character in Elizabethan
days such as might be given of Homeric
warriors by one who judged them in the
light of modern methods of warfare.
This is not what is known as the "sym-
pathetic tone" in history. But we must
remember that Lord Ernest Hamilton is
an Ulster member of Parliament.
Herbert L. Stewart
The Run of the Shelves
During the war. Professor W. S. Davis,
who is as favorably known for his his-
torical novels as for his more serious
work in history, began a little sketch
intended to tell the men of the American
Army something of the past of the great
French nation, on whose soil they were
battling for liberty. The early armistice
enabled him to expand this into a consid-
erable volume of six hundred pages for
all Americans: "A History of France
from the Earliest Times to the
Peace of Versailles" (Houghton-Mifflin).
Though very sympathetic to his subject,
and though he often animadverts to the
ravages of the Hun in the present when
telling of the past, his tone is scholarly
and his attitude sufficiently impartial.
In his survey of twenty centuries he has
skillfully selected only those events which
were of permanent importance. He be-
lieves in using the past to interpret the
present. He suggests, for instance, in-
teresting analogies between the Jacobins
of Revolutionary France and the Bolshe-
viki of Revolutionary Russia. He sup-
plements his narrative with a number of
good illustrations, and for those of his
readers who are stirred to a further
study of French history, Mr. Davis has
added an excellent select bibliography.
Unfortunately, there is almost nothing
of French literature and art — virtually
nothing of the Chansons de Gestes, noth-
ing of the Renaissance under Francis I,
and only a scant page given to the daz-
zling age of Louis XIV. Yet who can
doubt that this great national literature
has been one of the strongest, though
perhaps quite unconscious, forces in giv-
ing the French those splendid national
traditions and ideals which fortified their
spirit so remarkably during the dark
months following 1914?
"Spain's Declining Power in South
America" (Berkeley: University of Cali-
forniaPress), by BernardMoses, Emeritus
Professor of History and Political Science,
presents a consideration of the last dec-
ades of colonial dependence in Spanish
South America. He finds that during
the period in question, in spite of certain
measures of economic progress, the au-
thority and efficiency of the Government
were declining. The policy of the Crown
to confer important offices in America
only upon persons sent from Spain led
the Creoles and mestizos gradually to
constitute themselves a society apart
from the Spaniards and in opposition to
the established administration. Revolts
against the policy of this administration
and against its imposition of specific
fiscal burdens constitute a feature of
this history, and indicate that the colo-
nies were slipping away from the grasp
of Spain, even before the creole-mestizo
elements in the population had clearly
formed a design for emancipation. The
author gives a somewhat extended ac-
count of the expulsion of the Jesuits as
an act depriving the dependencies of
their ablest and most effective teachers,
as well as of their most energetic and
farsighted industrial and commercial
entrepreneurs. By this act, moreover,
the Government removed the only body
of residents who manifested any clear
conception of the proper relations to be
maintained between the Spaniards and
the Indians.
Writing recently from Paris, where
he now resides. Professor Moses says :
Since my last book was finished, I have been
studying the colonial literature of Spanish
South America ; but this is only for the fun
of doing it. No normal person in these times
is likely to be interested in this subject, and
when the book is finished it will liave to take
its place in the morgue of subsidized pul)lica-
tions, such ^s the universities are supporting
nowadays.
The Bulletin Italien, devoted to things
Italian, was issued for eighteen years
under the auspices of the University of
Bordeaux; "but we were forced to sus-
pend publication at the end of 1918,"
writes Professor Georges Radet, dean of
that institution, "for two reasons. In
the first place, and principally, for lack
of funds and the increase of fifty per
cent, in the cost of printing, and in the
second place because the managing edi-
tor of the Btdletin, Professor Bouvy,
who filled the chair of Italian literature,
was transferred to the University of
Paris and no successor was sent us."
But the suspension at Bordeaux really
meant only enlarging the field of the
Bulletin, for it soon followed Professor
Bouvy to Paris, where it began, in Janu-
ary, 1919, to appear under another title,
Etndex Italiennes, and has beiome "the
only French review whose sole object is
the historical study of Italian civiliza-
tion." The editors, three Sorbonne
Italian scholars — Professors Henri Hau-
vette, Eugene Bouvy, and Edouard
Jordan — unite in declaring that they owe
much of the success of their undertaking
to the support of their well-known pub-
lisher, M. Ernest Leroux, "whose habit
of taking the initiative outweighed any
hesitation he might have felt in continu-
ing the good work of the Btdletin in the
midst of the printing crisis through
which we are now passing." The editors
also announce that the number of pages
of the periodical, now some 130, will be
increased "as soon as this crisis ends."
The editor-in-chief, M. Hauvette, is
the leading Italian scholar of France,
where he organized the Italian courses
and studies of the colleges and universi-
ties and where he has been since 1893 a
professor of the Italian language and
literature, assuming the chair at the
Sorbonne in 1906. He is also the presi-
dent and founder of the Union Intel-
lectuelle Franco-Italienne, under whose
auspices the new quarterly appears, and
the author of many volumes on Italian
literature and art, his new translation
of Dante's "Inferno" being now in
press.
The three or four numbers of Etudes
Italiennes which have reached this coun-
try speak well for its present character
and its future success. The articles are
printed either in French or Italian,
though the first of these languages
largely predominates. The third number
contains a very eulogistic review of the
three books on Dante by Professor
Grandgent, of Harvard, who was recently
chosen a corresponding member of the
famous Florentine Accademia della
Crusca, and who was an exchange pro-
fessor at the Sorbonne in 1915-1916. At
the end of the review his former col-
league, pays him this very high compli-
ment: "May we not expect some day
from Professor Grandgent a complete
translation for the American and British
public of the poetical works of
Dante?"
Mr. Brand Whitlock, American Am-
bassador to Brussels, writes in a recent
letter, apropos of his two remarkable
volumes, "Belgium: A Personal Narra-
tive," in many ways the best of the
American war books :
Payot is about to bring it out in a French
edition at Paris, as well as a French edition
of my little "Life of Lincoln." which I trans-
lated myself By the way, I had hoped to stay
on awhile in America, but the King asked
me to accompany him home, and so here I
>86]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, Xo. 45
The Company Stores at Lawrence
ON the banks of the Merrimac at a
point where its busy waters take
a slithering slide of some twenty-six
feet and in the process produce annually
$200,000,000 worth of woolens, stand
the city of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and
the great hills that dominate it not other-
wise than anciently the cathedrals domi-
nated the towns that gathered in their
shelter. The carvings are not there, nor
the painted windows, nor choirs to chant
their orisons in the still, chill air of
winter mornings. But for all that, he
who finds in the contrast of the elder
day with our own no sign but of spiritual
decadence, should pause to consider many
things before he seals his judgment, and
not among the least of these, some very
recent happenings.
Just at present those in the little
Massachusetts city who are looking for
some new thing may be abundantly sat-
isfied. The streets, in fact, are all agog
with the pros and cons of the newly
established Company Stores of the great
American Woolen Company.
Is the whole thing a bluff? Will it last?
Was it justified? Will it do any good?
— these are but a few of the innumerable
questions that are on every tongue and
they are asked in English, French, Ital-
ian, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Syrian,
and languages even more foreign to
American ears. For of the ninety-odd
thousand inhabitants of Lawrence, sev-
enty-eight thousand are foreign born or
of foreign parentage. It is not quite
true that these various nationals live in
separate quarters — the city is too small
to allow of that. Nevertheless, there is
a natural grouping of that sort, and in
each neighborhood are several small,
"one man" stores where the people may
bargain in their native tongues. Then,
of course, there are the main streets,
where the larger and more pretentious
emporiums keep company, and carry on
a thriving trade — rather too thriving,
according to William Wood, president of
the American Woolen Company, who
challenged them, one and all, to show
cause why he should not take a hand in
the game, to prevent the alleged exploita-
tion of his employees.
Now, the uneducated foreigner with
his pocket full of good American wages
is not often miserly. He lounges into
the best store in town — it is shirts he
wants — that fine silk one with the broad
stripes — too large? No matter; it is
what he wants. Out of his pocket comes
an enviable "roll" and the requisite num-
ber of bills are proudly peeled off. Under
such circumstances human nature does,
sometimes, I doubt not, profiteer. Temp-
tation of that sort is rather more
abundant in Lawrence than in most
Massachusetts cities, so that it seems not
altogether improbable that the charge
made by the head of the American
Woolen Company to the effect that the
cost of the necessities of life was higher
in Lawrence than elsewhere was not
without some justification.
But that is really a very small part of
the story; the cost of living is always
highest at the point where one happens
to be paying one's bills. The merchants
of Lawrence met Mr. Wood's demand for
lower prices by a denial of his state-
ments of fact, and, after one or two
rather sharp passages, it was formally
announced that the American Woolen
Company would reduce the cost of living
for its employees by establishing stores
where they could buy without paying
retailers' profits. A beginning was made
and enthusiastically received by the
workers, an organization is being per-
fected to enlarge the scope of the enter-
prise, and the merchants of Lawrence
are out of luck — that is about all that
the public knows of the matter.
The talk that froths and foams about
these surface facts follows the partisan
sympathies of the talker. Some say
that Mr. Wood is caught in a trap of
his own setting, that by a hastily and
ill-advised statement which pride has
compelled him to back up, he har. forced
his own hand, and that he will soon
weary of the experiment. Others say
that the merchants of Lawrence mis-
judged their man, and have got them-
selves into a scrape from which many
will not come out with whole skins. As
always, there is the man who button-
holes you and leads you aside to insinu-
ate darkly that organized labor has got
the big corporation into a corner and
forced it to act against its choice and
better judgment.
A few who think more deeply say that
the president of the American Woolen
Company is not a man to make an im-
portant move from impulse, or under
the stress of outside compulsion; that
he would not commit the great com-
pany of which he is the head to an
important business policy merely to put
a few town merchants in a pickle; they
say that Mr. Wood is a "policy man,"
and acts only with some farsighted aim.
This aim, according to these knowing
ones, is to hold his labor for the evil
day that draws nigh when immigration
will no longer afford an unfailing supply.
It does not appear to be in the nature
of the "nigger in the wood pile" type
of thinker to accept so simple and lumi-
nous a statement as that which Mr. Wood
himself made at the dinner of the Na-
tional Association of Clothiers:
"I will not trouble you with the narra-
tion of what we have already done, but I
will say that we intend to lose no oppor-
tunity to promote wisely and justly, the
happiness and prosperity of those upon
whose labors this great industry depends.
... In the past we have had our dis-
agreements. Demands have been made
by the workers which I have felt, in jus-
tice to the investors and to the public, I
could not grant. But sometimes, no
doubt, I myself have been mistaken.
... I am happy to say that with the
experience of these years I think I now
know my job better. . . . Things have
happened of late in the relations of our
employees and the management that have
touched me very deeply and that have
given me a new confidence in the future
as well as a deep satisfaction. I indulge
in no illusions. I know that we shall
have our troubles and disagreements in
the future somewhat as we have had in
the past, but I hope and believe that we
shall approach them with a new spirit
and a new appreciation and a new regard
each for the viewpoint of the other."
In few words, it would appear from
this that the company has moved in the
direction of really helping its employees,
and the workers have shown a disposi-
tion to meet the company half way"; that
the conduct of so great a business has
had an educative effect on all concerned;
that the experiences of the great war have
deepened and quickened these lessons;
and that the prosperity brought about
by war-time profits has softened the way
and opened the door for a new attitude,
first on the part of the employer, and,
in response, on the part of the workers.
If the American Woolen Company
persists in its enterprise — and it is
generally believed that it will, as it is
reported to have the solid backing of
organized labor and of its own workers
— the weaker merchants may be forced to
close their doors, but the stronger ones
and the better ones will remain, and per-
haps make more money than they ever
did — why not? For the more wholesome
the conditions, the better for all con-
cerned.
As to the future — well, they are a
mercurial lot, these Italians, Poles, Rus-
sians, and Syrians of whom only about
one-half speak English well. It is more
than probable that the waters will again
be troubled. It is not inconceivable that
again, as in 1912, wild mobs, led on by
wilder leaders, may surge down the
streets of Lawrence calling for the
destruction of the mills, of the city, of
the Government. All of this may happen.
But it is the belief of your correspond-
ent that the corner has been turned in
the Americanization of this cosmopolitan
mass of workers, and at the same time
in their relations to the industry by
which they are supported. The com-
pany stores are an incident only of a
movement that has in it a very real
promise of better things.
Staff Correspondent
March 20, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[287
Church Unity
THE movement of present-day thought
about church unity offers many strik-
ing analogies to that noticeable in the
ideas of political reform. In the world
of politics we find at once the widest
internationalism and the narrowest na-
tionalism. On the one hand we are ex-
horted to learn the difficult art of think-
ing internationally; on the other we are
urged to shun all such vague generaliza-
tions and to lend all our energies to the
fostering of an aggressive nat'onal
spirit. And then, of course, between
these tv/o apparently irreconcilable op-
posites there is a "new school" of
mediators who insist that there is here
no opposition at all, but that interna-
tionalism is only nationalism in its
social expression. I need not love my
country lesd because I love "humanity"
more.
Precisely the same lines of thought are
followed by those who concern them-
selves with the subject of church unity.
Here, too, we find the party of frankly
avowed sectarianism and the party of
intersectarianism, or, as they are more
prone to call it, "non-sectarianism." And
then between the two we have the media-
tors again, those who would maintain
their allegiance to their several sects,
not merely out of a traditional loyalty,
but because they believe, or would like to
think they believe that only through
this narrower loyalty can the remoter
end of a true Christian unity be attained.
Within this body of mediating thought,
however, there is one rather nice distinc-
tion not always clearly perceived, but
worth careful attention. It is suggested
by the two words "unity" and "union."
Unity, we are often told, we all desire
and may all attain. It rests upon such
a deep and complete conviction of the
real nature of Christianity that all dif-
ferences of form and expression become
of no importance. Pruvided only that
the true Christian spirit be preserved,
the varieties of creed and of organization
are of no account. They are only the
natural outcome of those diversities in
human nature that save it from stagna-
tion and decay. "All very fine," replies
the other wing of the mediating party,
"but where are you to get a definition of
this abstract unity? How are we to know
when any single body of persons has at-
tained thereto, much less the whole multi-
tude of those who confess themselves and
would like to be called 'Christians'?"
There must be some outward signs by
which this unity can be recognized. In
other words, there must be some form
and some degree of union to give a tangi-
ble body to what is otherwise only a
vague and impracticable ideal.
We once heard the very liberal pastor
of an American church abroad give an
invitation to the celebration of the Lord's
Supper which, for breadth and inclusive-
ness, left nothing to be desired, had he
not seen fit to conclude with the request
that his hearers "would partake with
ungloved hands." It was only the other
day that the Episcopalian Bishop of New
York publicly reproved a clergyman sub-
ject to his direction for lending his
church building for the purpose of a
political discussion. The offense lay, not
in providing a room for discussion nor
in the nature of the opinions expressed,
but in the desecration of a building
specifically consecrated to a religious pur-
pose. It is not long since a building
thus consecrated was sold to worship-
ers of another communion and, before
it was handed over, solemnly decon-
secrated. The principle of unity is very
apt to break down at the critical point
and the emphasis to shift over to some
tangible kind of union in outward form.
These reflections are suggested by the
appearance of a little volume* bearing
the modest title of "Approaches Toward
Church Unity." It contains a group of
articles by four clergymen, three Con-
gregationalists and one Episcopalian. Its
declared aim is not to lay down any one
definite programme of action, but rather
to suggest various possibilities of helpful
effort toward the end of unity. It is
not consummation but "approach" that
we are asked to consider. Two leading
motives are followed: one, the histori-
cal, another, the speculative or ideal.
The former is the subject of the first
article, in which Professor Walker, of
Yale University, deals with the infinitely
vexed question of the development of
"officers" within the body of the early
"charismatic" Church.
On the nature of these officials Dr.
Walker speaks with no uncertain voice.
He reviews in the light of the best in-
foimation we have, meagre as this is, the
emergence of an official class from the
simple charismatic leaders of the first
generation to the monarchical parish
(not diocesan) episcopate of the Ignatian
letters. He concludes that here is no
trace of an apostolic succession, but
rather evidence of a leadership resting
upon personal quality. If Dr. Wal-
ker is right, and we think he is, the whole
structure of claims to church authority
resting upon apostolic succession falls to
the ground. No chain is stronger than its
weakest point, and, if the defective link
in a chain of evidence occurs at the very
beginning of it, we need not concern
ourselves greatly about the rest.
The historical "approach" is continued
by Dr. Raymond Calkins, a Congregation-
alist minister of Cambridge, Mass. His
contribution here takes the form of an
exhortation to all apparently opposing
branches of the Christian family to study
♦Approaches Toward Church Unity,
edited by Xewman Smyth and Williston
Walker. New Haven : Yale University Press.
the history of grreat dividing epochs,
notably in the Church of England, and
thus to reach such an understanding,
each of the others' points of view, that
they may come to think of their own
peculiar ideas and practices as of no
account compared with the great aim of
realizing the ideal of the One Holy
Catholic Church. He thinks that some
approach can and ought to be made to
Canon Rawlinson's dictum that real unity
of church worship "can not take place
until the Pope of Rome appreciates and
values the Methodist prayer-meeting or
until the Puritan learns to worship with
insight and devout intelligence at Mass
in St. Peters." Dr. Calkins would say
"and until" rather than "or until," but
he does not seem to realize that if ever
this gorgeous ideal could be reached both
Pope and Puritan would long before have
disappeared. His historical approach
only demonstrates that after two thou-
sand years of struggle the Protestant,
even "though he be educated in church
history," still wants to be a Protestant
and the Catholic wants to be a Catholic,
but that neither wants to be both.
Dr. Calkins dc-es not hope that "this
or that experiment of reunion shall suc-
ceed" but only that these two forms of
the Church shall "understand each other."
He has faith that out of st(ch mutual
understanding there shall arise the one
Church, etc., but he seems to forget
that one of the postulates of this whole
volume is that the one Church already
exists and only seems to be divided be-
cause its varied aspects have, in fact,
worked out into those differing forms
which reflect the happy varieties of
human nature itself. What is going to
happen when this much-prayed-for un-
derstanding is reached does not appear,
and we suspect that our authors have
only the vaguest idea of this themselves.
We incline to think that the wicked peo-
ple to whose infirmities of temper Dr.
Calkins attributes the divisions of the
Reformation period had a great deal
clearer understanding of the meanings
of their partisan conflicts than we have,
or than our successors educated in the
doctrine of development are likely to
have. The heat of their partisanship
came largely because they understood
what was involved in their controversies,
and we are profiting both ways from the
steadfastness of their faith.
Where Dr. Calkins's real sympathies lie
seems to be rather more clearly disclosed
in another article on Creeds. He shows
quite accurately that creeds are historical
formulations, not metaphysical inven-
tions. His special concern, however, is
not to have them preserved for defensive
purposes, but to have them frequently
repeated as a means of edification and
as reminders of the unity of all Chris-
tians. That the creeds contain positive
affirmations of belief in things which the
288]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 4.j
rational sense of our time knows to be
impossible does not trouble him. "Say
them over often enough" is the obvious
inference from his words "and you will
come to believe them in some sense that
is good enough for the one supreme end
of unity." The virgin birth, the descent
into hell, the physical resurrection —
these all mean something "more" than
they say, and what this something may
be every individual "believer" is at lib-
erty to determine for himself. Dr. Cal-
kins says "this is not to toy with lan-
guage," but there will be readers who
will think that it is toying with things
more important than language, with
honesty of thought and the sanctities of
true belief. The church that says "No
matter what you believe so long as you
are willing to say you believe what other
people say they believe" is planting the
seeds of its own damnation.
Dr. Newman Smyth's chief contribu-
tion is in several short articles on the
general thesis of biological analogies in
the life of the Church. It is a method
rather suggestive than positively con-
structive. The Church is an organism
with a development going on from the
beginning and destined to go on forever.
Schism, which Dr. Smyth seems to agree
is a sin, is not so much the lopping off
of one limb from an otherwise perfect
organism as it is a separation between
members equally responsible for the
maintenance of unity and, therefore,
equally guilty of the sin of division. The
application of this idea to the modern
Church is obvious. There is no single
tribunal that can decide in the matter
of schism. It is the duty of all the
churches, frankly admitting their sinful
state, to "get together" under the guid-
ance of the one spirit they all profess
to follow.
Bishop Brent, of the Protestant Epis-
copal Church, in a chapter of three pages,
exp-esses general good will toward any
workable project of church unity. He
makes also a hopeful, but non-committal,
reference to a scheme of approach to this
end by a conference of Episcopalians and
Congregationalists. Dr. Smyth, too, pre-
pares us for a study of this scheme by a
selection of cases illustrating the possi-
bility of episcopal ordination in addition
to that already received from some other
source. The scheme itself is given in the
Appendix, and we can not escape the
impression that here we have the "nub"
of the whole matter so far as this volume
is concerned. The essence of the pro-
posals here contained is, that any min-
ister who has not received epi.scopal
ordination, with the approval of "the
ecclesiastical authority to which he is
sub:e2t," may under certain conditions
receive ordination from a bishop of the
Protestant Episcopal Church without,
however, ceasing to be a member of the
communion to which he alreadv belongs.
Here is obviously the danger of a con-
flict of jurisdiction, but this is cannily
provided for in advance. In case this
luckless servant of two masters be
"charged with error of faith or of con-
duct," he shall be tried according to
episcopal procedure and sentenced by a
bishop, with due notification to the other
communion and acceptance of its find-
ings as "evidence of facts."
This scheme has been accepted by men
calling themselves Congregationalists,
but to the unregenerate it looks like a
veiy one-sided bargain. It seems to him
that the principle of episcopacy would
be gaining a practical recognition from
that body of Christians which has been
most distinctly opposed to it, and that
the principle of Congregationalism would
in fact be surrendered. Now these two
principles are not reconcilable. Any
working arrangement between them
would be possible only by trimming away
from each all that makes it valuable in
the adaptation of the Church to the
varied needs of various types of men.
If ever that trimming process shall be
completed the sham unity that will re-
sult will not be worth having. The real
and fortunate diversities of human na-
ture will then proceed to re-assert them-
selves, and the ancient struggle of liberty
against uniformity and of honesty
against wordy compromise will begin
again. The only true unity is that unity
of the spirit which thrives upoii diversi-
ties utilizing them for its highest ends.
Theologian.
Drama
Percy Mackaye's "George
Washington" and St. John
Ervine's "Jane Clegg"
AT the Lyric Theatre last week I saw
Percy Mackaye's "George Washing-
ton" received with moderate approval by
an audience whose size hinted only too
plainly that the play's weeks, if not its
hours, were numbered. Washington is
the first, or second, of our men of state,
and Mr. Mackaye's name is bright on
the rcster of cur active men of letters.
Rumor says that Mr. John Drinkwater's
"Abraham Lincoln" has been known to
earn six thousand dollars a week at the
Cort Theatre, and the emptiness of two-
thirds of the se?.ts in the Lyric orchestra
gapes for explanations. One might begin
by suggesting that Mr. Drinkwater's re-
lation to "Abraham Lincoln" is that of
chaplain; the relation of Mr. Mackaye
to "George Washington" might be de-
fined in the word "herald." Heralds had
their solemnity in the old Roman and
mediaeval days, and Mr. Mackaye is stu-
dious, solicitous, and earnest in his fash-
ion. But in Mr. Drinkwater the design
and the temper are equally grave; in
Mr. Mackaye the design is graver than
the temper. Both plays with entire wis-
dom omit formal story, but the theme of
Lincoln has offered Mr. Drinkwater rich
compensations in character and atmos-
phere. Washington has not been quite
so generous to Mr. Mackaye.
In history I think one has the sense
that Washington does not quite embody
Washington, that there is a sheath or
glaze about the man which resists the
passage of the soul outward. In life he
seems already monumental. Now Mr.
Mackaye, whose gift is "buxom, blithe
and debonair," might have seemed to be
nature's own appointee for the task of
enlivening and diversifying a slightly
heavy theme. What has been the issue?
Mr. Mackaye has added the condiment
freely, but he has forborne to stir it in;
and the result is that part of the dish is
overseasoned, and part of it is rela-
tively savorless. For example, the mad-
cap George, in his very first appearance,
frightens an old negress out of her wits
by masquerading as a feathered Indian.
Plainly, we are to have a live George; I
am thankful for a live George; but I
could have spared this particular guar-
antee. Moreover, I have a feeling that
the liveliness has a certain resemblance
to the Indian feathers in the ease and
completeness with which it falls off, leav-
ing us, for long periods at least, to the
expected and accustomed sobrieties.
The Washington is acceptable, but
scarcely noteworthy, and there is still
another point which raises mild remon-
strance in the critic. The play begins
in fantasy, and there are three whim-
sical people, Quilloquon and his boy and
girl, who, always on the stage and never
in the play, and proving by their saucy
charm how soon the 'superfluous can
become the indispensable, never allow
the play to escape from the realm of the
fantastic. This is all very well in cer-
tain parts, but what can fantasy do at
Valley Forge or Trenton? Elfland surely
does not skirt the Delaware. In or ;
scene Mr. Mackaye makes Washington
play the flute in the rigors of Valley
Forge. The flute at Valley Forge — in a
soit it is symbolic of the play. Mr.
Mackaye's diction, which is hardly sur-
passed in its kind, afforded me the cus-
tomary pleasure; I could only regret the
apparent blindness of the audience to the
fireflies that shone snd darted in his
verse.
Mr. Walter Hampden took the part of
George Washington. The e is some-
thing of the Roman, of the magistrate,
in Mr. Hampden as in Washington him-
self, and the rigidity which is felt in
both is both a help and an impediment to
Mr. Hampden. It enables him to produce
without trouble a respectable Washing-
ton; it hinders him in the suggestion
of that Washington whom Washington
^March 20, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[289
I
himself could not reveal. The emotion,
when it arrives, is mannered ; the person-
age obscu.es the man.
Mr. St. John Ervine's "Jane Clegg,"
which the Theatre Guild is now present-
ing at the Gariick Theatre, is a real play
and a good play. It is less moving than
"John Ferguson." The note of "John
Ferguson" was an intense family soli-
darity; the note of "Jane Clegg" is a
family division so profound as almost to
make the characters impervious to joy
or .sorrow from each other. It is the
stoiy of the relation of a husband and a
wife. That relation, tacit at the begin-
ning, is explicit at the close; at its depths
the play is stationary. On the surface,
however, the e is motion enough; the
means by which this tacit relation be-
comes explicit is a compact, crisp, and
ene.-getic drama. Another point of in-
terest is that the dramatic force of the
separation in the last act lies less in the
rupture of a tie worn so thin on both
sides that it paits without a snap than
in the originality of the conditions under
which this division is accomplished. Hus-
band and wife both want the same thing,
a concord which is sometimes thought to
stifle drama. But agreement may now
and then be dramatic if the agreement
itself be in conflict with expectation and
the normal course of things. In ex-
actly the same way a quiet curtain (of
which there are three in Jane Clegg)
may be dramatic, if it is quiet enough
to make its quietness surprising.
The play is very simple in its mechan-
ism. The scene is immovable; the action
includes three days and fills three even-
ings; the transaction is single. Of the
scant cast of seven characters, two, the
children, are entirely useless, and a third,
the grandmother, is nearly so. The ac-
tors in the play reduce themselves to
four, the lying, bullying, and whining
husband, the grave, unfaltering, clear-
sighted wife, the cashier of the bank
>vhich the husband has robbed of one hun-
ired and forty pounds, and the bookmaker
Aho presses the husband for the settle-
iient of a racing bet. Behind this group
here lurks in the shadow the other
voman, for whose sake the husband is
)repared to rob his employers, to desert
lis family, and to flee to Canada, and
vho.se existence is disclosed in the final
■ft by the vengeance of the unpaid book-
iiaker to the laconic, Draconic, and un-
werving wife. The bookmaker, who in
his last scene, as elsewhere, is a mere
tensil, is allowed by Mt. St. John Ervine
0 make rather more clatter than a uten-
il should. The closing passage between
usband and wife, in which the wife
ends him off or lets him go, is of a deli-
ate originality and a rare penetration.
■ fine moment arrives when the husband
' shocked at the wife's failure to be
locked by the misdeeds which he grossly
immits and delicately deprecates. The
play is essentially a play of character
without obvious thesis; one of those wise
plays in which the plot is to the charac-
ters what the .scenery is to the plot.
Some day I shall read the play to test my
p.esent impression that the grand-
mother is memorable among the figures
of the contemporary stage for the
mixture of crackbrainedness, shrewdness,
cynicism, languor, peevishness, mawkish-
ne.s.s, and self-complaisance.
The performance was equally re-
markable for vigor and symmetry. Mr.
Dudley Digges as Henry Clegg was good,
though the human nature in the auditor
writhes a little at the exhibit of its own
dishonor. Miss Margaret Wyche.-ly's
Jane Clegg was the prolongation of one
note, but that note was judicious and
imposing. Mr. Henry Travers was ex-
cellent in the whip-cracking part of the
bookmaker. Mr. Erskine Sanford as the
cashie.- was really subtle in the circum-
spect, circuitous and deprecatory man-
ner which cloaked, yet could not hide, the
undeceivable and unflinching man of
business. Miss Helen Westley's por-
trayal of the old grandmother left admi-
ration groping for words.
0. W. Firkins
Music
David Bispham's Memoirs
A Quaker Singer's Recollections. By David
Bispham. New York: The Macmillan
Company.
A SINGER who can write with ease
and style is rarer than that rare
bird, the black swan. One artist of the
kind is David Bispham.
For thirty years and more David Bis-
pham has been prominent, here and
abroad, as a baritone of note, a singing
actor, and an advocate of the use of
English speech in opera. In these recol-
lections he has packed into one volume
the record of a long and busy life — a life
of many strange and varied experiences.
Unlike most men who have their hour
in opera, he has had his in society. He
has traveled far and wide, and mixed
with people who were worth knowing and
far-famed in many ways. To this it may
be added, unreservedly, that he has more
than an instinctive turn for setting down,
in plain but vivid words, what he would
tell. He writes attractively of art and
men and things. And if at times he
dwells at undue length on minor matters
(such as his family crest and ancient
Norman lineage), we can forgive him.
On both his father's and his mother's
sides he comes of Quaker stock, tracing
back his ancestry to the Biscops and the
Biscophams of Lancashire and the Eng-
lish Lake District. The descendants of
those English Quakers settled in Penn-
sylvania; and it was there, in Phila-
delphia, that the future singer was born
into a rather weary world. From his
early childhood he was strongly drawn
to drama and music. It seemed un-
ce.tain for some years to which of
these he would devote his life. He did
well enough in amateur theatricals. But
his taste leaned much more strongly
towards singing. While still quite young,
he visited Europe and some pa«ts of the
Near East, heard Verdi's operas in Italy,
and halted in Athens. Thence he was
taken to Constantinople, where he had
glimpses of Dancing Dervishes. He saw
Fechter, Bariy Sullivan, and Adelaide
Neilson, and lest no chance of reading
all the d.ama.s, new and old, he could lay
hands on. Then, after a few brief com-
mercial inte.ludes, he devoted himself to
oratorio and studied hard for a time
under the best teacher of the day in
England, William Shakespeare. His
Quaker friends soon looked on him as
lest. They prophesied that little good
would come to a young man who was
always "fooling around after music."
But, sometimes in Boston and his home
town, sometimes in Europe, he persisted
in singing. In Europe, at the outset of
his career, he met many celebrities;
among them, Salvini, Irving, Cellier, Gil-
bert, Sullivan, Meredith, Watts, Ellen
Terry, Sargent, "Ouida," Browning, Mrs.
Burnett. Booth, and Barrett. At the
advice of various friends, he extended
his activities from the concert hall to
the opera house, and, at the age of thirty-
two, made his first bow in opera, as the
Due de Longueville, at the Royal English
Opera House (now known as the palace),
in "La Basoche" of the French composer,
Andre Messager.
"Planchette," which anticipated the
now popular "ouija board," then took a
hand in David Bispham's art life. At
a dinner given in London, the young
baritone sat down to consult the spirits.
When his turn came, but, as he assures
us, before he had touched the planchette
board, he read these words: "Opera, by
all means." It was the answer to a
question he was about to formulate.
Planchette next urged him strenuously
to study "Verdi and Wagner" — more par-
ticularly "Aida," "Tannhauser," "Tristan
und Isolde," and "Die Meistersinger."
Going further into detail, Planchette
bade him learn the parts of Amonasro,
Wolfram, Kurvenal, and Beckmesser. To
his great surprise, he was soon after
engaged by Sir Augustus Harris, of
Covent Garden, to sing all those roles.
It was to Mr. Maurice Grau, when
temporarily director of Covent Garden,
he owed his engagement at the Metro-
politan, where he repeated some of the
successes he had scored abroad. He made
his New York debut as Beckmesser, in
"Die Meistersinger," with Jean and
Edouard de Reszke, Pol Plan^on, and
Emma Fames.
290]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 45
Americans had not yet fought their
way on to the opera boards. Indeed, at
one time David Bispham was the only
male American in opera. He gave more
care than most, too much as some have
thought, to the dramatic aspects of his
interpretations, even at the sacrifice of
vocal urgencies. He agreed in theory,
no doubt, with "Jean," who invariably
reminded himself that opera was neither
pure drama nor pure music, but a com-
promise, and that acting in opera should,
for that reason, be largely convention-
alized.
Like Maurice Renaud, the French bari-
tone, and Saleza, the French tenor, David
Bispham was too prone to overstrain in
order to interpret thoroughly. Had he
been less devoted to the acting art, he
might have stayed some years longer on
the opera stage. He cut a wide swath,
none the less, in opera before leaving it
for the concert field. Among other parts
in which he gained distincton may be
mentoned Wolfram, Wotan, Vander-
decken, Kurvenal, Alberich, Falstaff,
Amonasro, Beckmesser, and Gomarez (in
Floridia's "Paoletta") .
These recollections abound in pertinent
anecdotes. They are handsomely, lav-
ishly illustrated. Above all, they are
well and brightly written.
Charles Henry Meltzek
EDUCATIONAL SECTION
To meet an obvious demand for the
discussion of educational matters,
the Revieiv plans with this issue to set
up a special department. There is no
intention of entering the province of tech-
nical journals; the aim will be, rather,
to discuss "questions of fundamental in-
terest to the citizen as well as to the
professional teacher. "Everyone," writes
one of our readers, "is now thinking
about educational matters as he never
did before, and very few are thinking
with much clearness." It is the purpose
of the Review, by discussion of those
problems about which "everyone is think-
ing," to serve the clear and constructive
elements in educational thought. It is
worth noticing, too, that the word "Edu-
cation" has come to embrace legitimately
a great many enterprises wholly sepa-
rate from academic control. The work
of the American Library Association, the
organization of schools at the plants of
large industries, and the amazing devel-
opment of propaganda are significant
instances. Notices, with editorial com-
ment, of those phases which seem of na-
tional importance will appear from time
to time in the Review. Obvious ad-
juncts of these notices and comments will
be book reviews and occasional articles
on educational questions of wide interest.
THE wise man who said that "it takes
two to make a teacher" has received
possibly more praise than he deserves.
He did not mention the parent and voter,
who in his double capacity produces
both child and revenue. At no time has
this third "party" been of greater impor-
tance than now, for he has opinions and,
with negligible exceptions, he suffers no
inhibitions in the expression of them.
The benefits which may accrue from his
quickened interest in education are many.
He is calling the schools and colleges to
a practical demonstration of their effect-
iveness. Retroactively, he is realizing
more and more that growth of mind and
spirit can not be accomplished by a
purely utilitarian course, that intellect
is, after all, more important than intelli-
gence, that capacity without character is
not the end of life. He may even come
to see that an underpaid teacher is an
undesirable teacher. But the dangers
which spring from the same cause are
formidable. Sometimes the good man,
whether he is a teacher or not, mistakes
notions for opinions, and a clear dis-
tinction between principles and preju-
dices is rarely his affair. In the lively
and rather muddy stream of thought
which has accompanied the emergence
of education from academic groves, the
word "education" has come to be as
loosely used as "democracy" itself. When
it is employed to describe a "process
which stimulates productive growth," it
allows astonishing variations; but the
definition is a good one for general pur-
poses, since it reminds us of the essen-
tial nature of education. When the word
is used, however, simply to describe a
process, neither productive nor growth-
stimulating— worse yet, to describe
something which does not even proceed—
it amounts to a mere dissipation of
energies. Thinking on educational ques-
tions probably ought not to be returned
to private control; certainly the parent
and voter can not and will not be put
back into the isolated modesty or indif-
ference of his forbears. He has taken
education and the future of the nation
to be his province — what is he going to
do about it?
Dead Culture and Live Business
A "FORMER college professor," writ-
ing in the Century for January on
"Why I Remain in Industry," gives,
among other reasons for his decision, the
discovery that "culture and broad-mind-
edness" are more commonly to be found
in the industrial world than in the uni-
versity. "Ideas, instead of being con-
fined to text-books and class-room lec-
tures, are in a constant state of flux and
competition with one another. The re-
sult is a certain mental alertness, a readi-
ness to credit the other man's viewpoint,
and an openness to new plans and ideas,
no matter how unusual, which are un-
known in academic life."
The arraignment of the university may
not be wholly fair; the definition of cul-
ture, implied if not actually stated, may
leave much to be desired. The profes-
sor's conclusion, however, supports a
general feeling that certain traditional
notions need radical revision. One
meets plenty of businessmen who bear
the marks of culture, as well as other
businessmen and many college professors
who bear no such marks. Do the college
men lack them in spite of the atmosphere
in which they constantly dwell? Did the
businessmen who bear the marks acquire
them at college and do they preserve
them, forever indestructible, in the "sor-
did" atmosphere of their dollar-chasing?
Or, as the professor suggests, does the
world of industry, rather than the col-
lege, produce that "accessibility to ideas"
which Matthew Arnold insisted on as the
sine qua non of culture?
The poor word culture has been much
abused. One might perbans disregard
as trivial the most obvious misuse of it,
if that misuse were not common, even
among "educated people." To a great
many the word unfortunately carries the
vague meaning of an intellectual adorn-
ment, accompanied by a mild' disdain for
things which have cash value. It is com-
monly used in only a negative sense, to
cover a condition which is not utilita-
rian. Working from this conception of
it, many have argued, by the facile proc-
ess which used to get called ignoratxo
elenchi, that studies which are in no
sense utilitarian must serve it— as, for
example, reading Shelley or reciting a
Latin verb; and whole courses of study
have been built on the dreary fallacy.
The "man in the street," who has too
often been told that something of this
sort is culture, has long been suspicious
of its having any value, spiritual or
other; it may fairly be called dead, if
indeed it ever lived— that is, dead as
culture, but still living, though moribund,
as a cult.
(Continued on page 292)
March 20, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[291
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292]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 45
^Continued from page 290)
Few, but more worthy of notice, are
these who adhere to Matthew Arnold's
view of culture — "the acquainting our-
selves with the best that has been known
and said in the world, and thus with
the history of the human spirit." Such
acquaintanceship should produce what
our "former college professor" calls "a
readiness to credit the other man's view-
iwint, and an openness to new plans and
ideas." But it means a sense of values,
too; an instant distinction between
things significant and things insignifi-
cant, essential and accidental; a sort of
intellectual chastity. The point is illus-
trated by a remark attributed to a well-
known Gree'.i scholar when some one.
eulogizing Bernard Shaw, said triumph-
antly, "Well, you must admit that Shaw
says a lot of true things." To which the
scholar replied: "Any man who allows
no inhibitions in his thinking can not fail
at times to strike the truth. If he thinks
everything, he must include some true
things. But the value of his mind de-
pends only on the order among his
ideas."
It is this unerring sense of values
which perhaps more than anything else
marks the man of culture. Our "college
professor" found in the leaders of in-
dustry a progressive mental alertness
which he had not found in the academic
circle — not merely a quick intelligence in
regard to things that "pay," but "a read-
iness to credit the other man's view-
point," with the strong implication of
at least a potential sense of values. Evi-
dently, if he was right, culture may flour-
ish in a factory while it languishes in
a colleje. Mr. Lowes Dickinson says
ominously, speaking of culture, "The
things we do to maintain it might kill
it ; the things we do to kill it might pre-
serve it."
The fact is, we have grown, since
Arnold, to think of culture as a condition
0.' state of being, and in so doing we
have oftener than not treated it as dead
at the sta.t, with the result that our col-
lege courses established to maintain it
have too frequently amounted to a sort
of solemn obsequies. Yet this passive
use of the word culture was apparently
unknown before the nineteenth century.
Cice .0, though he used the word figura-
tive'y — that is, to speak of culture of the
mind — never did so, we are told, "except
with st.ong consciousness of the meta-
phor involved"; and the same conscious-
ness of metaphor appears not only in
Bacon's "Culture and manurance of
minds," but in the use of the word by
other writers till recenr times. To be
sure, the condition which we now call
culture existed, happily, and was con-
stantly being produced by cultural proc-
esses, long before men got to thinking
of the condition itself, passively, as cul-
ture. Nowadays we may go the length
of saying that "culture of the mind pro-
duces culture," but, instead of doing any-
thing so foolish, though it might whole-
somely remind us that a vital process is
involved, we say, "the study of Latin pro-
duces culture." Culture thus becomes a
full-fledged state of being, not a process;
and we have only to teach Latin in any
one of a dozen wrong ways to kill cul-
ture outright — if we have not already
destroyed it by the very act of crystal-
lizing it into a condition.
For it is significant that, together with
the growth of the conception of culture
r.s a condition, a state of mind, grew
also the notion first alluded to, that it
could have nothing to do with things of
practical value. The men of culture a
few generations ago studied for the most
part things which had no utilitarian
value, but so did everybody who went to
college — so did these who acquired no
culture whatever; a fact which ought to
have raised the suspicion that the prac-
tical usefulness or uselessness of a sub-
ject in no way indicated its cultural
value. Instead, the few sons of light
were piously observed, and the classical
tradition, already strong because of its
"disciplinary" value, was now invoked as
the handmaiden of culture. The thing
was demonstrable — or nearly so. Did
not the classics contain much of "the best
(Continued on page 293)
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THE REVIEW
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(Continued from page 292)
that has been known and said in the
world?" Where, if not in them, was to
be found the intellectual chastity which
the wayward generation needed? All
sorts of students were, therefore, put
through the process, students who in due
time grew into such apostate professors
as the contributor to the Century. Cul-
ture in colleges was nearly dead; the
thing which was done to maintain it was
killing it.
While the classics, properly taught,
might have established contact with "the
best that has been known and said in
this world," they accomplished, except in
a few notable cases, small signs of cul-
ture. It was then that the college cham-
pions of the classical tradition fell back
on the last infirmity of their noble minds
and made much of the fact that, though
only a few — the children of sweetness
and light— might attain unto the fullness
of the stature of culture, the "vast re-
siduum," if they did not get culture, at
least got mental discipline out of the clas-
sics. A doctrine which thus set culture
apart, a thing to be enjoyed only by a
small and rather precious group, was cal-
culated to hasten the process towards
atrophy. Even professors became apos-
tate.
Yet culture did not really die. Under
such conditions it merely seeks pastures
new, wherever its chief food, ideas, sets
up a cultural process — in colleges, but
perhaps in science laboratories, perhaps
also in those classical courses which have
broken with the formula; also in busi-
ness, in the very stronghold of cash
values.
It should be instructive in this connec-
tion to recall the activities of men dur-
ing periods of productive culture. What
wrought the desired state of being in
Erasmus, in Bacon, in Milton? Certainly
not the classics, which had a plain cash
value. What was the process before
Erasmus and the classical tradition?
Latin in the Middle Ages was as hope-
lessly utilitarian as French is to-day.
And what shall be said of Phidias and
Praxiteles, to whom Greek was the neces-
sary mother tongue? How does it come
that Michelangelo and Leonardo, prod-
ucts of an age born of the revival of the
classics, should have been so incurably
utilitarian as to build fortifications and
invent wheelbarrows? Was it not that
they, just because of a vital culture, a
culture that was still a process, were
filled with creative energy, as are to-day
the diggers of canals and the builders
of railroads — men of vision and ideas? A
good many champions of dead culture
seem to have forgotten that the Renais-
sance, their fortress and their strength,
was directly responsible for a quickened
interest in this world, an interest which
in time produced modern science. Science
(Continued on page 294)
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THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 45
{Contintted from page 293)
worked havoc with their comfortable
ways of thinking; they pronounced the
non-utilitarian doctrine to maintain their
precious culture, and so killed it; and
culture went to live among the idolaters !
The trouble is not with culture, plainly,
nor yet with the classics. It lies in the
crystallizing of culture into a state of
being and the development of a ritual
to serve it — in losing that "strong con-
sciousness of the metaphor involved" in
Bacon's "Culture and manurance of
minds." Business is "live" because it is
vital, and as such it may produce ideas,
may even produce order among ideas.
But it is not cultural just because it is
utilitarian, any more than the classical
formula is cultural because it is non-util-
itarian. Few, if any, ideas have had such
transforming power as those contained
in the classics. There is a strong case
for them, though not the case most com-
monly presented — as there is a strong
case for other studies which reveal man's
search for truth — if their guardians will
bear steadily in mind, whatever the con-
sequences to "immemorial" prejudices,
that the condition of .culture has ever
been produced by the process of culture,
that mental pruning shears alone will not
make the student grow, that there must
also be "manurance of minds." Culture
will flourish wherever significant ideas
are brought to birth; and significant
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birth where men are building Parthenons
and Pennsylvania Terminals than where
they are repeating, with ghostly insig-
nificance, the rituals of a perished super-
stition.
Walter S. Hinchman
IT is worth noticing that the Board of
Education of Massachusetts plans to
give this spring a course in "Methods of
Teaching English in Secondary Schools."
This course, which will be organized as a
series of conferences of English teach-
ers, will focus its attention particularly
on the question of College Entrance Eng-
lish. Such an effort, after the publicity
that has recently been given this much-
mooted question, should have practical
results and should prove of interest and
value outside of Massachusetts. Not
only have the discussions in the Harvard
Alurrini Bulletin shown that everyone is
net satisfied with admission requirements
as they now stand, but the recent flood-
ing of the universities of Minnesota and
Iowa with inadequately prepared stu-
dents under the "accrediting" system
has revealed that everyone is not satisfied
with admission requirements as they now
fall. At the November meeting of the
National Council of Teachers of English,
Miss Breck, of Oakland, California, urged
the colleges to rely on the judgment of
the high schools — to open wide their
doors and have faith. The question is
not merely one of English require-
ments, nor yet burning solely in Massa-
chusetts; it concerns the whole question
of admission requirements and is of
national importance.
An honestly liberal view can not adhere
exclusively to either the radical or the
ultra-conservative ideas. Is a college
education desirable for more than a small
percentage of high school graduates?
Will they really profit by the opportunity
if the doors are thrown wide open? Are
those who can profit really shut out by
examination bars? Will the psycholog-
ical tests recently set up by Columbia
solve the problem? If the colleges are
to become advanced high schools, where
are the instructors to be found? These
questions have not yet been adequately
answered, but the issue between the ac-
crediting system and the old examina-
tion system is fairly joined. The impor-
tance of the outcome of this issue must
be appreciated by all who are interested
in educational matters.
Books Received
POETRY
Brereton, C. Mystica et Lyrica. London :
Elkin Mathews.
Lindsay, Vachel. The Golden Whales of
California. Macmillan. $1.75.
Sassoon, Siegfried. Picture-Show. Dut-
ton. $1.50 net.
Turner, W. J. The Dark Wind. Dutton.
$2 net. •
Books and the News
Woman Suffrage
WITH woman suffrage by Constitu-
tional amendment all but an accom-
plished fact, to name a list of books upon
the subject may seem superfluous. But
both as a current question and for the
historical interest in the long struggle,
it is not inopportune to refer to the
stories of the pioneers, and the argu-
ments of the "pros" and of the "antis."
The whole question of "women's,
rights" from the days of Augustus to the
present, ' is described by Eugene A.
Hecker (a "pro") in his "Short History
of Women's Rights" (Putnam, 1910).
Anna H. Shaw, in her "Story of a Pio-
neer" (Harper), tells of campaigns,
early and late, in America. Another
American leader's work is told in "Julia
Ward Howe and the Woman Suffrage
Movement" (Dana EStes, 1913), by her
daughter, Florence H. Hall.
The suffragists are well represented
by Mary Putnam Jacobi's " 'Common
Sense' Applied to Woman Suffrage"
(Putnam, 2nd ed., 1915) and by Carrie
Chapman Catt's compilation, "Woman
Suffrage by Federal Constitutional
Amendment" (National Woman Suf-
frage Pub. Co., 1917). Helen L. Sum-
ner, the author of "Equal Suffrage"
(Harper, 1909), made an investigation
of conditions and results in Colorado,
and reports favorably. Josephine Schain's
"Women and the Franchise" (McClurg,
1918) is brief; it states the arguments
against equal suffrage, but is itself pro-
suffrage. "What Women Want" (Stokes,
1914), by Beatrice F.-R. Hale, is "an
interpretation of the feminist move-
ment," in which the question of votes
occupies only a fraction of the space.
On the other side, should be read
Grace D. Goodwin's "Anti-Suffrage; Ten
Good Reasons" (Duffield, 1913). A re-
markable monograph is Sir Almroth
Wright's "The Unexpurgated Case
Against Woman Suffrage" (Constable,
1913). Molly Elliot Seawell wrote wit-
tily, on this side of the question, in "The
Ladies' Battle" (Macmillan, 1912).
"The Woman Voter" (Stokes, 1918),
by Mary Sumner Bosd, is a handbook
about the history of the woman-suf-
frage movement, together with informa-
tion for the woman voter. Henry St. G.
Tucker's "Woman's Suffrage by Consti-
tutional Amendment" (Yale Univ. Press,
1916) is an important legal study; with-
out expressing an opinion of the right or
wrong of woman suffrage, he attempts
to show that for the country to adopt it
in the manner which is now being done
is subversive of the spirit of the Consti-
tution. Samuel McC. Crothers's "Medi-
tations on Votes for Women" (Houghton,
1914) is a humorous and pleasing essay.
Edmund Lester Pearson
/
THE REVIEW
^'
Vol. 2, No. 46
New York, Saturday, March 27, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment
■Editorial Articles:
The Wreck of the Treaty
Campaign Arguments
il The Farmers' Questionnaire
" ' Kapp's Ballon d'Essai
295
297
299
299
301
Behind the Financing of China. Part
I. By Charles Hodges 302
Experimental Allegiances. Part II.
By W. J. Ghent 303
The Transportation Problem in France.
By Andre Rostand 305
Correspondence 306
Book Reviews:
Public Service in the Days of Roose-
velt 308
A Modern Greek Poet 309
First Youth 310
The Run of the Shelves 310
Drama:
Arnold Bennett's "Sacred and Pro-
fane Love" — John Barrymore in
"Richard III." By O. W. Firkins 312
' Books and the News: Sea Stories. By
Edmund Lester Pearson 314
It TAD we not grown so accustomed
!•■■■'• to the idea, the situation in
I which the country finds itself with the
I treaty's failure in the Senate would
Ibe regarded as intolerable. No prac-
iticable way of arriving at a real set-
Jtlement is in sight. A mere declara-
ion that the war is over would leave
everything at loose ends, even if it
'could be made effective without the
consent of the President, which is at
least doubtful. The one resource
which does remain open is a return
of the treaty to the Senate by the
President, with a suggestion from
him of some basis upon which ratifi-
cation may be obtained. But it seems
certain that Mr. Wilson entertains no
thought of doing anything of the
Icind. It is still in his power, how-
ever, by a single stroke to reestablish
limself in the regard of those who
50 short a time ago were his devoted
idmirers, and to win the approbation
)f millions of others. All he has to
lo is to recognize the duty which cir-
;umstances place upon him. If he
should rise to the occasion now, no-
body will begrudge him the satisfac-
tion of claiming that he was right all
along, that he had fought to the last
ditch for what he held to be essential,
and that, in accepting less at last, he
was yielding only to the compulsion of
absolutely demonstrated necessity.
/~\N the evidence presented, the jury
^-^ at Grand Rapids promptly brought
in a verdict of guilty against Senator
Newberry and sixteen of the leading
agents in the collection and expendi-
ture of the funds used to procure his
election. The result is of the highest
public importance as an example of
the powerlessness of wealth and social
standing and political influence to
paralyze the arm of justice. Judge
Sessions imposed upon Senator New-
berry and two others the maximum
penalty of two years in the peniten-
tiary and $10,000 fine. The verdict
was based on conspiracy to violate
the law imposing a specific limit on
allowable expenditure. Senator New-
berry's complicity was established by
letters over his own signature to the
manager of his campaign, showing
that he had full knowledge of the
large sums used, and gave constant
advice as to their expenditure. A
stay of sixty days was granted, within
which papers will be prepared for an
appeal. The case will be fought on
the validity of the law itself, and not
on the question of its violation. The
possible escape of the present defen-
dants on some technical defect in the
legislation under which they were
convicted would only deepen the pub-
lic feeling that the expenditure of
money to control the results of pri-
maries and elections needs stringent
regulation.
npHE newspapers have given only
•*- fragmentary reports of the evi-
dence in the case. Enough has been
printed, however, to show that the
wealth of Mr. Newberry himself, his
family, and his friends was lavishly
used in violation of the law and of
political decency. This is not to say
that Senator Newberry reached his
seat by what is usually denominated
as bribery. But we are coming to
realize that less visibly criminal
forms of attaining one's ends in poli-
tics may be more corrupting, more
dangerous to the safety of the state,
than direct bribery. The expenditure
of large sums of money in election
campaigns is not wrong merely be-
cause there happens to be a law set-
ting a comparatively low limit, and
establishing a penalty for its trans-
gression. The moral condemnation
of. the practice was emphatic and
general long before it found its way
into the statute books. It is practi-
cally impossible to keep such lavish
expenditure free from actual bribery,
but even if this could be done there
is ample reason for restriction. To
allow the man of wealth to spend
without limitation is to put a tremen-
dous handicap on the man of small
means who aspires to public office.
ACCORDING to the Freeman,
■^*- which made its initial bow to the
reading public last week, the one far-
off divine event into which mankind
is to evolve, with the husks of politi-
cal organization stripped away, is to
be simply "the idea of Society." The
aristocratic state has passed, the
middle-class state is hurrying to-
wards the brink; the proletarian
state is coming, but not to stay. In
fact, the very word stay is an offense
to the whole scheme of modern prog-
ress. Did not Cicero appeal to
Jupiter StaioT to stay the hand of
Catiline and his fellow progressives
in their efforts to change the estab-
lished order of the Roman republic?
Why centre our politics around an old
Graeco-Roman root like that, with all
kinds of reactionary ideas clinging to
it? Let us away with things static.
296]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 46
and give full swing to the kinetic.
The mere "idea of Society," uncor-
seted by stays of any description, is
certainly fluid enough to make of life
no dull museum of the magna char-
tas, constitutions and other establish-
ments of the past, but one grand
movie, with no police regulations, no
censor, no war tax, and no reserved
seats. Doubtless the architects will
be able to arrange some plan by
which each and all of us may have the
very best seat, the one thing neces-
sary to save the stateless future from
that friction of inequality supposed
to be fatal to any possible form of
state.
"[VTEITHER the Danes nor the Ger-
■'•^ mans are satisfied with the re-
sults of the plebiscite in Slesvig. The
former are bitterly disappointed by
their defeat in the Second Zone,
which includes the important town of
Flensburg ; the Germans, on the other
hand, complain of the inclusion within
the First Zone of such preponder-
antly German towns as Tondern,
where the vote was 2,385 for Ger-
many and 733 for Denmark, and of
Hoyer, where 581 German and 219
Danish votes were cast. The Ger-
man Government has presented a
note to the Plebiscite Commission de-
manding a frontier line which would
leave a section including these towns
and some territory belonging to Flens-
burg's hinterland to Germany, and in
Denmark a strong chauvinistic move-
ment is on foot for a Danish Flens-
burg, in spite of an overwhelming ma-
jority having voted against incorpo-
ration with Denmark. The plebiscite
as a panacea for frontier disputes is
sadly discredited by this experiment,
which leaves both parties dissatisfied
and insisting on a revision.
'T'HE refusal of England and France
"'■ to recognize Prince Feisal as King
of Syria has promptly been answered
by the new monarch with the declara-
tion of a boycott against countries oc-
cupying territory of Arabs. The Brit-
ish policy of encouraging a Pan-Arab
propaganda was an excellent weapon
against the Turk when military forces
could not be spared in sufficient
numbers to defeat him without the
aid of his rebellious subjects ; but now
the rebels, being subjects of the Turk
no longer, are naturally disinclined to
acknowledge themselves subjects of
any Western Power. "Freedom and
independence are rights of Syria,"
proclaim the posters displayed on the
walls of Damascus; and the Arab's
origin from Ishmael, "more ancient
than Moses, Christ, or Mohammed,"
buttresses his claim to these rights.
Without strong reinforcements it
will be difficult for France to main-
tain her position of mandatory Power,
but it is doubtful whether, at the
present juncture, with Germany in a
turmoil, she will be able to spare any
troops. For a country so exhausted,
and deprived of a large percentage of
its manhood, it seems a dangerous
policy to sacrifice its energy, badly
needed for reconstruction at home, to
a scheme of colonial expansion. Win-
ston Churchill admitted in the House
of Commons the impossibility of
policing Mesopotamia permanently at
the cost of at least $15,000,000 a year.
How, then, could France afford to
keep up her protectorate over a coun-
try which strongly objects to being
protected? But Churchill has sug-
gested a remedy for this high cost of
colonial living : as a modern Prospero
he will send out his Ariels to guard,
in inexpensive flight, the old Garden
of Eden.
ivro merchant fleet has suffered se-
J- * verer losses during the war than
that of France. They amount to
930,355 tons, or 40 per cent, of pre-
war tonnage. The Compagnie de
Navigation sud-Atlantique, in a re-
cent publication, gives a very pessi-
mistic view of the country's chances
of recovering its sea-trade. Only by
purchasing, at fabulous prices, old or
badly built wooden ships, has France
been able somewhat to make up for
her loss. But neither the number nor
the seaworthiness of these new acqui-
sitions suffices to enable the country
to compete with its allies and the neu-
trals in the conquest of the world-
market. The import of the chief nec-
essaries of life is carried on largely
by foreign freighters, for which the
country has to disburse an annual
amount of four billion francs to for-
eign steamship companies. Experts
estimate the country's need of ton-
nage at 51/2 million tons, which is
about twice the amount before the
war. No wonder the French press in-
sists on retention of the 500,000 tons
of German ships now in the hands of
the French Government, of 200,000 of
which the Wilson-George agreement
would deprive the French.
TN his able criticism of Keynes and
•■■ Dillon in last week's issue of the
Review, Professor Love joy expresses
the belief that "M, Clemenceau seems
to have fought with all his skill, re-
sourcefulness and pertinacity" for the
French demand that all German ter-
ritory on the left bank of the Rhine
should be separated from the German
Empire. As the former French Pre-
mier is held responsible by common
opinion for all the demands which,
though but partly conceded, have
made the Versailles peace an execra-
ble document to the Keyneses and
Dillons, it seems only fair to M. Cle--
menceau that a different version of
his share in the proceedings with re-
gard to this point of vital interest
should be brought to the knowledge
of our readers. Stephane Lauzanne,
the chief editor of the Matin, vouches
for the truth of this diverging ac-
count. Foch and Poincare, accord-
ing to him, were advocates of the
Rhine as the strategic frontier.
"Foch wrote his eloquent memoran-
dum of January 10, 1919, which could
not be suppressed ; Poincare composed
an admirable note, which can not be
suppressed for good, and will, one
day, have to be published." But he
demanded that it should, at least, be
handed to Wilson and Lloyd George.
They refused to concede it, "and," ex-
claims Lauzanne, "how could they be
expected not to refuse, seeing that
the French delegation shared their
standpoint! In vain Poincare ad-
dressed a personal letter to Wilson
and Lloyd George to win them ovei
to his views. But how many letter.'
would he have had to write to con
vince Clemenceau, Pichon, and ever
Tardieu !" Only Tardieu let himsel:
be persuaded, at last, to change hif
mind and became an ardent supportei
of Foch and Poincare after his con
March 27, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[297
version. It was he who, even after
France had received, as an alternative
guarantee for her security, the prom-
ise of special treaties with England
and the United States, insisted on a
temporary occupation of the Rhine-
land as a guarantee for the fulfillment
of the peace terms by Germany.
TT is very encouraging to be told
•'■ by the Restaurant Men's Associ-
ation that the price of food is coming .
down. From such a source it is so
much more encouraging than if the
hope were held out, say, by a Govern-
ment official, or a mere economist.
We have noticed that when the deal-
ers in clothes or the dealers in gaso-
line, or the dealers in anything, say
that the price of their commodities is
going up, go up it does. As prophets,
they never make a mistake. For that
reason, when they say that prices are
coming down, we are prepared to ex-
tend to them, and to them only, the
fullest credence.
ANOTHER hopeful sign of the
■^ times is given forth by the New
York Custom Cutters' Club, which,
apparently, is charged with responsi-
bility for setting the styles of men's
clothes. Tight-fitting clothes must go,
and the easy, natural-fitting coat of
pre-war days will be the mode. Since
pretty much everybody who is thor-
oughly honest and of good taste is
still wearing a coat that was made
before the war, concerning the lines
of which it may at least be said that
they are easy, perhaps the decision
of the Custom Cutters is just as well.
'T'HE attack of the New York City
■*■ Commissioner of Accounts on
William T. Hornaday, as director of
the New York Zoological Park, is a
matter which deserves the attention
of every lover of wild life. If the
Commissioner has found points in
which the account-keeping of the
Park could be improved, no one who
knows the character of Mr. Hornaday
will doubt that a proper presentation
of them would receive respectful and
immediate attention from him. But
the tone and substance of the attack
bears every mark of a desire to re-
move the Bronx Zoological Garden
from the care of the New York
Zoological Society and throw it into
the hopper of city politics. This
would not only strike a heavy blow at
the value of the "Zoo" itself, as a
place of recreation and education for
the millions of New York City, but
would seriously cripple the working
facilities of a man who has done per-
haps more than any other man that
ever lived to promote an intelligent
interest in wild life, and secure both
legislative and private measures for
its protection. It is inconceivable
that public sentiment will allow the
wolves of spoils politics to drive Will-
iam T. Hornaday out of the "Zoo."
"T FOUND myself deeply interested,"
-■■ said Professor McAndrew Cantlie,
"in the present effort to socialize
the traffic in New York's Fifth Ave-
nue. I regret that I had not more
time in which to study its manifold
bearings. It was at once plain to
me, however, that whatever signifi-
cance they might have in the troubled
lives of the drivers of motor cars, the
complicated system of lights and
other signals possessed no interest
for mere pedestrians. The pedes-
trians, indeed, do not even need to
watch the incredibly numerous po-
licemen who are strategically dis-
posed along the thoroughfare. The
pedestrian is watched by the police-
man ; and let him so much as start to
cross the street when, as it were, he
would be moving out of his turn, and
a vigilant officer firmly and promptly
restores him to an insecure footing
on the edge of a crowded curb. When
at a signal the vigilance of the police
relaxed, the crowd streamed across
the avenue with an unwonted sense
of utter safety. At that moment — it
seemed to be perfectly understood by
those who were managing the game,
but it most certainly was not under-
stood by the crowd — the motors turn-
ing from Forty-second street into
the Avenue began to crash into them.
It was most interesting to see the
crowd endeavoring, and not always
with perfect success, to recover its
blunted sense of individual responsi-
bility. Here," said the Professor, "I
fear we have the perfect type and
example of paternalism."
The Wreck of the
Treaty
WHEN President Wilson laid the
" - Treaty of Versailles before the
Senate, he knew, and all the country
knew, that there would be a more or
less serious struggle over its ratifica-
tion, and that this would turn entirely
on the issue of the League of Nations.
It soon became apparent, too, that
the lines would be drawn not upon
acceptance or rejection of the League,
but upon the issue of reservations
designed to lessen the force of some
of the obligations involved in the
treaty, especially those contained in
Article X. That the treaty would be
accepted in some form was not only
the almost universal wish and hope,
but the almost universal expectation,
of the people of the United States.
A large proportion of them desired it
because of their high hopes of the
League as a permanent preventive of
war ; and all of them, with the excep-
tion of a small though not an unim-
portant contingent, desired it because
rejection of the League meant rejec-
tion of the treaty, and rejection of
the treaty meant failure of the United
States to do its share in the restora-
tion of the world. It was felt that
even any considerable delay in the
completion of the settlement would be
a calamity of appalling magnitude,
with Europe in the throes both of
revolutionary upheaval and of dire
economic distress.
In those first days of the treaty
debate, the gloomiest of pessimists
would not have dared to forecast the
actual story which these nine months
have presented. We have lived
through month after month of dreary
wrangling, relieved by hardly a single
inspiring feature, and ending in
melancholy failure. For this failure,
while there have been many causes.
President Wilson must bear incom-
parably the heaviest load of responsi-
bility. He chose to adopt from the
beginning, and to maintain to the end,
the attitude of one who was not called
upon either to pay a decent respect
to the opinions of those who differed
with him in judgment, or to take into
serious account the power of those
298]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 46
who, in the exercise of their Consti-
tutional functions, were in a position
to defeat his purpose. From the first
moment to the last, it seems never to
have occurred to him that the higher
that purpose was, the more impera-
tively was the duty laid upon him of
striving for it, not by staking every-
thing on a gambler's chance of win-
ning by sheer obstinacy, but by
adopting such a course as was rea-
sonably calculated to attain so much
of it as could be attained. No plea
of high ideals can avail to absolve
him from the guilt of having failed
in that clear duty. How lamentably
he did fail, a calm retrospect suifices
to show.
For the outstanding feature of the
whole story is that the President's
hold on public sentiment has steadily
diminished, from week to week, from
month to month. He started out with
the advantage of that almost unani-
mous desire for a speedy settlement
to which we have referred. More-
over, his party in the Senate was sol-
idly behind him, while the opposing
party was split into three sharply
marked divisions. The "mild reser-
vationists" showed, in those early
days, more anxiety in behalf of the
treaty than in behalf of their reserva-
tions. These reservations themselves
were couched in language which care-
fully avoided all appearance of un-
friendliness to the broad purposes of
the League. It was evident that what
these men offered, and offered at the
cost of arraying themselves against
their party's leaders, was the utmost
that could be attained. Some of the
most ardent advocates of the League
of Nations — men who had been de-
voted to the idea of it long before Mr.
Wilson had taken it up — recognized
this at once ; others of them, like Mr.
Taft, recognized it before long. The
President had absolutely no reason
for believing otherwise. Had he felt
that sense of responsibility for the
result which marks the true states-
man— yes, the true man — ^he would
have welcomed the aid of the "mild
reservationists." He might not have
accepted their proposal; he might
have fought for more, so long as there
was any hope for more ; but he would
have exhibited a certain degree of
friendliness to those who were striv-
ing to save all they could of his pro-
gramme. Instead of that, he left
them out in the cold ; the Democratic
Senators, acting under his directions,
refused to enter into any kind of un-
derstanding with them; in a word,
the only hopeful element in the whole
situation was deliberately reduced to
a nullity.
We have said that the President
had "absolutely no reason" for think-
ing that the treaty could be put
through without reservations. In
one sense this statement is not alto-
gether correct. He did have one rea-
son, which to his peculiar type of
mind was sufficient. He thought that
he could swing the country into line
in a whirlwind speaking tour. No
amount of experience seems to sufllice
to pry this notion of personal omnipo-
tence out of Mr. Wilson's head. His
speaking tour did not fail because of
his physical breakdown. It was a pit-
iful failure from the beginning. And
it was to the credit of the American
people that it was a failure. Long
before he began the tour, it had be-
come manifest that the people had
come to realize that there were se-
rious reasons for misgiving about the
country pledging itself unreservedly
to so momentous a departure from its
traditions as was involved in Article
X. Instead of meeting the actual dif-
ficulties of this question Mr. Wilson
simply dug himself in. Exhortation,
denunciation, assertion — these were
the staple of his speeches. They rested
essentially on the assumption that
whoever opposed his programme was
actuated either by a low standard of
public morality or by partisan or per-
sonal malice; and at the end of his
speechmaking the League was weaker
than at the beginning of it.
Apart from all this, however, the
last trace of possible doubt as to the
character of the situation was re-
moved when the Senate voted on rati-
fication four months ago. There
might still be differences of opinion
on specific points ; but that the treaty
could not be adopted without substan-
tial reservations was then proved be-
yond peradventure. The President
would still have been justified, never-
theless, in an endeavor to have the
reservations made as inoffensive as
possible; but not a finger did he stir
in this direction. When he emerged
from his long silence in his Jackson-
Day letter, he dashed all the hopes of
the friends of the treaty by adhering
to his position of no compromise. In
his very last word — his recent letter
to Senator Hitchcock — he went even
further than ever before by explic-
itly putting upon the mild reserva-
tionists the same brand as upon those
who had been responsible for the
most obnoxious proposals. The con-
sequence has been not only the defeat
of the treaty, but a practically unop-
posed course for a miscellaneous as-
sortment of mischievous proposals
such as the preposterous reservation
concerning Irish independence. When
all proposals are indiscriminately
doomed to futility, there can be little
energy in the effort to save the best
and reject the worst. How different
the result would have been if the
President had not laid his paralyzing
touch upon the situation may unhesi-
tatingly be inferred from the fact
that, even as it was, one-half of the
Democratic Senators felt it their duty
to vote for the treaty vdth all the
sins of the Lodge programme, and
more besides, on its head.
We do not by any means wish to
absolve others of their share of the
blame. Senator Lodge has shown
himself neither a large-minded states-
man nor a competent party leader;
and he has given countenance to many
abominable moves in the game. On
the Democratic side there has been
a lamentable want of manly self-
assertion. In the face of a responsi-
bility so awful in its nature that one
might have hoped it would call forth
on all sides a loftiness of spirit and a
largeness of mind befitting the occa-
sion, there has been a long succes-
sion of petty manoeuvres. But the
situation of others was complicated
by the fact of divergencies to be
reconciled or combinations to be ef-
fected; upon the President alone
there rested a clear and simple duty
and an undivided responsibility.
The responsibility he shouldered with
unhesitating assurance; but to the
duty he has been consistently and per-
versely blind.
March 27, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[299
Campaign Arguments
/^NE consideration must have
^ tempted even the "irreconcil-
ables" to yield on the treaty. The
thought of the campaign arguments,
with the treaty still an issue, is hor-
rible to contemplate. An indication
of what they will be like, even when
prosecuted on a supposedly high
plane, is given by Mr. Walter Lipp-
mann's attack on General Leonard
Wood in the New Republic.
Two laudatory volumes on General
Wood gave Mr. Lippmann his chance.
A part of this material was fair game,
no doubt, though even here Mr. Lipp-
mann shows himself to be a pretty old
young man in taking exception to the
use as argument of certain details
which were calculated to catch the
admiration of youth. For, other
things being equal, Wood's athletic
prowess at college and his marked
success in organizing college teams
might be supposed to excite approval.
Truly, our youth have rapidly aged
if they now regard the captain of the
football team as quite like other mor-
tals! Not so long ago even old men
were rather pleased to remember
Teddy's skill as a boxer and the fact
that he had once floored a big bully
in the primitive West.
The point would not be worth
stressing if it were not involved in
the broad implications of Mr. Lipp-
mann's arguments. It unfortunately
tends to discredit the advantages of
vigorous manhood and carries the
reader back to that whole body of
doctrine sponsored by the phrase "too
proud to fight." Is one of the best
American instincts to be challenged
anew during the campaign?
One is not pleased, either, by Mr.
Lippmann's polite sneer at General
Wood's proud American ancestry. In
biographies it is fitting to introduce
facts of birth and antecedents, and
Mr. Lippmann's singling out of these
for criticism reminds one of the re-
cent tendency of representatives of
other races in this country to mini-
mize the Anglo-Saxon strain and tra-
ditions. Of such urgency is the cause
of internationalism !
These are preliminary details.
What matters in the writer's argu-
ment is General Wood's qualifications
for President. After listening to per-
functory praise of his work in Cuba,
which is shown to signify little as to
his possibilities as a statesman, we
are permitted the conclusion : he has
not been "an administrator by vol-
untary cooperation like Hoover."
Waiving the established fact that
Wood had remarkable success in ob-
taining the good will of the Cubans,
Mr. Lippmann's comparison can not
pass without challenge. If he is re-
ferring to Mr. Hoover in his capacity
as United States Food Administrator,
his remark ill befits one who has for
some years preached the supreme
power of economics in regulating
world affairs. While we do not wish
to detract one jot of the praise due to
Mr. Hoover, it is only fair to recog-
nize that with his hand on the great
food reservoirs of this country he
held over Europe a weapon mightier
than a general's sword.
"For the ulterior objects of this
war he [Wood] cared nothing in par-
ticular, but for war, efficiently and
triumphantly conducted, he cared a
great deal. Roosevelt and he focused
and organized sentiment chiefly
among the upper strata of society in
the big cities, in the colleges, and
among the intellectuals. The mass of
the people they did not convert — that
was done by the President with his
democratic formulas." There is a
curious upsidedownness in Mr. Lipp-
mann's reasoning. He contends, in
effect, that the persons of presum-
ably higher intelligence drew upon
their instincts in order to see the
light; whereas the masses were not
convinced until vouchsafed the Four-
teen Points. Which is to say that a
farmer in Kansas withheld his son
until assured that Albania was to be
freed and Poland guaranteed access
to the sea! What the upper strata
saw and felt was, of course, the out-
rage perpetrated upon civilization.
To infer that they had no hope of a
better order of things coming out of
the war is merely stupid. Stricter
logic would have made Mr. Lippmann
see that what the President really did
was to confuse simple persons by
setting their minds at work on the
details of the future world settle-
ment when they should have been
focused on the central issue of right
and wrong. To admonish us to be
neutral in our thoughts on a question
upon which no right-minded, discern-
ing person could possibly be neutral
tended to delay a popular judgment
which any leader with his heart in
the cause might have obtained
promptly.
But to hold Mr. Lippmann down to
strict logic would be hardly fair. Our
new President is to be an executive
in a "new world" in which even logic
may be supposed to show new mani-
festations. What qualities he should
have is not clear even to the radicals.
The Nation, also a "new worlder,"
condemns the New Republic's choice,
Mr. Hoover, because he is not what
he professes to be, a "progressive in-
dependent." He is not progressive, it
seems, because he clings to those
hoary institutions, private ownership
of railroads and competition in indus-
try. If a man with "progressive"
ideas is desired, let it be remembered
that Mr. Wilson had those in abun-
dance. One of the real dangers just
now is the fact that the world is
deluged vsith ideas, most of them too
unwieldy for mortals' brains. The
man of the hour is he who can re-
orient us safely and solidly. It is well
for the chances of Hoover and Wood
that they do not measure up to, or
down to, the tests implied by Mr.
Lippmann's campaign arguments.
The Farmers' Ques-
tionnaire
/^NE is somewhat at a loss, these
^ days, without a Who's Who of
farmers' organizations. Here, as
elsewhere, one has to be on the look-
out for camouflage, for it is no more
true that everyone who wears the
"blue jeans" has ever held the plow
handle than that every American girl
who walks the streets of Lucerne with
a rucksack slung over her shoulder
and an alpenstock in her hand has
climbed, or intends to climb, Pilatus.
We have no reason to suppose, how-
ever, that the National Board of Farm
Organizations, which has drawn up a
questionnaire for presidential candi-
800]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 46
dates, does not have its roots actually
in the outdoor soil, rather than in
some politician's private hothouse.
The questions which these men
have put are conveyed with no offen-
sive threat, nor do they involve any
temptation to an honest candidate to
stultify himself, or sacrifice the inter-
ests of the whole, in order to secure
the vote of a class. The candidate
who does so will not be driven by
superior force from without, but will
be displaying his own inherent in-
stinct for the demagogue's way of
approach. The candidates are first
asked to pledge themselves to work
towards a more direct dealing be-
tween farmers and consumers, both
sides to share in the resultant saving
from undue expenses between farm
and kitchen. There is no demand to
abolish the middleman altogether, no
railing at him as always and every-
where a profiteer, but merely a rea-
sonable proposal to cut down interme-
diate expenses by such means as may
be found available. The second point
aims to secure to all farmers and con-
sumers "the full, free and unques-
tioned right to organize and to pur-
chase and sell cooperatively." Coop-
eration is not "socialism," nor is there
any denial of the right to private
property in the fact that a large num-
ber of individuals choose to use a
part of their private property in such
a combination. In claiming every
such movement as an irretraceable
advance towards an inevitable "so-
cialism," the advocates of that "ism"
do not state a fact, but merely illus-
trate their lack of mental balance.
The third question, pertains to rep-
resentation of farmers on general
boards and commissions in whose
membership various interests are
recognized, even though the work in-
volved might be only indirectly con-
nected with agriculture. Believing
that this was not intended as a mere
request for a share in "patronage,"
we do not believe that any candidate
would improve his chances by pledg-
ing himself, if elected, to place some
man direct from the farm on each and
every "general" board or commission
constituted during his term. What
is wanted is a reasonable considera-
tion of the agricultural interest,
wherever directly or indirectly in-
volved, and this can be both promised
and delivered without demagoguery
or class favoritism. The next ques-
tion concerns the qualifications of the
Secretary of Agriculture, and sug-
gests nothing extreme or unwise. In
asking for a Secretary "satisfactory
to the farm organizations of Amer-
ica," we do not believe that the satis-
faction in mind is of the sort referred
to when one speaks of a Democratic
revenue collector at the port of New
York, or a Republican postmaster in
Philadelphia, as "satisfactory to the
organization." The request for an
investigation of "the great and grow-
ing evil of farm tenancy, so that steps
may be taken to check, reduce, or end
it," may well have an affirmative re-
ply, without committing the candidate
to the assertion or belief that tenant
farming is always an evil. The real
evil is the descent from ownership to
tenancy ; but tenancy is sometimes an
intermediate station for men moving
in the opposite direction.
We are not quite certain just what
is referred to in the question whether
the candidate will work to secure to
cooperative organizations of farmers
engaged in interstate commerce "ser-
vice and supplies equal in all respects
to those furnished to private enter-
prises under like circumstances" ; but
all right-thinking men should agree
that the federal power ought to pre-
vent discrimination of the kind, if it
exists, at any point falling within its
jurisdiction. The candidate is further
asked whether he will favor the re-
opening of the railroad question "if
at the end of two years of further
trial of private ownership the rail-
roads fail to render reasonably satis-
factory service." We do not take it
that the men who drew up this ques-
tion meant to say, "Satisfactory ser-
vice within two years, or Government
ownership!" The candidate who
should pledge himself to a hard and
fast programme of that kind would
hardly find that he had sensed the
present temper of American farmers
as a class.
"Will you use your best efforts to
secure the payment of the war debt
chiefly through a highly graduated
income tax, or otherwise, by those
best able to pay" ? Here is a question
on which a candidate might easily
trip himself up, if at all inclined to be
a demagogue in matters of taxation.
A graduated income tax may be a
reasonable recognition of varying de-
grees of ability to aid in bearing the
public burdens ; on the other hand, it
may be a vicious attempt to hit at
wealth merely as wealth. We pre-
dict that the candidate who is not
afraid to call attention to this truth,
and to pledge himself only to what
shall appear fair and wise, will have no
trouble with the farmer. The candi-
date who will not pledge himself, in
accordance with the next question, to
uphold the policy of the conservation
of our natural resources and to work
for some effective check to deforesta-
tion, will have trouble with others as
well as farmers. Any right-minded
candidate can also afford to pledge
himself to do his best to secure and
enforce "effective national control
over the packers and other great in-
terstate combinations of capital en-
gaged in the manufacture, transpor-
tation, or distribution of food and
other farm products and farmers'
supplies." The Board of Farm Or-
ganizations wisely refrain from set*
ting forth a detailed programme of
legislation for this purpose. All they
ask is a candidate determined to make
as effective as possible a course of
action to which the Government has
long been committed.
And finally, "Will you respect and
earnestly try to maintain the right of
free speech, free press, and free as-
sembly?" There is no assertion here
that these rights have no limitation.
Any candidate may well say to the
American farmer, "I will go as far
as you, perhaps even a little farther,
in granting, under the head of the
rights mentioned, anything that does
not strike dangerously at the moral
health of civilized society, or the con-
tinued existence of orderly govern-
ment." The revolutionary radical
will give the farmer up as hopeless
when he reads this questionnaire ; and
herein the Review finds justification
for the belief which it has expressed
more than once, that the American
farmer is, as a rule, a makeweight on
the side of stable progress.
March 27, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[801
Kapp's Ballon d'Essai
■p'ROM the various, often contradic-
-*• tory, reports that have reached
us from several parts of Germany, one
important fact stands out sufficiently
clear to admit of some tentative con-
clusions being drawn from it as to
future developments. The failure of
Dr. Kapp and his associates to main-
tain the power which they had seized
without any apparent difficulty was
not due to their Government being
paralyzed by the general strike or the
refusal of the Reichsbank to honor
their orders for money. They failed
because of the freezing lack of re-
sponse from the bulk of the nation.
Even the immediate success of the
coup, obtained without bloodshed,
could not rouse the people to an im-
pulsive declaration of loyalty to the
new Government. On that the
usurpers had reckoned, and realizing,
after four days of anxious expec-
tancy, that their calculation had been
wrong, they saw no other way out
than to surrender. More amazing
than the briefness of their rule is
that ignorance of the people's real
state of mind which made their mis-
reckoning possible. Prussian official-
dom, trained to a high degree of effi-
ciency in working the state machine,
has always ignored the human ele-
ments of will and passion that gen-
erate the power by which the
mechanism is driven. The bureau-
crat Wolfgang Kapp imagined that,
as soon as the expert officials of the
old regime had resumed their posts
at the machines in the state's engine-
room, the business would revive and
jProsper as before. That the generat-
'ing station would supply the power
was to them a matter of course.
It would be over-hasty to conclude
from the events of last week that the
jerman nation has finished with
nonarchism and is, for good and all,
■epublican in conviction and senti-
nent. Two other causes account for
ts having turned a cold shoulder to
he herald of the restoration: the
reneral apathy and mental lassitude
)revailing among all classes except
he extreme wings of Communists
tnd "Kaiser-treuen," who, being the
ipposition parties, are stimulated by
hatred and by hope of an upheaval;
and, more important still, the lack of
political thinking in the average Ger-
man citizen, which makes him slow to
act in a crisis of this kind. The old
regime taught its subjects not to
reason but to obey, and so long as
their material welfare was secure
they little objected to a rule which
spared them the mental difficulty of
choosing and deciding for themselves.
But now that prosperity is gone, and
with it their absolute confidence in
the wisdom and infallibility of those
in power, they have turned skeptical
and despondent, and are helpless be-
cause of that lack of political training
which is their heritage from the old
regime. One circumstance only could
have induced the bulk of the nation to
acclaim the Government of Kapp and
Von Liittwitz: its lasting success.
But as this success could not be se-
cured by force of arms, but was itself
dependent on the support of the
people, the enterprise ran a fruitless
course in a vicious circle.
The daring coup of the extreme
right having ended in disaster, the
extreme left is likely to pluck the
fruits of its failure. The Independ-
ents are not strong enough to seize
power, but they possess the means to
make the resumption of it by Herr
Ebert's Government a difficult task.
The general strike, employed by the
Majority Socialists as a weapon
against the usurping Government,
was turned by the Independents
against the lawful one. The agree-
ment between Ebert and the Federa-
tion of Trade Unions is an undeniable
surrender to the Independents. The
immediate socialization of all indus-
tries, involving, of course, the nation-
alization of the coal and potash syndi-
cates, is a far-reaching concession to
make for a Government in which both
the Centre and the German Popular
party have their representatives. It
is to be seen whether these bourgeois
parties will give their sanction to the
compromise. The wisest course for
them would be to accept it without
demur, as their rupture with the Ma-
jority Socialists would cause the lat-
ter to swing still farther to the radical
left and help to strengthen the forces
of Independents and Communists.
The French may be right in dis-
trusting the official German reports
of Communist risings as a means of
frightening the Entente into conces-
sions as to the number of troops that
the Empire may retain. Noske's ex-
cuse for tarrying with the reduction
of the army is far from convincing.
The real danger is not in the local
successes of scattered Communist
forces, but in a development of the
political situation which should leave
the Majority Socialists no other
choice than to compromise with the
German section of the Third Interna-
tionale. And in a compromise be-
tween opportunists and doctrinair-
ians experience suggests that it is
the former who give and the latter
who take.
The failure of the reactionary coup
d'etat has not resulted, therefore, in
a firmer reestablishment of the Ebert
regime. It has regained power at the
risk of its stability. It vacillates
towards the radical left, and not only
the Communists but also the reaction-
aries will see their advantage in un-
settling it still further. The reaction
would see its time arrive when undi-
luted Socialism had make the na-
tion realize the stern blessings of the
proletariat's rule. That the late coup
is to remain the only attempt of the
old regime to return to power is very
unlikely. The ballon d'essai, which
probably Ludendorff sent up, with Dr.
Kapp and von Liittwitz as pilots, will
doubtless be followed by better-
equipped political aircraft when the
clouds that darken the nation's des-
tiny bring on the storm in which it
can secretly manoeuvre to better ad-
vantage.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Corporation
1 40 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
dollars a year in
copy. Foreign post-
Subscription price, five
advance. Fifteen cents a .
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24. Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright, 1920, in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD de wolf FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Ayres O. W. Firkins
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson
Jerome Landfield
302]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 46
Behind the Financing of China
(IN FOUR PARTS — PART ONE)
rpHE consummation of a $20,000,000
•*■ gold loan to China by the Allied
banking groups brings to the fore the
most dangerous situation in the East
to-day.
China's economic potentialities at
the present time are greater than
those of any other country. Yet the
Chinese Republic constitutes a tre-
mendous international liability, in-
stead of being a stabilizing asset in
a war-stained world; the blame
for a state of affairs where her ex-
penditures exceed her income by
$100,000,000 annually lies between
China herself and the frenzied finance
of the Powers. For some time now,
this deficit has been an almost fatal
overload, eating up the country's re-
sources and thwarting its develop-
ment. From the first foreign obli-
gations incurred in 1875 to the deluge
of Japanese loans recklessly resorted
to for running expenses during the
Great War, the Chinese people have
been the victims of hard international
circumstances and have seen one bur-
den after another piled upon them at
the most difficult period in their four
thousand years of national life.
Take it as you will, China is no
longer a going concern. Almost too
late, the Powers have become cogni-
zant of conditions which threaten the
peace of the world; foreign offices,
it is now clear, realize that only far-
reaching efforts on their part can
save us from developments in the
East as extensive as the breakdown
of Russia.
Internally, China's position has
been like that of an ancient business
house using until recently obsolete
methods and forced to compete with
establishments running on the costs
system and scientific management.
Up to the Manchu conquest, the Chi-
nese Emperors had somehow made
both ends meet by levying what they
could and expending what conditions
obliged them to disburse. The com-
plicated system of taxation operative
during the Manchu regime accom-
plished little more, yet it was suffi-
cient until the T'aiping Rebellion rav-
aged the heart of the Empire and
tried China's resources to the limit
at the moment (in the 'fifties) when
the Western nations were resorting
to force of arms to open the country
to foreign intercourse. This initiated
a series of calamities most costly to
China. The war with Japan in 1894-
95 carried in its wake the Boxer Out-
break of 1900, to be followed in 1911
by the Chinese Revolution and the fall
of the Manchu dynasty. Republican
China tried to get itself on a business
basis in 1912, but ran into domestic
difficulties which the Great War
aggravated by its fiare-back on the
Orient.
Along with this went a saddling of
the country with external obligations.
The Chino-Japanese War left costs
aggregating more than $375,000,000
gold. With this came the scramble
of the Powers for "concessions," as
a result of the conviction that China's
hour of partition had arrived; the
Boxer troubles were the direct prod-
uct of the vicious circle of demands
made on China for "spheres of inter-
est," as European diplomats euphe-
mistically called the process of provi-
sional dismemberment. The cost to
the Chinese for the rash popular pro-
test was a new series of loans to
cover an indemnity of $337,500,000.
Coincidently, the Powers employed
their financial diplomacy to obtain
railway loans, aggregating $230,-
000,000, and to develop strategic ends
in China.
These years saw the European
rivalries which culminated in the
Great War playing their part in the
economic conflict of the Far East.
While diplomacy had its hands full
with the frictions in the West,
China's troubles were naturally left
unconsidered. After all, they were
assets in the hands of European
statesmen, and we were too detached
from the game to count. European
statesmen eagerly followed the leads
of their foreign offices. United
States bankers really played no large
part, because they had neither that
capability which comes from expe-
rience nor the continuous diplomatic
support necessary to essay such an
international financial role as the
situation demanded if China's spoli-
ation was to be stopped.
It was laissez-faire with a ven-
geance in China, haphazard financing
subordinated to state purposes of a
dubious sort. The sum-total of all
this has put China under the follow-
ing burden :
Debt outstanding from Japanese
War, 1894 $ 150,000,000
Indemnity of 1900 240,000,000
Communications Loans 200,000,000
Japanese Loans during Great
War 300,000,000
General Loans 225,000,000
Sliort Term Loans 85,000,000
$1,200,000,000
The service of this debt, sinking fund
and interest charges, costs China
about $56,000,000 annually, or more
than half of the deficit confronting
her. Though China's running ex-
penses have been met in part by bor-
rowed capital, throughout all her
troubles she has met her foreign ob-
ligations without default. But so far
as the national balance-sheet is con-
cerned, she is on the verge of bank-
ruptcy.
China, however, is too large and
too important a country to permit of
a receivership in the interests of any
one Power or group of Powers. In
comparison with her tangible re-
sources, China is not insolvent but
in need of large-scale reorganization.
The fact that she has in the past
raised funds from every possible
source on every kind of security at
exorbitant rates does not mean des-
perate need and low security.
Neither is the payment to reputable
bankers of a commission of 6 to 9
per cent, on national loans the sign
of failing credit. The truth is, as
might be suspected from a glance at
the list of external obligations, that
China has been milked by the preda-
tory finance of the Powers. It has
been the drive of the Government-
backed pound sterling, ruble, and
franc; the yen diplomacy, the dollar
diplomacy, which has cornered
China.
What but the fears of Manchester
steel mills and Osaka spinning inter-
ests for their foreign markets has
made them invoke every diplomatic
means to strangle China's infant in-
March 27, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[303
dustries? What nations, down to
1918, balked every Chinese attempt
to secure more revenue, vetoing every
plan to increase the five per cent,
tariff arranged by treaty sixty years
ago, though the enumerated articles
increased more than four times and
the volume of trade eighteen ? What
interests at the Shanghai Conference
in 1918 made every attempt to pre-
vent even a nominal increase in tariff
revenue? It was the same forces
which have made China at every
turn, thanks to international high
finance, accept the most onerous
banking terms on record.
With the exception of Japan, these
interests have overplayed their
hands, for none of them can afford
to have a foreclosure on China
carried out. Largely responsible for
China's international straits to-day
because of the handicaps placed on
her by them in the past, the Powers
are now turning to the problem of
salvaging their capital investments
on a scale which would not have been
necessary had there ever been con-
structive finance in the East. The
Frankenstein of their greed frightens
them.
They see a region greater than
Europe still lacking the needed trunk
lines, for the political railways
now serving parts of China are dis-
connected systems personifying the
national interests behind them from
couplings to goods vans and bridge
spans. They see a country with a
population over three times that of
the United States possessing but the
railroad mileage of California; in
China there are 107,000 people for
every mile of railway built, while in
the United States it is 3,800 people to
each mile of line. Wheat at eleven
cents a bushel exists in China's west,
whereas a thousand miles away, on
the lower Yangtsze, millions starve.
There is not a mile of railway operat-
ing in Szechuan, a Province exceeding
pre-war Germany in size, population,
and basic natural wealth.
It is recognized that constructive
financial cooperation in China must
succeed the former practices of inter-
national bankers, who hunted in a
I pack only because it was easier to
I crowd China and then divide the
spoil. Transportation and produc-
tion are the foundations of the mod-
ern state; it is the problem of the
new finance to bring these to China.
The financial stabilizing of China
means the end of maladministration
aided and abetted for diplomatic ob-
jectives; then the Land Tax, which
now yields $90,000,000, will increase
to five times that sum ; the Wjne and
Tobacco Administration, it is esti-
mated, can equal the reorganized Salt
Administration's $70,000,000 ; and so
on down the list.
Just two nations are in a position
to furnish the sinews for this finan-
cial renovation of China. It is a
question whether Japanese yen and
American dollars will devote them-
selves to a decade of reconstructive
cooperation or will prefer to bring
China into a new welter of financial
imperialism.
Charles Hodges
Experimental Allegiances
(in two parts — PART TWO)
P'ROUP Autonomy is hardly the
^^ fearsome thing darkly hinted
by Mr. Lippmann. As an idea it is
sufficiently heretical and revolution-
ary to provide ecstatic thrills for the
most ardent parlor radical; but as a
movement or tendency with an ap-
preciable threat to democracy it
awakens few tremors of alarm. It
has had its day, even among the
trade-unions of France. Certainly
the I. W. W. have built their struc-
ture and doctrines around the idea;
and it goes without saying that the
I. W. W. are generally regarded as a
menace. But it is not because of the
idea itself that they are so regarded ;
it is because of their proneness to
certain pluralistic activities such as
the starting of bogus free-speech
fights, the destruction of hop-fields,
the wrecking of buildings, and the
breaking up of trade-unions. Though
over these activities the New Repub-
lic and the Nation are now and then
wont to shed the halo of indulgent
toleration, to the general public they
are unendurable and call for suppres-
sion.
Group Autonomy is as Group Au-
tonomy does. Under the apostleship
of Kropotkin it took on the seeming
of a vague but not unbeautif ul dream.
Under Johann Most it carried a fiery
message of universal revolt; and the
days of Most, though many, were
full of trouble. Under Emma Gold-
man, the least intellectual but one
of the most energetic and aggressive
of its prophets, it lapsed into quite
unintelligible vagueness; and, need-
less to say, it was not her group-
autonomistic pleas that brought her
into conflict with the law. Group
Autonomism may be, as Mr. Lipp-
man avers, a "powerful heresy," but
unless its propaganda is accom-
panied by certain overzealous incite-
ments and activities, the "heresy-
hunters" of Mr. Lippman's apprehen-
sion are unlikely to set up the hue and
cry.
For the thing has never, since man-
kind grew out of it, taken an endur-
ing hold. Men do indeed look back
upon it, now and then, as upon a
long-abandoned home, a sort of uni-
versal Zion of the race, which might
serve as a refuge from the irksome
and troublous present. But this is a
matter for the imagination, and not
for the workaday world of effort.
Sometimes, moreover, for a brief
period, the idea inspires a movement ;
but the reaction follows as the night
the day. The one unique opportunity
for its translation into the actuali-
ties of modern life has been Soviet
Russia. One finds there, instead, a
rigorous, unitary, political, sovereign
state in which autonomous groups
have been relentlessly crushed, or, as
in the case of the cooperative socie-
ties, permitted to live only under a
constant persecution. There, if it had
something of that vital and persis-
tent force ascribed to it by Mr. Laski,
Mr. Croly, and Mr. Lippman, should
have been the place of its beginning.
It should have triumphed over Bol-
shevist tyranny and firmly estab-
lished itself. It was unable to do so,
and the unitary state was its victor.
804]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 46
Still, new light may have been
brought to bear upon the subject;
and here are recondite pages and
columns aplenty in which to search
out answers to obstinate questionings.
Is this pluralism of the state a pro-
posed, a projected thing, or is it an
inherent thing somewhat obstructed
in the functioning? Mr. Lippmann
(N. R.. April 14, 1917, p. 316) calls
attention to the fact that Mr. Laski
has just published a book, "The Prob-
lem of Sovereignty," which contains
the "courageous assertion that the
state is not absolute but plural." I
fear that the answer embodies a con-
fusion between is and ought to be,
for I find in other places the most
severe arraignment of the state as a
unitary concern that must give way.
But I pass on. How much "disper-
sion of power" should there be ; what
degree of federation ; what limitation
of the power of final decision by a
central authority? Further, and
most to the point, are there now ob-
servable tendencies in the United
States toward this "dispersion of
power"; toward a loosening of the
reins of the central government;
toward the creation of autonomous or
quasi-autonomous bodies which, fed-
erated, may supplant the central au-
thority?
I turn to Mr. Laski. "Even in
America," he writes (A. M. S., p.
384), "the classic ground of federal
experiment, it is a new federalism
that is everywhere developing." He
mentions the Federal Reserve Sys-
tem and the Rural Credits Board, and
he refers to an article by Mr. Croly
in the New Republic for further light.
I turn to Mr. Croly (N. R., Dec. 16,
1916, pp. 170-72) and find an article
entitled "The Failure of the States."
Though it is unsigned, no doubt Mr.
Laski knew who wrote it. But what
I find herein is, strangely enough, a
declaration, not that centralization is
declining, but that it is everywhere
developing. The article is a severe
arraignment of the inefficiency,
backwardness, selfishness, capricious-
ness, irresponsibility, wrongheaded-
ness, "social obscurantism," and cor-
ruption, along with a number of
minor evils, on the part of the forty-
eight American State Governments.
Constitutional federalism, it would
appear, has broken down. But the
outstanding fact is the increasing
centralization of power in Washing-
ton. "Symptoms of the tendency
toward centralization," he writes,
. "are showing themselves in every
region of political activity," and he
gives what appear to him to be in-
stances. He is apparently unsatisfied
to have the declaration rest upon his
own assertion, and so he cites a com-
petent authority. This authority is
none other than Mr. Laski. "No won-
der," writes Mr. Croly, "an English
observer of American political pro-
cesses inquires, as Mr. Harold J.
Laski does, in another column,
whether the American democracy is
not consenting to the erection in
Washington of an ominous and auto-
cratic mechanism of centralized con-
trol."
I turn to Mr. Laski, in the same
number (pp. 176-78), to find the con-
firmation of Mr. Croly's statement;
and then I turn back to Mr. Croly to
find the confirmation, suggested in
Mr. Laski's book, of the evidence of
the developing "new federalism."
The evidence cited is exceedingly
tenuous. There is the Federal Re-
serve System — nothing more — and
there follows the prediction that
similar bodies are sure to be organ-
ized. But the amazing part of this
pluralistic argument is the insistence
(or seeming insistence) upon central
political control. The illuminating
passage follows:
The Federal Reserve system, for instance,
combines regional banks, which preserve a
sufficient measure of local self-government
with central political control. Similar ex-
amples of regional independence subject to
national determination of general policy will
almost certainly be adopted when the work of
reorganizing essential national industries, such
as the railroads and the food and luel supplies,
are seriously undertaken.
So all the brave words about the
"dispersion of power," "the neutrali-
zation of the state," "the abdication
of sovereignty," "the coordination
and federation of allegiances"; the
dark hints of the explosive revolu-
tionism in this tremendous new idea
— all soften down into an approval
of boards and bureaus under the
sovereign control of the national
state. M. Jourdain has been talking
prose all his life without knowing
it. If this be Administrative Syn-
dicalism we have most of us been
Administrative Syndicalists all our
lives. The parlor radical can not but
feel that he has been cruelly hoaxed,
and that he must transfer his alle-
giance to some more thrilling pro-
posal.
I turn back to Mr. Laski for fur-
ther evidence of the "new federal-
ism." He says {A. M. S., pp. 384-
85) ;
There is a clear tendency upon the part of
industrial and professional groups to become
self-governing. Legislation consecrates the
solutions they evolve. They become sovereign
in the sense — which, after all, is the only sense
that matters — that the rules they draw up are
recognized as the answer to the problems they
have to meet. They are obtaining compulsory
power over their members ; they demand their
taxes; they exercise their discipline; they en-
force their penal sanctions. They raise every
question that the modern federal state has to
meet, and their experience is, governmentally,
a valuable basis for national enterprise.
So, it appears, you may have it both
ways: the extension of administra-
tive service under the control of the
sovereign state is Pluralism ; and the
totally opposite thing, the functioning
of bodies which decline to recognize
the state (if there be any), is also
Pluralism. It is hard to be patient
with such a mass of preposterous
assertions as are contained in the
passage quoted. If Mr. Laski can
furnish a single instance of a group
that has become self-governing (or
is in the way of becoming self-gov-
erning) in the sense required by his
implication, he will do far more for
his argument than by citing innum-
erable passages of irrelevancy from
De Maistre or Lamennais. If he can
show how the "consecration of solu-
tions" by legislation is an evidence of
coordination of power, he will do yet
more for his argument. By a reck-
less manipulation of words — by the
use of "taxes" where he means
"dues"; "penal sanctions" where he
means "rules regarding fines and sus-
pensions" ; "compulsory power"
where he means a very restricted con-
trol over certain activities in a single
field — he has made a showing for
autonomism as an existing force. By
representing it as a specifically mod-
ern phenomenon (which it is not)
and as a force which is constantly
March 27, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[305
developing (an assertion exceedingly
dubious) he has heightened the pic-
ture; and he has capped and crowned
it with the statement that these vol-
untary bodies "raise every question
that the modern federal state has to
meet." All this is too painfully
absurd for comment. But one can
not pass this amazing summary with-
out a look at the meaning of the third
sentence. If sovereignty, in "the
only sense that matters," is the
power, for instance, of the trade-
union to determine the conditions
under which its members will work,
then the whole structure of Pluralism
as a rival of the existing state cracks
and falls into fragments.
I trust that there is more to be said
for it than this ; for though I hold to
the unitary state and am even unable
to think of organized society in any
other terms, I can yet wish that a
theory (or more correctly, a social
passion) which has captivated so
many beings should be presented at
its best that it might be fairly judged.
It may be that this theory (or what-
ever it is to be called) is, as Mr. Lipp-
mann says, "widely and deeply re-
sented." But I choose to think that
the resentment has a different object.
I think it is directed not at the theory
but at the manner of propaganda.
A part of the prevalent resentment
arises, I fear, from the arrogant and
sweeping censure of system, codes,
institutions, and individuals in the
name and on behalf of the theory by
exponents who can not intelligibly
explain it even to themselves.
W. J. Ghent
The Transportation Problem in France
THE recent abortive strike of the
railroad workers, the second since
the signing of the armistice, has once
more drawn attention to the transporta-
tion problem, one of the gravest con-
fronting the French Government. Since
the previous attempt of July 21, 1919,
the condition of the railroads has stead-
ily deteriorated, partly through the ex-
tension of the personnel with thousands
of inefficient hands, partly through the
rowing lack of rolling stock and coal.
V few months after the July strike of
;ast year, the Chamber of Deputies, de-
sirous to avert the spread of Bolshevism
by meeting the ever-growing demands
Df railway men and other industrial
workers, passed the eight-hour working-
Jay law, which compelled the railroad
companies to increase their personnel by
140,000 men. These had to be recruited
rom various industries by the lure of
ligh wages, although they were un-
rained hands who had to be taught
!ieir work from the beginning. The ex-
orienced staff, moreover, suffering from
he strain of four or five years' overwork
luring the war, gave way to a pardon-
ible longing for leisure and laziness, a
latural reaction from the hardships they
lad bravely withstood in the hour of
1 anger.
The condition of the rolling stock was
ittle better. The pre-war average num-
ler of engines under repair amounted to
ight per cent.; it has now risen to
wenty. The number of passenger cars
nder repair has gone up from nine to
wenty-six per cent., that of freight cars
rom four to seventeen. The engines
■ hich Germany has handed over are
mostly out of condition, and the adjust-
ment of American engines to their new
work has only recently been accomplished.
As a consequence of this decrease in
labor output and lack of rolling stock,
several passenger trains had to be taken
off. But even that restriction could not
bring the freight traffic up to its normal
volume. And, which is worse, even if the
transportation system could be restored
to its efficiency and comprehensiveness
of six years ago, it would not answer
the requirements of new agricultural and
industrial conditions created by the war.
A complete reorientation and reorganiza-
tion is necessary for the railroads to
meet the exigencies of entirely altered
circumstances.
The destruction, first of all, of the fac-
tories in the north and the east of France,
a loss which it will take many years
to repair, has thrown the currents of
traffic out of their accustomed course.
The materials which are necessary for a
given industry are, in a great many cases,
no longer to be found in those parts from
which they used to come. The devastated
provinces, which formerly were great
producers, are only consumers now. And,
in the second place, the abnormal propor-
tion between export and import, the for-
mer having decreased to the lowest level
ever known in the history of France, is
another factor which makes for disturb-
ance and disorganization of railroad
traffic.
But the gravest problem the railroads
have to cope with is the severe lack of
coal. Even before the war home produc-
tion remained far short of the country's
needs. Now a great number of mines
are ruined, and years will pass before
they will have recovered their former
productivity. And the output of those
mines that can be worked has been con-
siderably reduced by the introduction of
the eight-hour working day. Hence
France has to import her coal from
abroad. But Belgium, where similar ab-
normal conditions prevail, can not spare
her much; the export from Great Britain
has been severely curtailed by repeated
strikes in the mining districts, and Ger-
many, which, under the terms of peace,
had to indemnify France for her ruined
pits, has failed up to now to supply the
stipulated amount.
■ As a result of these deplorable eco-
nomic conditions the railroads are faced
by a financial debacle. The amount of
wages paid to their personnel has in-
creased from 800 to 3,000 million francs,
their coal expenses, from 350 to 1,500
million francs ; the total cost of exploita-
tion from 1,250 to 4,750 million francs.
What return can security holders expect
for the money invested in a railroad busi-
ness? Two and a half million French-
men have placed their confidence in what,
a few years ago, appeared to be a safe
investment. Most of these people are
small holders, the average amount of
their capital thus invested not exceeding
7,000 francs. A railway strike that
threatens to ruin outright a by no
means prosperous concern in which one
of every fifteen Frenchmen is financially
interested is, therefore, bound to be un-
popular.
The obvious remedy for this precarious
situation is to raise the fares. On Feb-
ruary 23, a new, greatly increased tariff
went into effect. Another effective meas-
ure is the priority granted, under the
freight-carriage regulations, to essentials
such as foodstuffs, agricultural imple-
ments, etc. However, these remedies are
only makeshifts. The whole system,
which is based on a scheme drafted as
far back as 1883, no longer answers pres-
ent exigencies and should be put on quite
a different footing. "Nationalize the
roads," is the Socialists' cry ; whereas the
capitalists of the old regime fear nothing
but disaster from any change whatever.
The country, however, will not listen to
either extreme. It looks to M. Noble-
maire, one of the new members of the
Chamber of Deputies, for a solution of
the problem. He is the son of a former
manager of the great P. L. M. company ;
his brother manages the Compagnie des
Wagons-Lits, and he himself is on the
board of the P. L. M. As he proudly said
in the speech in which he unfolded his
scheme before the Chamber, he knows
what he is talking about. Seldom did
the Chamber listen to a speaker so inti-
mately acquainted with the matter under
discussion; he made a strong impression
on his audience by an absolute freedom
from prejudice, by an honest apprecia-
306]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 46
tion of modern ideas concerning social
cooperation, and by his expert discussion
of the remedies for an evil which he has
been better situated than any living
Frenchman to observe and study closely.
M. Noblemaire envisages the fact that
the problem is not exclusively economic,
but has its moral and social aspects as
well. This scheme involves an entire re-
vision of actual conditions. He advo-
cates a strong concentration of the lead-
ing organization, together with local de-
centralization, guarantees granted to the
security holders by the state, and coop-
eration between the managers and the
professional syndicates. But it is a long
way from the enacting of a new railway
law to the blessed state of things which
it is meant to inaugurate. Will life,
during that long and anxious time, keep
on pulsating through the arteries of the
country's organism?
Andre Rostand
Paris, March 4
Correspondence
The Theory of Purchasing
Power
To the Editors of The Review:
William James once showed me a re-
view of a book on ethics in a protection-
ist journal which declared that it was as
impossible to construct a theory of con-
duct without religion as to expect pros-
perity without a protective tariff. From
the bed-rock of the tariff it was possible
to reason direct to the Kingdom of God.
With like confidence it would seem as if
the believer in the quantity theory of
money relied on the sacerdotal character
of the doctrine that the more money there
is in circulation the greater the demand
and the higher the level of prices. Be-
lieving that this dogma is neither true
in principle nor workable in fact, I beg
the courtesy of your journal for a brief
consideration of the matter.
Purchasing power, either in the offer
of money, or of checks drawn on a de-
posit account (the result of a credit
transaction) is the mechanism through
which demand operates. But economics
knows no doctrine — so far as I am
aware — that demand alone determines
the price of anything (1). We do have a
principle of demand and supply which
affects price. In short, buyers may ex-
press their desire for an article through
effective demand; that is, through ac-
ceptable purchasing power; but that is
only one-half the problem. The price is
also as much — if not more — determined
by all the conditions affecting supply (2).
When a millionaire contractor wishes a
hammer (a type of freely reproducible
articles), does he forget the state of the
arts, the efficiency of modern industry in
producing hammers, and make an offer
at a price independent of the production-
costs for hammers? (3). If he did, he
would soon be out of business. The supply
comes forward in competitive industries
under conditions affecting expenses of
production, such as prices of materials,
wages, and taxes. No competent buyer
pays more for goods than the price at
which his rival can buy, no matter how
much credit he has at the bank (4) . Just
because he is a successful man of wealth
and has credit we have the reason why
he is likely to know what a fair price
should be under existing conditions of
supply. What holds the price above a
given level at any time is the production-
costs (5). Demand and purchasing power
are adjusted to them. In fact, demand
varies with the price, generally falling
off as price rises and increasing as price
falls (6). That is, demand is always de-
mand at a price. Production-costs are
conditions influencing demand. Does not
every one know that to-day, in spite of
an intense desire for our goods in Eu-
rope, the demand for our exports is fall-
ing off because prices as increased by
the unfavorable rates of foreign ex-
change are high?
But, so far, we have had in mind only
the great mass of freely reproducible
articles. There are goods, however,
which can not be quickly supplied as de-
mand varies. Until supply can come
forward, a strenuous demand may keep
prices above production-costs. This is
the explanation of possible profiteering.
In such cases, it is not the offer of pur-
chasing power which is dominant in set-
ting the price, but the scarcity of the
goods ; for as soon as scarcity disappears
(even under a strong demand) price
falls to some relation to production-
costs. Of course, under absolute monop-
oly, supply has no effect, and demand is
decisive. That is what monopoly means.
On the prices of such goods changes in
the quantity of money and credit are not
material.
For sake of brevity, purchasing power
has so far been referred to as consisting
usually of money. But when loans are
made on the sale of staple goods to pur-
chasers, the bank first grants the bor-
rower a deposit account. Thus by a
credit operation. A, for instance, selling
shoes, has his goods coined into purchas-
ing power. So does B, who is selling
clothing ; and C, who is selling plows ; and
so on throughout the whole range of all
our industries. That is, A's purchasing
power is met by the purchasing power
of B, C, . . . Y, Z, offered for A's goods.
Therefore, why should A's purchasing
power, arising from normal credit, raise
the prices of the other's goods when met
by an equalizing demand? Demand by
normal credit does not come out of the
blue against all goods; it is a form of a
reciprocal demand of goods for each
other, offered through banks and clear-
ing houses. In its essence, normal credit
acts only as a medium of exchange like
money, and is not an initial cause of de-
mand; it is only a mechanism through
which goods coined into a means of pay-
ment are exchanged against each other.
The initial cause of the demand is the
possession of bankable goods.
But the logic of Alice in Wonderland
is left far behind by the argument that
the more dollars there are the more will
be offered for goods. Why a sober busi-
ness man with large means should
suddenly act like a spendthrift and be
obliged by some unseen force to expend
to-day all the purchasing power he has
for such goods as he may at the moment
want, is beyond any intelligence but that
of Sir Oliver Lodge (7). There is no such
impelling economical force. Worst of all,
this necessary expenditure of a man's
purchasing power is supported by the
amazing assumption that because of the
competition of purchasers there is no
limit to the ensuing rise of prices (8).
But what has happened to the competition
of sellers and producers? To argue as if
prices were fixed solely by buyers is to
assume that the whole world of suppliers
are sick with influenza or have gone to
each other's funerals. To talk as if sell-
ers had no effect on price is to suppose
that goods come into existence by incan-
tation or by rubbing Aladdin's lamp (9).
When men can not follow such reason-
ing, they are supposed to be under the
delusion that "gold is a fixed standard of
value." In the first place, it is one thing
to say that our currency is to-day re-
deemable in gold, and quite another
thing to say that "gold is a fixed stand-
ard of value." The latter is impossible,
and for a very good reason. Price is
the ratio of exchange between any article
and a given standard, like gold. A
change on either side of this ratio will
change price. If the production-costs of
steel or shoes increase (because of the
rising prices of materials, labor, etc.),
their prices will rise; which is the same
thing as saying that gold has fallen rela-
tively to steel and shoes. Now the quan-
tity theorists one-sidedly insist that
only causes affecting the money side of
the price ratio affect prices, utterly ob-
livious to what happens to the expenses
of producing goods. But if driven to
this point, they contend that materials
and labor could rise in price (and thus
raise production-costs) only because
there was more money or credit in circu-
lation offered for them. This fallacy,
however, entirely ignores the influence
of scarcity of materials and labor. I
have already dealt with that matter
above. Moreover, before we entered the
war and before prices rose materially,
scarcity conditions caused a higher price
for materials and labor. Why ignore
the supply side of demand and supply?
March 27, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[307
Then the curious point is made that,
even if production-costs did rise, that
"has absolutely nothing to do with the
question of the relation between prices
and the supply of money" (10). That is, if
the question at issue — that only an in-
crease of money raises the price of any-
thing, labor or materials — is granted,
then production-costs do not influence
the selling prices of goods (11). Of
course, no economist in his senses could
grant this for a moment. But to the
quantity theorist this method may be as
necessary as for the protectionist to
argue from the bed-rock of the tariff to
the existence of religion.
J. Laurence Laughlin
Boston, February 28
[The foregoing letter by Professor
Laughlin is in reply to the editorial on
"Prices and the Gold Standard" which
appeared in the Review for February 21.
For the sake of brevity and clearness we
have indicated by numbers the points
upon which it seems desirable to com-
ment, thus avoiding the necessity of re-
peating Professor Laughlin's remarks.
1 and 2. Nobody that we know any-
thing about has said or implied that "de-
mand alone determines the price of every-
thing," or has denied that the price is
as much determined "by all the condi-
tions affecting supply."
In the very article to which Professor
Laughlin is replying, we said :
The quantity theory of money perfectly
recognizes that high prices are quite as capable
of being brought about by diminution of pro-
ductivity as by increase of the monetary me-
dium. In so far as productivity has diminished
in these last years, it accounts for the rise of
prices. How serious that diminution has been,
nobody knows. But everybody knows that
there has been enormous increase in the
monetary medium ; and all that the quantity
theory says is that this increase has caused a
corresponding rise of prices.
3. The price offered by anybody for
hammers is of course not "independent
of the production-costs for hammers."
But the relation of the price of the ham-
mers to the production-costs is a rela-
tion not to those costs as measured in
hours of labor and quantity (by weight
or volume) of raw materials consumed,
but to those production-costs as meas-
ured in money. Reference to rise of
production-costs, therefore, only shoves
one step back the question of the rise
of prices, and leaves the nature of the
question just the same as before.
4. This is quite true; but if both the
buyer and his rivals have command of
a larger amount of credit in dollars than
they had before, while the supply of the
commodity for which they are bidding
has not increased, they will, unless there
is a combination among them, bid more
in dollars for it in the endeavor of each
to have his full share of the business.
5. This has been treated under 3.
6. Demand does "fall off as price
rises, and increase as price falls," if
the monetary supply is not altered; but
demand does not fall off as price rises
if the rise of prices simply keeps pace
with the increased volume of the mone-
tary medium at the command of pur-
chasers.
7. In the editorial to which Professor
Laughlin is replying we referred to the
fact that "some very intelligent persons
experience a certain difficulty" in this
matter, though we had not supposed that
any professors of political economy were
included among these persons. What we
said with a view to clearing up their
difficulty was as follows:
Merely because I have more dollars, they
ask, why should I pay a higher price for what
I want? But the reason is very plain. Any-
body who has more dollars than he had before
wishes to do something with the extra dollars ;
he wishes either to spend them or to save
them. Now if the things to be bought for the
dollars are no more abundant than they were
before, then, at the old scale of prices, he
would be getting more of the things than he
got before, and somebody else would have to
go without. Accordingly somebody — either he
or somebody else — will pay a higher price
rather than forgo the satisfaction of his de-
sires; and in this competition of purchasers
prices are raised. Nor is the case different if
he prefers to save instead of spending. People
do not in our time put their extra money into
a stocking. They invest it so as to draw in-
terest. But to invest means, directly or in-
directly, to engage in some form of produc-
tion or trade; and this, in turn, means to buy
either commodities or labor needed for the
carrying on of that production or trade. Thus
the extra money is put to just the same kind
of use as the old money — the purchase of
commodities or services. And if the aggre-
gate quantity of those commodities and serv-
ices remains the same while the number of
dollars available for the purchase of them is
doubled, the average price of them will be
doubled also.
8. Nobody says that "there will be
no limit to the ensuing rise of prices;"
the limit to which prices naturally tend
(conditions other than those affecting the
monetary volume remaining the same) is
that which would make the rise in the
general price-level proportional to the in-
crease of the monetary medium.
9. Nobody talks as if "sellers had no
effect on price."
10 and 11. We have already referred
to the matter of production-costs, under
5. But to make it plain that we said
nothing that could possibly be inter-
preted as meaning that "production-costs
do not influence the sefling prices of
goods," and that we did not beg the ques-
tion at issue, we will reproduce here the
whole of what we said on that point:
Mr. Laughlin's idea is that the prices of
commodities are high because, under the pres-
sure of war need, high wages were paid to
workingmcn, both in manufactures and agri-
culture, in order to stimulate production, and
that this had the effect of raising the prices
of all commodities. But this is only another
way of saying that the first thing that rose in
price was labor, and that other things followed
suit — which may be perfectly true, but has
absolutely nothing to do with the question of
the relation between prices and the supply of
money. If commodities had risen first, and
wages had risen afterwards in order to meet
the increased cost of living, the thing that
made the rise possible all round would still
have been the same — the increased supply of
money. As a matter of fact — and indeed of
notorious fact — the events have taken place
sometimes in one order and sometimes in the
other. The new supply of money may flow in
the first instance to any one of a hundred dif-
ferent points; but to msist that because it
flowed first to one point rather than another,
therefore the flow of money had nothing to
do with the case, is suggestive of the logic of
Alice in Wonderland rather than of the rea-
soning of political economy. — Eds. The Re-
view.]
The Work of the South
in Women's Education
To the Editors of The Review :
A copy of the Review containing the
article "The Women's Colleges" has come
into my hands, and I note with regret
that there is no mention of what the
South did in those early days for the edu-
cation of women. I, therefore, give you
a brief sketch of Wesleyan College,
Macon, Ga.
The Legislature of Georgia granted a
charter and gave the power to confer
degrees to Wesleyan College in 1836, but
the coUege was then named "The Georgia
Female College." On January 7, 1839,
the doors of the college were opened and
ninety students entered. The curriculum
was practically that of the colleges for
men. On July 16, 1840, eleven young
women were graduated and they received
the A. B. degree, the first degrees ever
given to women in the world. The first
name on the list was that of Catherine
Brewer, who married Richard A. Benson,
and became the mother of Admiral W. S.
Benson.
Harvard, the first college for men,
was founded in 1636, and two hundred
years later, in 1836, Wesleyan College,
the first college for women, was founded.
Neither Oberlin nor Holyoke was able to
give degrees until some years later than
Wesleyan. There were some excellent
seminaries in the South, and the college
drew its first students largely from them.
It is thought by some that the reading
of the work that Emma Willard was try-
ing to do in the North put into the minds
of some of our Southern men the idea
of doing better things for the women of
the South. Wesleyan has gone steadily
onward and upward, its doors have never
been closed, and it has sent out a great
number of cultured, broad-minded, edu-
cated women whose power has been felt
in this country and abroad.
LiLLUN P. Posey
Macon Go., March 20
308]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 46
Book Reviews
Public Service in the Days
of Roosevelt
George von Lengerke Me^tx, His Life and
Public Services. By M. A. De Wolfe
Howe. New York: Dodd, Mead and
Company.
MR. ROOSEVELT was a believer in
the amenities and civilities of pub-
lic as well as private life. He had a
very alert and correct sense of "form."
It was one of his strongly marked
traits, though little dwelt upon by his
many biographers. He gathered about
him while he was in the White House
many agreeable, pleasant, civil-spoken
men whose chief apparent qualification
was a distinct social background and
tradition. They were not grubby, work-
aday persons at all, but rather men who
had found the world a charming place
of sojourn largely because their fathers
and grandfathers had provided a solvent
for the bread-and-cheese problem. For
the most part they were the very best
butter and acquitted themselves credit-
ably. George von Lengerke Meyer was
one of these men.
The current fiction about Washington
in Roosevelt's time that sought to ac-
count for the circumstance that Meyer
held one good job after another was that
he was kept in by the potent influence of
Senator Lodge. The amusing theory was
that unless a gilded place was found and
kept for Meyer his ambition for public
service would lead him to make a race
for Congress against Augustus P. Gard-
ner, Mr. Lodge's son-in-law. It is true,
at any rate, that Mr. Meyer was giving
serious consideration to his chances as a
Congressional candidate when he ac-
cepted President McKinley's offer of the
Ambassadorship to Italy. It was Mr.
Gardner who went to Congress.
All men in public office should keep
a diary of their formal and informal
contacts. It insures a measure of
permanence to the memory of their
activities. So few measured opinions
are of value, but in any honest impres-
sion artlessly set down always inheres
the distinct flavor and quality of truth.
Meyer kept such a diary, and it has been
skilfully used by his present biographer.
Some quotations from it here will serve
best to give a taste of the man's quality.
During Meyer's residence in Italy
(1900-1905) the German Emperor was
showing much attention to Americans,
especially to rich Americans. The Em-
peror managed, not only at that period,
but in later years, to see a great deal of
our Ambassador. Meyer was of German
descent; both his paternal grandfather
and grandmother were German born. It
is apparent that he was flattered by the
Emperor's attentiveness. He has set
down fairly long and detailed accounts
of what happened on the several occa-
sions he lunched and dined with the
Kaiser and had long, uninterrupted, and
unhurried talks with him. After Meyer
had come home from Europe and was
Postmaster-General in Roosevelt's Cabi-
net he sets down in his diary :
The President in [Cabinet] meeting turned
to me and said that he had Imperial informa-
tion that I was not quite satisfied or contented
being in the Cabinet, and that he, the Em-
peror, would be very pleased to have me come
as Ambassador to Berlin ; reminded the Presi-
dent that he had sent Speck to please him.
On another and earlier day Mr. Meyer
records that one of the newspaper cor-
respondents came to him to ask if he
was going to Berlin, saying that he had
heard the story at the German Embassy,
where it was intimated that the appoint-
ment would be very agreeable to the
Kaiser.
In January, 1905, while still Ambassa-
dor at Rome, he received a letter from
President Roosevelt notifying him that
he was to be transferred to St. Petersburg
and also stating, with characteristic
vigor, Roosevelt's conception of the func-
tions of an Ambassador:
I desire to send you as Ambassador to St.
Petersburg. My present intention is, as you
know, only to keep you for a year as Am-
bassador; but there is nothing certain about
this, inasmuch as no man can tell what con-
tingencies will arise in the future; but at
present the position in which I need you is
that of Ambassador at St. Petersburg. St.
Petersburg is at this moment, and bids fair
to continue to be for at least a year, the most
important post in the diplomatic service, from
the standpoint of work to be done; and you
come in the category of public servants who
desire to do public work, as distinguished from
those whose desire is merely to occupy public
place — a class for whom I have no particular
respect. I wish in St. Petersburg a man who,
while able to do all the social work, able to
entertain and meet the Russians and his fel-
low-diplomats on equal terms, able to do all
the necessary plush business — business which
is indispensable— can do, in addition, the really
vital and important things. I want a man
who will be able to keep us closely informed,
on his own initiative, of everything we ought
to know ; who will be, as an Ambassador ought
to be, our chief source of information about
Japan and the war — about the Russian feeling
as to relations between Russia and Germany
and France, as to the real meaning of the
movement for so-called internal reforms, as
to the condition of the army, as to what force
can and will be used in Manchuria next sum-
mer, and so forth and so forth. The trouble
with our Ambassadors in stations of real im-
portance is that they totally fail to give us
real help and real information, and seem to
think that the life-work of an Ambassador is
a kind of glorified pink tea-party. Now, at
St. Petersburg I want some work done, and
you are the man to do it.
Within two months of his arrival at
St. Petersburg it fell to the American
Ambassador to conduct in person the
negotiations with the Czar which led to
the Peace Conference at Portsmouth and
the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese
war; a little more than two months later
he secured from the Czar, again in per-
son, the agreements upon terms which
brought about the signing of the treaty. •
He observed closely the beginning of the
internal disturbances in Russia and
watched the unpropitious opening of the
Duma. He wrote regularly to Roose-
velt. His letters and diaries written in
Russia in 1905, 1906, and 1907 picture a
government and a social condition now
passed beyond recall. His own records
of this period are more complete than
those of any of his other services.
The anecdotal, gossipy record of his
contacts and minor adventures in Wash-
ington, where he came in 1907 as Post-
master-General in the Roosevelt Cabinet,
is heartening to read at this time, when
Washington seems disorganized and
demoralized. Mr. Roosevelt did bring
interesting men to Washington and the
governmental machine was well admin-
istered and cared for during his time.
The diary reflects many of the lighter,
intimate aspects of the Roosevelt official
household. Here is a new T. R. epithet :
At a Cabinet meeting the President said,
"Notwithstanding our exact information
as to Japan's preparation there were
certain 'sublimated sweetbreads' who
closed their eyes to any chance of trouble
with Japan." And when the anti-
Japanese feeling came to the surface in
California, Roosevelt "regretted it be-
cause the State was too small to become
a nation and too large to put into a luna-
tic asylum." This was also said in the
close privacy of the Cabinet.
We quote at random a few other bits
of the diary :
May 11.— Ride with the President, Root, and
Lodge; go way out on the Potomac. The
French Ambassador and Madame Jusserand
were out in the park near the hurdles. The
President put his horse over the 3-foot stone
wall and the 4-foot hurdle. Then he turned
to me and said that we would jump them
together, which we did. Lodge said my horse
jumped in much better form. He was carry-
ing, however, about 30 pounds less. After
that, without realizing what effect it would
have on the President, I put my horse over
the 5-foot jump. I had no sooner done it
than the President went at it. His horse re-
fused, so he turned his horse, set his teeth,
and went at it again. This time the horse
cleared it well forward, but dragged his hind
legs. Lodge was very much put out that the
President has taken such a risk with his
weight. I appreciated that it was my fault,
for the President said, "I could not let one
of my Cabinet give me a lead and not follow."
October 25.— First Cabinet meeting since
last June, Taft and Straus absent. Presi-
dent tells a story why Root, according to a
certain general, is the greatest Secretary:
"The trouble with Taft was that he had once
been a Judge, and if he came up against the
law in a policy which he wanted to pursue,
he had such a respect for the law that he
gave in, while Secretary Root was such a
great lawyer that he always could find a way
to get around it."
February 16.— The President said to Root,
"George Meyer, when I ask him to go to walk,
refuses, but with an air which is as much as
to say, 'I have been several times and I am
able to do it, therefore I can refuse I'" The
March 27, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[309
President told this with one of his smiles
which showed all his fine teeth.
March 20— Cabinet meeting. All present.
Decide to accept the invitation from Japan
to have the fleet visit their ports. Attention
was brought to the publication of a Socialist
journal in Paterson. The President much in-
censed. It urged the use of dynamite to de-
stroy the troops and the police. Under instruc-
tions from the President, I am to stop the
transmission through the mails.
March 27.— Cabinet meeting. The Attorney
General informed the Cabinet that, under the
strict construction of the law, I probably had
not the authority to keep certain anarchistic
papers out of the mail, as the Courts had pre-
viously defined what "immoral" was.
I informed the Attorney General that it
had already been done, and the President
added that we had public sentiment with us,
and that he should continue this policy to-
wards the papers which threatened life and
property until the Courts stopped us.
Taft telephones me to meet him at the
Union Station at 3:30. Get there just as he
is getting out of his automobile. We sit down
on a bench in the Union Station and the secret
service men [form] a cordon about us. I find
he wants me to consider Beekman Winthrop
for Assistant Secretary of the Navy, which
is agreeable to me. He tells me Hale said to
him that a resolution would be introduced, if
I were appointed Secretary of the Navy, in-
vestigating my relations with the Fore River
Engine Co. I told him that I never owned a
diare or bond in my life.
March 2.— Final Cabinet meeting. Mr. Roose-
velt said, "Before we take up any business,
ts this is our last meeting, I want to say to
you that no President ever received more loyal
support from his official family than I have
received. The work that you have done I
Ijave received the credit for — credit must go
to the general in command. The only reward
you receive is having the knowledge of doing
your work well. I refuse to allow you to
reply;" but Garfield said, "Whatever we have
done has been inspired by your example."
While he was Secretary of the Navy in
I Mr. Taft's Cabinet, Mr. Meyer, singu-
(larly enough, kept no diary. That is
I unfortunate, for it would have made an
: interesting contrast.
Edward G. Lowry
A Modern Greek Poet
IKoSTES Palamas: Life Immovable. Trans-
lated by Aristides E. Phoutrides. Cam-
bridge : Harvard University Press.
MR. PHOUTRIDES, a Harvard doctor
of philosophy, who has recently ac-
Icepted a professorship at the University
\ot Athens, is undertaking the task of
aediating between the souls of a native
id an adopted country. He is proceed-
Dg with a tact, modesty, and good taste
liat are in refreshing contrast with the
ptyle of a more widely advertised inter-
reter who proclaims his mission in this
rain: "This book reveals America to
Brself by interpreting Europe. I stand
symbolic relation to both Hemispheres
-having navigated unknown seas of
erman psychology."
Dr. Phoutrides' translation of the
jief work of the modern Greek poet
Costes Palamas is also of a very differ-
■5nt literary quality from that of the
/olume of grotesque renderings from
German poetry put forth a few years
ago under the auspices of one of the most
eminent representatives of German sci-
ence in America:
Naught else he loved above it.
He emptied it every meal,
And so he used to love it,
The tears from his eyes would steal.
There are no niaiseries of this sort in Dr.
Phoutrides' book. Estimates of its value
as absolute poetry may vary. But there
is nothing to offend the taste or provoke
the smiles of a reader bred in the purest
traditions of English poetry. One ap-
parent possible exception.
The lilies grew of marble witherless,
would be remedied by a comma after
"marble." The original has —
Bgainoun amarant apo marmaro ta krina
Omitting the rhymes and the double
rhymes as too difficult to reproduce, he
has given us in correct rhythm, and in
singularly pure and often truly poetical
English, a faithful transcript of what
the Greek poet tries to say and what the
strange language in which he writes will
not let him say to more than a few score
' readers in all the world.
Mr. Phoutrides will probably not con-
cur in this estimate. But he will par-
don the sincerity that raises a most in-
teresting psychological problem. He is
able to keep in separate chambers of the
mind his proved and competent appre-
ciation of classical Greek poetry, the pur-
ity of his English taste with his mastery
of English poetical diction, and his pa-
triotic enthusiasm for the quaint lan-
guage which a poet of modern Athens is
driven to employ. He is not troubled
by the mixture of clipped popular forms,
commonplace literary modern Greek, and
poetic compounds suggested by the older
language and sometimes emulating its
happiest audacities in which Palamas em-
bodies his genuine if slightly Byronic in-
spiration of sentiment and reflection.
But for all, save the very few who are
capable of such division of the records
of the mind, Mr. Phoutrides' version is
far better than the original. It is bet-
ter for me. In the sestet of the second
sonnet on the lagoon city of Missolonghi
I can read with pleasure unalloyed by
the shock of any admixture of incon-
gruity :
There stands Varsarova, the triple-headed ;
And from her heights, a lady from her tower.
The moon bends o'er the waters lying still.
But innocent peace, the peace that is a child's.
Not even there I knew ; but only sorrow
And, what is now a fire — the spirit's spark.
But in spite of two winters spent in
Athens I can not read the original so.
It is not that I am unable to construe it.
But my pleasure is baffled by the san apo
purgou doma, the sta olostrata nera, the
mia photia echei genei and other aberra-
tions from the haunting nouns that pre-
occupy my mind.
I can not in feeling harmonize them
either with the delicacy of the poetical
sentiments or with the sophistication of
the compound epithets, some of them
hardly intelligible to readers who would
require sta and san and the like. Emer-
son somewhere says that the single word
"Madame" spoils an entire page of Ra-
cine for him. I have outgrown that par-
ticular prejudice. But what Anatole
France feels as "those exquisite lines"
of Baudelaire —
Et des que le matin fait chanter les platanes
D'acheter au bazar anznas et bananes
still, in spite of my better knowledge and
belief,aflfect me somewhat in this fashion:
And when dawn thro' the plane tr^es the
morning breeze fans
To buy at the bazar pineapples and "banans."
And this gross caricature, though not in
strict logic a parallel, may serve to illus-
trate the chief obstacle to the appreci-
ation of modern Greek poetry by English
speaking scholars — the obtrusion and
conflict of incompatible associations.
This does not interfere with the enjoy-
ment of the Klephtic ballads. They are
too simple, too far removed from clas-
sical Greek, to invite the fatal compari-
son— "simia quam similis." But ordi-
nary modern Greek verse with its dis-
regard of quantity, its perpetual sug-
gestion of French, English, or German
idiom, the teasing approximations of its
polysyllabic and often beautiful com-
pounds to classical Greek, and its sudden
lapses into what from this point of view
are barbarisms and solecisms requires for
its enjoyment a more agile and open
mind than most of us with the utmost
goodwill can achieve. The French crit-
ics who salute Mr. Palamas as the great-
est living European poet are not, I sus-
pect, more intimately familiar with mod-
ern Greek, but only less sensitive to these
disparates, if I may borrow a word from
their own language. They estimate Mr.
Palamas by their sympathy with his poet-
ical ideas — ^his gallicized criticism of
life and letters, his twentieth-century
questionings of destiny, his Wordsworth-
ian religion of nature and tranquillity,
his neo-Hellenic patriotism blended with
Childe-Haroldian meditations on the de-
parted glories of a Greece whose olives
are still as green as when Minerva
smiled :
For I stood on the end of the sea, and thee I
beheld from afar,
O white, ethereal Liokoura, waiting that from
thy midst
Parnassus, the ancient, shine forth and the
nine fair sisters of song.
Yet, what if the fate of Parnassus is changed I
what if the nine Fair Sisters are gone?
Thou standest still, O Liokoura, young and
forever one
O thou muse of a future Rhythm and a Beauty
still to be born.
All these things Mr. Phoutrides' versions
give us with perfect faithfulness and in
a sufficiently poetical English diction en-
310]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 46
tirely free from the disharmonies that
thwart our endeavors to do justice to
the original. His book, with its thought-
ful, well-written introduction, will give
much pleasure to the quiet lovers of the
quiet poetry of meditation and senti-
ment. There are still a few such left in
spite of the noisy vogue of Miss Amy
Lowell's "Grand Cancan of St. Mark's
or the Four Horses of the Acropolis."
(I quote from memory.) In the words
of our author:
But still more beautiful and pure than these,
An harmony fit for the chosen few
Fills with its ringing sounds our dwelling
place,
A lightning sent from Sinai and a gleam
From great Olympus, like the mingling sounds
Of David's harp and Pindar's lyre conversing
In the star-spangled darkness of the night.
Paul Shorey
First Youth
Pirates of the Spring. By Forrest Raid.
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company.
CoGCiN. By Ernest Oldmeadow. New York:
The Century Company.
The Burning Secret. By Stephen Branch.
New York: Scott and Seltzer.
Jeremy. By Hugh Walpole. New York:
George H. Doran Company.
OUAINT enough now seems the time
when a child was looked upon as a
sort of unsuccessful or at best incom-
plete grown-up. Yet it survived by some
centuries the John Evelyn who boasted
that there had been "nothing childish"
about the son who died of Greek and
other unchildish complaints before reach-
ing the age of five. Not until our own
generation has childishness ceased to be
looked upon as a blemish, and childlike-
ness come to be perceived as a quality in
itself venerable. It has remained for us
not merely to yield the infant his place in
the sun, but to pay him tribute as a
prophet ; or at least as a celestial stranger
whose undimmed vision of our makeshift
world may be of value. Very recently
we have been giving serious study to
the tragi-comedy of adolescence.
In an earlier novel, "The Spring Song,"
Forrest Reid achieved a remarkable in-
terpretation of a child who, somewhat
haplessly, carries over his childish sen-
sitiveness and imaginativeness into the
years of boyhood. It is a touching por-
trait of an Ariel among the Stalkys.
"Pirates of the Spring" belongs frankly
to the Stalky-realm. Its four schoolboys
are typical and inclusive rather than ex-
ceptional, very British, very much in the
recognized public school manner. For
the thousandth time we are here inducted
into the privacies of the English school
for young gentlemen, with its gentle-
manly masters, its scholarly head, its
cricket, its construing, its chicane. A
point of novelty is that our four boys
are day-scholars, a race commonly dis-
credited in British school-fiction. The
central figure is Beach Traill, son of a
charming and well-to-do widow. From
the schoolmaster's point of view, he is
the dullest of the four. There is little
far him in the insides of books, and he
keeps his place in school by the merest
foothold. But he has character and a
kind of sturdy charm, an instinct for the
right kind of people and the right way
of conduct in a larger sense. For
Beach's friendship the other three in
their different ways contend. He has one
blind spot, the result of his boyish feel-
ing for a younger boy Evan. It is not
quite an infatuation, but one of those
innocent if not altogether wholesome
leanings of youth to youth which are so
common during the period of adolescence.
Evan's beauty and half-feminine weak-
ness are lures to the stalwart older boy.
We are largely concerned with his grad-
ual release from what threatens to be-
come an unhealthful relation. The
moral, I say, is ruthlessly British. Beach
Traill and Palmer Dorset and Miles Oul-
ton are essentially all right; (because)
they are of good stock, well-housed and
well-bred. The villain, Cantillon, is a
bounder and a cur, and the handsome
Evan is at bottom a cad and a coward;
(because) they have lacked like advan-
tages of birth and breeding. By way of
offset — and, so far as we can see, with-
out the knowledge of the author — Evan's
mother, that amiable Philistine and fault-
less skipper of the domestic bark, is
infinitely superior to Beach's pretty and
well-bred mother in character as well as
in personality.
She is a far more real person than the
mother of "Coggin," who is held up for
our admiration in the tale of that name,
as a lady of low degree. Though British,
Coggin is one of nature's gentlemen as
well as a genius — a hard compound to
swallow for the conventional novel-
reader. For it seems to be generally
agreed that a genius is almost always a
cad, even with all possible advantages of
birth and rearing. Coggin is not a cad;
but he is, to tell the truth, a fearful
prig, and the reader must have a patient
way with priggish and humorless virtue
to bear with him till the end of the pres-
ent narrative. The story is told with a
certain skill and polish ; but it is not very
clearly worth the telling, for all that.
Even if you believe in Coggin, he re-
mains little short of a bore ; and the tale
ends in a smother of religious emotional-
ism centring in the not very well-bal-
anced parson, who is supposed to have
been turned mysteriously into a sort of
pseudo-Christ (what more popular figure
in recent fiction?) by contact with Cog-
gin. Coggin's merit, I take it, is that he
is without guile, integer vitae; but surely
he needn't have been an ass? He is the
virtuous prodigy about whom there is
nothing that is childish, and, alas, little
that is human.
"The Burning Secret" is, perhaps, a
"novelette" rather than a novel; the study
of an episode in its bearing upon various
lives — two lives really. The scene is a
foreign mountain resort in a country un-
named. The persons are a Jewess on
the verge of overmaturity, wife of a
prosperous lawyer of "the metropolis";
her twelve-year-old son Edgar; and a
woman-hunting young baron. The Jew-
ess is the baron's only promise of sport
at the time and place. As a first move
in the game he makes up to the boy,
who responds with passionate gratitude.
But he soon finds himself pushed aside;
then begins his awakening. It is he who
saves his mother from her folly, and in
the process leaves childhood behind him.
Not altogether unhappily, for now he
dimly perceives the mysterious charm of
the future reaching out to him: "Once
again the leaves in the book of his child-
hood were turned alluringly, then the
child fell asleep, and the profounder
dream of his life began." The story has
a compactness and distinction compa-
rable to, say, Mrs. Wharton's "Ethan
Frome," or Mr. Swinnerton's more re-
cent "Nocturne," It is not, of course, a
"pleasant" story.
I confess to having found Mr. Wal-
pole's "Jeremy" hard reading. It is
a circumstantial and doubtless faithful
chronicle of the nursery life of an Eng-
lish household some thirty years ago. It
sedulously refrains from having any spe-
cial point or "idea." It records in piti-
less detail the egotism, the whimsicality,
the grubbiness, the fancies, the predilec-
tions of an average sort of family of
children. It represents a kind of thing
which has been very much done of late,
and is a solid piece of work in that kind.
But it adds nothing of great account to
our lore of youth or to our debt to Mr.
Walpole. And Jeremy is too neutral and
"average" a youngster to absorb atten-
tion for his own sake.
The Run of the Shelves i
MISS ELLEN FITZGERALD has
translated for Doubleday, Page the
French Volume of "Walt Whitman : The
Man and his Work," published by M.
Leon Bazalgette in 1908. Miss FitzGerald
teaches English in a normal college, and
her own English is a melancholy proof
of the growing insensibility of educators
and publishers alike to their obligations
as curators of the language. M. Bazal-
gette is not a critic; he is a biographer,
or, better, a portrait-painter, or, better
still an indweller who invites the reader
to share his domestication in the tene-
ment of Whitman's personality. Person-
ality in this case, includes and stresses
the physique. There are moments when
we feel disposed to say that the subject
of this biography is the person of Walt
March 27, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[311
Whitman. The author can not take his
hands off his poet's frame; when he is
not feeling his pulse, he is testing his
muscle.
The book has been prepared with some
ire. Every fact of weight is supported
by a reference — the only means by which
the exhibitor of a foreign theme can pro-
tect both himself and his readers. There
are parts of Whitman's life, notably the
period before 1855 and the finalities of
ins decline, which the devotion and per-
severance of the biographer make rather
vivid for us. But M. Bazalgette is in-
separable from his subject; his jubilee
from page 1 to page 355 is uninterrupted.
Now a biographer who has chosen a sub-
ject is a good deal in the position of a
man who has married a wife. Devotion
is the presumable motive in both acts,
but henceforth a certain chariness or
continence in praise is enjoined by the
publicity of the relation. When the
author is too lavish of exclamation points
the reader parries with the question
mark. Whitman was a man who might
be said by a reckless figure to bathe in
humanity, as he bathed in rivers or the
sea, and this book is designed after a
sort for bathers in Whitman. But much
of the tonic effect of the robust plunge
is lost when M. Bazalgette insists on
heating the water for use in his private
tank.
In one sense the book is very thorough ;
it leaves no phase of Whitman's life un-
ouched. The reader, however, may be re-
minded of a delightful pleasantry which,
iccording to a recent article in the Cen-
tury, was uttered to General Pershing
n Mexico by some person lowly enough
0 be impertinent: "Well, General, I
hink we've surrounded Villa — at least
)n one side." It is in something of the
lame fashion that M. Bazalgette has en-
ircled Whitman.
There is much more than antiquarian
nterest — though much of that, too, of
n absorbing character — in Frederic J.
Vood's "Turnpikes of New England"
Boston: Marshall Jones), a handsome
olume of which both author and pub-
isher have reason to be proud. A de-
jailed history of each of the many turn-
like companies, such as is here fur-
ished, offers a great deal to interest
he engineer, and, from one point of
iew, summarizes the economic develop-
lent of the country from the close of
le Revolution to the middle of the nine-
jenth century. To all these varied ap-
eals of his subject Major Wood is fully
nd discriminatingly responsive.
The turnpikes were built by the first
f the public service corporations,
carcely one of them, though the public
jntinued to subscribe for stock with an
ithusiasm that is a little difficult to
nderstand, ever collected enough tolls to
pay even a decent interest return on the
investment. Before many years, long
before the competition of the railroads
began to be felt, the corporations were
glad to turn their highways over to the
town or the county, which in turn were
seldom glad to assume the responsibility.
But, thanks to private enterprise, and
in spite of public hostility to the pay-
ment of tolls at all and to the tendency
of the corporations to lay their roads in
a straight line, no matter who was
inconvenienced, communication between
town and town was made, what it had
hardly been before 1800, a practicable
every-day affair. The book is furnished
with excellent maps and many photo-
graphs.
There is one community in Palestine
which must be watching the Zionists with
more than trepidation. As old a feud
as any that exists in the whole world is
that between the Jews and the Samari-
tans, and age has not abated its vigor.
The Moslems and Christians may view
the Jews as the Canaanites did the in-
vading army of Joshua, but these can
fairly take care of themselves. With the
tiny body of Samaritans it is different,
and only archaeologists are interested in
them as a strange bit of social and re-
ligious fossilization. It is, therefore, to
their advantage to have their very
strangeness recognized. As museum
"specimens, if not as a viable people, they
may be saved. So every book about them
helps, and especially one like Dr. J. E. H.
Thomson's ""The Samaritans, Their Testi-
mony to the Religion of Israel." (Lon-
don: Oliver and Boyd), for it is full of
vivid antiquarian detail. He evidently
likes the Samaritans as he has known
them, and he has known them quite inti-
mately. He has recast, in his mind, the
whole history of Israel round them and
their problems — their ritual, their his-
tory, their theology, and their sacred
texts — and has gained thereby some most
interesting ways of looking at that his-
tory. There is much to be said for this
method of shaking the kaleidoscope of
the world, and Dr. Thomson has used it
skilfully. As he says himself, he has come
out with conclusions which agree neither
with traditional orthodoxy nor with the
orthodoxy of the dominant critical
school; and that is a distinct gain. The
more dominant schools, orthodox or so-
called critical, are criticised, the better it
is for them and for everybody. When
their conclusions pose as "the assured re-
sults of modern science" they invite
new thunderbolts, and there are several
celestial flashes in this book.
"Home, Then What?— The Mind of the
Doughboy, A. E. F." (Doran) consists of
thirty short essays submitted by Ameri-
can expeditionary soldiers in a prize com-
petition. Able the essays are not, if one
reflects on the aggregate of brains and
of literary ability, tried or untried, which
the conscription of the entire young man-
hood of an enlightened people must have
sent to France. Diversified the essays
are not. Mr. John Kendrick Bangs, in
the uncritical benevolence of a sunny
"Foreword," begins his first paragraph
with the assertion that it would take a
thousand pens with a thousand nibs
apiece to set down the variety of
thoughts in the minds of two million
doughboys. He begins his second para-
graph by saying that their minds ran in
grooves. The likeness of men to each
other is modified surprisingly little by
that cult of individuality in the universal
praise of which we assert our difference
and prove our unity. The feelings, the
purposes, in these papers are exemplary.
This is partly the outcome of the condi-
tions. A prize competition is an inspec-
tion or dress parade, and it is only nat-
ural that the ideas and sentiments which
appear in it should be beautifully
groomed.
All this is true; but its truth has no
quarrel with the other truth that lovers
of America might replenish their faith
in its destiny by a perusal of these
manly, modest, sane, and patriotic es-
says. A year in military service has al-
tered the stuff of the ideals of these
young men very little, but it has done for
their ideals what it has done for their
persons — made them erect and robust.
It is curious to observe that in these
writers there is no visible mark of any
lasting effect upon their spirits of the
horrors and squalors to which their rela-
tion has been so intimate and painful.
Not one of them finds his present world
ugly.
Mr. Humphrey Milford, of the Oxford
University Press, has recently issued for
the British Academy two pamphlets:
"Shakespeare and the Makers of Vir-
ginia," and "Sir James Murray." The
first, the annual Shakespeare lecture for
1919, is the work of Sir A. W. Ward, a
fellow of the Academy, who speaks in
most complimentary fashion of "Shakes-
peare and the Founders of Liberty in
America," by Professor C. M. Gayley, of
the University of California. The sec-
ond pamphlet is interesting to Americans
because it has to do with the learned
editor of the Oxford Dictionary, Sir
James A. H. Murray, who, it will be
remembered, died in 1915, before the
completion of this great work. This
interesting biographical sketch is writ-
ten by Dr. Murray's principal coadjutor.
Dr. Henry Bradley, who truly says of his
chief that "it is to Murray far more than
to any other man that the honor of this
great achievement will belong."
312]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 46
Drama
Arnold Bennett's "Sacred
and Profane Love" —
John Barrymore in
"Richard III"
MR. ARNOLD BENNETT'S "Sacred
and Profane Love," which is aiding
Miss Elsie Ferguson to pack the Morosco
Theatre, is a play of which I do not
clearly grasp the purport. An outline of
the plot may serve to explain my diffi-
culties, if it explains nothing else, to the
inquiring reader.
In the first act an inexperienced young
girl, Carlotta Peel, gives herself to a cele-
brated pianist, Emilio Diaz, on the ur-
gency of feelings implanted by an hour's
acquaintance. This takes place in a
house of timid and even peevish respec-
tability, and Mr. Bennett's excuse for the
dramatic impropriety is puerile. What-
ever our view of the morality of the act
— Mr. Bennett's unconcern about its mor-
als is Olympian — surely we can not but
feel that, on the part of two persons of
the first order of human capacity, its pre-
cipitation is clownish. The mere sense
of artistic process which inhibits the be-
ginning of a symphony with its finale or
a novel (the girl is a novelist) with the
concluding chapter should have inter-
posed its quiet veto. The girl, however,
becomes frightened and distrustful, and
the hurry of her tremulous flight in the
chill of the reproachful provides a brief
scene of novel interest. Afterwards she
repents, but — and here lies the pith and
marrow of the play — what she repents is
not the deed, but the departure. She
had failed in faith.
Act II discovers Carlotta Peel, after
a lapse of seven years, accumulating fame
and fortune by the composition of heart-
probing novels in a suburb of London.
The main plot is almost motionless, but
there is a curious interlude in which Car-
lotta finally declines an elopement with a
married publisher to whom she had con-
fessed her attachment and vouchsafed a
kiss. The import of this outbreak of vir-
tue is not clear unless Mr. Bennett means
to suggest that the persons who yield
magnificently can magnificently renounce.
The third act finds Carlotta Peel at
the door of Emilio Diaz, whom the mor-
phine habit has expelled from concert
halls and decent hotels, and condemned to
the ignominies of a degenerate life in an
evil district of forgetful Paris. Diaz is
brought to accept the companionship and
nursing of Carlotta at the end of a long
scene, which is somewhat bloodshot and
disheveled for the author of "Clay-
hanger," and which, lying inside the
story, lies outside the theme. Indeed the
theme and story in this play remind one
of those fellow-travelers who rejoin each
other after frequent separations.
Act IV, in contrast to Act III, might
almost be described as an element in the
theme, but an interlude in the story.
The return of Diaz to London, where, in
the confidence of returning health and
skill, he plays, amid resurgent plaudits,
in an overflowing concert-hall, is of
course essential to the narrative. But the
real point of Act IV is the momentary
revival of Carlotta's old insecurity as to
the faithfulness of Diaz, an insecurity
which is finally dispelled by his utter-
ance of the tranquillizing words: "I
drink to our marriage."
What does all this mean? Trust, says
Mr. Bennett. Yes: but trust where and
when? Are men as men to be trusted in
illicit ties? The male record is discour-
aging. Are artists as such to be trusted
in like relations? The artistic record is
disquieting. If Mr. Bennett means that
in illicit relations trust is doubly im-
perative, because the securities for the
permanence of such unions are all in-
ternal, his point is sound. But a retort
would be promptly forthcoming to the
effect that the failure of so devoted and
courageous a woman as Carlotta Peel to
attain or maintain that unfaltering trust
is proof of the inherent brittleness of
such connections. The mischief of un-
authorized relations is that their main-
tenance demands more character than
human nature can supply. A woman
should not flee from her great moment.
Possibly not. But will Mr. Bennett un-
dertake to provide the woman with some
clear tests for distinguishing the really
great moment from those imitations of
great moments by which her sisters have
been cruelly and irreparably deceived?
His man and woman marry in the end —
accept an external security. Trust in
God, but keep your powder dry.
Miss Elsie Ferguson's success as Car-
lotta Peel is only moderate. Her voice in
plain speech is dry and a little hard,
and when she needs an emotional voice,
her only expedient is to open sluices. It
then becomes a rainy voice, a wading
voice, sometimes a drowned voice, and
the hearer is irritated by Carlotta's in-
sistence that he join her in the celebra-
tion of her sorrow. Mr. Jose Ruben gave
a life-like presentation of a Diaz in whom
perhaps the original is a little lightened
and reduced.
"Richard III," in which Mr. Arthur
Hopkins presents Mr. John Barrymore
in a notable performance at the Ply-
mouth Theatre, is a play of restless
energy and brilliant episodes. But it suf-
fers from the fact that it is a chronicle-
play in form, a character-play in essence ;
and, since the chronicle-play is inevitably
the regulative force, the result is an ex-
position of character that is prolix, scat-
tering, repetitious, and unclimaxed.
Richard himself is never dull but I should
have liked better a Richard who was
more subtle and less complex. The com-
plexity begins in the division of the hero
into two men. There is Richard, and
there is — Dickon. Richard is the dis-
sembler, the contriver, the Jesuit ; Dickon
is the grotesque, the imp, the sneerer, the
scoffer, the Mephistopheles. Richard and
Dickon are more than once at cross-pur-
poses; Dickon would speak when Richard
craves his silence; in the fantastic scene
in Act I where Richard wins the heart
of Lady Anne by methods which insult
both her heart and her intelligence, the
derision really nullifies the subtlety.
But the division between Richard and
Dickon is not the end of the complexities;
Richard himself is complex. Among his
brutal compeers he is not the fox among
lions ; he is only the lion with a vulpine
streak. His policy succumbs to his
wrath, as it bends to his impishness. His
rage dispenses with Buckingham whom
his cunning would have anchored to his
side. In the crisis of his fate his craft
disappears, and he is thrown back upon
that valor and ferocity which was the
common heritage and stronghold of his
race.
Such a nature is evidently complex. It
is too complex to excel in subtlety. In a
man who is lion and ape as well as fox,
the fox will never be perfected. Shake-
speare in Richard sought to give us the
artist in crime; what he gave was the
criminal, but not the artist. Shake-
speare's age was nowhere more artless
than in the view it took of artfulness ; a
perfect willingness to lie and kill seemed
an ample equipment for successful vil-
lainy. Richard murdered unwisely, his
methods are often blunt and crude, he is
quite as much the juggler or sorcerer as
the tactician (see his handling of Anne
and Elizabeth), and Shakespeare has not
spared him the crowning humiliation of
taking from Buckingham the hint for the
prayer-book and churchmen scene, almost
the only scene in which he bears himself
with incontestable astuteness.
What does Mr. John Barrymore do
with a Richard of this kind? He does a i
great deal, and much of what he does is
fine. To begin with a detail or two, Mr.
Barrymore knows how to listen; as the
Lady Anne scene clearly shows he can
make listening an act. Again, he has hit
upon the art of soliloquizing; the "win-
ter of our discontent" speech was admir-
able in the leisurely tentativeness, the ob-
vious search of the mind for the next
thought, which alone can justify or ex-
tenuate soliloquy. But the great original
beauty of his work was that the Richard
he portrayed was mainly thoughtful,
with a mind not quick or springing, but
ruminative, a self-infolding, self-em-
bosomed mind, looking out from its cov-
ert with a curious, contented, relishing
sagacity at the world and its own conduct
(Continued on page 314)
March 27, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[313
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Delightful informal recollections of horses, of hunting, of all that
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314]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 46
{Continued from page 312)
in the world. His best speeches had the
effect of distillations, distilled venom, it
is true, but extracts and concentrations
nevertheless. There were other parts of
his work that seemed to me raw beside
this beautiful and satisfying ripeness.
He blustered sometimes, and his bluster
struck me as no better than that of the
ungifted actor; indeed, bluster would
seem to have the property of reducing all
artists to a level. The trait has its war-
rant in the drama, but the half-animal
element in Richard, which I can not but
think that the tradition of the stage has
imposed on a reluctant Shakespeare, was
brought out by Mr. Barrymore with a
success that set a premium upon failure.
I had no pleasure in the laugh, the leer,
or the guttural noises, and in what might
be half symbolically described as the
licking of the chops after some act of
blood. I felt only another recreancy to
the high ideals which ruled the greater
and the graver sections of his work.
The support, while respectable in the
mass, was scarcely provocative of hyper-
boles. The settings of Mr. Robert E.
Jones, on the contrary, were a support
and an alleviation to the play. To a
period in which history shades off into
fiction at its borders, Mr. Jones was wise
enough to give a legendary setting, a
setting in which vivid centres fade away
into marginal indistinctness. He gave
meaning and animation to the Middle
Ages without dispelling the twilight into
which their actualities have receded.
0. W. FlEKINS
Books and the News
Sea Stories
THE National Marine League and the
American Library Association are
craftily inciting readers and writers to
choose the best ten books of the sea. It
should not be difficult to start the argu-
ment ; most of us, like Hamlet, will iight
upon this theme until our eyelids will
no longer wag. It is inherited, perhaps,
from far-off ancestors, like the love for
wood fires, and though we be the mildest
and least sea-faring persons going, we
can hold strong opinions about nautical
writers. I have always sympathized with
that strange mariner, Captain Parker
Pitch, in Carryl's ballad :
His disposition, so to speak,
Was nautically soft and weak;
He feared the rolling ocean, and
He very much preferred the land.
For he summed it all up:
Says Captain Pitch : "The ocean swell
Makes me exceedingly unwell."
And so, though I put to sea with mis-
givings, I am as ready as others to say
which seem to me the best books about
the sailor and the ocean. Here they are :
Janvier. "In the Sargasso Sea."
Clark Russell. "List, ye Landsmen!"
Clark Russell. "My Shipmate Louise."
Hamblen. "On Many Seas."
R. L. Stevenson. "The Wrecker."
Bullen. "The Cruise of the Cachalot."
Slocum. "Sailing Alone Around the
World."
Kipling. "The Seven Seas."
W. W. Jacobs. "Many Cargoes."
Southey. "Life of Nelson."
Janvier, in his story of the young
sailor, caught in that vast tangle of old
wrecks in the mythical Sargasso Sea,
not only tells a fine tale of adventure,
with all the magic and wonder of the sea,
but he concentrates his reader's atten-
tion upon the lonely experiences of one
man, in a fashion hardly equalled since
Robinson Crusoe. Clark Russell is still,
to me, the first among his kind, and no
psychological Mr. Conrad can equal him.
It is customary to recommend his first
success, "The Wreck of the Grosvenor,"
but the two which I have named, in spite
of their sentimental titles, are better
examples. Both contain, though it is
irrelevant to their excellence, his always
amusing and eminently correct treatment
of that difficult situation: the unchaper-
oned young lady and the resourceful hero.
Mr. H. E. Hamblen, writing under the
pseudonym of "Frederick Benton Will-
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THE REVIEW
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March 27, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[815
iams," made of his "On Many Seas; the
Life and Exploits of a Yankee Sailor," a
capital book of yarns, a sort of latter-
day "Two Years Before the Mast." It
is presented as fact, not fiction. Not all
of Stevenson's "Wrecker" is upon the
sea ; but the ocean chapters are pure gold,
as a murder story its horror is unsur-
passed, and as a mystery only the actual
events of the cruise of the "Marie
Celeste" can be quoted with it.
Of "The Cruise of the Cachalot;
Round the World after Sperm Whales,"
Mr. Kipling said all that is needed: "It
is immense — there is no other word.
I've never read anything that equals it
in its deep-sea wonder and mystery."
Captain Slocum's "Sailing Alone Around
the World" is unique — humorous and
extraordinary. You have only to hunt
for quotations about all the phases of
ocean life and adventure to prove that
there are more apt ones in Kipling's
"Seven Seas" than in any other single
volume of poetry. For humorous short
stories of the sea, and along shore, Mr.
Jacobs leads all the rest; his "Many Car-
goes" contains some of his best tales.
Southey's "Life of Nelson" is not apt to
be displaced as a readable biography;
greater accuracy, or greater fullness of
historical detail may, of course, be found.
Nobody has yet done so well for our
naval hero, Paul Jones. The scientific
historians have made it unlikely that
anyone ever will.
The omission of Mr. Conrad from such
a list will cause more objection that any-
thing else. Like Meredith, he has his
warm admirers and he has those who
simply can not read him. The former
look upon the latter as Mr. Tumulty is
said to look upon Republicans; simply as
lioll weevils. I think that Mr. Conrad's
sincere admirers have been reinforced
through clever advertising — through
spreading the idea that one must like
him for the sake of intellectual distinc-
tion. But to those who do not find his
characters interesting — and there are
many such — it matters not about the
beauty of his descriptions, nor the thrill-
ing quality of some of the incidents.
Quarter-deck and forecastle alike, in Mr.
Conrad's novels, look to me like psycho-
logical clinics. Though I can fancy and
tolerate Jesse James and his brother in a
ship's crew, I do not expect to meet — I
do not care to meet — Henry James and
his brother, William, there.
Edmund Lester Pearson
Books Received
FICTION
Bowen, Majorie. The Burning Glass.
Dutton.
I Dreiser, Theodore. Hey-Rub-A-Dub-Dub.
iBoni & Liveright. $2 net.
North, Anison. The Forging of the Pikes.
Doran.
Orczy, Baroness. His Majesty Well-Be-
loved. Doran.
Oyen, Henry. The Plunderer. Doran.
Parrish, Randall. The Mystery of the Sil-
ver Dagger. Doran.
Pedler, Margaret. The Hermit of Far End.
Doran.
Sadler, Michael. The Anchor. McBride.
$1.75 net.
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THE REVIEW
Vol. 2, No. 47
New York, Saturday, April 3, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment 317
Editorial Articles:
The Anomaly at the White House 319
Labor and the Industrial Conference 320
The Centralia Murder Trial 321
France and England 322
Behind the Financing of China. By
Charles Hodges 324
Constantinople and the Turks. By D.
B. Macdonald 325
The Third Internationale. By A. J.
Barnouw 328
Correspondence 329
Religious Revivals — Old and Nev7. By
Stanley Went 332
Book Reviews:
Three American Labor Leaders 333
Reality and Antidote 334
The Cockpit of Christendom 335
Spanish America 335
Poetry: These Dead Have Not Died.
By Harry T. Baker 336
1 The Run of the Shelves 337
Drama :
I "Medea" at the Garrick— the "Piper"
at the Fulton. By O. W. Firkins 338
I Music :
"Eugene Onegin" — Pushkin and
Tschaikowsky. By Charles Henry
Meltzer 340
Books and the News: The Candidates.
By Edmund Lester Pearson 340
Educational Section 342
America's Foreign Loans. By Thomas
F. Woodlock 344
4 NUMBER of prominent citizens,
^*- all of them "devoted friends of
the League of Nations," have ad-
dressed to the President a respectful
but urgent appeal. They ask him to
jaccept the treaty on the best terms
jnow obtainable, and leave to subse-
quent endeavor the task of securing
any modifications of the terms upon
which we take part in the League.
The request is eminently reasonable.
Had it been made in a disputatious
iform, it might have cited the Pres-
jident's own former declarations as to
'the desperately urgent necessity of
putting the machinery of the peace,
lind of our participation in it, into
jimmediate operation. What they do
^ay, and what we are certain is the
jfeeling of an overwhelming majority
pf the American people, is that the
only sure way to save the treaty is to
save it now. A subsequent appeal
might be made to the nation in behalf
of the President's own programme;
an appeal which could be made "with-
out subjecting the vital question of
our becoming a part of the League of
Nations to the uncertainties and
perils of a partisan political cam-
paign in which, by entirely unfore-
seen influences, all may be lost."
That the evident cogency of this view
will make any impression on the
President, we are not so sanguine as
to expect; but at least the effort is
worth making, and it is stated that
the petition will have the backing of
thousands of representative citizens
in all parts of the country.
TTAVING "got" the Kaiser in the
■'■■'- interests of humanity, a good
many former members of the armed
forces of the United States are once
more in the field, thank you, to get a
little something for themselves. They
propose to begin where the G.A.R.
left off — not compensation for dis-
ability, but a little something for
everybody who wore a uniform, and
the more the better. Call it not a
bonus ; it is "adjusted compensation,"
an attempt to put into the ex-service
man's pocket some of the money he
might have made if, instead of going
to war, he had staid home to profiteer.
If war is sometimes profitable to
somebody, should not a fair share of
the profit accrue to the men who bore
directly the hardships and dangers of
war? But the fight over this ques-
tion within the American Legion is
not yet ended. If more of the leaders
in that organization will display
something of the courage of George
Brokaw Compton, Chairman of the
New York County Committee — fight
to the end, and then resign if neces-
sary— a grave danger may yet be
averted. The danger was foreseen
when the Legion was organized. Re-
sponsible men chose to run the risk
of it in order that the many possibili-
ties for good inherent in such an or-
ganization might have a chance of
realization. Now that the organiza-
tion gives promise of destroying at
the outset its possibilities of useful-
ness by its insistence on cash in ad-
vance, it is the patriotic duty of the
leaders who can not control their cre-
ation to good ends, to destroy it if
they can, and while there may yet
be time.
TJ7THAT that danger is may be made
" clearly to appear by glancing
at the four proposals, very modestly
and decently expressed by Frank-
lin D'Olier, the Legion's National
Commander.
First, land settlement covering the purchase
of farms in all States.
Second, home aid to encourage the purchase
in all States of either rural or city homes by
ex-service men.
Third, vocational education for all ex-service
persons.
Fourth, adjustment of compensation or
extra back pay based on length of service.
The committee unanimously decided that the
ex-service men should be given the choice of
the four features proposed.
The first and the third of these sug-
gestions are reasonable propositions.
There is a natural limit to the number
of men who will want farms or the
benefits of technical education, and
there is a limit to the amount of these
things which will be wanted by those
who want them. For a return of this
kind a man who had offered himself
to his country might reasonably look.
But the second proposition, which is
not clear but looks like a disguised
form of the fourth, and the fourth
itself, are essentially different from
the others. In any group of men there
will be almost none who will refuse
a gift of profitable real estate or of
cash, once they have persuaded them-
selves that they can accept it with-
out loss of dignity, and there is no
limit beneath the heavens to the
amount of such "easy money" that
they will find themselves willing to '
318]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 47
accept. If they accept a bonus rang-
ing from $50 to $1,000 to-day, they
■will accept more the day after. The
choice which the committee offers to
the ex-service man is not a fair one.
And the ex-service man, in shouting
for his "bonus," is not playing fair.
He is presuming on the weakness of
Congress, which rarely has the
strength to reject the easy course of
granting money when votes are in
sight. And he is presuming on the
natural desire of the public to see
their own soldiers and sailors hon-
ored by being duly helped where help
is needed. Whatever Congress may
do — and it might do much if the in-
fluence of the Legion were brought
to bear in such matters as the reha-
bilitation of disabled men, the facil-
itation of the entrance upon the
better sort of agricultural or indus-
trial work of any who desire it, the
tj'ing up of all those loose ends which
have left many ex-service men with
a feeling that "the Government is not
doing its part" — whatever Congress
may do, the public is not going to
look with complacency upon another
G.A.R. before which the ghost of the
old one will stand amazed at its own
moderation; the public is not going
to be pleased with the spectacle of
men of whom it longs to be proud
scrambling in the gutter for cop-
pers.
"■WTHEN McKinley was shot down,"
" exclaims Senator John Sharp
Williams, addressing the Mississippi
Legislature, "when Garfield was shot,
was there a Democrat but expressed
sorrow? Has any one seen words of
sympathy for the President in any
Republican paper?" Does it not oc-
cur to Senator Williams, however,
that neither McKinley nor Garfield
was engaged in ruling the country
— not to speak of the world — with a
rod of iron from his sick-bed? The
country can hardly be asked to submit
to the dictatorship of a sick man who,
even when well, was distinguished for
almost unparalleled self-will; and if
he is to be resisted, it would be more
offensive for his opponents to be con-
stantly expressing solicitude over
his illness than to pass it over in
silence.
THE real situation in Germany is
more clearly revealed by the list
of Ministers in the new Cabinet than
by any dispatches concerning the
movements and local successes of
Communist forces. The inclusion of
members of the Centre and Democrat
Parties in Herr Hermann Miiller's
Government may be taken as evidence
of the failure of the radical left to
impose their will on the men in power
at Berlin. Ebert's recent compromise
with Legien, it is true, binds the new
Cabinet to a plan of socialization
which will make its members the exec-
utives of the Independents' instruc-
tions. But when the Red revolt, which
the French were obviously right in de-
claring exaggerated, has subsided
into its former state of brooding dis-
content, the work of legislation will
gradually decrease both in speed and
radical tendencies, under the pressure
of those elements which are for mod-
eration in reform. Bauer's Cabinet
fell far short of the expectations even
of his own friends, the Majority So-
cialists; and Hermann Miiller, unless
he proves to be a stronger man than
he is believed to be, is not likely to
carry through legislation which will
satisfy the Independents. There is a
wide chasm between his undertakings
and the chances of their fulfillment,
and his failure to bridge it, which
seems next to certain, will mark the
beginning of a new period of domestic
upheaval and revolt.
CHORTLY after the Paisley elec-
^ tion, the Daily Chronicle, Lloyd
George's speaking trumpet, made an
attempt to claim Mr. Asquith for the
Coalition — on the ground of his hav-
ing received the votes not only of
the Liberals, but also of a great
many Unionists, because of his oppo-
sition to nationalization. Besides,
the journal opined, there was hardly
any difference in the policies of the
two. The Premier himself repeated
this bid for the support of the Inde-
pendent Liberals when he called upon
all the old parties to unite against
their common enemy, the Bolshevist
spirit of Labor. Mr. Asquith has
made a reply to these approaches
which precludes any reconciliation
between the two leaders. He de-
nounced Lloyd George's call to arms
against Labor as an "appeal for
class cleavage and the most mischie-
vous thing that has been done" ; and
in order to leave no doubt as to the
cleavage between Mr. Lloyd George's
policy and his own he repeated, in
the strongest terms, his condemna-
tion of the Irish bill, calling it "the
greatest travesty of self-government
ever offered a nation." This out-
spoken language will have its bene-
ficial effect upon British politics. It
traces with unmistakable distinct-
ness the lines which divide true
Liberalism from the false variety of
the Coalition, and may help many a
Liberal who went astray in this
"transient era of organized insin-
cerity" to find again his lost bear-
ings.
A SPECIAL Federal grand jury,
■^ sitting in Indianapolis, has re-
turned indictments against 125 coal
miners and operators for violations
of the Federal conspiracy laws. The
exact nature of the charges, and the
evidence on which they were based,
have not yet been given to the pub-
lic. Comment on the validity of the
indictments is of course out of place
until the trial develops the character
of the evidence which the prosecution
has in hand. The fact that both em-
ployers and employees have fallen
into the net of the law together, how-
ever, furnishes proof that the grand
jury was actuated by no animus
against the miners and their organ-
ization in its enquiry. If operators
have violated the law, they must take
their punishment. Under the circum-
stances, the case may surely be
allowed to proceed to its conclusion,
whatever this may be, with no at-
tempt to inflame public opinion in
one direction or the other in ad-
vance.
'T'HE word "soviet" has a little more
•*- to do than ordinary labor union
standards would seem to allow, even
if kept strictly within its own limits.
An untold quantity of printer's ink
and paper, and some editorial energy
to boot, was wasted last week in ap-
plying it to a temporary wave of stu-
dent horse-play in a Kansas college.
April 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[819
Ebullitions of the kind, where masses
of young men are gathered together,
are as old as human history, and the
colleges have less serious trouble with
them to-day than they have had in
days gone by. In times when events
of real importance are crowding the
mails and wires beyond the limits of
the paper supply for printing, the
news agencies may well allow tales
of college "Soviets" to pass unher-
alded into the oblivion which, at least
in the place of their origin, would
swallow them up in a week. Isn't the
exploiting of college mare's nests
growing just a little stale for real
newspapers ?
nnHE Review is very glad to give
-'■ space to the Interchurch World
Movement of North America to tell
its own story. In its campaign for
a third of a billion dollars it will un-
doubtedly be successful. But the very
magnitude of its assured accomplish-
ment, the very ease of it, once the
efficient machinery is put in action,
give rise to more doubts than can
fairly be disposed of in a paragraph.
In the first place, a third of a billion
is a large sum of money; if that
amount is needed to enable the
churches to do the work they ought
to do, so much is not too much to ask
for and to receive. But is there any
assurance that it will not fall into the
hands of leaders who are energetic
and resourceful rather than well-bal-
anced and mindful of the vital im-
portance of pursuing only right
methods and appropriate objects?
Will the church, with this great in-
crease in material prosperity, stead-
fastly refuse to aim at political
power? Will it cling to its spiritual
treasures and avoid the temptation —
which has been alluringly placed be-
fore it by sentimental radicals
having their own notions as to what
a regenerated church may accom-
plish— to become the clearing-house
of industrial disputes? On the an-
swer to such questions hinges the
success or failure of this enlarged
programme. It is not impertinent to
remind the ministers of religion that
their own estate is subject, in this
jperiod of change, to the same dangers
Ithat beset the body politic.
The Anomaly at the
White House
'T'HE question of what constitutes
■'• "inability" of the President to
perform the duties of his office, which
greatly exercised the public mind a
few weeks ago, ceased to be acute
when the marked improvement in Mr.
Wilson's health set in. This improve-
ment appears to be maintained. It
is manifested both by his occasional
appearances in the public streets, and
by a number of vigorous acts in re-
lation to great public questions. Even
at the worst, there was a marked ab-
sence of pressure for action of any
kind on the subject, and now nobody
is thinking of disturbance of his exec-
utive powers during the remainder of
his term of office. There is even seri-
ous thought of his candidacy for a
third term.
Nevertheless, the situation at the
seat of government is in the highest
degree abnormal. The mighty power
of the Presidency is being wielded,
and there is every prospect of its con-
tinuing to be wielded for eleven
months more, by a man apparently in
full possession of his mental vigor,
and certainly in possession of a will
of extraordinary inflexibility, but
almost completely withdrawn from
all those influences and aids which
are supposed, as a matter of course,
to be indispensable to the wise and
safe exercise of those faculties in the
direction of that tremendous power.
There is abundant reason to believe
that, even if the President were by
nature as much inclined to take ad-
vice as in point of fact he is disin-
clined to do so, the state of his phys-
ical health would forbid this being
burdened by the consideration of the
complex, troublesome, and often in-
tensely trying developments of a sit-
uation of unexampled difficulty and
seriousness. Unless it be supposed
that the judgments at which he ar-
rived many months ago are infallible
guides for his conduct in the present
and in the future — subject neither to
revision on their merits, nor to modi-
fication on account of the emergence
of new facts and new problems — we
have before us the spectacle of the
ship of state being steered by a helms-
man who gets but meagre indications
either of its position or of the state
of things by which it is surrounded.
The discharge of Secretary Lansing
on the ground that he called the Cabi-
net together in informal meetings has
not been followed by the holding of
Cabinet meetings, either formal or
informal, at the call of the President.
The access to him of public men,
whether from the Cabinet or from
Congress, is so slight as to be practi-
cally nil. Senators of his own party,
who had faithfully stood by him
through months of struggle over the
treaty, are as much in the dark as
anybody else concerning his inten-
tions on that subject, as well as on
all others.
In his insistence upon carrying on
the Government after this fashion,
Mr. Wilson is violating no provision
of the Constitution. But for the
wholesome working of any system of
government, something more is re-
quired than observance of the positive
injunctions upon which it is based.
Great as is the inherent power of the
Presidency, and comprehensive as its
expansion has been, owing to the
ever-increasing scope and importance
of governmental functions, such an
exercise of that power as we are now
witnessing has never been contem-
plated as possible. It is, indeed, a
distinguishing feature of our system,
as contrasted with the parliamentary
regime of which the British Govern-
ment is the great model, that the
American chief executive is abso-
lutely independent of any outside con-
trol. Our history has furnished many
notable instances of the aggressive
and inflexible exercise of that inde-
pendence. Andrew Jackson in his
uncompromising determination to de-
stroy the United States Bank, Grover
Cleveland in his unflinching stand for
sound money, are outstanding exam-
ples of adamantine firmness on the
part of American Presidents. But
these were assertions of executive
power relating to single definite is-
sues of fixed policy, by Presidents who
maintained normal relations with
their Constitutional advisers and who
were in normal touch with the events
and with the influences of their time.
820]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 47
They involved no arrogation by the
President of the right to wield su-
preme power without those safe-
guards for its proper exercise which
are prescribed not only by the spirit
of our Constitution, but by the obvi-
ous principles of rational government.
It may be objected that it is idle
to make these criticisms when noth-
ing can be proposed by way of
remedy. But surely the recognition
of a grave and unexpected evil is one
of the first requirements of intelli-
gent public opinion among a free
people. Nobody knows what the com-
ing eleven months may bring forth.
The oversight of our foreign relations
has lately been transferred from the
hands of a trained and seasoned pub-
lic servant, and placed in charge of a
man not marked out for the post
either by experience or by personal
qualifications. At any moment the
most crucial decisions may be taken
without proper consideration either
in the State Department or at the
White House. There is no reason to
expect that, when such a question
arises, there will be that grave con-
sideration, that effective taking of
counsel, which is supposed to be the
special function of important meet-
ings of the Cabinet. In sweeping
aside everything which, in the course
of our history, and indeed as a result
of the most elementary principles of
human relationship, has grown up as
a mitigation of the absolutism of the
Presidency, Mr. Wilson has opened up
possibilities of danger in our system
of government which no previous ex-
perience had given reason to appre-
hend. Against the possible aberra-
tions of a self-willed sick man, en-
trenched in the seclusion of the White
House and wielding without abate-
ment the immense power of the Presi-
dency, our Constitution and laws fur-
nish no protection. If we can not
count on the good will of the incum-
bent and on his recognition of the
undefined, but nevertheless univer-
sally recognized, obligations of such
a situation, we are helpless. Whether
anything can be done about it or not,
it is manifestly the duty of the Ameri-
can people to recognize the fact and
to take account of the possibilities
which it discloses.
Labor and the Indus-
trial Conference
nnO understand what the Industrial
•'- Conference at Washington has
done it is essential constantly to
bear in mind two vital points — one
relating to the general conditions of
industry, the other to the settlement
of disputes.
In its treatment of the general
problem of improved industrial con-
ditions, the Conference confines
itself to recommendations the effi-
cacy of which will depend solely on
the weight that the report of the
Conference may have in swaying the
minds of employers and employed,
either directly or through the influ-
ence of public opinion. No mecha-
nism whatever is provided for put-
ting into effect any of the general
recommendations of the Commission
which deal with the normal relations
between employers and employed.
Whether the subject be employee
representation, profit-sharing, gain-
sharing, or hours of labor, all that
the Conference report does in discus-
sing it is to express its estimate of
the degree of importance to be at-
tached to the matter, of the prospect
of its advancement as indicated by
past experience, and of the means
which it would be wise to adopt in
promoting the object in question.
On the particular question of "em-
ployee representation" — shop-coun-
cils and the like — the report does not
content itself with the absence of
any governmental proposal, but ex-
plicitly says that "it is not a field for
legislation, because the form which
employee representation should take
may vary in every plan." That is a
good reason, but there is a deeper
reason, as the Conference is doubt-
less fully aware; the fact being that
it refrains from proposing legisla-
tion not only on this point, but on
any of the points relating to the
actual conduct of industry.
In regard to the settlement of dis-
putes, the Conference does propose
the establishment of an elaborate
system of governmental machinery;
but compulsion is no part of the pur-
pose of that machinery. Every ef-
fort is directed towards making
resort to the mechanism almost in-
evitable if composition of the trouble
by the parties immediately interested
proves unattainable ; but the right to
strike is not interfered with, nor is
the decision of the governmental
agency, when resorted to, binding un-
less the parties have assented to the
decision in advance. Mr. Hoover,
who is generally understood to have
been a dominating factor in the pro-
ceedings of the Conference, has taken
occasion, since the issue of the report,
to contrast the Conference plan for
the settlement of disputes with that
recently adopted by the Kansas Leg-
islature in the case of essential indus-
tries. Mr. Hoover regards the Kan-
sas plan as substantially identical
with the scheme of compulsory arbi-
tration which, so hopefully acclaimed
when introduced in Australasia a
number of years ago, is now gener-
ally acknowledged to have broken
down; and it is his opinion that any
compulsory plan is inherently des-
tined to failure. We believe that this
is at least certainly true of any plan
of national scope ; and accordingly we
feel that the Conference has done very
wisely in undertaking no more than
to bring to bear upon a dispute a
well-considered mechanism of inquiry
and adjudication, the efficacy of which
will depend either on voluntary sub-
mission or on the effective focusing
of public opinion upon the points at
issue.
The character of this machinery
was set forth in sufficient detail in
the preliminary report of the Con-
ference issued on December 29 last.
In the Review for January 3 we dis-
cussed the character and merits of the
plan. The final report does not
modify it in any important respect.
We sincerely hope that the plan will
be adopted by Congress, with such
modifications as competent discussion
may indicate to be desirable. But
it was evident from the start, and it
is still more evident now, that the
project will meet with opposition both
from the capitalist side and from
the labor-union side. It solves none i
of the inveterate problems over which
the struggles of two generations have
been carried on; it does not under- '
April 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[321
take to solve them. Fundamentally,
however, the opposition from either
side is due to a fear that it will some-
how strengthen the other. Men look-
ing at it from the standpoint of the
great organizations of capital fear
that it will strengthen the position of
the great organizations of labor ; and
the heads of the great labor organiza-
tions fear that, while it does not in
any explicit way interfere with their
functions, it will lessen their hold on
the situation when any crucial con-
test is on. To our mind, the great
merit of the plan is that it recog-
nizes the abiding character of the
forces on both sides, that it does not
seek to eliminate or to emasculate
either, but that it provides means for
reducing to a minimum the clashes
between them. To reject it would be
to refuse to try an experiment against
which no vital objection has been
I'aised, and in favor of which there
seems to us to stand the promise of
innumerable opportunities for the
averting of blind and disastrous in-
dustrial warfare.
Mr. Gompers objects not only to
the plan for the adjustment of dis-
putes, but also to the general rec-
ommendations of the Conference.
Among these the report lays most
stress upon the idea of "employee
representation." The phrase itself is
happily chosen to cover what "has
been discussed under different names
and forms, such as shop committees,
shop councils, works councils, rep-
resentative government in industry,
and others." The Conference satis-
fied itself, after extensive inquiry,
that experience in many industrial
concerns in this country justifies the
belief that a widespread introduction
of these methods will have a benefi-
cent effect not only upon the rela-
tions between employers and em-
ployed, and upon the well-being of
the latter, but also upon our indus-
trial productivity. Whether this con-
clusion is correct or not, surely it
can not justly be made the subject
of bitter attack. For the recommen-
dation of the Conference will not be
adopted in a wholesale fashion. The
most it can do is to direct more seri-
ous attention to a plan which in the
past few years has been attracting
much interest. Mr. Gompers fears
that any development of organization
among the employees within a plant
will lessen their allegiance to the
great national organizations which,
he asserts, are the sole efficient pro-
tectors of the rights of labor. But it
is manifest that no such lessening of
allegiance follows as a necessary con-
sequence of that closer union among
the workers of a single plant which
the plan of employee representation
institutes. As a matter of fact, the
plan has worked successfully with all
possible relations of the men to the
unions. If it is instituted in accord-
ance with the principles laid down
in the Conference report, it will evi-
dently interfere with the power of
the union only in cases where the
workmen themselves feel that that
power is exercised in a tyrannical
way.
The report says a good word for
profit-sharing, but recognizes the se-
vere limitations to which it is subject.
It points out that "gain sharing" is
free from the difficulties of profit-
sharing, in that here the extra reward
of the worker is based on actual in-
crease of production and not on the
chances of profit and loss connected
with the business conduct of the en-
terprise. It takes up, also, such broad
questions as those affecting hours of
labor, housing, etc. A very important
class ef recommendations are those
relating to unemployment. Among
these is one for the establishment of
"a system of employment exchanges,
municipal. State and Federal, which
shall in effect create a national em-
ployment service" ; another relates to
the devising of methods for diminish-
ing seasonal variations in industries
in which they have very evil effects,
such as coal mining and building. On
the special status of labor in public
utilities, and of public employees, ap-
propriate recommendations are made.
In all these matters the Conference
says things that are well considered
and helpful. It is to be hoped that the
report will be widely read. It is cal-
culated to promote the best tendencies
in the ranks of employers, of labor,
and of the public. But it can not
be said that the report along these
general lines does more than this.
Nor was more to be expected; the
danger was rather that an ambitious
attempt at the solution of insoluble
problems might be undertaken, with
the consequence of that mischief
which always attends the raising of
false hopes.
It is not upon the general recom-
mendations of the Conference, but
upon its plan for the adjustment of
industrial disputes, that public atten-
tion should be chiefly centred. This
is a definite proposal — not going to
the root of the trouble indeed, but
holding out the prospect of a real ad-
vance. We trust that the plan will be
considered, in Congress and out, upon
its merits, and not be enveloped in the
haze of a vague and scattering dis-
cussion of a miscellaneous assort-
ment of questions concerning the
welfare of labor, or the principles of
industrial management.
The Centralia Murder
Trial
T^HE days have been filled with im-
-*■ portant doings of their own
since last November, and the Armis-
tice Day troubles that cost four lives
in Centralia, Washington, are all but
forgotten outside the region of their
occurrence. Eastern papers have
done little more than record the ver-
dict, in the case of the ten members
of the I. W. W. who were brought to
trial for the death of one of the vic-
tims of that day's tragedy. Seven of
the ten were declared guilty of mur-
der in the second degree, one was
pronounced insane, and two were
acquitted. The State had contended
for a verdict of murder in the first
degree.
The newspapers of the Northwest
express sharp dissent from this ver-
dict, contending that the facts of the
case left no tenable middle ground be-
tween shooting in permissible self-
defense and premeditated murder. If
the jury had accepted the theory of
self-defense, acquittal was the only
verdict possible. By holding the
seven men all equally guilty, they
say, the jury indicated its belief that
they were acting by such preconcerted
arrangement as to come fully within
322]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 47
the definition of first-degree murder.
The Nation takes the result as prov-
ing that the prosecution was unable
to make out its case, and that there-
fore there was no plan to attack the
procession. This forces the conclu-
sion, it holds, that the killing took
place in a riot which followed an at-
tack by the marchers on the I. W. W.
hall. A witness before the coroner's
jury, himself a member of the pa-
rade, is said to have testified to an
attack on the hall, and the firing of
a volley from within when the door
was forced open. This the Nation
uses to substantiate its position.
This leaves out of account, how-
ever, the evidence produced at the
trial that the paraders were fired
upon from three different points out-
side and at a distance from the hall,
by I. W. W. men armed in advance.
The defense could not break down
the testimony that Warren O. Grimm,
the one of the victims on whose kill-
ing the indictment in this trial was
based, received his fatal wound at
too great a distance from the hall to
have been shot in immediate resis-
tance to an attempt to force an en-
trance. The defense was not in
position to deny that I. W. W. men
were stationed under arms at differ-
ent points commanding the route of
the parade, but sought to justify this
as permissible preparation for the
defense of their hall against possible
attack. The court instructed the
jury, however, that the plea of self-
defense could not cover the taking of
human life under such circumstances.
It must be remembered that the sol-
diers on parade were marching
wholly unarmed.
To take the second-degree verdict
as conclusive proof that the prosecu-
tion had failed to substantiate its
contention is to neglect more than one
well-known tendency in the working
of our jury system. Cases are not
infrequent in which a jury as a whole
assents to a milder verdict because
of its knowledge that some one or
more of its members will never agree
to the sterner conclusion warranted
by the evidence. In the material of
which American juries are made, too,
there is a very widespread tendency
to flinch from a verdict which will
involve the probability of the death
sentence. Under the State law in this
case, if a first-degree verdict had been
rendered the decision between the
death penalty and life imprisonment
would have devolved upon the jury
itself, while in case of a second-de-
gree verdict the assessment of the
penalty is left to the court. The
opportunity to escape this solemn re-
sponsibility would act as a strong
incentive, with many jurymen, to
avoid the sterner verdict on any
ground not felt to constitute a delib-
erate violation of sworn duty. We
can not read precisely what was in
the minds of the jurymen at Monte-
sano, but it seems reasonable to sup-
pose that their verdict was a not
unusual softening of a sterner con-
clusion really justified by the evi-
dence, rather than a determination to
pronounce a sentence of guilt in some
form when the failure of the prosecu-
tion to make good its contention really
demanded an acquittal. For there is
force in the contention of the Port-
land Oregonian, which gave very
close attention to the case as devel-
oped during the trial, that the
shooting was either an outright assas-
sination or a justifiable act of self-
defense.
We have seen no indication that the
defendants did not have a fair trial.
The jury was solemnly charged that
they were to be considered as indi-
viduals, indicted for the specific of-
fense of killing Warren 0. Grimm.
Their membership in the I. W. W.
must not be taken into account, nor
the fact that others were killed at
the same time. Instruction was also
given by the court that the confession
of Loren Roberts, alleged by the coun-
sel for the defense to be insane, must
not be allowed to have any weight
against any of the other defendants.
It is true that an informal "labor
jury," appointed by labor organiza-
tions to watch the trial and render
its own verdict, pronounced in favor
of acquittal. But it is also true that
one member of this "jury," called
before the courts as a witness, was
obliged to admit that he had been aid-
ing the attorneys for the defense in
securing testimony. The prosecutor,
dissatisfied with the mildness of the
verdict in view of the testimony pre-
sented, has given notice that indict-
ments for murder in the first degree
of another of the victims will be im-
mediately pressed against the same
men.
Perhaps the worst of all attempts
to explain the shooting was made by
the Nation just after its occurrence:
The country is reaping what it has sown; it
has been teaching millions how to kill. It has
expounded the doctrine that the way to punish
a fellow you do not like was to apply "force
without stint" to him, and we are now wit-
nessing the private application of the doctrine
on a large scale. The most lawless continue
to be judges and district attorneys and law
officers generally.
The genesis of the Centralia murders
lay not in the war, but in the unrea-
soning distrust and hatred of all
orderly legal processes imbedded in
the ignorant and unruly minds of
such men as largely make up the
I. W. W., emboldened to the point of
criminal action by just such wild
words as those which we have quoted.
France and England
TVTHEN the French and English
" fought shoulder to shoulder,
and British convoys of reinforce-
ments and wounded were crossing
and re-crossing the Channel, the lack
of a tunnel connection between the
two countries was much deplored by
the British, and the conviction was
general on both sides of the water
that, after the war, an under-sea thor-
oughfare would be built which would
symbolize their friendship in a prac-
tical and permanent form. "England
must remain an island," said Lloyd
George in disapproval of the plan.
But though she maintained her geo-
graphic insularity, politically Great
Britain will never be able to reen-
trench herself in "splendid isolation."
The war has made her a peninsula on
the political map of Europe, and no
successful opposition against the
Channel tunnel can sever it from the
Continent.
That being so, it is a matter of the
greatest consequence to Europe that
England should live on the best of
terms with her immediate Continen-
tal neighbor, and the friends of both
countries will therefore view with
April 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[323
anxiety the symptoms of an estrange-
ment which grow, week by week, in
number and strength. A tempera-
mental difference is at the bottom of
this disagreement. In the Briton,
less emotional than his French com-
rade in arms, hatred against the
beaten foe will sooner subside than
in the Frenchman. The latter's more
open exposure to the enemy's revenge,
and the recollection of severer suf-
ferings than England has borne, add
the force of argument to the im-
ponderable strength of instinctive
feelings. This deep-rooted difference
of temperament, accentuated by ex-
ternal circumstances, accounts for the
clash between British criticism and
French advocacy of the terms of the
peace with Germany.
Of late, however, French insistence
on their justice, and on the danger of
mitigation, has taken the form of an
indictment of England. It is Eng-
land that prevented the pushing for-
ward of the military frontier to the
Khine, it is England that prevented
the creation of a great Poland, it is
England that, by urging leniency
towards Germany, sacrificed the
safety and reconstruction of France
to the demands of the British Labor
Party. The bitter tone in which
these grievances are worded by M.
Rene Pinon in the New Europe, by
Pertinax in the Echo de Paris, by M.
Barthou in the Chamber of Deputies,
creates the impression that in Paris
this conflict of British and French
policies is felt to be due to an inten-
tion, on the part of the London Gov-
ernment, to block the vital interests
of France at all points. "Eng-
land," says M. Barthou, "is ready to
recognize the Soviet Government as
soon as she assures herself of the
greatest possible advantages she can
I get." M. Pinon complains of "un-
I friendly intrigues of British agents
in Syria to disgust France with
I Syria and the Syrians with France,
I and insinuates that King Feisal is
still supported by Great Britain.
Even England's whole-hearted sup-
port of the League of Nations is
called into question; it affords her a
pretext for holding her hands free
and backing out of definite agree-
ments.
How much truth is there in these
accusations? That Lloyd George's
foreign policy, in spite of his late de-
nunciation of Labor, has largely been
guided by the wish to conciliate the
British Labor Party, is undeniable,
but it is not Labor alone that insists
on mitigation of the peace terms. A
large body of Liberal opinion in Eng-
land is no less in favor of leniency.
But there would be far less of this
sentiment if the British public could
be brought to see great force in the
French contention that a revision in
favor of Germany is detrimental to
the vital interests of France. Though
the man at the head of affairs in
England be himself not guided by
any principles, the powerful body of
British opinion which he can not af-
ford to ignore is actuated by no self-
ish motives, but earnestly wishes to
see France fully indemnified and re-
stored and Europe at peace.
French statesmen oppose the opti-
mistic belief in the efficacy of mercy
as the surest safeguard against the
lust for revenge with the realistic
plea that nothing except superior
strength can protect France from
German revenge. The Government
of France is determined, if need be,
to act independently of her Allies in
enforcing the strict execution of the
treaty, even at the price of fresh mili-
tary burdens for the country. Only
an intimate knowledge of the spirit
presiding at present over the German
people and its Government, a knowl-
edge we do not pretend to possess,
could give one the right to condemn
this attitude of the French as in-
transigeant. But we deplore it be-
cause of the dangers that will result
from it both to France herself and to
Europe. Even if Marshal Foch suc-
ceeds, which we do not doubt he can,
in carrying out his plan of reprisals,
France will have paid too high a price
for her safety from a questionable
danger by the sacrifice of the Entente
Cordiale.
And of this there is a real danger.
If isolated action, involving French
occupation of more German terri-
tory, should lead to the political iso-
lation of France, the security which
the possession of military guar-
antees will give her will be neu-
tralized by the loss of her inter-
national connections, which will
make her seem a less formidable
enemy in the eyes of a vindictive Ger-
many. France isolated means a
relatively stronger Germany, al-
though under compulsion of Marshal
Foch's military measures the reduc-
tion of the German army be carried
out to the letter of the treaty. What
more can Foch expect than to deprive
Germany, for a certain length of
time, of the means of revenge? The
spirit of revenge he can not quell,
by force of arms, in a nation of sixty
millions. If it will be revenged, it
will recover the means, in spite of
peace treaties and military guaran-
tees. France, in her state of physical
and financial exhaustion, will scarcely
be able to bear for long the burden
which the possession of those guaran-
tees entails. And, as Millerand said
in the Chamber : "France will be to-
morrow as she was yesterday, the
first victim of a new assault."
But to England also the danger
would again be as great as it was six
years ago. England can not, for her
own sake, allow France to put herself
into an impossible position. To the
express demands of the French an-
nexationists, indeed, British opinion
can never be brought to assent. But
British statesmen can do a great deal
towards conciliating France by re-
moving the suspicions which, with
more or less justice, are being har-
bored in Paris and which are respon-
sible for the present irritation. The
Entente Cordiale ought not to fall a
victim to an incompatibility of tem-
per which can be controlled by a wise
and circumspect statesmanship.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Corporation
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
dollars a year in
copy. Foreign I)p8t-
Subscription price, five
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cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St.. Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright, 1920, in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Ayres O. W. Firkins
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson
Jerome Landfield
32-1]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 47
Behind the Financing of China
(IN FOUR PARTS — PART TWO)
"pHINA," said my official Chinese
^ friend, "by force of circum-
stances is on the auction block — it
would pay the world a thousandfold
to underwrite her instead of letting
Japanese yen control our potentiali-
ties."
That statement was made in Peking
at a time when the armistice had for
the moment halted the finance that is
undermining China's integrity. Even
then, a movement was being pushed
quietly by an inner circle of friends
of the Chinese Republic. Meetings
were held at certain private resi-
dences where foreigners representing
official and unofficial interests worked
upon schemes to provide for the in-
ternational financing of China along
cooperative lines. From the first
there was general recognition that the
legitimate vested interests of all the
Powers would have to be protected in
an equitable way, and that, on the
other hand, the effective blocking of
the extension of spheres of influence
was imperative.
Well-wishers of China have been
long convinced that the only way to
keep China intact is to pool the con-
flicting interests, pro-rate the entire
development of the country among
the interested Powers, and thus end
political manipulation by outside in-
fluence. There was nothing new dip-
lomatically in the proposal. The idea
was behind Secretary of State Knox's
proposals to "neutralize," or interna-
tionally control, the Manchurian rail-
way development in 1909-10. It
cropped up in another form in the
evolution of the Six Power Group to
make China a huge loan for reorgani-
zation shortly before the war.
Our withdrawal from this interna-
tional bloc, it will be remembered,
was forced by the Wilson Adminis-
tration in 1913. The abrupt action
of President Wilson at that time
caused a great deal of distrust be-
tween our bankers and the foreign
banking groups, who could not under-
stand how such a step could be taken
by the American Government without
our financial interests having fore-
knowledge of the move. While it
may not seem strange to us now, we
must bear in mind that at the time
the world had not accustomed itself to
the President's instinctive recourse
to obstructive measures the moment
his conceptions of statecraft were
crossed. Thus, instead of helping to
modify, as he thought best, the terms
then proposed to China, he would
have nothing to do with them. The
President's interposition served to
hold up action until the outbreak of
the European war. Henceforth, the
European members of what became
the Five Power Group could give little
heed to even their vital interests in
the East, except where the war itself
disastrously crossed them.
The working out of events gave
Japan the free hand in the Orient
which has so tremendously compli-
cated any settlement of the situation.
With Japan financial diplomacy has
meant everything. She has risen
from the position of a debtor nation,
heavily encumbered by borrowings
abroad, to that of a Power with a
surplus of funds. Instead of being
chronically sapped, Japan was able
to embark on the sapping of her
neighbor.
The three periods of Japan's finan-
cial growth in China's development
vividly show what has happened.
Until 1909, when she began to recover
from the strain of the Russo-Japa-
nese War, which had given her a foot-
hold in Manchuria, the Japanese in-
vestments were of small importance
outside of the Three Eastern Prov-
inces. From the year 1909, however,
to the outbreak of the European
struggle, her investments rose per-
ceptibly; they reached the total of
approximately 50,000,000 yen — say
$25,000,000. The distribution of
Japan's surplus capital was, in many
ways, not unlike those of other
Powers: railway loans in her South
Manchurian sphere; advances on
communications in the Yangtse Val-
ley; and a series of credits to the
great Hanyehping Iron Works in
Hankow, the Chicago of China. It
was in the last of these advances that
the purpose of Japanese loans began
to show itself — to gain political
domination over China's development
by first mortgages which should close
to other Powers possible avenues of
investment.
A great increase in lending on these
lines began with the opening of the
Great War. Between 1914 and 1916,
the Okuma Ministry negotiated
12,000,000 yen worth of loans ; it was
the Foreign Minister, too, of the "lib-
eral" Okuma who directed Japan's
diplomatic assault on China in 1915.
The negotiations over the Twenty-one
Demands gave Japan privileges
directly affecting the situation at the
present moment, for they secured to
Japanese capital a monopoly of de-
velopment in five Chinese provinces
and part of a dependency until the
year 2002.
Under the premiership of Terauchi,
the aggressive Japanese elements in-
trigued with the Chinese militarists,
between 1916 and 1918, to pile up a
huge total of non-productive loans,
for they were advanced for military
or administrative purposes. They
were accompanied by the most objec-
tionable practices, a literal debauch-
ing of a nation, for (1) they were
consummated in the main illegally,
without recourse to the duly consti-
tuted authorities ; (2) they carried an
abnormally high rate of interest; (3)
adequate supervision over expendi-
ture was deliberately omitted to per-
mit diversion to unworthy ends ; (4)
they mortgaged to Japan national
assets threatening China's security
and not infrequently violating rights
held by other Powers.
According to information from
American official sources, China is
said to have borrowed from Japan,
during 1917 and 1918, about 250,000,-
000 Chinese dollars — mines of all
kinds, national forests, strategic rail-
ways, etc., being pledged as security.
These advances were largely wasted
in the struggle between the Northern
and the Southern parties in China,
as Japanese statesmen well knew
they would be, and they served to
prolong China's internal conflict.
Even the much-heralded liberalism of
the Hara Ministry has not been able
to stop this subsidizing of China's
April 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[325
ruin by Japan's Military Party, and
the grand total of political and so-
, called economic loans made to China
! by Japan now exceeds, in all proba-
liility, half a billion yen — say, $300,-
000,000 gold in round numbers.
When the news of the armistice
broke over the Far East, something
like panic took possession of the
Japanese Foreign Office and the Mili-
tary Party. They felt that the Peace
Conference would upset all their
plans. "Had the organization of the
New Consortium been brought at
I once to a conclusion after the armis-
tice," one of the foreign officials
directly concerned with the formation
of the international financing project
intimated to me recently, "the Japa-
nese would have been only too glad to
come in on the best terms we would
give them. Now the situation has
changed. The results of the Peace
Conference have enabled Japan to
hold off and dicker for her own con-
ditions."
It is natural that Japan should
ivish to see the fruits of her high
inance validated; namely, excluded
rom the scope of the Consortium,
vhich latter she would like to wreck.
as she did our dollar diplomacy in
Manchuria just a decade ago. She
has made large preliminary advances
and her business system at home is
overextended and tied hand-and-foot
with the success of her schemes for
expansion. These require title to
Manchuria's future for a century; a
similar grip must be fastened on the
Shantung Peninsula; a like penetra-
tion must be assured into Mongolia.
Hundreds of miles of communications
will thus be ear-marked for Japanese
capitalists ; and the natural resources
Japan so lacks will become hers as
the nominal tenant of China.
The control of such interests is the
stake in the fight being waged by the
Powers that advocate international
cooperation in the development of
China, under American leadership,
as opposed to the yen diplomacy of
a predatory nationalism. The Con-
sortium offers the only fair solution
for this conflict of Japanese ambi-
tions, Chinese rights, and the grouped
interests of the other Powers. The
bringing about of this is the inward-
ness of the Lamont financial mission
we have just sent to the Far East.
Charles Hodges
Constantinople and the Turks
rHE problem of Constantinople and of
the status of the Ottoman Turks in
islam, like everything else in this world
f space and time, is confused or ex-
lained by the principle of relativity. We
;ave learned copiously of late that a
jhing is what it is always in relation to
jome other thing and never absolutely,
'hat applies here most exactly. The
urks are one thing to themselves, an-
;ther thing to the Arabs, and yet a third
iiing to the far-away Moslems of India.
: would be easy to establish for them
ill more relativities; but in these three
■e have the cardinal points for our pres-
it problem. Similarly, the Caliphate is
jQe thing for the Turks, another thing
)r the Arabs, and a third very different
ling for Indian Islam. And, finally, the
jurks feel in one way about their own
Utus in Constantinople; the Arabs feel
I another way about that same status
the Turks; and India has to it still
lother attitude. In all this the Turkish
id the Arab positions have been clear
ir long, almost for centuries; but the
tactions of Indian Moslems are quite
odern, are in all probability hardly
clear, even yet, to their own conscious-
ness, and have been deeply affected — the
orthodox Moslems would say, perverted —
by a couple of generations of English
education. In all probability the old-
fashioned Moslems of India, who have
learned their Islam in Arabic or in Per-
sian and not from English books, think
of the whole complicated tangle of rela-
tionships much as do the Moslems of the
nearer East and if, from motives of pol-
icy, they fall in with the drift around
them, do so with a full understanding
of its unhistorical character.
I. The Turks, to themselves, are pri-
marily Turks and secondarily Moslems.
This may not hold consciously of the
masses; but it does so unconsciously. To
them an Arab, for example, is an ogre,
an enchanter, an uncanny being; this
comes out clearly in their popular fairy
tales. For their leaders, on the other
hand, the Empire is consciously the Otto-
man Empire, and to the dream of Otto-
manizing everything the Young Turks
sacrificed the fruits of their revolution
and thus sealed the fate of historical
Turkey. They feel far greater kinship
with the Turanian tribes which stretch
through Asia to the Great Wall of China
than they do with their fellow followers
of the Prophet of Arabia. They are
completely under the spell of racial
nationality and, under the names of
pan-Turanianism or Yeni Turan (New
Turan), they dream of a restored empire
reaching from the ^Egean to China. The
rest of the world of Islam they would
lightly sacrifice to that.
Naturally, then, for the Arabs, they
are indifferent Moslems or absolute un-
believers. The Arabs, that is all the
Arabic-speaking peoples south of the
Taurus and the mountains of Kurdistan,
have known them for centuries as con-
querors and oppressors. For them the
Turk is a bogey, despised for stupidity,
feared for his heavy hand, yet respected
for a certain solid force of discipline and
ability to pull together in subordination.
To discipline and subordination no Arab
will ever submit. It is an old observa-
tion that the only thing which has ever
unified them has been religion, and even
that never for long. In consequence, the
Turks were able, though with difficulty,
to keep them under until the Arab chance
came in the war. That common uprising
united them for a time; now, out of the
confusion, the Kingdom of the Hijaz, a
dubious Kingdom of Syria and another
still more dubious of Mesopotamia, seem
to have arisen; but for how long none
can prophesy. Religion, the only force
which, according to the old and true say-
ing, could unite them, is the one force
which must not. That way madness lies.
And now in recoil from foreign domina-
tion, the attraction of a common cause
is being found even with the Turks. Not
that the Arabs wish the Turks back
again ; they must stay on their own aide
of the mountains. But, when all has
been said, they are Orientals and, at
least, nominal Moslems, trying to hold
their own against an all-devouring West,
and if they are overthrown or weakened
beyond measure, all Moslem peoples will
be weakened thereby.
But modern Indian Islam has never
known the Turk and has never suffered
from him : It believes quite fixedly, with
of course varying degrees of under-
standing, that Turkey in the past has not
had a fair deal; has been more sinned
against than sinning. That is, those who
have some knowledge of the Turkish sit-
uation and problem so believe. For the
masses the Ottoman Sultans have been
far-off, half-legendary rulers, the great-
est ruling independent Moslem realms
and meeting the kings of Christendom on
equal terms. Now they have fallen on
evil days, and so it is for all Moslems to
rally to their support; the solidarity of
Islam must mean at least as much as
that. It is true that they have made war
on the British Raj, and Indian Islam has
326]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 47
fought against them loyally ; but the long
years of friendship between Britain and
Turkey should now be remembered, and
too great a penalty should not be im-
posed. In this, of course, there is an im-
mense amount of the will to believe;
but there can not be any doubt that the
Moslem masses in India do so believe. It
does not mean disloyalty on their part or
even, in any strict sense, a divided loy-
alty; it is rather a profound sentiment
based on community of religion and on
ancestral devotion and respect.
II. There can not be much doubt that
the conception of the Caliphate is enter-
ing upon a period of change. But the
time is far in the future when it will be
safe to say that it has actually changed,
and that there need no longer be any
fear of a reversion to the original con-
ception. And, so far, the position of the
canonists of Sunnite Islam has been
unanimous and clear. The Caliph is an
administrator only; he is the executive
of Islam, and he administers the whole
system of Islam as it is related to this
world and to the world to come. Strictly
he should do it all personally ; lead in the
mosque prayers, preach the Friday ser-
mon, judge in the law courts, head the
armies in war. As that is impossible,
his office has gradually been put into
commission, and all the functionaries
who do these things are his delegates.
But he has no power of legislation, or
even of interpretation. Still less is he
a spiritual head who can bind the con-
science* of the Moslems, but otherwise
has no control over them. The systems
of theology and of canon law have been
formulated by the inerrant Agreement of
the Moslem people, and he must accept
these and can administer only these. He
may have his own opinion; but that is
only as an individual Moslem and not as
Caliph. In consequence no non-Moslem
sovereign state can allow him any au-
thority with regard to its Moslem sub-
jects. That would mean, at the least,
that he was a suzerain, however that
term may be defined, and it might mean
that he could interfere at any point in
the administration of that state.
So, ideally, the canonists put it; the
practice has, of course, varied greatly;
but has always been based on the funda-
mental fact that the Caliph is the execu-
tive in the state. Also, as priesthood of
any kind is unknown to Sunnite Islam,
he has never been an authority in his
own right in spiritual things. To the
Turks the Caliphate came after their
conquest of Egypt in 1517 by legacy from
the last Abbasid Caliph, then resident
there. This transfer was perfectly legal
if accepted and ratified by the people,
and since then the Ottoman Sultans have
been formally elected Caliph by the
Shaikh al-Islam, acting as representative
of the people, at the time of their inau-
guration as Sultan. But for them these
two titles were of very different practical
value. The title of Sultan meant that
they were rulers of the factual Ottoman
state, while Caliph meant only a claim to
rule over a vague Moslem world. It was
of far greater importance to them to ex-
tend the actual Ottoman boundaries —
especially so as to include the Sacred
Cities, Mecca and Medina — than to stress
an historical and practically impossible
headship. It is true that later, within
the last couple of centuries, Turkish dip-
lomats found the Caliphate useful as a
card to play in their game with the Eu-
ropean Powers. They found that the
idea of spiritual headship, of a papacy
in fact, was current among these Powers
and acceptable to them, and that the pos-
session of such a status would add
greatly to the influence and dignity in
Europe of the Ottoman state. It gave
Turkey, in the eyes of Europe, that hege-
mony of the Moslem world which she de-
sired, while, being spiritual only, it
seemed to do away with all fear of Turk-
ish meddling with the Moslem subjects
of European Powers. Naturally then,
this misconception of the Caliphate was
encouraged, and Turkey's possession of
the title was emphasized. The European
Powers were misled, or, at least, public
opinion in Europe was, while Moslems in
general and the Moslem subjects of these
Powers in particular knew very well that
the recognition of the Ottoman Caliphate
meant that the Sultan was overlord de
jure and in part de facto to all Europe.
Meanwhile, for the Arabs or Arabic
speakers, the Caliphate meant the Suc-
cessorship of the Prophet, and was lim-
ited by accepted tradition in such ways
as legally to exclude all Turks and simi-
lar parvenus. "So long as there are two
left of the tribe of Quraish," says a tra-
dition from Mohammed, "one of them
will be Caliph and the other his helper."
This the Arabs always remembered, even
when they had to submit to the force
majeure of the Turks. The Caliphate,
therefore, was and is for them a high
ideal office. It reminds them that Mo-
hammed was the Prophet of the Arabs
and that it was under the early Caliphs
that their race swept to victory from
Samarcand to Spain. It reminds them of
the days of undivided empire and of the
future apocalyptic days when Islam will
be led by a true Successor of the Prophet
to the conquest of the whole earth. For
those whose minds are not attuned to so
lofty a strain it is reminiscent of all the
glories of the vanished Moslem courts, of
the Omayyads at Damascus, and the Ab-
basids at Bagdad and the Fatimids at
Cairo. So loaded with memories and
hopes is the Caliphate for them — a sym-
bol of the necessary and essential unity
of all Islam and of the glory of the Arab
race. Nor can they separate it from the
long theological and legal development
through which it has lived. Their Ca-
liph, as Successor of the Prophet, must
be an orthodox Moslem, as orthodoxy has
come with them to be understood. That
does not necessarily mean the rigors
of the puritanic and Calvinistic Wah-
habites; but he must himself profess
broad, orthodox Islam — be a Sunnite in
that sense of the term — and must regard
himself as the head of such Moslems and
as essentially opposed to all wanderers
from that faith, whether they be Shi'itea
or of minor errant sects.
It might be thought that this last re-
quirement should be taken for granted;
that a Caliph must be an orthodox Mos-
lem— "an unbelieving Pope will never
do!" But the view of the Caliphate to
which Indian Islam seems to have come
suggests caution here. For it the Cali-
phate is now a symbol for all Islam in
the widest conceivable sense, and their
hope is that the Caliph of the time may
be a centre round which all sects and par-
ties may unite for mutual support and
defense. They are thus, like the Turks,
realists, but of a very different reality.
The real thing for the Turks is the Turk-
ish race, first the Ottomans and then all
their connections; for Indian Moslems
the real thing is the People of Moham-
med, as it exists at the present day, apart
from creed, school, or history. They are
the only absolute Panislamists, for with
them Panislam is not, as it was with Abd
al-Hamid, a political means, but a faith.
Some of their leaders may have schemes
or ambitions; but the masses are un-
doubtedly simple and sincere. This tend-
ency has been long present in Islam, and
has, from time to time, asserted itself
in individual theologians. One of the
greatest of them all, in the early twelfth
century, said, "Keep a guard on thy
tongue as to people who turn in worship
towards the Ka'ba." He meant that they
were all to be reckoned, without ques-
tions being asked, as fellow Moslems.
And modem conditions in India have
tended to foster this catholic tendency.
All kinds of Moslem sects are there, and
they are all face to face with the crassest
forms of polytheism and idolatry. They
are all, too, under the Pax Britannica,
bound over to keep the peace not only
with their ovra heretics but with these
flagrant idolaters. Naturally they draw
together in spirit and the All-India Mos-
lem League is the consequence. Its Pres-
ident was, perhaps is, the head by right
of blood of the sect of Khajas, who were
the Assassins of the Crusaders, and he
himself is the lineal descendant of the
Old Man of the Mountain — an absolute
heretic if not an unbeliever for orthodox
Islam. Through the English education
of the leaders, too, they have for years
been soaked in ideas of tolerance and
union. In truth, church union seems to
be in the air, and the same air is
breathed in India as in the United States.
Thus it came about that all Indian Mos-
April 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[827
lems, Sunnites and Shi'ites with far out
heretical sects to which earlier Islam
refused the name of Moslem at all, have
united on behalf of the Turks. Less easy
to understand is their hostility to the
King of the Hijaz, a Moslem of unexcep-
tionable orthodoxy and a descendant of
the Prophet in de facto possession of the
Sacred Cities. But he is also a rebel
against the Ottoman Sultan, and in India
the glamour of Constantinople and of its
great Caliph has long worked powerfully.
There the Indian Moslems thought they
had found the centre and symbol of the
Moslem world for which they had hoped.
Other, and less ideal elements, including
the complicated politics of Arabia itself,
have also probably played a part ; but the
decisive movement has certainly been
loyalty to the Ottoman Sultan. It has
driven some of them so far that
they have formulated a demand that
the lost provinces — Syria, Mesopotamia,
Arabia, especially the Sacred Cities — ■
should be returned to Turkey. That is
a hopelessly impossible position, which
certainly does not express the mind of
these provinces and which suggests influ-
ence from Turkey itself. Yet it makes
plain that for India the Ottoman Sultan-
ate is the great fact in Western Islam.
III. It is probable that the average
Turk is puzzled at the prominence which
Constantinople has come to hold in these
discussions. He has never felt especially
at home there; Brusa, for example, as
compared to it, is to him home. Just as
so many Turks have abandoned Bulgaria
and Thrace, so he, with a comparatively
i easy mind, would move on across the
Straits. In all Constantinople there is
only one specially sacred place, the
mosque built over the alleged tomb of
Ayyub, a Companion of the Prophet, who
fell in that first unsuccessful siege of the
city in or about A. D. 672, nearly 800
years before its capture. There the Otto-
man Sultans are inaugurated by being
! girt with the sword of Othman by a dep-
uty from the Head of the Mevleviyeh
Dervishes at Konia. With Adrianople
I the ties are much older and closer, and
the present threats of the Turkish army
in Thrace to hold it by force are intel-
ligible.
But with the Arabs, again, the case
is different. Constantinople, for them,
marks a great conquest of Islam. Their
memories carry back to the first fiery
raids under the immediate Successors of
the Prophet, when Constantinople was
reached but not taken; then to the later
long-drawn-out conflict, when the By-
jZantines reestablished and held the lines
I of the Taurus against them. That the
' Ottomans should finally have taken, made
their capital, and held so long that city
of long-deferred hopes, marked them as
great conquerors and restorers of Islam,
and that they should now lose it would
be bitter, even to those who have cast off
allegiance to them. We have here, again,
the solidarity of Islam rising above race,
language, and local hostilities. It is a
different matter from their personal feel-
ing towards the Turks qua Turk, and
very different from their feeling towards
the Ottoman Sultan as claimant of the
canonical Successorship of the Prophet —
he, an interloper and "climber," without
lot or part, except by violence, in the
sacred memories and associations of the
Arab race! But, again, with the Arabs,
as with all, there is another constant mo-
ment uniting them with the Turks. They
recognize perfectly clearly that for cen-
turies the Turks have represented the
East as against the West, have stood in
the gate, by diplomacy and by force,
against that which for the whole East
was and is the great peril, the ever-ad-
vancing and devouring West. But when
so sweeping a statement as this is made,
what of the attitude of the Oriental
Christian peoples? Do they feel them-
selves as Orientals solid with the Mos-
lem peoples among whom they are scat-
tered? It may safely be answered that,
given personal security and equality,
they, too, would be part of this solidarity
of Asia. The Egyptian Copts are an
example: In the security of the British
Protectorate — that is the irony of such
things — they are joining the Moslem
Nationalists, as Orientals against the
West. In so doing they shut their eyes,
wittingly or unwittingly, to the fact that
the ultimate object of their agitation
must be the removal of that protectorate
and their own suppression and political
destruction by the enormous preponder-
ance of the Moslem population. For it
can not be overemphasized that no Mos-
lem state or civilization can, in fact, give
citizenship and equal rights to its non-
Moslems. It may possibly, in contradic-
tion to the basal principles of Islam,
write these into its constitution, but the
non-Moslems can secure and enjoy their
rights only by having actual force behind
them. And the Moslems, left to them-
selves, will always revert to that basal
Islam.
The same considerations hold with In-
dian Moslems; they feel the solidarity of
Islam and they also feel the solidarity of
the East. But so far as they have been
affected by English education, and that
is very widely and deeply, another ele-
ment enters. They think of Constanti-
nople in terms of our classical world.
They have read their Gibbon, even if
they have not their Virgil, and Constan-
tinople is for them New Rome, the City
of Constantino, before it is the City of
the Sultans. There the Ottoman Sultans
represent the Byzantine emperors and
carry on the line of the Csesars. To
minds thus nurtured the thought that
the City of Europe, the -''>'f — many
remember that Stamboul means cigri/VTToAiv
— has been held by Eastern hands for
nearly five hundred years — works like a
spell, and to abandon it would be proof
of the final decadence of Islam. This may
be set against the sentiment of Christen-
dom that the dome of Santa Sophia must
again be given to Christian worship.
Such are, fairly, the foundations of the
problem. But the essence of the prob-
lem is simply the Turks. There are so
and so many millions of them, scattered
through such and such territory; what
can be done with them? We can not
employ with them their own methods
with the Armenians; so they are on our
hands. There must be some way, per-
haps a makeshift one, found to control
them. For how to control them is the
question, and whatever method really
controls them is right, and the right
method can be found only by trying. It
may be that they can be controlled from
Constantinople; it may be that that will
only split them up. Then they must
lose Constantinople and the control must
be pushed into Asia Minor. Whatever
may come of the rather premature King-
doms of Syria and Mesopotamia, the
French are now advancing again into
Northern Syria and Cilicia and the
Greeks are advancing from Smyrna. The
British will have to hold the mountains
which command the Mesopotamian plains
and the southern shores of the Caspian.
The pity is that a precious year has been
lost through waiting, mostly for this
country to discover its own mind. And
now it will be well for us, in our turn, to
be realists ; that is, to recognize facts in-
stead of spinning theories, however beau-
tiful. The gorgeous figments of a new
heaven and a new earth are gone, and
both here and in the East we must make
the best of the same old conditions and
the same old human nature. This coun-
try definitely declines to take a mandate;
it can, therefore, claim little voice in the
settlement. Whatever League of Nations
can now come into being, if any, can be
but feeble, and yet all actually in contact
with the situations agree that a League
to affect anything must have a very big
and thick stick and be prepared to break
it over certain heads. And these heads
are not those of the supposed predatory
European Powers, but of the little na-
tionalities which have sprung into exist-
ence out of the debris of Turkey, and
which are ready to fly at one another's
throats. The old Turkish Empire is
now fairly Balkanized, for better or for
worse. And, finally, we must not im-
agine that any settlement is going to be
permanent, for many a long day to come.
This may sound like despair; it is really
hope. The nations must fight their own
way out to life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness. They may be guarded and
protected in that, but the burden of the
struggle is and must be their own.
D. B. Macdonald
328]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 47
The Third Internationale
ACCORDING to a cablegram from The
Hague of March 20, a special edi-
tion of the Tribune, the organ of the
Dutch Communists, has given publicity
to the complete list of resolutions adopted
by a secret meeting of the Third Inter-
nationale held at Amsterdam on Febru-
ary 3 and following days. The public in
Holland will have received the news with
more than its usual phlegm, as an ex-
tensive report of this secret conference
had appeared in the papers more than
a month before the conspirators put a
bold face on the matter and made their
Tribune repeat what a bourgeois journal
had betrayed. It was the Amsterdam
Handelsblad which, a week after the
meeting, brought the first revelations.
Communists, even when secretly conspir-
ing, remain communicative creatures.
One of them must have unburdened his
mind to an undeserving bourgeois jour-
nalist, whose faithful report in the Han-
delsblad remained for more than a month
the only source whence the Communist
subscribers to the Tribune could draw
information as to how their interests
were being cared for by the great politi-
cal thinkers of the party.
The Handelsblad chose the right mo-
ment for its disclosures. For on that
same day, February 14, a general strike
was declared in the Rotterdam and
Amsterdam harbors, the demand of the
laborers being an increase of wages, in
which the four principal labor groups,
Socialists, Communists, Roman Catho-
lics, and members of the Christian
Workers Union, however much differing
among themselves in political views, could
go hand in hand.
But when the report "f the secret
Communist meeting was (disclosed in the
Handelsblad, the leaders of the two last-
mentioned groups realized that they were
allied with men who used the demand
for an increased wage as a pretext,
merely, for starting an action directed
against the control both of the harbor
and the City Government, although,
when they entered into the compact with
the radicals, it had been emphatically
stipulated that their action was to be
economic and non-political. The advisors
of the Roman Cathol'>, laborers, there-
fore, counseled theix followers to re-
sume work at once, but — an ominous sign
of the times and of the futility of leader-
ship when once the masses have been
turned loose — the men refused unani-
mously to do as they were told and stuck
faithfully to their Communist comrades.
The strike has lasted now for seven
weeks, and there is little chance that it
will soon be called off. The Holland-
America Line announces in the New
York papers that "on account of strike
in Holland, sailings up to and including
April 3 have been canceled." The Fed-
eration does not lack money to finance it.
"The Russian Soviet Government," says
the Handelsblad report of the Communist
meeting of February 6, "has placed at
the disposal of the Executive Bureau of
the Third Internationale a collection of
diamonds, pearls, and other precious
stones to a value of twenty million
rubles," which, as was explained by Mr.
S. J. Rutgers, the happy bearer of this
news from Moscow, "must be used for
the support of every strike and every
movement which bears a revolutionary
character." Amsterdam is a regular
market for the sale of stolen jewelry
from Russia, and one of the brokers em-
ployed by the gentlemen-dealers of Mos-
cow is a Communist member of the City
Council. Diamonds are offered for sale
as imported from Denmark, although
Copenhagen has never had any trade in
that line. The wife of Mr. Rutgers is
less mysterious about their origin than
the jobbers. She makes no secret of it
that she brought a diamond cross, a pearl
necklace, one big and one small diamond
to Holland in order to sell them for the
benefit of the Communist movement.
This Mr. Rutgers is a Dutch engineer,
who has been for some time in the em-
ploy of the Soviet Government, and, hap-
pening to be in Moscow at the time,
attended the constitutive assembly of the
Third Internationale. Its international
character was not apparent at that first
meeting, for the only non-Russian mem-
bers were Chinese, Poles, Letts, and pris-
oners of war from the countries of the
Central and Allied Powers. Lenin, being
desirous to internationalize his Interna-
tionale, sent Mr. Rutgers to his native
country with the mission there to effect
an extension of the new organization, and
to prepare a Bolshevist Conference for
the West European countries and the
United States. Lenin's choice of Hol-
land as the centre for this propaganda
scheme was explained in these words,
verbally quoted by Mr. Rutgers from
the Soviet Tsar: "It is a quiet country
with a feeble reaction," a characteriza-
tion which has caused no little amuse-
ment in Holland, as the brave David
Wijnkoop, the Dutch Trotsky, is never
tired of denouncing the bourgeois Gov-
ernment at The Hague as a gang of
reactionary despots. The remark justi-
fies, incidentally, the drastic measures
against bolshevist agitation in this coun-
try, which will save it from the distinc-
tion conferred upon Holland by the great
man at Moscow.
Mr. Rutgers was assisted in the exe-
cution of his great mission by the poets
Herman Gorter and Henriette Roland
Hoist van der Schalk, by the astronomer
Dr. A. Pannekoek, and the politicians W.
van Ravesteyn and David Wynkoop.
Obedient to Lenin's orders, they called a
secret international conference, which was
attended by representatives from Ger-
many, Switzerland, the Netherland East
Indies, Russia, England, Belgium, Hun-
gary and the United States. The chief
item on the programme was the forma-
tion of an Executive Bureau of the Third
Internationale which will await its orders
direct from Moscow. Sub-bureaus are to
be established in North America, East
Asia, Spain, and Mexico. Once in three
months the countries which have joined
Lenin's Internationale will send a dele-
gate to the Bureau at Amsterdam.
With regard to Soviet Russia the fol-
lowing resolution was passed :
A revolutionary action of labor for forcing
international capitalism to make peace with
Russia is a necessary condition for the salva-
tion of Russia and the maturing of the world
revolution. In order to promote this action,
the communists in all countries must make use
of every strike and every mass demonstra-
tion, must remind the working classes of their
responsibility towards the Russian revolution,
must convince them of the analogy between
their own and Russia's aspirations, and pro-
mote all over the world a strong feeling of
revolutionary solidarity. Under the growing
pressure of labor on the various Governments
the latter have begun to evince a desire for a
compromise with Russia, not with a view to
peace, but in order to dislocate Soviet Russia
from within. The recent proposals for a re-
sumption of trade relations by means of reac-
tionary representatives of pre-revolution co-
operatives, which since have been merged in
the Soviet organizations, have no other pur-
pose than to drive a wedge between peasants
and laborers and to crush the Soviet monopoly.
Under the disguise of such manceuvres a
great spring offensive is being prepared, which
must be prevented at all cost. This Bureau,
therefore, must immediately take steps to or-
ganize an international demonstrative strike
against intervention in Russia. Such a strike
must not only demand the cessation of the
blockade and intervention in Russia, but ought
also to press political and economic demands,
in accordance with the revolutionary develop-
ment of each separate country. This demon-
stration must be supplemented by coercive
strikes in proportion to the power which the
workers can command for such an action. The
appeal to the workers for an international
strike must be made not exclusively through
the medium of the bureaucracy of the trade
unions, but should preferentially be straight-
way addressed to the masses both within and
without these organizations, over the heads of
their leaders.
A long discussion had preceded the
passing of this lengthy resolution, espe-
cially about a proposal of comrades Mur-
phy and Frayna, delegates from Eng-
land and the United States, which the
Handelsblad gives as follows :
The imperialistic Governments try to justify
their own aggression by accusing the Soviet
Government of aggressive aims. Soviet Russia
admits that revolutions have their origin, not
in attacks from abroad, but in forces developed
in the country itself. Soviet Russia is now
waging a defensive war, which her imperialis-
tic opponents force upon her. It will cease
as soon as the imperialistic Governments ac-
cept peace on the conditions which the Soviet
Government has formulated more than once.
If, however, the opposition of the imperialistic
April 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[329
Governments should compel Soviet Russia to
change her defensive war into a military offen-
sive, either against the West or the East, an
appeal would be addressed to the workers in
the other countries not to offer resistance to
the Soviet armies, but to expel their own bour-
geois Governments and proclaim the Soviet
Republic.
Against this resolution the great David
Wijnkoop raised a warning voice, because
it would play into the hands of the reac-
tionary Governments. "It is perfectly
true," he said, "and it may safely be
admitted in this meeting, but if the bour-
geoisie should come to know of these
plans, it would exploit them against us
and accuse us of reckoning on an invasion
of the Soviet armies and of intending to
aid them. I should like to know what
Mr. Rutgers" (who represented the
Soviet Government) "has got to say on
this point."
Mr. Rutgers agreed with David Wijn-
koop that the resolution of com-
rades Murphy and Frayna was untimely.
"The situation," he said, "is such that
months may yet pass before the Soviet
troops can begin an offensive outside Rus-
sia. The Soviet Government, I think,
would hardly be pleased with the passing
of this resolution." The opinion of Rut-
gers, the spokesman of Lenin, finished
the matter; the resolution was imme-
diately withdrawn, so that the bour-
geoisie of the imperialistic countries
might be kept hoodwinked a little longer.
The disclosures of the Handelsblad
form a telling comment on the recent
statement of Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet
plenipotentiary at Copenhagen, as to
Moscow's foreign policy: "We respect
the right of every country to dispose
freely of its own affairs, and will not
interfere in the interior politics of other
nations." What business has a Govern-
ment so little meddlesome to establish
Executive Bureaus and sub-bureaus in
Holland, Spain, Mexico, the United
States, East Asia? Are strikes no inter-
nal affairs, and is their financing with
the loot of the Soviets no interference in
the interior politics of other nations?
And how does comrade Litvinov reconcile
his promise of non-interference in the
domestic affairs of other nations with the
conviction of the secret conference that
"a revolutionary action of labor for
forcing international capitalism to make
peace with Russia is a necessary condi-
tion for the salvation of Russia and the
maturing of the world revolution?" The
answer to these questions is perfectly
simple: it is not the Soviet Government
which will be responsible for the uni-
versal upheaval, henceforth the Third
Internationale, honestly international-
ized, will do the dirty work, thereby
allowing the official spokesmen of
Russia to profess the Soviet Govern-
ment's "respect for the right of every
country to dispose freely of its own
affairs." A. J. Barnouw
Correspondence
The Adriatic Problem
To the Editors of The Review:
In your editorial on the Fiume prob-
lem in the Review for February 28 you
state that "a strict application of the
principle of racial self-determination
would have allotted to Italy all the East-
ern ports and islands of the Adriatic."
Racial self-determination is a rather
vague expression, but on any interpreta-
tion your statement seems wide of the
truth. That the Italian race is either
wholly absent from, or constitutes but
a negligible fraction of, the population
in the Eastern ports and islands of the
Adriatic, save only the ports of Fiume
and Zara and the Lussin-Cherso island
groups, is frankly recognized by Italian
as well as other authorities. The beau-
tiful ethnographic map by Olinto
Marinelli, the foremost living Italian
geographer, published in the Geographi-
cal Review during the war, and the
ethnico-linguistic maps by the Agostini
Geographical Institute, which greatly
exaggerate the Italian areas, agree in
showing that the east side of the Adriatic
is overwhelmingly Jugoslav. When Presi-
dent Wilson enunciated the principle of
self-determination, all Italy protested
through the press and through her offi-
cial spokesman that this principle could
not be applied to the settlement of Italy's
frontier problems. The Jugoslav repre-
sentatives agreed to a settlement of the
whole issue by plebiscite because they
were confident that not one port or
island would vote for Italian rule.
Equally surprising is the assertion
that "paradoxically, the Pact of London
was more nearly in accord with the Four-
teen Points than any subsequent pro-
posal has been." Since the subsequent
proposals have eliminated from Italian
control over 200,000 Jugoslavs and only
14,000 Italians in Dalmatia, and over
100,000 Jugoslavs and only 4,000 Italians
in the region at the head of the Adriatic,
and have at the same time added only
10,000 Germans and Jugoslavs with less
than 100 Italians in the Sexten Valley and
Tarvis regions; and since, furthermore,
they increase the security of Jugoslavia's
access to the sea by removing Italian
territory farther from Fiume, it is easily
seen that they bring the settlement more
closely into accord with such of the Four-
teen Points as are applicable to the Adri-
atic problem.
You add that the Treaty of London
"gave Italy virtually all of the Italian-
speaking littoral." It would be more
accurate to say that it gave to Italy all
the economically and strategically most
important Slavic-speaking littoral. It is
frankly admitted by Italy and her allies
that the Treaty of London was designed
for strategic ends in-so-far as its Adriatic
terms are concerned. And while many
Jugoslavs do speak Italian, none of
the parties to the Treaty denies that
the Slavic-speaking population forms an
overwhelming majority in the disputed
areas. The Austrian census figures are
based on language, and favor the Italian
case, since many Jugoslavs give Italian
as their language for business, political,
cultural, and other reasons, while an
Italian seldom if ever gives Slavic as
his language. Yet the language statistics
show less than 20,000 persons speaking
Italian as their ordinary language and
nearly 400,000 speaking the Slavic tongue
in that part of the lands assigned to Italy
by the "Treaty of London which the Presi-
dent refuses to turn over to Italian sov-
ereignty.
It is not my intention to go into ques-
tions where there is some possible
ground for a reasonable difference of
opinion, nor even into the oft-repeated
assertion that Fiume is "an Italian city,"
although I think careful study will make
clear to any fair-minded man the facts
that the so-called Italian "majority" in
Fiume is a little less than half the total
population of the city, that it includes
many Italian-speaking Jugoslavs who have
no Italian blood in their veins, that it
also includes several thousand citizens
of Italy who never gave up their Italian
citizenship, and that a very considerable
proportion of the total Italian popula-
tion, as well as the large Slavic and
mixed population, is vigorously opposed
to Italian sovereignty on the very sub-
stantial ground that it would mean the
economic ruin of the port. But the spe-
cially staged "self-determination" of
Fiume has obscured the real situation to
many, and put the question in the realm
of the debatable, where I am content to
leave it. Square Deal
New York, March 15
[Our correspondent justly calls atten-
tion to certain overstatements. His own
figures, however, show that the mingling
of races is such that no strict applica-
tion of the principle of self-determination
is possible. No mere reckoning of human
debits and credits — Slavs assigned to
Italy, and vice-versa, at all meets the
case. We repeat the gist of our com-
ment:— a commercial outlet should be
assured to Jugoslavia ; otherwise the pre-
sumptions are in favor of Italy, because
of her sacrifices in the war, because of
the necessity of securing her active ad-
herence to the League, and because of
her established cultural position and pros-
pects. When disposing of an almost un-
developed region, statistics of the scanty
population have secondary meaning.
What counts greatly is the capacity
of the claimants for developing and
eventually peopling the territory.— Eds.
The Review.]
330]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 47
"Keep Your Eye on Paisley"
To the Editors of The Review :
Herbert H. Asquith's return to the
House of Commons as member for the
Scottish constituency of Paisley is not
without much significance. "Keep your
eye on Paisley," has been the maxim of
political leaders in the old country for a
long time. The town has historic in-
dustrial, and intellectual traditions of a
peculiar kind. Asquith's constituency
for nearly thirty years was the East Fife
burghs, including St. Andrews, with its
ancient university. The Fifeshire man,
known as the "Fifer," is of the most
"pawky" of canny Scots, and when Glad-
stone recommended the cultured young
Yorkshireman from his own university
of Oxford to the East Fife electors as
a suitable candidate, he made an excellent
choice. Both Gladstone and Asquith
have combined in their characters the
industrial instinct of the North Country
man with the intellectual culture of their
Southland university. Indeed, it is as a
financier rather than as a statesman that
Gladstone may finally be known to his-
tory. Gladstone himself, beginning
political life as member for the Univer-
sity of Oxford, had finally to woo the
suffrage of a Scottish constituency, that
of Midlothian.
The higher "industrial call," as it may
be termed — that is, the union of the his-
toric sense and of intellectual acumen
with the common sense of the manufac-
turer and businessman — is the call of the
time to-day. The Paisley voter has a
long national past behind him and com-
bines these qualities. Two miles off, in
the suburb of Ellerslie, the Scottish
patriot. Sir William Wallace, was born.
In its noble Abbey, left unharmed in the
general destruction of religious edifices
at the Reformation, lies buried a Stuart
queen. In this magnanimity. Paisley
wisely did not break with the past. In the
eighteenth century it became an indus-
trial centre, and Burns's Nannie, readers
of "Tam o' Shanter" will remember, had
a "sark of Paisley ham." An intelli-
gent citizen of Paisley, visiting the Vale
of Cashmere over a hundred years ago,
made himself acquainted with the ex-
quisite products of its looms, and
planted the industry of "Paisley shawls"
in the old burgh. Another Paisley man,
James Coats, discharged after Waterloo
with a meagre private's pension, was
able to establish the manufacture of
thread at Paisley in a way that made
the name of Coats known all over the
world. Paisley has also had a continu-
ous literary tradition. The brightest
lyric star after Bums was the Paisley
weaver, Robert Tannahill, who cele-
brated the beauties of the Braes of Glen-
nifer. At the close of last century, when
the Marquis of Bute wished to establish
a Scottish Review, it was to a Paisley
editor. Dr. Metcalfe, and to the enter-
prising Paisley publishing firm of
Gardner that he entrusted the work.
And this same editor it was who brought
out the revised edition of Jamieson's
Scottish Dictionary, with supplement.
Historically, intellectually, and indus-
trially Asquith has thus again a con-
stituency that will be able to appreciate
him. The world still does well to "keep
its eye on Paisley."
James Main Dixon
San Francisco, Calif omia,
March 3
Reducing the Human Cost
of Living
To the Editors of The Review:
Is it permitted to say a word regarding
Mr. Colcord's article on "The Human
Cost of Living"?
1. Personally I deprecate the "sob
stuff." Can we not leave this style to the
muck-rakers and the journals of opinion?
2. Why compare those "killed and
maimed" in industry with those "killed"
on the Union side at Gettysburg? Un-
like things can not be compared. The
number killed daily in industry in the
United States is 83. The number killed
on the Union side in the three days'
battle of Gettysburg was 3,072, or an
average of 1,024 per day. The ratio,
therefore, is not one to two but one to
twelve.
3. The young lady in the chorus said
that she had not yet learned much in her
double-entry bookkeeping course at the
business college but that she had found
out that when you put something down
on one page you put something down on
the opposite page to contradict it. How
then shall we make our ledger entries?
If we put on the one page the 25,000
killed annually in industry, what shall
be put on the other? The processes of
civilization are held generally to have
substantially added to the average of
human life, and, whereas, say a century
ago, the average length of life was ap-
proximately 32.22 years, it is now about
47.60 years. We have a population of
approximately 110,000,000. These now
die then at the average of 47.60 years,
or 2,310,924 annually; whereas at the old
rate the number of deaths annually would
have been 3,414,028. We may then con-
trast the two entries, 25,000 lost and
1,103,104 saved.
4. But in and of itself the daily indus-
trial loss of 83 is lamentable and it would
be serious indeed were we compelled to
adopt the writer's view that it is doubt-
ful "if it is humanly possible to do more
than our great industrial corporations
. . . are doing to-day." Can not the
workers themselves do something? Be-
cause we have swept off the statute
books "contributory negligence" and
"fellow-employees," have the things that
they connoted disappeared?
Some years ago the then Governor of
Pennsylvania in an effort to build up his
political machine called an industrial
conference. Mr. Gompers, in his inter-
esting address, said that most of the
industrial accidents occurred in the clos-
ing hour of work, and advocated the
eight-hour workday as a remedy. I in-
vestigated the facts in one of the haz-
ardous industries, itself on an eight-hour
basis. The facts were that most of the
accidents occurred in the first hour after
the noon interval, and were attributed to
the use of intoxicants by the workers
during that interval. Voluntary reform
or reform compulsory under prohibition
may be a substantial remedy.
The railroad representatives at this
conference called attention to fatal acci-
dents on railroads (5,084 to trespassers
and 2,031 to passengers and to employees
in 1915) and advocated legislation to in-
sure the prevention of trespassing. This
was strenuously opposed by the leaders
of organized labor, and the explanation
passed around was that they were afraid
that in the case of a strike the law might
be used to prevent their easy access to
railroad property, provided they wished
to interfere with workers. It may be
that the employer, alive to his responsi-
bilities, has done all that he is able, but
I think it likely that something remains
to be done by the workmen through
greater carefulness, more sober and re-
sponsible habits, and the selection of
wiser leadership; and by the State
through intelligent and courageous legis-
lation.
5. From a bulletin recently received I
abstract the following:
In Pennsylvania there was reported in 1919
a total of 484 strikes, involving 171,630 wage
earners, who lost in the aggregate 500,000
working days. The total strike loss is esti-
mated at $14,000,000.
In Pennsylvania the record of disabling acci-
dents in industry for 1919 showed 152,544
cases, involving a wage loss of about $8,750,-
000.
The abolition of strikes would mean as
much or more savmg for industry in general
as would the complete prevention of acci-
dents.*
It may well be that we should feel that
the contrast as made is unsympathetic
and gives but scant value to the human
element, but on the other hand the strike
loss is not fully indicated by the wage
loss. There is always the suffering and
♦Reference is made to Bulletin No. 157 of
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U. S. Depart-
ment of Labor, and to the articles "On the
Improvement in Longevity during the 19th
Century in the Netherlands," by Pereira and
Landre, and "On the Improvement in Longev-
ity in the United States during the 19th Cen-
tury," by John K. Gore, published in Volume
I of the Proceedings of the Fourth Interna-
tional Congress of Actuaries.
April 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[331
the want, disease and death, the reduc-
tion to poverty and semi-starvation of
thousands of workers, the dislocation of
business enterprises, the dispersion of
orders to other communities and other
countries — consequences that may endure
long after the strike is over.
L. F. LOREE
New York, March 8
Religious Liberty
To the Editors of THE Review:
I note with interest the proposal of
Mr. Cyrus H. Eshleman, in your issue
of February 28, that the Government
should "supervise and regulate" religion.
It is not a novelty, however. Cujus regio
ejus religio was a sixteenth century
maxim which can be applied under demo-
cratic control as well as under personal
rule; and the policy of the dominant fac-
tion in "Red" Russia appears to be quite
on that line. The French Revolutionists
of the Terror tried it, too, with what
success we know. But I fail to see why
the proposed revival of secular tyranny
over spiritual matters should be thought
either "liberal," "rational," or "progres-
sive." Such use of undefined terms
darkens counsel, even though it is too
often characteristic of "modern thinkers."
Mr. Eshleman forgets that historic
Christianity is based upon a historic
fact : the life of Jesus Christ. Christians
believe that Jesus Christ is God made
Man, a living Revelation of the invisible
Father. Catholic Christians believe that
He established a Divine Society, His
Church, which shall endure, essentially
unaltered, so long as the world stands.
They believe that they already know the
Truth, and are made free by that knowl-
edge; and they respectfully decline Gov-
ernment regulation of their belief and
worship, or membership in a state-con-
trolled religious Trust. Even non-Chris-
tians will acknowledge that if men are
convinced of the divine authority of a
teacher, they can not make better use of
their reason than by obeying him.
Mr. Eshleman is wrong when he de-
clares that Orthodox believers worship
the Bible or the Church. Whether Protes-
tant or Catholic, they worship Jesus as
I their Lord and God, their living Head.
iAnd when it is proposed to "substitute
progress for the idea of finality," Mr.
Eshleman must tell us what he means by
• progress, and towards what goal. It is
[possible to go ahead until one is hope-
llessly bogged, if one does not know the
way or its end.
This is no place to debate the issues
j between Christianity and secular sys-
Items of thought; but, to speak a word
for religious liberty, in view of an appar-
ent threat, may perhaps be allowed. And
it is significant that the advocate of state
control of religion should be not an eccle-
siastic, but a professed liberal and ra-
tionalist, supposedly animated by the
modern spirit.
William Harman van Allen
Boston, March 2
The Hazard.s of Book
Reviewing
To the Editors of The Review:
In the first sentence of the review of
"The Flow of Value" in the Review of
March 20, my style receives wholesale
condemnation supported by the quotation
of what probably is the most abstruse
sentence in the entire book. That sen-
tence is the culmination of an elaborate
line of reasoning. Unless the reader has
been led up to that sentence not only
will he find it "tedious," and "not to be
read without effort," but he will find it
utterly incomprehensible, without mean-
ing at all. A man once said to me that
Herbert Spencer's definition of Evoluti6n
was clear as crystal to the man who fol-
lowed the exposition which culminated in
that definition, but that if a negro min-
strel were to take that definition alone
and rattle it off in a vaudeville mono-
logue it would bring a laugh from the
entire audience. I hope the analogy is
apparent. It is needless to say that no
comparison is instituted between Herbert
Spencer and myself.
Ninety-nine persons out of a hundred
after reading that first paragraph not
only would not read the book, but would
not read the remainder of the review. To
the mind of "a general reader" it would
kill the book.
Logan G. McPherson
New York, March 22
[We feel that the opening paragraph
of the review was likely to do Mr. Mc-
Pherson's book the injustice of which he
complains, though it was certainly not
the intention of the reviewer to convey
the impression that the sentence he
quoted was typical. Had the remark
been made anywhere but at the begin-
ning of the review, its occurrence would,
whether too severe as to the particular
point or not, have been just one of the
ordinary incidents of the hazardous
trade of reviewing. As it is, we are
glad to offset any wrong it may have
done by pointing out that in the very
next paragraph of the review the au-
thor's method of opening up his subject
is commended as "one of the best ways
to present it to those who are beginning
to think economically"; that from this
point on throughout the article, the work
is commended for the straightforward-
ness and adequacy of its exposition; and
that the closing paragraph of the review
refers to the "clearness" with which the
book develops its main thesis, the "vig-
orous enforcement" of which is declared
to be a "real service." — Eds. The
Review.]
Protection for Investors
To the Editors of The Review :
Senator Kenyon has introduced a bill,
Senate No. 3702, which proposes Federal
action to protect the investor against
fraudulent stock promotions. Such leg-
islation was urged by the Capital Issues
Committee during the war, and by Presi-
dent Wilson in a recent message. The
bill requires any corporation engaged in
interstate commerce to give publicity to
pertinent financial facts regarding new
securities which it offers investors.
Such information is to be filed with the
local United States postmaster for public
inspection, and also with the Federal
Trade Commission at Washington, and,
in addition to general facts regarding
the corporation and its officers, and the
latest balance sheet of the corporation,
it must include a statement as to the
purposes to which the proceeds of the
new securities are to be devoted, and the
terms of the flotation, including expenses
and the names of the underwriters and
others concerned with the original sale.
A copy of this statement of information
is to be attached to every bond and
original certificate of stock and receipt
for subscription. False statements are
punishable as perjury and the United
States District Attorney is made respon-
sible for enforcement. Purchasers of
original securities regarding which mis-
statements are made may recover by suit
twice the amount of the purchase price,
but the suit must be brought within a
year of the time of purchase. The pre-
cise form which this statement should
take is a matter on which expert opinion
will differ, but the requirement of such
a statement regarding new issues seems
a sound public policy.
Still further control is effected through
the public post office by the proposed en-
actment that the mailing of any original
securities for which the required state-
ment has not been filed or the mailing of
any required statement regarding securi-
ties known to be false shall be a punish-
able offense.
The details of the Kenyon bill should
of course be scrutinized carefully by
those concerned technically with the pro-
motion of securities, for such legislation,
to be effective, must be workable. Their
judgment may, however, be supplemented
by that of disinterested laymen who see
not only the great loss every year
through fraudulent securities, but also
the still greater check excited by such
fraudulent activities on the growth of a
habit of thrift. To one judging the situ-
ation from this point of view the Ken-
yon bill offers hope of a legitimate
method of control, and the undersigned
urges that Senator Kenyon's bill receive
widespread consideration.
Benjamin R. Andrews
New York, March 16
332]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 47
Religious Revival
Old and New
IN the financial columns of a New York
evening newspaper there appeared re-
cently a cable dispatch from its London
correspondent which declared that there
was a growing feeling among "hard-
headed business men" that the best hope
of checking the Bolshevist spirit lay in
"a genuine religious revival."
That, on the face of it, seems rather a
remarkable statement, coming from such
a source. When one speaks of a religious
revival one thinks instinctively of the
Billy Sunday type of evangelism or of
the old-fashioned emotional revivals led
by some prominent evangelist who made
a swing around the circle, rousing men
and women to confess their sins and join
the church.
It is hardly possible to overrate the
influence in shaping the character of the
American people that such periodic re-
vivals exercised. They have become an
intimate part of American history, and
no account of the development of Ameri-
can character and institutions can ignore
them. But clearly this is not the type of
revival that one would expect to appeal
to "the hard-headed business man" as a
probable cure for Bolshevism. What he
doubtless had in mind was a general
quickening of the spiritual life of the
country through a more acute realization
of the truths of Christianity, an empha-
sis on the spiritual as opposed to the ma-
terial things of life.
In point of fact, it may fairly be as-
serted that in America this kind of re-
vival is already under way, and there are
signs that it is spreading, by way of the
great Dominions, Canada and Australia,
to the British Isles. The man in the street
may feel inclined to grumble at the fre-
quency with which he is invited to pull
out his pocketbook ; occasional doubt may
even be expressed as to the administra-
tive economy of some of these appeals to
the charitable public; but it is a rather
remarkable tribute to the spiritual em-
phasis of these drives that it does not
seem to have occurred to any one to cast
serious doubts on the fundamental worth
of the objects involved.
No doubts are, of course, possible. Al-
most without exception the drives have
been in aid of some eleemosynary, educa-
tional, or religious cause of unquestioned
standing. They have come at a time
when the country is rolling in wealth,
and there can hardly be a doubt that the
spiritual blood-letting, if one may call it
that, which they have accomplished has
been an uncommonly good thing for the
community.
This, then, is the new type of revival,
displaying itself, broadly speaking, in
appeals to the public to concern them-
selves with the things of the spirit in
the most practical and effective manner
possible by providing money for their
support. More specifically, of course, the
term revival is particularly applicable to
those appeals which have a definitely reli-
gious end in view. Started by a small
denomination, the Disciples of Christ,
which in 1918 "went over the top," as
the jargon of the "drive" has it, with a
total subscription of $6,500,000, the
fashion of these intensive campaigns has
been adopted by one denomination after
another. The most conspicuous ex-
ample so far is, of course, the Centen-
ary Movement of the two branches.
North and South, of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church, which subscribed the mag-
nificent total of $168,000,000.
Now the ambitious programme of the
Centenary is to be eclipsed by the Inter-
church World Movement of North Amer-
ica, with an appeal to the Protestant con-
stituency of the country for a sum of no
less than $336,000,000, the intensive cam-
paign by which this enermous sum is
to be raised being scheduled to take place
during the one week, April 25 to May 2.
As a matter of fact the total is not quite
so staggering as it sounds, for whereas
the Centenary Movement, which was
able to raise $168,000,000, represented
only two denominations, the Interchurch
World Movement represents thirty with
members and adherents numbering some
30,000,000. Indeed, one compelling cause
for the Movement's coming into exist-
ence was the clearly seen necessity for
some kind of coordination among the
various Protestant churches of the coun-
try in making their appeals for public
support. The various Protestant denom-
inations have profited so well by the les-
sons taught them by the Disciples of
Christ and the Methodists that at the
present time there are completed, under
way, or in immediate contemplation more
than thirty different denominational "for-
ward movements," all appealing to their
several constituencies for various sums
which amount in the aggregate, for the
five years which most of the forward
movements adopt as the period of their
programme, to considerably more than
half a billion dollars.
It does not need the assistance of an
efficiency expert to realize the inevitable
economic waste and duplication of effort
involved in conducting all these separate
"drives," not to speak of the almost cer-
tain apathy or irritation that the multi-
plicity of appeals would ultimately induce
in the general public. It is obvious also
that, even if the money was collected, in
the framing of a number of different pro-
grammes, each independent of all the
others, the evils of overlapping and du-
plication could hardly be avoided, and
consequently that the money collected
would not be applied to the missionary
and other benevolent objects of the va-
rious churches in the most economical
and effective manner possible.
Both these dangers were realized by
the churches in time, with the result that
thirty denominations have agreed to
unite their forces in the financial cam-
paign of the Interchurch World Move-
ment, and to adjust their programmes
of expansion so as to avoid competition
one with another. The denominational
forward movements retain their integ-
rity, just as the various churches retain
their complete denominational autonomy.
They will canvass their own constituen-
cies for funds, and these funds will be
applied to their own treasuries. At the
same time a joint campaign committee in
each community, consisting of represen-
tatives of all the local churches partici-
pating in the campaign, will make an
appeal to citizens who are not identified
by membership with any church. Funds
derived from this source and not ex-
pressly given for a particular denomina-
tion will go to a central treasury in care
of the Interchurch World Movement, and
at the end of the financial year will be
distributed pro rata among the partici-
pating denominations.
A study has been made of the exact
facts of the situation, and these facts
are available to the cooperating denomi-
nations and to any other denomination
that may subsequently decide to partici-
pate in the Movement. The opinion of
the newspaper correspondent quoted at f
the head of this article indicates part ?
of the opportunity that is given to
the churches, and careful inquiries
made among representative men in
various walks of life in this country
show that that opinion is very widely
shared. There is a deep and growing
conviction that our domestic problems are
going to be solved only through an in-
creasing recognition by employers and
employees alike of the essentially Christ-
ian principle of the brotherhood of man. (
Both capital and labor have rather fallen I
into the habit of late of assuring the<
church that here is an unparalleled oppor-
tunity to assert its influence — by which
they usually mean to throw its weight
into the particular scale which the ap-
pellant represents — and the church has
at times appeared inclined to adopt an
attitude of apology for its inability to
assist matters. There is a good deal of
evidence that church leaders in these
days are inclined to take a sounder and
more aggressive view of the church's
position, and their reply to the vocifera-
tions of both sides is: "No, gentlemen,
this is not our opportunity, it is your
opportunity. We are not a species of in-
dustrial expert to be called in when you
are in trouble to settle things for you,
while you yourselves remain outside the
church. You come inside the church,
and you will find that you will quickly
settle things for yourselves."
Stanley Went
April 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[333
Book Reviews
Three American Labor
Leaders
Labor and the Common Welfare. By Sam-
uel Gompcrs. Edited by Hayes Robbins.
New York: E. P. Dutton and Company.
W. B. Wilson and the Department of Labor.
By Roger W. Bsbson. New York: Bren-
tano's.
Debs : His Authorized Life and Letters.
From Woodstock Prison to Atlanta. By
David Karsner. New York: Boni and
Liveright.
IT is an interesting and perhaps signifi-
cant fact that all three of these notable
American labor leaders are of foreign
extraction. Samuel Gompers was bom
in London, in the year 1850, and came
to America at the age of thirteen. Wil-
liam Bauchop Wilson was born at Blan-
tyre, near Glasgow, in 1862, and came to
Arnot, Pennsylvania, at the age of eight.
Eugene Victor Debs is a native of In-
diana, but his parents, Jean Daniel and
Marguerite Bettrich Debs, were French
Alsatians from Colmar. When these
facts are noted, it is easy to see the tena-
cious pugnacity of the bulldog breed in
Gompers, the untiring industry of the
canny Scot in Wilson, and the fierce revo-
lutionary idealism of the French in Debs.
The most extraordinary thing about
Samuel Gomcers is the fact that he has
held the presidency of the American Fed-
eration of Labor from 1882 until the
present time, with the exception of a
single year. His enemies say that he is
a labor fakir and a political boss, who, by
alliance with the big national unions, has
created a machine which the small fac-
tions, lacking leadership and the advan-
tage of office, have been unable to break ;
but Mr. Gompers, though an astute poli-
tician, is far more than that — he is the
voice of organized labor, expressing, as
no one else has done, the principles and
purposes of craft unionism in America
during the past forty years.
Perhaps Mr. Robbins in his valuable
compilation of addresses and editorials
may have selected those giving the most
favorable impression of Mr. Gompers's
labor philosophy ; but, making due allow-
ance for the personal equation of the
compiler, it must be admitted that Mr.
Gompers has a record for consistency in
his utterances such as few politicians of
any stripe can show. He is so consistent,
in fact, as to incur suspicion of insincer-
ity in repeating the shibboleths of
former days, which, although they still
appeal to the multitude, must have long
since lost much of their meaning for
him. But, of course, no esoteric philoso-
phy of labor is here revealed.
Mr. Gompers has been preaching the
gospel of trade unionism for nearly
forty years with great emphasis upon the
rights of labor and with but slight men-
tion of correlative duties. Among the
most sacred are the right to organize,
locally, nationally, or internationally, as
may seem most advantageous; the right
to bargain collectively through represen-
tatives of locals or nationals, as the la-
borers may prefer; the right to ask for
better and still better wages, hours, and
conditions of labor; the right of a body
of laborers to strike, or withhold their
labor; the right of laborers to boycott or
withhold their purchasing power from
obnoxious employers ; the right to picket,
to "peacefully persuade," or to use other
lawful means to prevent the employment
of strike breakers, or to extend a boycott.
For many years, especially since the
passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
of 1890 and the Pullman Strike of 1894,
Mr. Gompers has protested against the
use of the injunction in labor disputes,
and has contended that labor is not a
commodity or article of merchandise;
until finally his views were in part incor-
porated in the Clayton Act of 1913, and,
apparently, labor was absolved from the
sin of conspiracy in restraint of inter-
State trade.
Although Mr. Gompers has been an
antagonist of many individual capital-
ists, he has been at the same time a de-
fender of capitalism against those who
would kill the cow that gives such abun-
dant milk or the goose that lays the
golden eggs. He condemns Socialism as
"economically unsound, socially wrong,
and industrially impossible." Nor is he
any too friendly to "welfare workers, so-
cial uplifters and busy-bodies, intellec-
tuals and professional public morals ex-
perts," who are condescendingly trying
to do for the laborers what they, when
organized, can far more effectively do
for themselves. Also, Mr. Gompers has
stood out against the creation of a labor
party, preferring the traditional method
of pledging candidates and manipulating
the balance of power, although quite re-
cently he has seemed to waver on this
point. Mr. Gompers is nothing if not
self-sufficient, assuming, as the priest of
trade unionism, that organized labor can
do no wrong, and justifying its ways by
a strange mixture of sound and specious
reasoning. As for reproof and admoni-
tion of his constituents, Mr. Gompers
does not indulge in it, but takes them as
they are for better or worse — and here
is another reason for his long tenure of
office.
The Honorable William Bauchop Wil-
son, as presented by Mr. Babson, is not
so much an evangelist and bishop of the
labor church as a sort of Dick Whitting-
ton, who came to this country a poor boy,
and, by virtue of his ability, honesty, and
steadfastness of purpose, became Inter-
national Secretary of the United Mine
Workers, then member of Congress, and,
finally, the first Secretary of Labor in
the United States. He was a studious
boy, a "lad o' pairts," who, despite his
lack of schooling and his entering a coal
mine at the age of nine gave his spare
time to poetry, philosophy, economics,
and like solid reading, and thus acquired
a truly liberal education, which with his
native qualities has made him one of the
best and sanest of American labor lead-
ers.
It has been Mr. Wilson's fortune to be
somewhat overshadowed by more con-
spicuous men, such as Samuel Gompers,
John Mitchell, and President Wilson, but
for all that, he stands high in the regard
of all who know him. He has been criti-
cised as biased in favor of labor, and his
intervention in certain disputes has been
resented by many employers, yet he tries
to be fair to all parties, according to his
light, and the dissatisfied should be
thankful that the labor administration,
especially during the world war, was not
in worse hands. Certainly, Mr. Wilson
is something more than a labor advocate,
and his utterances on economic questions
bear the marks of keen analysis and
sound judgment worthy of a countryman
of Adam Smith and James Mill. He is
especially strong in his defense of col-
lective bargaining, as opposed to the rev-
olutionary views and proposals of the
Socialists, who, after his examination of
the alleged right to the whole product
of labor, have scarcely a leg to stand
upon.
Mr. Babson very properly combines
with his biography of Mr. Wilson a brief
history of the Department of Labor and
of the bureaus which preceded it, which,
while substantially accurate, is far from
complete or final. Oddly enough, the
brilliant and versatile Roger Babson ap-
pears in the foreground with occasional
references to business barometers, the
"law" of equal and opposite reaction, the
Babson Composite Plot, and a chapter
on business cycles, and he poses in two
pictures of buildings connected with the
early life of Secretary Wilson. It is a
little hard, therefore, to tell where Bab-
son begins and Wilson leaves off, for the
biographer has not been quite able to
play the part of Boswell to his Johnson.
David Karsner, a true hero worship-
per, has done better by Eugene Victor
Debs, and has made a loving portrait,
which, although idealized in many re-
spects, is far from imaginary and is al-
most a work of art. The ordinary reader
who knows of Debs as a flaming revolu-
tionist, four times candidate for the
Presidency on the Socialist ticket, one of
the founders of the I. W. W., and the
comrade of "undesirable citizens" like
Bill Haywood, will be surprised to find
that Debs has neither hoofs nor horns,
but is a simple-minded, affectionate,
neighborly Hoosier poet, a sentimentalist
and fanatic, no doubt, but a hail-fellow-
well-met whether in a country store, a
834]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 47
tavern, a socialist meeting, or a peniten-
tiarj-. Debs was a great friend of Robert
Ingersoll, James Whitcomb Riley, Eugene
Field, and other literary men, all of whom
have testified to his fine qualities of
mind and heart. Mr. James Lyons,
Mayor of Terre Haute, Mr. Debs' birth-
place and home, said of him in 1907:
While the overwhelming majority of the
people here are opposed to the social and eco-
nomic theories of Mr. Debs, there is not per-
haps a single man in this city who enjoys to
a greater degree than Mr. Debs the affection,
love, and profound respect of the entire com-
munity. He numbers his friends and asso-
ciates among all classes, rich and poor, and
some of the richest men here, people who by
very instinct are bitter against Socialism, are
warm personal friends of Mr. Debs.
If all this be true, why is Eugene Debs
in jail? He was sentenced to ten years
in the penitentiary on September 14,
1918, by a United States Court in Cleve-
land, Ohio, for violation of the Espionage
Law in a speech before the Ohio State
Socialist Convention at Canton on June
16 of the same year. In this speech Mr.
Debs characterized the entry of the
United States into the war as the work of
"Wall Street Junkers," condemned patri-
otism as "the last refuge of scoundrels,"
scarified Samuel Gompers as a friend of
the capitalist class, praised the I. W. W.,
glorified the Bolsheviki as "the very
breath of democracy and the quintes-
sence of freedom," and made many other
intemperate and insane remarks, all of
which he proudly admitted before the
court, without apology or retraction.
Naturally, the court had to find him
guilty of "attempting to cause and incite
insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, and
refusal of duty in the military and naval
forces of the United States," and on sev-
eral other counts as well, and the sen-
tence was later confirmed by the United
States Supreme Court. Now, Mr. Debs
is in Atlanta prison, recalcitrant as ever
and refusing even to ask for freedom lest
such action should be construed as a
withdrawal of his words and an admis-
sion of wrong-doing.
Eugene Debs glories in martyrdom,
arouses sympathy among friends and
enemies, and will probably make con-
verts to Socialism from his prison cell;
just as he made them on a free platform
and by the articles that he was continu-
ally writing for the socialist press.
In fact, unrestrained and morbid elo-
quence such as his, is just now at a
discount, when even people of radical
views realize that something more is
needed for the healing of the world than
maudlin sentimentality. Berserker rage,
the revolutionary fervor of a paranoiac,
or the frenzy of a whirling dervish — all
forces of destruction, which, if given free
rein, might easily ruin the whole fabric
of civilization.
J. E. Le Rossignol
Reality and Antidote
The Inscrutable Lovers. By Alexander Mac-
Farlan. New York: Dodd, Mead and
Company.
Legend. By Clemence Dane. New York : The
Macmiilan Company.
1 RECALL "Mockery" as a somewhat
disconcerting and ill-balanced piece
of ironic comedy with a fresh accent. It
was a new voice speaking, whether one
liked it or not, which is the one thing a
reviewer of contemporary fiction most
yearns for. Here now was another
young comer, an Alexander MacFarlan
to be by a few ears, at least, listened for :
"The Inscrutable Lovers" is their suffi-
cient reward. It is a comedy of simpler
and firmer texture than its predecessor.
It has not only brilliancy but a delicate
completeness comparable to (not like)
that of Mr. Hewlett's earlier bits of ro-
mantic comedy. It is based upon a para-
dox more than once announced of late,
in one form or other, that the realist in
art or in life is a person seeking escape
from his own romantic nature, and vice
versa.
The problem is worked out here purely
in terms of life. There are only three
human factors, Count Kettle, his daugh-
ter Margaret, and the young Macaig
whom she absurdly marries. Count Ket-
tle is that hapless one who tries to "live
up to" his ideals, who is bent upon ex-
pressing instead of denying or escaping
his romantic nature in action — a predes-
tined failure accordingly. He is a wor-
shiper of fine sentiments and phrases —
a true worshiper, who can not learn that
his companions are mostly sniggering in
their sleeves. It is his pleasure and van-
ity to sacrifice himself and his family to
any fine desperate cause. His invincible
sentimentalism makes him the gull and
victim of venial plotters. A costly and
disillusionizing fiasco in Mexico has
finally done for his wife. Now he is pre-
pared to offer the rest of his fortune, and
his daughter, as blindly to the uses of a
pro-German plot, which is thinly masked
for his benefit as a stroke for Ireland.
But the daughter is not willing to be sac-
rificed. Though she has been brought up
to be noble and highflown, she has a
secret yearning for common sense. Hence
her sudden marriage with the young
Macaig, "from his infancy nourished
upon facts." There she will take refuge
from romantic torments, in the shelter of
his humdrum and his commonplace. She
is happy. But presently the quixotic
Count, her father, becomes involved in a
rascally plot (which is not rascally for
his innocence), and confides his part in it
to his daughter. She turns upon him and
threatens to block his dangerous plans
by telling her English husband. The
Count is outraged: "He will treat my
honor as— a fact!" he cries, ". . .
He will regard the situation, this tragi-
cally delicate situation, as though it were
a business problem. He will bend upon
it all his prudence. Prudence!" Never
mind, he shall be told, says Margaret:
Macaig's very literalness will see the
need of curbing the Count's wild project.
Then comes the high point of the com-
edy; for Macaig, being told, shows him-
self to be quite another man from the
stolid citizen they have taken for granted.
He quite understands the Count, being a
concealed romanticist who has abhorred
the practical traditions of his house as
Margaret has the impractical traditions
of hers. And presently, when the Count
is disposed of as gently as may be, the
young pair are left to discover each other
anew. He, it now transpires, has mar-
ried her as "a daughter of the romantic
life he coveted," while she has married
him solely because he was not of that
life, but "a plain, steady, dependable man
with no — no dreams." However, they
happen to love each other, and are not to
be parted by theories, even theories of
each other. The old priest. Father Cli-
thero, says the last word about them : that
"their characters are much the same and
only their temperaments differ." More-
over, he perceives how slyly each will
continue to impute his own impulses to
the other, the wife finding evidence
where you will that there must be "a
practical streak in him somewhere," and
the husband, that "she must be romantic
at bottom." A delightful piece of lit-
erary comedy.
Readers of the first novel of Clemence
Dane, "Regiment of Women," will re-
member there also a fresh accent. That
was a satirical comedy dealing with the
relations of women to each other — and
breaking rather suddenly at the end into
the romantic vein knovra to vulgar tab-
ulation as "heart interest." Only in the
relations of man and woman does the
author, after all, find anything sound and
satisfying. One may perceive a similar
moral in "Legend," different as the tale
is in scope and method. Its way of tell-
ing is original, as a single dialogue or
scene, recalled some years later by one
of the minor actors — or, one may almost
say, hardly more than a chance witness.
Place, Anita Serle's rooms, occasion, a
sort of monthly salon of minor celebri-
ties, literary and "artistic"; time, the
day of the death in child-birth of a for-
mer member of their group, Madala
Grey. It is the legend of Madala Grey,
fresh-compounded by friends and inti-
mates, that we are to hearken to ; a leg-
end touched quite as much with malice
as with affection; a commentary on the
quality of the surviving friends even
more than of the dead one. Madala Grey,
we gather, was a wholesome young
woman with a touch of genius which
drove her to the writing of two remark-
able novels of realism, or naturalism.
And having written them and been ap-
April 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[385
plauded for them, she found them harsh
and ugly, and wished that she might
write "a kind book, a beautiful book."
This she did presently, with "The Rest-
ing-place," a romance beginning "There
was once," and ending "happy ever
after," and delighting a vast audience
hungry for the fact or the illusion of hap-
piness. Her literary friends of the Anita
sort deplored this bitterly, tried to believe
it a deliberate parody, and so on. But
there followed the more disconcerting
fact of her marriage to a commonplace
honest fellow, with whom she was ap-
parently quite content. And now she is
dead as the result of her folly. Among the
company who here sit informally upon
the life and character of the departed
are: the egotistic Anita, later to become
famous as Madala's biographer; Mr.
Flood, a supercilious litterateur with no
heart; "the Baxter girl," a literary sat-
ellite ; the chronicler, who is Anita's new
secretary; and so on. Two figures who
stand apart from the rest are the painter
Kent who has really loved Madala and is
stunned by her loss, and (unique portrait
among them all) old lady Serle, Nita's
mother, who has also loved Madala for
her genuineness, and is blind to none of
the pretentious littlenesses of her own
daughter. ... In the end, after the
long making and remaking of the legend,
comes the unexpected and a trifle super-
fluous bit of romantic convention in
which, it seems, this writer habitually
seeks refuge at the eleventh hour from
her satire. Whether the whole perform-
ance is more than a brilliant tour de
force may only be determined or esti-
mated, after later readings; it is cer-
tainly well worth a first.
H. W. BOYNTON
The Cockpit of Christendom
A Short History of Belgium. By Leon von
der Essen. The University of Chicago
Press.
THE history of Belgium, from the
. early Middle Ages down to the pres-
ent time, is a compendium of European
warfare. "The very cockpit of Christen-
dom" the Netherlands were called by
James Howell in his "Instructions for
Forreine Travell," "the school of arms
and rendezvous of all adventurous spirits
and cadets; which makes most nations
beholden to them for soldiers." And
the Nuncio Bentivoglio, writing at about
the same time, coined the phrase "arena
militare," which became a standing
designation for Belgium in books deal-
ing with European history.
Readers of the present volume can not
fail to recognize the aptness of these
descriptive names. The country's geo-
graphic situation, which induced the Ger-
mans to invade it in 1914 at the cost of
their good name in the world, made Bel-
gium a battlefield and its people com-
batants in most of the wars which evolved
from the eternal rivalry between Ger-
many and France. It was the latter
country, in those earlier conflicts, which
menaced the independence of the Bel-
gians. "France will absorb Flanders or
will be destroyed by it," said the French
King Philip Augustus. And, as in our
days, it was England which, for her own
safety, came to the assistance of the
little country against the greatest Power
of the Continent. The Emperor Otto of
Brunswick and the Duke of Brabant
joined the English-Flemish alliance, and
on July 24, 1214, the battle of Bouvines
was fought, which gave Philip Augustus
victory over his enemies. This famous
battle established the political hegemony
of France in Europe and the subjection,
for nearly a century, of the political and
intellectual life of the Flemish. But
they had revenge in 1302, when the
Flemish Communes, in the Battle of the
Golden Spurs, under the walls of
Courtrai, inflicted a crushing defeat on
the army of King Philip the Fair. That
victory not only saved them from absorp-
tion by France but raised them to the
prestige of an international power, whose
alliance was sought by King Edward III
of England in his war against King
Philip of Valois. Under the leadership
of Jacob Van Artevelde, "the greatest
Fleming of all times," Flanders joined
the English cause; not for political rea-
sons only, but also for the sake of its
thriving cloth industry, which required
an undisturbed import of English wool.
Economic factors had begun to carry
weight in these international conflicts,
since the communes of Flanders, by the
power which their growing wealth as-
sured them, had acquired a decisive voice
in the conduct of the country's policy
towards its mighty neighbors.
With the incorporation of Flanders
with the realm of the Burgundian Dukes,
a restoration of the ninth century king-
dom of Lotharingia, the political power
of the Communes in international affairs
came to an end. In a short but lucid
survey the writer explains how the
Burgundian Netherlands passed into the
possession of the Spanish branch of the
Hapsburgs, against whom they rose up
in arms in 1568. The eighty years' war
that followed divided the Low Countries
into an independent northern part, the
Republic of the United Netherlands, and
a southern part which, from 1588 on,
remained subject to Spain. Henceforth
the destinies of Holland and Belgium fol-
lowed separate courses, apart from a
short and ill-fated period (1813-1839),
when they formed one kingdom under
William I of Holland. The two centuries
and a half between Belgium's return
under the Spanish yoke and the creation
of the Kingdom of the Belgians form
the most uneventful and inglorious part
of its history. Under the rule of the
Coburgs it resumed its place among the
nations of Europe and played a part in
its history not unworthy of its great
past.
Professor van der Essen has treated
this difficult and often intricate subject
with admirable skill; though writing
with a scholar's intimate knowledge of
his country's history, he has succeeded
in steering clear from the shoal of pon-
derosity and dulness. Here and there
the Roman Catholic has led the historian
astray. Having described the collapse
of his country at the end of the Spanish
war, when the population had been re-
duced by at least 50 per cent., when trade
and industry were in large part gone,
and artistic and literary activity had
come to a complete standstill, the writer
winds up with the words "but Bel-
gium remained Catholic and subject to
the Spanish branch of the Hapsburgs,"
as if that were a compensation for the
loss of the nation's freedom.
Spanish America
Studies in Spanish-American Literature.
By Isaac Goldberg, Ph.D. New York:
Brentano's.
THIS volume is intended for several
kinds of readers. It is evident from
the title that it will interest not only
specialists in the study of literature in
the language of Cervantes, but also that
part of our reading public, by no means
small, which is at present extremely curi-
ous in regard to Spanish America. But
Dr. Goldberg's reviewers can do him a
service by pointing out what he himself
has not made clear in his title, that the
book concerns a third feroup of readers.
It deals with that phase of recent Span-
ish-American letters called Modemismo,
which is only one aspect, as its name
implies, of the new spirit that permeated
the world of thought during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
It is obvious, then, that it should be read
also by the students of Whitman and
Wilde, of Sudermann and Hauptmann,
of Gorki and Ibsen and d'Annunzio, of
the Parnassians and Symbolists of
France, whether they know Spanish or
not, and whether or not they care for
Spanish America.
Whatever motive may lead a reader
to Open Dr. Goldberg's book, he will cer-
tainly be surprised at what he finds.
Someone has written a book called "The
Amazing Argentine," and the adjective
might well be applied to the whole of
Spanish America. Our education in re-
gard to "the other Americans" has con-
sisted from the first in agreeable dis-
illusionment. Only a few years ago we
thought that throughout the rest of this
hemisphere everyone wore broad-brim-
med hats and no one wore shoes. We
supposed that the chief products of
Spanish America were revolutions and
336]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 47
yellow fever. By a series of surprises
we have found out that Rio and Buenos
Aires and Santiago de Chile are modern
cities, and that they and many other
southern cities are filled with men not
only civilized enough to wear shoes and
uphold stable governments, but also
energetic enough to win one-fifth of our
total foreign trade. We still persist,
however, in thinking that their progress
is only material ; that mentally and spir-
itually and aesthetically, at least, they are
ragged and shoeless. And now comes Dr.
Goldberg with the greatest surprise of
all, for his book shows that Spanish Amer-
ica is as much to be reckoned with in the
world of literature as in the world of
trade ; that the poetry of the Modemistas
— and their prose too, although prose
plays here a minor part — is as worth
studying as that of any other recent or
contemporary school of poetry, whether
French, Italian, or American.
An author who attempts to write a
book on Spanish-American literature is
handicapped by two serious difficulties.
The first lies in the fact that the major-
ity of his readers are totally ignorant
of the subject. Exposition, and a great
deal of it, must come before criticism.
Dr. Goldberg has realized this. In his
foreword he says : "Owing to the meager
acquaintance that our reading public
has with Spanish-American literature, a
book of purely critical essays is at this
time inadvisable. I have, therefore, in
the following chapters, freely mingled
excerpts, exposition, and a modicum of
criticism." The faithfulness with which
he has adhered to this plan may be in-
ferred from the size of his book. It con-
tains 377 pages, of which, moreover,
some 250 are devoted to only four
writers. But he is not merely exhaus-
tive. He writes English both charm-
ingly and forcefully, and has the ability,
besides, to seize and emphasize salient
points. His opening pages, on the
French background of the Modemistas,
constitute a masterly handling of a very
difficult subject. The following sections,
on the precursors of the movement, are
as notable for what they omit as for
what they contain. And the body of the
book, which deals with the four great
exponents of Modemismo, is a model of
expository writing. It is certain that
readers who know Spanish, and who,
therefore, can read the excerpts which
Dr. Goldberg offers as evidence of the
soundness of his critical contentions,
will gain a correct impression of the
versatile, but always delicate Dario, the
glowing, radiant Rodo, the strong, vi-
brant Chocano, and the vitriolic Blanco-
Fombona. It may be asserted with con-
fidence that he has overcome one of the
difficulties inherent in his task.
The majority of Dr. Goldberg's read-
ers, however, will not know Spanish,
and in their ignorance of the language
lies the second of the handicaps to which
I have referred. With this problem, un-
fortunately, he has not dealt as success-
fully as with the first. He has tried to
solve it, of course, by means of transla-
tions, some of them in prose and some
in verse. The prose translations are
fairly satisfactory. Nothing can be said
against them except that a prose render-
ing of a poem is never entirely satisfac-
tory. But the verse translations which
he uses — they are not his own— are
disappointing. It is always difficult to
translate poetry effectively, but it is
especially so in the case of poetry of the
type written by the Modemistas, where
so much depends on the sheer music of
the words and lines and strophes. The
translations used by Dr. Goldberg, al-
though good English verse, do not re-
flect this music at all, and can therefore
give no adequate idea of the originals.
It is even possible that they will lead
unthinking or oversuspicious readers to
discount the opinions of the author as
to the merits of the poets concerned.
In the lack of just the right kind of
verse translations, therefore. Dr. Gold-
berg would have done better to use prose
in all instances.
As to the scholarship of the book,
there is not much to criticize, at least in
the way of essentials. The author makes
no slips in regard to such things as the
dates or facts of literary history, and
his critical judgments will seem justified
to those who know the field. He falls
below his own standard of excellence only
in his occasional remarks on the metre
of the Modemistas. Not that it would
have been advisable for him to write a
chapter on this involved subject. He
himself points out, in the early part of
his book, that not only the difference in
language, but also the very great differ-
ence between our prosody and that of
Spanish-American poetry, makes it al-
most impossible for us to enter inti-
mately into the matter of metric struc-
ture. It is to be regretted, however, that
he has not taken sufficient care to guard
readers who do not know Spanish from
certain vital errors. From his refer-
ences to the influence of Whitman on the
Modemistas, they will certainly draw
the conclusion that the recent Spanish-
American poets are Whitmanesque in
their technique. In fact, they will go
further than that. Owing to his un-
fortunate way of printing some of his
prose translations in short lines, they
will think that the Modemistas are akin
in their metre to our own writers of free
verse. These conclusions are erroneous.
Whitman's influence on the metre of the
Modemistas has consisted merely in en-
couraging in them the spirit of revolt
against the traditional. "They have car-
ried out the revolt in their own way.
The essential difference between them
and their predecessors consists in the
use of longer lines and new combinations
of old lines. Their relation to the older
Spanish poetry, therefore, may be better
expressed by comparing them to Swin-
burne than to Whitman. And the impli-
cation of a metrical analogy with such
schools as the Imagists is equally mis-
leading. With the exception of a few
sporadic instances, the most radical
Modemistas have written only vers
Hbre, which is a very different thing
from free verse, inasmuch as it is free
only in the counting of syllables, and does
not abandon rhyme, or the traditional
Spanish substitute for rhyme, assonance.
All this is surely well known to Dr.
Goldberg. He should have stated it
plainly.
I have said that Dr. Goldberg's scholar-
ship is good in essentials. Unfor-
tunately, however, he can not be compli-
mented for carefulness in little things.
It seems probable that his manuscript
was sent to the printer without the
thorough final revision advisable in a
book of this nature. In spite of the
general clarity of his style, there are
now and then pages far from clear. A
revision would have allowed him, more-
over, to correct occasional errors in his
translations. There are also certain me-
chanical flaws which might easily have
been remedied, such as the incomplete-
ness of the appendix, which does not con-
tain translations of all the poems "quoted
in the text and not made clear by the
surrounding matter." And if it is prob-
able that the manuscript was hastily
prepared, it is certain that the galleys
were hardly proof-read at all. Here
and there misprints occur even in the
English; in the Spanish they are here,
there, and everywhere. We who know
Spanish have long since become hardened
to the eccentricities of newspaper Span-
ish ; we can even take delight in decipher-
ing the garbled Spanish of travel-books;
but misprints in a book of the kind under
discussion are annoying. When they are
frequent, they become exasperating.
Frederick Bliss Luquiens
Poetry
These Dead Have Not Died
HAVE done with frenzy to pierce the
Veil;
We need no ghost to affirm the tale.
"These dead shall not have died in vain."
Lincoln lives — in the minds of men!
Leave to the quack the promise free.
Can God be other than mystery?
Stratford Church is a holy place;
But Shakespeare lives in the soul of the
race.
Harry T. Baker
April 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[337
The Run of the Shelves
ON April 9, it is announced, Marshal
von Hindenburg's memoirs are to
-see the light under the title "Aus
Meinem Leben." The work will consist
Df five volumes. The first deals with the
author's life before the war; the second
,vith the war on the eastern front until
\ugust 28, 1916, the day on which he
\:is appointed Chief of the General Staff;
he third brings the history of the war
ip to the close of 1917; the fourth is
levoted to the final struggle on the west
Tont; the fifth contains the end of the
onflict. The book, the title of which is
ominiscent of Goethe's autobiography,
s bound to invite a great deal of com-
iient from critics looking for the "Dich-
ung," which, as in the life of his greater
ompatriot, is the twin sister of the
Wahrheit."
When "animism" is made a term of
he last opprobrium by some, as recently
y Professor Joseph Jastrow in these
ages, and formally defended and used
3 explain the interworking of mind and
ody by others, as by William Mc-
•ougall, F. R. S., the Oxford psycho-
igist, the plain man may well ask, What
! it, after all? Up to a certain point
e will be helped by Mr. George William
ilmore's admirable little book, "Ani-
iism, or Thought Currents of Primitive
. leoples" (Marshall Jones). Mr. Gilmore
)as made a very suggestive collection and
iassification of certain phenomena in
le case, specimens of the agglomerate
: acts and beliefs which are the basis
' all civilization, the stuff of all folk-
re, and which dominate our own most
aveled mental paths. That he stops
lort with objective statements of the
lienomena and does not entangle him-
If in psychologies, primitive or modern,
of his plan. But, apparently, he has
.me out with a definite belief in the
':istence of a thing in man which can
I called "soul" — an exactly animistic
.'sition; in the continued life of the
]oul" beyond the grave; and in the exis-
nce of superhuman powers.
There is an equally objective statement
I phenomena in Professor G. Henslow's
1'roofs of the Truths of Spiritualism"
)odd. Mead), but of phenomena much
«re exciting, though quite as well
^tested as the great majority of folk-
I'e elements. Professor Henslow is a
Itanist of reputation; he dates back in
<i.mbridge to the middle of last century,
Nien he took a first class in the old
litural Science Tripos; that he is also
s clergyman should hardly be to his
EBjudice as a witness. Yet he does bear
fl^t-hand witness to the most hair-rais-
i|j things which took place at private
ainces with unpaid mediums — autom-
?sms, material phenomena, spirit-
rotography, psychographs, materiali-
zations, etc. The pity is that, like so
many old and thoroughly convinced
spiritualists, he is not careful and de-
tailed in his descriptions of happenings ;
these things have become for him quite
ordinary. Still, his book, slovenly as it
often is in statement, is another moment
in the accumulating mass of evidence
which can not be laughed or sneered or
denounced away. The fact that this man
of scientific training, with so many of
his like, has been so thoroughly con-
vinced is a definite one and must be
faced. There are plainly phenomena to
be explained, to whatever hypothesis of
explanation we may be driven. The
trouble about the spiritist key is that it
is too much a pick-lock and too little a
key, even a master-key. Spirits can do
anything and laws cannot hold them.
In philosophy, as in theology, it is sal-
utary, if not always acceptable, for agile
thinkers to be brought back to the rock
from which they were hewn, and kindly
nature, working in the minds of her
children, generally sees to this. Thus
every century has its return to Aristotle
and raises its own crop, however thin,
of Platonists. But there are some nearer
beginnings which do not so automatically
reassert themselves, partly because of
inhibitions — to speak by the card — and
partly because the paths of connection
are overgrown beyond even the memory
of nature. It may be doubted whether
the Modernists of the Roman Church
would welcome a reference back to the
twofold truth of the Averroists or the
multiform truth of Moslem theologians,
and few Pragmatists know how straight
is their descent from the Algazel of the
medieval scholastics. Such work, there-
fore, as the text and translation of Av-
erroes' Metaphysics, by Carlos Quiros
Rodriguez, is to be welcomed. ("Aver-
roes Compendio de Metafisica." Madrid :
Estanislao Maestre.) He gives a much
better text than the Cairo edition, a
good translation, with notes and a tech-
nical vocabulary, and a sufficient intro-
duction. From the translation in this
book the attraction which Averroes exer-
cised on mediaeval Europe can be much
better understood than from those by
Marcus Miiller, published in 1875. The
latter gave little clue to his real philo-
sophical positions.
In the biography of her husband, the
great naturalist, Mrs. Agassiz sank her
own personality, though she had shared
his labors as few wives have been able
to do. There she was merely Mrs. Louis
Agassiz. It is fitting now that we should
have a "Life of Elizabeth Cary Agassiz"
(Houghton Mifflin), in which the em-
phasis should be laid on her own achieve-
ment in founding Radcliffe College. This
pleasant task has been carried out faith-
fully and well by Lucy Allen Paton. The
emphasis, as we say, is properly placed
on Mrs. Agassiz's educational work
after the death of her husband, and to all
Radcliffians the book will thus have au-
thoritative value and a special appeal.
To others, perhaps, the most interesting
sections will be those that deal with her
earlier life. The second chapter, con-
tributed in part by Mrs. Agassiz's young-
est sister, begins thus :
Elizabeth Cabot Cary was born on Decem-
ber S, 1822, at the home of her grandfather,
Colonel Perkins, in Pearl Street. It was a
dignified street in those days, lined with hand-
some dwellings and shaded by fine trees, of-
fering many attractions to merchants as a
quarter for residence because of its proximity
to Fort Hill where from a grassy park on the
Revolutionary fortifications, still unievelled,
they could survey the harbor and watch their
ships from India or China coming into port.
... In 1833 Colonel Perkins moved to Temple
Place where he built a new house. ... At that
time the Cary family were living in Brookline,
where they had gone on their return to Boston
in the previous year, but Colonel Perkins
speedily began to gather his daughters about
him in Temple Place, and built a house for
Mrs. Cary next his own on the side toward the
Cornmon. . . . Such a gathering of a clan into
a single limited district was in complete ac-
cordance with the Boston custom of those
days.
What a door into a life now gone is
opened by these simple words ! We com-
mend the following pages to all and sun-
dry who may care to be introduced into
the charmed circle of that old Boston so-
ciety. Next in interest, to the unpreju-
diced reader we mean, are the chapters
which give the personal side of Mrs.
Agassiz's life with her husband in his
journeys for scientific purposes to Brazil
and up the west coast of South America.
Time was found for a good deal of play
amid the strenuous work carried on, and
adventures were not wanting. It is a
pleasant, happy record of a full life.
"En Amerique a la Fin de la Guerre"
(Paris: Beauchesne), by Abbe Felix
Klein, a warm friend of America, and
throughout the war chaplain of the
American military hospital at Neuilly,
has to do with the special French Catho-
lic mission sent last year to the United
States for the celebration of the semi-
centennial of Cardinal Gibbon's episco-
pacy. Abbe Klein was associated on this
occasion with Mgr. Julien, Bishop of
Arras, and with Mgr. Baudrillart, presi-
dent of the Catholic University of Paris,
of which the Abbe is an emeritus pro-
fessor. The pages of this little book are
full of friendly references to the United
States, of pleasant sketches of many of
our leading men, and of wise reflections
on our good qualities and our foibles.
Its aim is to strengthen "in the best
interest of the two nations, that profound
friendship, that durable friendship, that
necessary friendship, just as it exists —
we know this is true — in French hearts
and in American hearts, too, as I know
full well."
338]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 47
Drama
"Medea" at the Garrick —
the "Piper" at the Fulton
MANY years ago I read the "Medea"
in translation with revolt. I rested
a long time in that mixture of shame and
pride which marks one's estrangement
from a reputed masterpiece until, two or
three years ago, a desire to correct or
confirm this disaffected attitude impelled
me to a wrestle with the Greek. The
Greek was decisive on my own relation
to the drama. Hereafter, in a better
world than this, I may desire more love
and knowledge of it, but, for me, in this
planet, the "Medea" is everlastingly a
foolish and revolting play.
The mere killing of the sons does not
repel me; that has its parallels in nature
and in tragedy. What confounds me is
that in a play where a mother kills her
sons pity should be asked — for the
mother. I entertain no pity for the
scruples of a criminal which, if they were
active enough to deserve pity, would be
active enough to prevent crime. The
criminal who poses as victim is intoler-
able. The evident tenderness of Medea,
natural enough in itself, takes the result
out of nature. Killing sons is extreme
in any case; but surely it is less improb-
able and less monstrous to kill sons whom
you do not love than to kill sons whom
you do. Euripides has made no attempt
to obviate or moderate these difficulties;
Euripides has felt no difficulties. A mod-
em dramatist would have tempered the
rawness of the improbability by causing
Jason to threaten to take the children
from Medea. This would have helped in
three ways: it would have deepened
Medea's sense of wrong, it would have
shown Jason to be vulnerable on the side
of paternity, and Medea's preference of
her children's death to their loss by
separation would have seemed rational
and tolerable beside her actual prefer-
ence of their death to their companion-
ship.
I am aware of the inability of the
modem man to re-create in his own mind
the Greek attitude toward these in-
timately known and venerable legends in
which the boyhood of the individual
found, as it were, a pasture in the boy-
hood of the race. I can no more under-
stand the relation of Euripides to the
story of Medea than Euripides could
fathom my relation to the book of Gen-
esis. Associations are despotic, but
they bring obscurity as well as light;
and my feeling that Euripides might be
a better judge than I am of some sides,
at least, of the pure literature and
humanity of the book of Genesis conducts
me to the possibility of a like advantage
on my part in relation to the "Medea."
The merely local and racial appeal of the
play is irrecoverable, and it is not for
the sake of that appeal that Mr. Maurice
Browne has given to the "Medea" an in-
teresting, thoughtful, and in several
ways stimulative presentation at the
Garrick Theatre in this city.
Mr. Browne does not view the play pri-
marily as an action ; he views it as spec-
tacle and recitative to which action is
subsidiary. This attitude is probably
judicious. Present a Greek play as
spectacle and let us say, loosely, as opera,
and all the incidental action you get is
bounty and superflux. Present it as an
action, and all the merely spectacular and
operatic parts appear as charge and dis-
count. In one sense Mr. Browne's pres-
entation may be called inarticulate, the
appeal to the ear is tonal rather than
verbal. The enunciation is clear enough,
but it is hard to follow the words because
not one word in twenty is a furtherance
to the action, and the passiveness with
which the ear and the mind allow them-
selves to be rocked in the cradle of rhap-
sodic and poetic speech is deadening to
curiosity.
Mr. Browne's chorus is not Greek in
its numbers, nor, I think, in its move-
ments ; but it struck me as well imagined,
as embodying perhaps better than Medea
or Jason the dim terror and impalpable
suggestion which gave depth and color-
ing to the performance. Here were six
mobile, supple, rhythmic figures, who
gestured with their arms, with their
frames, with their robes, which seemed
themselves to be only gestures of the
protagonists, to be extensions and excur-
sions of Medea's soul. Whether Greek
or modern, this is poetry in spectacle. A
most remarkable incident in the play, an
incident, indeed, which all but snatched
up the play and ran away with it, was
the scene in which a messenger, in an
injudicious minimum of costume, re-
counts the story of the "enchaunted
flame that did Creusa wed." It was
done with minuteness, virtuosity, and
frenzy; in a sort, it was well done, and
possibly the cure for the dreaded irk-
someness of narrative in Greek and
later drama is not reduction, but enlarge-
ment. The size of this episode, however,
seemed abnormal, since the audience is
indifferent to the sufferings of Creusa,
and declines to excite itself about a
murder which the visible imminence of a
far blacker crime remands to insignifi-
cance. In Miss Ellen Van Valkenburg's
Medea, there was a voice and a presence,
but no woman; the accomplished and
harmonious declamation revealed nothing
but its own dexterity. Mr. Moroni Olsen,
on the contrary, gave in Jason a vivid
reflex of that shapely and lustrous hard-
ness which Greek civilization must have
wrought in its baser materials.
Every one knows the tale of the piper
of Hamelin, whose music lured the rats
and mice into the river, and the children
into the hollow hill, when the just recom-
pense for his first exploit was withheld
by avaricious burghers. This story fills
just one act of Mrs. Marks's four-act
play, now offered in the cautious form of
special matinees at the Fulton Theatre.
Where will Mrs. Marks find her three
remaining acts, and what form will the
gay, saucy, and somewhat unfeeling
legend take in the hands of a woman so
compact of fervors and poignancies that
joy itself becomes for her a half-dis-
tress? Before answering these inquiries,
let me say that Mrs. Marks's fancy is
blithe, even though her heart be serious,
and that the "Piper," though not highly
dramatic, must be reckoned among the
happiest outcomes of American poetic
drama. The blank verse can dance and
caper as well as sing; there is plenty of
movement, though sometimes the arms
move rather than the feet; the play is
quaintly and busily inventive, it frolics
in a maidenly way, it is demurely mis-
chievous and archly tender, and is poetic-
ally regretful that it must needs be pro-
saically wise. This leads me back to my
unanswered questions.
Mrs. Marks, in her earnestness and
conscience, has given us a piper who is no
rogue, but a serious reformer in whom
kidnapping is a form of philanthropy.
He sees that children and grown people
are two species, that children are butter-
flies who fly and shine and grown people
are caterpillars who eat and crawl, and
that the office of all pipers and of all
clear-voiced and clear-souled beings
everywhere is to prevent the relapse of
butterflies into caterpillars. Plainly, this
piper thinks ; that is the catch, the snag,
in the affair; for, if you think, you can
not keep children indefinitely in a hol-
low hill away from their parents. Some
day this piper will meet a sorrowing
mother, and some day he will ask coun-
sel of the sculptured Christ by the cross-
ways, who will bid him take the children
home. The Christ is perfectly right; but
the piper is Pan, and somehow one does
not want Pan at the feet of Christ, and
one hardly likes to see Christ siding with
the mealsack. The mealsack is imperious
in real life. Must it triumph even in
fairyland where poets are the sovereigns
and legislators?
All this is done from the highest and
most edifying motives; the piper grows
alarmingly respectable. In a sufficiently
pretty episode, he persuades Barbara,
the burgomaster's daughter, to eschew
the nunnery to which a peevish town had
sentenced her, and accept the brave
young conjurer and vagabond, Michael.
He sends them instantly to the priest.
To the priest they should undoubtedly
go; marriage is the only safety for Bar-
bara. But the piper who sent them
should forsake the road, and pipe the
{Continued on page 340)
April 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[339
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340]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 47
The New York
University Press
Efficient Composition: A
College Rlietoric
By ARTHUR HUNTINGTON
NASON, Ph.D., Professor of Eng-
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Cloth. xt-iii+SlS pages. Price, $2.50
A thought-provoking textbook for the ad-
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Tlie Ground and Goal of
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By CHARLES GRAY SHAW, Ph.D.,
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Cloth, xii+594 pages. Price, $3.50
Values,pmmediate and
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By MAURICE PICARD, Ph.D.,
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THE NEW|YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
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A study in the cultiire-history of a
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Cloth, xvi+360 pages. 64 full-page
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From the records of the Plymouth settlers,
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in 1627, from the Relations of the Jesuits, who
had a mission there among the Abenakis, from
old-time letters and unpublished manuscripts,
from early newspapers, and — for the later
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Mrs. Nason has produced in this volume a
picture of the social and intellectual life of
Old Hallowell, notable not only for its scholarly
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"True as history, compelling as romance; of
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"Notable both for its execution and for the
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THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
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32 Waverly Place New York City
{Continued from page 338)
Doxology hereafter as chorister in the
parish church of Hamelin. Let him be
godfather to Barbara's first child, and
be prompt in the bestowal of the
appointed number of Apostles' spoons.
But it is hard somehow to imagine Pan
at the font.
0. W. Firkins
Music
"Eugene Onegin"— Pushkin
and Tschaikowsky
WITH the production, a short time
ago, of "Eugene Onegin," in Ital-
ian, at the Metropolitan, the manage-
ment gave us the last novelty announced
for this season.
"Eugene Onegin" deals with romantic
moods and incidents, poetic (if you will)
in a Byronic fashion out of favor here,
though still admired in Russia. The hero
might claim kinship with Childe Harold.
He has a "past" with all that this
means in Byron's poems. He is bad and
mad and sad, but not, like Villon, "glad,"
by way of contrast. Yet, when the
heroine, Tatiana, an ill-balanced girl,
sends him a foolish love letter, he snubs
her gently. Soon after, though, he com-
promises Tatiana's sister, who is be-
trothed to his friend Lenski. And in a
duel which results Lenski is killed. Then,
tortured by remorse, Onegin wanders
through the world in search of peace.
Years later, he again meets Tatiana, who
is now married to Prince Gremin and
seems settled. He falls in love with her.
Forbidden fruit attracts him. But,
though Tatiana's heart still yearns for
him, his suit is spumed. With this the
story ends — a bit abruptly.
There are hints of Werther, as you
see, in Onegin, and there are other hints
of Charlotte in Tatiana. But the
romance of Werther lends itself to opera.
It has a beginning and a middle and a
denouement, of a definite kind. Tschai-
kowsky's "lyric scenes" seem far too
intimate for the vast spaces of the Metro-
politan. Mr. Gatti-Casazza has a con-
venient trick of forgetting his point of
view. He refuses, in one breath, to give
us "Pelleas." And, in the next, he pro-
duces "Eugene Onegin." To be sure,
Debussy is of the French school, in which
the Italians of to-day see their chief
rival. But, to be fair, we owe him
thanks for daring failure with this effort
of Tschaikowsky. We might feel more
grateful if he had chosen one of several
other Russian works, the "Khovant-
china" of Moussorgsky, for example, or
the delightful (if too long drawn out)
"Snegourotchka" of Rimsky-Korsakoff.
Tschaikowsky's score is often charm-
ing and always delicate, with the melodic
graces of Italian music sobered and tem-
pered by the sad Slavic spirit. The
soliloquy of Tatiana in her bedroom, as
she sits writing her impassioned love
letter to Onegin, will probably appeal to
many hearers. The dances in the first
act have the attractive hues and rhythms
of Slav dances. The later dances
seemed a trifle commonplace. Many com-
posers could have made them brighter.
Regarded as a whole, "Eugene Onegin"
has the defect which ruined many a
pretty painting of the Victorian period.
It is too literary. In opera we crave
for drama first, and only incidentally for
psychology.
Free cuts were made (not always quite
judiciously) in the score by Mr. Bo-
danzky, who directed the performance of
"Onegin" with much taste and skill. One
episode, which should have occurred in a
bedroom, took place in a garden. The
scenery and costumes designed for the
production by Joseph Urban helped the
effect. The stage pictures of the Viennese
scenic artist were more discreet than
some which he has shown us lately. The
snow scene, with the river and a reflected
light in the far background, though
really an easel picture magnified, with a
suggestion of a glorified Christmas card,
was pleasing to the eye and quite appro-
priate. The grays and blues and whites
in one interior made an agreeable har-
mony. And the comparative simplicity
of the ballroom, in the second act, re-
vealed a new and greatly chastened
Urban.
I can not say, with truth, that the inter-
preters of Tschaikowsky's "lyric scenes"
deserved much praise. De Luca, who
appeared as Onegin, lacked distinction
and that touch of the Byronic which
should have marked the character. As
the ill-fated Lenski, Martinelli looked
romantic and had fervor, but he sang
painfully out of tune at certain times.
The Tatiana of Claudia Muzio was melo-
dramatic, although tuneful.
"Eugene Onegin" may give innocent
enjoyment to a few audiences. But,
when it joins some other operas I could
mention in the limbo of the opera house,
it may not be regretted long or deeply.
Charles Henry Meltzeb
Books and the News i
The Candidates
WHAT may one discover, in books, to
tell of the life and adventures, the
mind and character of the dozen or more
gentlemen who are suspected of willing-
ness to take that thrilling drive up Penn-
sylvania Avenue on the 4th of next
March? Of most of them, very little,
indeed. Their words are in print, in thf
depressing pages of the Congressional
Record, in volumes of Governor's mess-
iContinued on page 342)
April 3, 1920] THE REVIEW [341
WORTH=WHILE BOOKS WORTH READING
Mrs. GLADSTONE
By Her Daughter, Mary Gladstone Drew
A memoir of Mrs. Ewart Gladstone filled with great people of England. The volume is illustrated
intimate details in the private lives of both Mrs. with many reproductions from personal photo-
Gladstone and her illustrious husband. A historic graphs in the possession of the author, who was
narrative introducing to the reader many of the the Gladstones' youngest daughter. $4.00 net.
A Short History ot tlie Italian People
By Janet Penrose Trevelyan
Here is a timely and intensely interesting work. The Fiume controversy and D'Annunzio's spectacular campaign have
brought Italy into the limelight. The book starts with the century preceding the barbarian invasion under Diocletian
and continues to the recognition of the Kingdom (1870). Six maps. $4.00 net.
A Short History ot the Great War
By William L. McPherson
A human, concise and well-balanced story of the war, with all dry, technical detail avoided. The author, whose
"Military CommeVit" in the New York Tribune attracted the widest attention, presents the broad outlines of the
struggle in authoritative manner. $^-50 net.
Sheepskins and Grey Russet
By E. Temple Thurston
A whimsical, wholly delightful adventurous chronicle of country life. The story begins with the buying of an old
farm and continues through all the humorous entangling mysteries that enhearten, confound and fascinate the ama-
teur householder. By the author of "The City of Beautiful Nonsense," "The World of Wonderful Reality," and "David
and Jotathan," etc. $2-00 net.
The Complete Opera Book
By Oustave Kobb'e
Brief biographies of all of the great composers, with condensed short stories of the operas. The New York Eve-
ning Post says: "This is indeed the complete opera book — more complete and abreast of the times than any other
similar work." One thousand pages. One hundred illustrations. Four hundred airs and motives in musical nota-
tion. Nearly two hundred operas. $5-0(^ "^'-
LEONARD WOOD
By William Herbert Hobbs
The life story of the career of a great American as kept his temper — no matter under what provocation — and
physician— Indian fighter— soldier— statesman. An inti- quietly "carried on." Illustrated,
mate biography of the achievements of a man who has $2.00 net.
Wilderness The Yankee in the
A Journal of Quiet Adventure British Zone
in Alaska ^y Ewen C. MacVeagh and
Lee D. Brown
By Rockwell Kent p^^^ ^j^ j^^^y Atkins and the Yank get on? What did they
The author's "quiet adventures" on an unpeopled Alaskan island learn about each other? That is what this book answers. It is
are recorded in this book with a charm and simplicity of style "°t dimply a war book-it is rather a study m psychology of the
, . T • r ,, •,. J -^i. average man — British and American. Written by two trained ob-
that stamps it a literary classic. It is fully illustrated with many servers, it reveals a wealth of anecdote, with many human in-
of Rockwell Kent's famous drawings. $5-00 net. terest stories and incidents. $^-30 "^*-
At All Booksellers
SS«A.„. G. p. PUTNAM'S SONS »S-
Please mention The Review in writing to advertisers.
342]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 47
(Continued form page 340)
ajres, in pamphlets — dusty even now —
which contain their orations given
at ceremonious meetings. Their biog-
raphies have been sketched in the maga-
zines. For the most part we draw our
mental pictures of them from the news
reports, from the debates upon the
Treaty, and see them as grave patriots,
or ignorant ruffians, according to our
own prejudices.
Thus, of Governor Cox, the shelves of
the library and book-shop reveal nothing ;
of Mr. McAdoo, we may read in pamph-
lets his views upon tunnels and subways,
upon fiscal affairs, and upon the general
excellence of his party and its present
leader. With Attorney-General Palmer,
the situation is similar. For Governor
Edwards, I can think of nothing better to
read than the quatrains of Omar Khay-
yam. Among the candidates from the
rival party, Senator Johnson and Gov-
ernor Lowden seem to be the bookless
ones.
Others have kept publishers and
writers of reviews busy. President
Wilson is both biographer and biog-
raphee ; the books about him have already
been named here. We know his favorite
poem, and that he likes limericks, and
can quote Oliver Herford. The card
catalogues of the libraries contain a fair
number of entries, also, under the name :
Bryan, William Jennings. There are
some painful looking campaign biog-
graphies, dating from the free silver
days, any number of addresses, singly
and in battalions, (all extra moral) and
some ingenuous volumes of travel. The
best of the collection, however, and one
of the two prizes discovered in this little
search of mine, is Mr. Bryan's "Letters
to a Chinese Official" (McClure, 1906).
It is Mr. Bryan at his best, — and also in
his most innocent aspects, for it shows
him the victim of a literary hoax. When
Mr. Lowes Dickinson wrote his " Letters
from a Chinese Official," he scarcely
expected that his criticisms of western
civilization would impose upon a person-
age like Mr. Bryan. The latter, however,
had his grave reply all written before he
learned that an Englishman, not a China-
man, was the author of the original book.
Among the other Democrats no one has
written a more entertaining work than
Mr. Gerard's "My Four Years in
Germany" (Doran, 1917). The number
of translations indicate that the author
is taken seriously in foreign countries.
For the Republicans, Dr. Butler has
been a frequent, but not voluminous
writer upon matters connected with his
profession; there are also one or two
books and some detached addresses about
foreign and domestic politics. Should
we decide that we need an epigrammatist
in the White House, we must plump for
Governor Coolidge. His political wis-
dom is presented in his "Have Faith in
Massachusetts" (Houghton, 1919), but I
doubt if it contains anything better than
his tSlegram to the Harvard football
team in California — that should have
made them all join a Coolidge Club on
the instant.
General Wood is the author of two
books, "Our Military History; its Facts
and Fallacies" (Reilly, 1916) and "The
Military Obligation of Citizenship"
(Princeton Univ. Press, 1915). There
are biographies of him by I. F.
Marcosson, J. H. Sears, and Eric Fisher
Wood. But Captain Walter Lippmann
(late of the "staff" of Colonel House)
says he won't vote for General Wood —
despite all these books. Had the General's
name been Bergdoll or Goldman, had he
tried to evade the draft instead of trying
to go to France, there might have been
kindly words, or apologetic ones, for him.
But the General is tainted with that
played out rubbish called "patriotism" —
and a pitying smile is the best he can
expect from an editorial writer in the
New Republic.
As the author of "Principles of Mining,
Valuation, Organization, and Admin-
istration, Copper, Gold, Lead, Silver, Tin
and Zinc," Mr. Hoover need expect no
vote from me. My sense of decency as
a librarian is aroused against such a
preposterous title as that. But as the
translator with Mrs. Hoover, of the "De
Re Metallica" of Georgius Agricola, the
elder, he appeals to my fondness for
curious, and (I suspect) useless, books.
It was translated from the final Latin
edition of 1556, and sumptuously pub-
lished in London, by the Mining Maga-
zine, in 1912. It is a noble looking
volume, and ought to rally to the "Who
but Hoover Clubs" many of the mining
engineers, and all of the admirers of
Georgius Agricola, the elder.
Edmund Lester Pearson
EDUCATIONAL SECTION
Propaganda and Education
ONE must be highly educated in order
to read discriminatingly current
publications. The press is supposed to
furnish news and to educate the public.
As a matter of fact, it requires well-
trained minds to distinguish fact from
opinion, news from publicity, propa-
ganda from education.
When one reads, for example, an ac-
count of the deeds and aims of the Bol-
sheviki, one should have a mental reser-
vation as to both the accuracy of the
facts and the purpose of the writer in
conveying his opinions concerning these
facts. An innocent-looking news item
regarding an automobile concern, or a
particular industrial enterprise, may be
merely veiled publicity, not news. And
an interesting statement in the news col-
umns of a newspaper regarding some
public measure or decision of importance
may be framed in a clever way, not to
educate the public, but to influence the
public to support a special point of view.
This obviously is propaganda in dis-
guise. It is more effective and much more
insidious than formal advertising or edi-
torials known openly to represent a can-
did, definite policy.
The development of this means of in-
fluencing public opinion was greatly
accentuated during the recent war in
connection with the many "drives" in
support of various projects "to help win
the war."
The promoters of such measures em-
phasized, of course, the necessity of edu-
cating the public. What they meant,
however, was not strictly to educate, but
to make the public see just one point of
view. Irrespective of the nature of the
particular project, this brand of educa-
tion is to be characterized as out-and-out
propaganda; and propaganda is nothing
but publicity, or advertising. The ob-
ject is to induce the public by news
items — soi-disant — by editorials, and
open advertising, to accept the ideas
advocated by the men backing the proj-
ect in question.
The advertising manager of one of the
most successful advertising mediums in
the United States tells me that, if one
is willing to spend the money, it is
possible by modern advertising methods
to "put over" almost any article of trade
or any commercial undertaking. He says
that the guiding principle in successful
advertising is to appeal to men more
through their sentiments and emotions
than through their reason. Emphasis is
to be placed on the happy, forward-look-
ing, and altruistic attitude of mind.
Happy, serene lives may be attained by
sleeping on a special make of mattress.
Homes may be brightened, annoyances
and domestic infelicities obviated by
various mechanical devices to save labor
and give comfort. The children may be
made better behaved and more helpful
if provided with divers articles of play,
dress, and elaborate conveniences. Per-
haps the most striking example of the
evolution of modem advertising is to be
found in extraordinary advertisements
couched in literary form by undertakers,
appealing to the sentiments and emotions
of the public. A funeral is made to ap-
April 3, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[343
pear so aesthetic and beautiful that one
is almost induced to want to die!
By substantially the same methods it
is possible, according to the expert al-
leady cited, to "put over" an idea as
well as to sell goods and securities. By
the adroit use of publicity a popular de-
mand may be successfully created in be-
lialf of almost any project backed by
money and by men whose names carry
weight with the public.
Now propaganda of this character ob-
viously is not education in the true sense,
which, on all matters of importance re-
quiring reflection and decision, must
necessarily include a presentation of all
sides of a question. The objections to a
proposal must be considered as well as
its alleged virtues. True education of
public opinion is through candid discus-
sion and argument. This, naturally, is
not the aim of advertising, nor is it the
aim of propaganda. The lamentable re-
sult is that, unless there is a counter
propaganda backed similarly by money
and men of prominence, the public is not
in a fair position to discuss intelligently
the proposal in question, or to reach a
reasoned decision.
The significance of this fact is of spe-
cial moment at a time when so many
intricate problems, domestic and interna-
tional, are clamoring for wise solution.
Never was there a more urgent need for
a press which should aim dispassionately
to give the public, first of all, real news,
based on ascertainable facts; secondly,
the judgment of experts on these facts;
thirdly, honest discussion concerning
these facts and opinions; and fourthly,
a generous consideration of all serious
arguments concerning a proposed line of
action suggested by the facts and inter-
ests involved. The pity of it is that our
publications seem constrained to assume
in irrevocable, partisan attitude on most
questions of importance. From that
•noment they dedicate their services to
3ropaganda rather than to the education
)f public opinion.
This need is nowhere more apparent
;:han in the field of international affairs,
where the American people, largely by
•eason of their lack of training, are
)eculiarly deficient in the ability to
mderstand clearly, and to reach mature
udgments concerning other nations and
vorld politics in general. For years it
las been evident that public opinion has
rreatly needed expert guidance in such
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WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC
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ipril 15, 1920.
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'M.MON Stock of this Company for the quarter
i"ig March 31, 1920, will be paid April 30, 1920.
Both dividends are payable to Stockholders of record
i of Apr.l 2, 1920. H. F. BAETZ, Treasurer.
New York, March 24, 1920.
matters. The American people have
been pathetically eager for reliable in-
formation and for authoritative assist-
ance in reaching sound conclusions. Too
often they have listened, instead, to an
ex parte presentation of facts, and are
besieged by partisan propaganda which
not infrequently takes the form of a
moral, social, and political coercion. It
is not strange that they feel utterly
bewildered when drawn by the recent war
into the maelstrom of world politics, and
asked to commit themselves to new
undertakings that run counter to pre-
vious habits of thought, as well as to
long-established policy.
For these reasons I desire to make an
appeal for a changed attitude on the
part of our "journals of public opinion,"
that they should regard themselves as
the educators, not the arbiters, of pub-
lic opinion. When the New Republic was
founded I fondly hoped, with many
others, that it would prove a public ser-
vant of this character. In this age of
transition in thought about most matters
of vital importance, I felt the need of a
periodical which would seek to enlighten
the American people and help them — par-
ticularly the reactionary conservative
element — to progress to a plane of
conservative liberalism that knows how
to move with the times but preserves
all that is best in our institutions. But
the New Republic became the organ of
special policies and views presented in a
cavalier fashion inconsiderate of other
honest arguments, and affronting the
very class of thinkers it should have
most desired to reach and help.
And now that another journal — the
Review — has this same great opportunity
before it, I am hopeful that at last the
American public has obtained the trust-
worthy medium for news and education
that is so imperatively needed at this
critical period in our history. We ask
a genuine opportunity to be educated.
We ask to be delivered from the irksome
necessity of being constantly on the alert
against publicity and propaganda. The
press should neither presume on our
ignorance nor make too great exactions
on our powers of discrimination.
Philip Marshall Brown
H
OW to Promote Better Relations
Between England and America"
is the imposing subject dealt with in an
essay competition between St. George's
School, Harpenden, England, and the
school of the same name near Newport,
Rhode Island. The essays, it appears,
were few and not of striking merit but
the character of the competition was one
which calls for imitation by other Ameri-
can and English schools, particularly at
a time when the rising generation has
great need to understand the necessity
of promoting better relations between
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Please mention The Review in writing to advertisers.
344]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 47
the two great English-speaking nations.
Even those who because of some bias,
Hibernian or other, feel that nothing
good can come out of "perfidious Albion"
must admit that if we are to make faces
we ought at least to understand the char-
acter of our adversary; while most good
Americans must see positive benefits in
any step to encourage understanding in
the younger generations of the two coun-
tries. Those in middle age and beyond
will go on with their Anglophile or An-
glophobe prejudices, little affected by
propaganda, but they will be dead in a
little while. It is the boys and girls of
to-day who must shape the international
policy of to-morrow; and little could be
more promising than an extension of the
St. George's idea — an attempt in aca-
demic competition to see the good points
of the other side,
"npHE unholy alliance between tired-
X ness and temper" is the striking
phrase used by Mr. Whiting Williams, of
the Hydraulic Pressed Steel Company,
Cleveland, Ohio, to picture one of the
causes of a condition which offers fertile
ground for the agitator. It produces
grievances. "An imaginary grievance is
just as powerful and impelling a force
as a real grievance," is one of many
significant sentences in a speech made
recently by Col. Arthur Woods, formerly
Police Commissioner of New York City.
In the course of his speech he told of the
experience of a Russian Jewess who had
been fined for a minor infringement of
a complicated law regarding ash-cans, of
her sense of grievance, and of her pro-
jection into that condition which offered
fertile ground for the agitator. He then
proceeded to tell how an order was issued
forbidding policemen to make arrests for
violation of the city ordinances. "They
were told that . . . they had to secure
an observance of the city ordinances on
their posts, but that they must do it by
educating the people and not by arresting
them. . . . The result was quite as-
tonishing. We had the people of the East
Side turning to the policemen for assist-
ance in every sort of way, and we had
the boys on the East Side formed into
what were called junior police forces."
All this is only an evidence, in another
field, of what the company clubs are
attempting to do in industrial work. The
policemen, to do their work well, had not
merely to be told that it was educative,
but they had to be taught how to, make
it educative; and behind that lay an
understanding of their relation to the
people and to the municipal officers of
the people. It is encouraging to note
that the Police Department of New York
City is a member of the National Asso-
ciation of Corporation Schools.
America's Foreign
Loans
AMERICA'S advances to the Allied
Governments were made as "call
loans" and bore interest at the rate of
five per cent. The amount of them out-
standing on December 31, 1919, together
with the interest accrued, is shown in
the table which follows:
Amount of Credits Interest
Country. Advanced. Accrued,
Great
Britain $4,277,000,000
France
Italy
Belgium .
Russia . .
Czecho-
slovakia
Greece . .
Serbia _ . .
Rumania.
3.047,974,777
1,621,338,986
343,445,000
187,729,750
67,329,041
48,236,629
26,780,465
25,000,000
$144,440,837
94,021,749
54,256,589
11,465.278
16,832,662
1,667,083
917,299
609,873
Total.
$4,421,440,837
3,141,996,526
1,675,595,575
354,910,278
204,562,412
68,996,124
48,236,629
27,697,764
25,609,873
Total Loans
European
Allies .$9,644,834,648 $324,211,370 $9,969,046,018
Cuba 10,000,000
Liberia . . 5,000,000
548
10,000.000
5,000,548
Total Loans
to all
Allies .$9,659,834,648 $324,211,918 $9,984,046,566
Reckoning accrued interest, the
amount is therefore now well in excess
of $10,000,000,000. Loans of this kind
between Governments are not wholly
without precedent but are an unusual
feature in modern finance. They gen-
erate problems, moreover, which are not
easy of solution. Leaving out of con-
sideration altogether the political disad-
vantages (and perhaps dangers) of a
mass of unfunded obligations of this sort
and considering only the financial aspects
of the case, it appears that our loans to
the Allied Governments are very likely
to prove a source of disturbance if not
actually a hindrance to our foreign trade.
The amount of interest annually
accruing to the United States on these
loans as they stand at present is $500,-
000,000. Presumably some arrangement
must be come to with regard to the
extinction of principal, so that we have to
consider a sinking fund as well as inter-
est. Sinking fund at one per cent, would
make the total amount annually due to
the United States for service of the ob-
ligations $600,000,000. There is only
one way in which this amount could be
received by the United States, and that
way leads through the exchange market.
In other words, our Government would
have to dispose of foreign exchange
(that is, drafts upon the countries enu-
merated above) to an amount of some
$600,000,000 every year. This would
make the Government a factor of tre-
mendous importance in the foreign ex-
change market. It must be remembered
also that the debtor Governments would
be forced into the exchange markets of
their respective countries as purchasers
of exchange upon a large scale.
Neither these Governments nor the
United States Government is in a posi-
tion to "create" exchange upon a foreign
country or to "consume" exchange upon
a foreign country in the ordinary way of
trade. Neither the United States Gov-
ernment nor the foreign debtor Govern-
ments are able to control or even to
influence the operations of their individ-
ual nations in foreign commerce, which
operations determine the supply and
demand of exchange in the various coun-
tries. Yet our Government must every
year market a great quantity of ex-
change; the above-mentioned foreign
Governments must every year purchase
a corresponding quantity.
From the point of view of the Ameri-
can merchant engaged in foreign trade,
the entry of the United States Govern-
ment into the foreign exchange market
as a large seller of bills every year is a
decidedly unfavorable influence. It would
be very much better, so far as he is con-
cerned, if we had made no advances what-
ever to the Allies, or, indeed, if we simply
wrote them off as cancelled. The foreign
trade of the United States is face to face
with the necessity for a readjustment.
Our people have until now conceived
"foreign trade" wholly in terms of mer-
chandise exports; now our export trade
is menaced very decidedly unless we in-
crease both rapidly and largely the vol-
ume of our merchandise imports. The
dead weight of the annual debt of
foreign nations to the United States Gov-
ernment, amounting to $600,000,000 an-
nually, will operate powerfully toward
forcing this readjustment. There is only
one way by which it can be quickly
accomplished, and that is by reduction
of exports. It is not too much to say
that perhaps the greatest single influence
tending to diminish American merchan-
dise exports to-day is this credit balance
of $600,000,000 a year.
It is perfectly evident that the wisest
course for the United States to pursue
with respect to this debt is to fund it
over a long term of years, making the
rate of interest and the annual contribu-
tion to sinking fund as small as possible.
The best interests of the whole commun-
ity would probably be served by funding
these obligations into bonds running one
hundred years at a rate of interest not
more than two per cent, and with a sink-
ing fund sufficient to retire the whole
issue in the period. If the two per cent,
rate of interest seems too low, it could
be made two per cent, for twenty-five
years, three per cent, for the next twen-
ty-five years, four per cent, for the
third twenty-five years, and five per cent,
for the concluding term of the loan. If
that be considered too low, then a good
way to deal with it would be to fund
the interest altogether for a period of
five to ten years so as to remove the
Government from the exchange market
during the critical period of trade
readjustment. Thomas F. Woodlock
o^-
THE REVIEW
Vol. 2, No. 48
New York, Saturday, April 10, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment 345
Editorial Articles:
The Expulsion of the Socialists at
Albany 348
The Housing Problem — Ethics or
Economics? 349
Justice and the Bonus 351
Ousting the Sultan 351
Behind the Financing of China. Part
III. By Charles Hodges 353
Helping the Reactionaries. By W. J.
Ghent 354
Poetry: Tides. By S. N. 356
The Outlook in Germany. By Ex-
aminer 356
* Correspondence 358
[ Problems of Labor and Capital : Em-
ployers' Associations. By Morris
L. Ernst 361
I Book Reviews:
A Sheaf of Verse 362
Domestic and Imported Models 363
Echoes of the War 364
I The Run of the Shelves 365
[The Tragedy of Pygmalion. By Ra-
phael Demos 368
I Drama: The Craft of the Tortoise and
Other Plays. By O. W. Firkins 368
(Music: James Huneker on Art and
Occultism. By Charles Henry
Meltzer 370
iBooks and the News: Libraries. By
Edmund Lester Pearson 372
fF you represented a ring of con-
scienceless criminals that had by
[treachery and cunning seized power
fin a great country, plundered and
Mooted its public and private re-
sources, and by violence and terror
held its simple folk in a state of ab-
ject serfdom, and
IF your principals had secured tes-
timonials from prominent Red Cross
and Y. M. C. A. officials, giving as-
surance that they were sincere re-
formers highmindedly, if perhaps
mistakenly, seeking to bring about a
heaven on earth in the form of a
Communist commonwealth, and
IF, abundantly supplied with men
and money, you had by insidious
propaganda succeeded in persuading
the less intelligent workingmen over
the country that you represented a
workingmen's Government, a veri-
table Utopia, and
IF you had been successful in en-
' listing the services of the parlor-radi-
cals and the devotees of isms, and
IF, with your unlimited funds, you
had taken into your employ dis-
credited politicians and venal journal-
ists, and had secured the active sup-
port of many journals professing
liberalism and open-mindedness, and
IF you had tempted many unscrup-
ulous and dishonest speculators with
promises of large profits and rich
concessions if they would use their
influence on the Government, and
IF you had secured the opportunity
to use a Senate Sub-committee as a
forum to create the impression that
your principals had reformed, had
given up the terror, had discontinued
their campaign to set class against
class and overthrow other Govern-
ments, and
IF, just as you felt you were about
to receive that recognition for your
principals that would legalize their
criminal acts and confirm them in the
possession of their plunder, a courier
bringing you fresh resources in rich
diamonds and the latest instructions
for your work was seized and the
whole plot exposed,
WOULD'NT IT MAKE YOU MAD?
ly/TR. KEELING, whose book on
-'-'-'• Soviet Russia received ample
notice in the Review, is now in jail
at Moscow. Lansbury, the editor of
the Daily Herald, the British Labor
organ, has visited him in his cell,
and elicited from the prisoner the
confession that he was not the actual
writer of his book. He had told his
impressions to others, who had pre-
pared them for the press, and per-
suaded him to put his name to it.
But he now regretted his part in the
publication, as his opinion of Bol-
shevism had changed considerably
since his first visit, and as a Chris-
tian he wished to confess that he had
been in the wrong. Soviet prisons
must be charming resorts that a resi-
dence there can change the impres-
sion of horror gained by a free
wanderer through Russia into a
favorable opinion of that country.
We shall soon, we fear, have to ex-
press our sympathy with Mr. Keel-
ing for being dismissed from his
comfortable reformatory.
TTAS the police administration of
■'■■'• New York City sunk back into
something like the mire uncovered by
the Lexow committee, and its coun-
sel, Mr. Goff, twenty-five years ago?
Are vice and crime simply kept a
little further out of range of the
casual eye, but allowed to go on with
their noxious work on condition of
pouring a steady stream of their
profits into the pockets of the men
paid and sworn to bring them to
punishment? Evidence brought out
during the past few weeks points
very significantly in that direction.
The blackmail levied by the criminal
police organization of Lexow's day
was so carefully graded to the ability
of its victims to pay as to suggest the
work of an expert price-fixing com-
mittee in some great branch of mod-
ern trade. The poor foreigner with
his pushcart, down on Hester Street^
uncertain whether he had any legal
rights or not, got along by paying
three dollars a month. The manager
of a house of prostitution had to pay
five hundred dollars at the outset and
fifty dollars a month thereafter, to
free himself from the worry of a
possible arrest and prosecution. And
the individual inmates of these houses
made their own forced contributions
to the graft thus gathered by these
guardians of the public safety
and order. The Lexow revelations
brought a stunning defeat to Tam-
many, and under Mayor Strong's
Police Commission such corruption
346]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 48
became merely sporadic, if it was not
eliminated altogether. But twenty-
five years is a long time, and there are
many apparent signs that the lesson
has been forgotten. If the grand
jury now at work does not probe the
matter to the very bottom, and arrive
at satisfactory results, another in-
vestigation from Albany may be in
order.
INVESTIGATIONS by legislative
•■■ bodies, however, have their own
dangers. The influence of a political
boss deprived New York of the full
gain in constructive legislation which
might have :£ollowed the Lexow ex-
posure of the rottenness that finds so
convenient a hiding place in the
partisan management of police ad-
ministration. Well up towards a
hundred investigations by Senate or
House committees at Washington are
now in progress, public' interest and
confidence in all of which is decidedly
marred by the fact that they have not
been kept free from the suspicion of
partisan purpose. If the New York
Legislature, with a strong Republican
majority, is to investigate the police
of New York City under a Tammany
administration, the very fact of this
political setting of the stage calls for
a committee wholly above the level of
conducting such an enquiry on the
basis of its relation to a coming elec-
tion. What New York City wants is
a police force too honest and too well
disciplined to fill its pockets through
blackmail from the gains of harlots
and criminals, not simply a political
overturn.
IF the men in power to-day in Ber-
lin were not known to be novices
in the subtle art of diplomacy, one
would feel inclined to see in their
sending of troops into the neutral
zone a clever move to force the
French Government to reprisals
which, if they should be disapproved
of by England and the United States,
would drive a wedge between France
and her associates. France isolated,
we wrote the other day, means a rela-
tively stronger Germany, and that
diplomatic gain would be well worth
to her the loss of the few cities that
Marshal Foch threatened to occupy.
But neither our knowledge of the
German statesmen now at the head of
affairs, nor the course of events that
led up to the present situation seems
to justify such a suspicion. Instead
of taking the decisive step of send-
ing troops into the Ruhr Valley when
conditions there appeared to be suffi-
ciently alarming to make that in-
fringement of Article 43 of the peace
terms seem a pardonable act of self-
protection, they shrank from the
initiative and even offered apologies
in Paris for the forward march of
Reichswehr troops into the Ruhr re-
gion, which Herr von Mayer, the Ger-
man charge d'affaires in Paris de-
clared, was against Government in-
structions. And now, when the Red
forces seem near to a collapse, the
same step which, when taken at the
right moment, was officially called a
mistake, is deliberately made under
Government orders. In the matter of
diplomacy, if such aimless, hesitating
proceedings deserve that name, Herr
Miiller has proved himself to be no
match for M. Millerand and Mar-
shal Foch.
T ITTLE countries, as if infected
■'-' by their great neighbors, are sus-
ceptible to fits of chauvinism and ex-
pansion. Belgium suffered from one
when, after the armistice, it de-
manded annexation of Dutch terri-
tory. Now Denmark has succumbed
to the contagion. To do justice to
the population of both countries, it
must be admitted that those who
come forward with such claims form
only a small, but vociferous minor-
ity, consisting mostly of political
hotheads and wealthy capitalists
whose interests would be promoted
by territorial expansion. In Den-
mark this group acquired greater
importance than its counterpart in
Belgium by its finding favor with
the Court. But the satisfaction of
their demands depended on factors
over which they had no control : those
of the Belgians were submitted to an
impartial conference of diplomats in
Paris, and the Danish claims to the
inhabitants of the disputed area. In
neither case was the verdict to the
satisfaction of the chauvinists.
Those in Denmark committed the
mistake of calling the justice of the
decision, thus impartially arrived at,
into question, and clamored for a re-
vision. That Flensburg, included in
the second zone of the plebiscite era,
was lost to Denmark, they felt as a
national defeat, whose quiet accept-
ance by the Cabinet of Mr. Zahle was
to them a betrayal of the country's
honor. They want to see the Danne-
brog, the red flag with the white
cross, hoisted on the townhall of
Flensburg. Their influence with the
King carried the dismissal of the
Zahle Ministry. The step was not
approved of by the large majority
of the people, and the general in-
dignation would have found a more
decided expression if the issue had
not been warped by the Socialists'
cry for a Danish Republic. The na-
tion refused to have its vindication
of constitutional rights made an oc-
casion for anti-dynastic propaganda.
Still, the King realized that the dis-
approval of his policy was stronger
and more general than of the mo-
tives which made the Socialists call
a nation-wide strike, and wisely
came to terms with the Rigsdag
leaders.
■jV-EW YORK'S jungle— Fifth Ave-
■'• * nue — has waked up with a ven-
geance from its winter snows. All
the Christian sounds of Easter Sun-
day could not silence the laughing-
hyena mail trucks, the chattering
bands of monkey cyclists, the inces-
sant barking of wolfish taxis, the
elephantine tread of the buses, and
the prolonged roars of Rolls Royces
and other lions of the Avenue. There
is nothing tame here. Why go to
Africa for excitement? Is it the
thrill of danger you crave? Then
dodge your policeman and take but
two steps into this modern jungle. If
it be at night, you will find, besides
the terrors of the day, dragon eyes
bearing down upon you. But this is
civilization at its height! At least,
the advocates of a brotherhood of
man for the whole world, including
the most primitive peoples, need not
despair when we have set up in our
midst a full-grown jungle which we
point to with pride as "Fifth Ave-
nue."
April 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[347
OUT, jungle or not, Fifth Avenue
-■-' is the most beautiful business
street in the world. The remark is
safe because there is nothing of its
kind to compare it with. London,
Paris, Berlin, and Vienna have no
business thoroughfares of such mag-
nitude. And even if they had. Fifth
Avenue would doubtless hold its own.
For in itself it is a thing of great
Deauty, as foreign visitors have freely
admitted. Those who saw it as the
Avenue of the Allies, when it was the
symbol of America's union in a great
cause, will never forget how satisfy-
ing it was to all our eager hopes for
the maintenance of a civilization con-
taining the elements of charm and
beauty as opposed to an order in
which might made right. With that
memory still strong, the institution of
Fifth Avenue Week as a yearly event
will give pleasure to many persons
the country over. In its gala dress
it is worth coming from afar to see,
even though New York is, and has
been for months, "full up."
T^ NGLAND is meeting the campaign
■'-' for prohibition in the right way.
Before even considering it seriously,
she means to know whether prohibi-
tion is to be used as an entering
wedge for a host of other restraints
upon personal liberty. Will it lead
to the giving up of tea and coffee, of
"scent," as the English still like to
call perfume, and of other domesti-
cated vices? This is not extrava-
ganza, for unless we have backbone
we are in for the establishment of a
new set of Deadly Sins. Science will,
of course, be the guide in these mat-
ters. What cigarettes can do to
women we have just been authorita-
tively informed. We dislike to think
of what science, once spurred on by
William H. Anderson, will reveal
when its attention is focused upon
coffee, ice-cream sodas, and sugar on
grape-fruit. Americans are an easy-
going people and will not permit
themselves to worry too much. They
will probably be content if the new
Deadly Sins are no more than seven.
All the same, the evident intention to
legislate evil and sorrow out of the
world and virtue and happiness into
it makes one wonder at Samuel But-
ler's foresight when he said that the
next tyrant to rule on this earth
would be machinery. Of all machin-
ery legislative machinery can be the
most diabolical.
'T'HERE will be general sympathy
•*■ with Hudson Stuck, Archdeacon
of the Yukon, and well-knoWn writer
on Alaskan matters, in his attempts
to save the residents of the region
drained by the Yukon and its tribu-
taries from the starvation which is
threatened by recent developments of
the salmon-canning industry. The
whole economy of this region, he says,
is based upon dried salmon as the
staple article of food. There is not
enough to eat without it, and no na-
tive product with which to replace it.
Existing "restrictions" merely limit
the gross amount which may be
taken by the canners in the waters
of the river itself, but do not re-
strain them, when this altogether too
liberal limit has been reached, from
moving their floating plant just out-
side into the Bering Sea and taking
all the fish they can get. The fish
they catch there are the fish that have
gathered to ascend the river, and it
makes no difference in the depletion
of the Yukon Valley food supply
whether they are taken in the one
place or the other. The danger is no
longer a mere matter of prophecy;
there was much actual distress dur-
ing the past winter because of the
shortage following the canning opera-
tions of last summer. The Fish Com-
mission has no marine jurisdiction,
and there seems to be no resource
save an act of Congress forbidding
commercial fishing in the Yukon and
adjacent waters. Archdeacon Stuck
is now seeking to bring about the in-
troduction and passage of such a bill.
We suggest letters from our readers
to their Congressmen urging the pas-
sage of such a measure before the
adjournment of the present session.
WELL-BRED talk, neither pro-
"^ found nor obvious, but human
always and ranging through the
centuries and over the globe — with a
large class of English, this is still
a staple of life. The remark is
prompted by a glance at the first few
numbers of the London Mercury, a
monthly occupied with the sphere of
literature and the arts. We have
called the articles in this publication
"talk" because they are so much
more informal than articles in Amer-
ican journals with similar intellectual
pretensions. To find informality in
American letters one has usually to
descend to the popular magazines,
where the desire of the writer to be
at one with the reader has led to such
silly affectations as illiteracy and the
slang of the bar-room. In between
there is, of course, plenty of plain
writing — so plain as not to differ in
style from the report of a factory
superintendent. But we are speaking
of our intellectuals, many of whom
when they write put on their culture
as though dressing for a function.
We have in this country — witness the
considerable sale of Everyman's
Library — a large audience for whom
an appreciation of the urbanities, the
charm, the enduring satisfactions of
life could be made an active force
if these were offered freely and
winningly.
INFORMALITY is all right when
-"• well-bred. One is not surprised
to find it ill-bred in the London
Saturday Review, which is always
ready to stoop when given a chance
to indulge its dislike of America. For
this weekly. Lady Astor is plain
"Nancy." Yet it is only charitable to
remember that the Saturday Review
has long carried a weight which
less-determined editors would have
shifted. It has to repulse the Amer-
icanization of Europe and the democ-
ratization of England. The latter
danger is the one which must cause
it the most embarrassment. The
honors bestowed by the King at New
Year's create a predicament. Shall
this paper acquiesce or shall it ignore
them? It is the self-appointed guar-
dian of English aristocracy. When,
some years ago, Mr. Blundell Maple,
head of a large furniture store, was
elected to the House of Commons, it
was delighted to have the chance to
"Blundell" him out. Lady Astor's
tongue has been wagging — does the
Saturday Review hope to stop it by
being too familiar?
348]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 48
The Expulsion of the
SociaHsts at Albany
TN the face of solemn and impres-
•^ sive protests by eminent Repub-
lican leaders like Mr. Hughes, by
Republican newspapers of which the
New York Tribune was the chief, and
by New York City organizations like
the Bar Association, the Citizens
Unions and the City Club, the As-
sembly at Albany has expelled the
five Socialist members by an over-
whelming vote. It is a matter of na-
tional interest to appraise as correctly
as possible the character and signifi-
cance of this action.
There is one special point that de-
mands separate consideration. Un-
der the Constitution and rules of the
Socialist party, those of its members
who might be elected to public office
incurred certain obligations which,
on their face, impaired their inde-
pendence as public servants. If the
fight on the Socialist Assemblymen
had been made exclusively on this
ground, the question of their expul-
sion would have had no such signifi-
cance as it actually bears. A mem-
ber of a Legislature who is under a
definite pledge to follow the instruc-
tions of a particular association,
whatever its nature, is not truly a
representative of the constituency
that elects him, but, in part at least,
a mere agent of that association.
Had the Assembly confined itself to
asserting this principle, it would not
have raised the broad and funda-
mental issues which, in point of fact,
its action has brought to the front.
Even so, as we have heretofore said,
the expulsion of the members would
not have been justified. It has been
pretty clearly made out that the
ejected Assemblymen did not ex-
plicitly sign such a pledge; and even
if they had, all that could justly have
been required of them, as a condi-
tion for retaining their seats, would
have been the abrogation of the
pledge. The assumption of such an
obligation, though ever so wrong,
would have been neither criminal
nor disgraceful, and its past exist-
ence could not justly be regarded as
a disqualification for future service.
But the gravamen of the case against
the Socialists did not reside in the
existence of an obligation as such,
but in the character of the associa-
tion to which the alleged obligation
had been incurred. The heart of the
case against them was not in any
special feature of their relation to
the Socialist party, but in the aims
of that party itself. The reason that
the five men were expelled was be-
cause the Socialist party aims to
bring about a revolutionary change
in the character of our institutions.
Accordingly, the alignment of the
forces for and against expulsion was,
in essence, upon this question: Has
an American constituency the right
to be represented in an American
legislative body by a man who is op-
posed to the continuance of the Amer-
ican system of government as now
established? And it must be said,
in justice to the chief exponents of
both sides, that in the main they have
frankly recognized this to be the
issue. The Tribune, the leading
Republican paper of New York, and
the World, the leading Democratic
paper, were equally unflinching in
the assertion of the principle that to
deny such right is a flagrant viola-
tion of the fundamental principles of
representative government. On the
other hand, the Sun and New York
Herald and the Times firmly declare
that the expulsion of the Social-
ists was a justified assertion of
the right of every form of govern-
ment to take such measures as are
necessary for its own preservation.
All other elements in the case sink
into insignificance in comparison with
the fundamental divergence between
these two points of view.
Readers of the Review do not need
to be told on which side it stands in
this vital question. Every form of
government is, indeed, possessed of
the right — more than that, is charged
with the duty — of striving to pre-
serve and perpetuate itself. The ques-
tion is, by what means shall it ac-
complish this? In the case of a
democratic nation, at least, the an-
swer is plain. Against violence it
must maintain itself by any exer-
tion of force, or of punitive repres-
sion, that the circumstances may
call for. Against infidelity of offi-
cers of the law to their sworn duty
— as in the case of the Boston police
strike — it must maintain itself by
summarily dismissing them from
their posts. But as against any
other form of agitation or endeavor,
however clearly directed against es-
tablished institutions, it must pro-
tect itself solely by preserving its
hold on the source from which it
derives its powers, the sentiment of
the people. If any body of men in
this country, large or small, is con-
vinced that democratic institutions
are an evil and that a monarchy
would be preferable to them, they
have a right to disseminate that view,
to obtain converts to it, and to elect
representatives favoring it in any
electoral district in which those con-
verts may have come to be a major-
ity. If we can not keep the country
from becoming a monarchy otherwise
than by suppressing the monarch-
ists, our democratic institutions are
in such sad shape that they are not
worth preserving. And if we can
not keep America from turning So-
cialist or Communist except by sup-
pressing the voice of those who be-
lieve in Socialism or Communism, we
have likewise admitted that Ameri-
can democracy, as established by the
founders, is a failure.
Through a hundred years of our
history, although this kind of ques-
tion was very remote from our own
affairs, we all took an emphatic stand
upon it. For the difference between
the rights which the Socialists are
claiming among us to-day and the
rights which liberals in the mon-
archical countries of Continental
Europe were asserting throughout
the Nineteenth Century is only a dif-
ference as to whose ox is gored.
When the Tsar of Russia was send-
ing to Siberia anybody who dared to
propose a change in his form of gov-
ernment, when the German Emperor
was putting in prison for lese-majesU
anybody who questioned his God-
given authority, who were more in-
dignant than we Americans over the
exercise of such tyranny? If Biar
marck or the Chartcellors who suc-
ceeded him had undertaken to ex-
clude from the German Reichstag
April 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[349
members of the Social-Democratic
party, would there not have been a
universal outcry in America over
this denial of the people's rights?
Yet the very name Democratic, not
to speak of Social, plainly avowed the
design to overthrow the German form
of government. Are we to admit
that, while it is the duty of a mon-
archical government to admit to
representation those who distinctly
avow a programme aimed at its over-
throw, a democratic government must
resort to the strangulation of its op-
ponents as the only means of pre-
serving its existence? Surely but
one answer is possible.
We do not believe that the action
of the New York Assembly will find
imitators. But if it did, there would
be inflicted upon our institutions,
upon the whole spirit of them, an in-
jury incalculably grave. If the prec-
edent were to be established, if the
practice were to become general, we
should never again know whether
the country was sound at heart or
not. Representation would come to
mean not a true picture of the state
of public feeling in the various con-
stituencies, but only such a picture as
an intolerant majority permits to be
presented. When there has been one
Socialist in Congress, or two, or
three, we have been justified in say-
ing that, out of the hundreds of Con-
gressional districts throughout the
length and breadth of the land, this
handful was all that the Socialists,
with a fair field and no favor, were
able to capture. If we don't allow
the Socialists to show how many
they are, it will obviously be im-
possible for us to show how few
they are. And that is not the worst
of it. The charge of disloyality, of
an allegiance to some other institu-
tion transcending the allegiance to
State or country, may be made in
more directions than one. It has
been made in the past against Cath-
olics, by fanatical organizations
which have at times commanded a
formidable following. It may be
made in the future against members
of a labor party, even though not
Socialist. It is essentially of the na-
ture of a proscription of citizens not
for their acts but for their state of
mind. It contains the very essence
of tyranny. It bears within itself
the seeds of the destruction of free-
dom. No higher duty rests upon the
leaders of public opinion in Amer-
ica to-day than that of exposing its
pernicious and dangerous character.
Deplorable as the action of the As-
sembly has been, viewed as a matter
of principle and precedent, there is
one aspect of the occurrence in
which we find it possible to take a
certain degree of comfort. In the
duty of responsible legislators, men
who should be supposed to under-
stand the principles of the govern-
ment of which they are a part, the
Assembly has lamentably failed.
But while it is no excuse, it is some-
thing of an explanation of their con-
duct that they doubtless supposed
themselves to be reflecting the senti-
ment of their constituents. They
were not carried away in the end —
whatever might have been the case
at the beginning — by a sudden gust
of emotion. No such overwhelming
majority could have been cast
against the Socialists unless there
had been a fairly universal feeling
at Albany that the people held the
Socialist programme in abhorrence.
Accordingly, if there was any doubt
before, it is quite certain now that,
except in a few districts, the heart
of the people is in the right place.
They believe in the government and
the institutions under which the
country has prospered and grown
great. They have no patience with
raw innovators who wish to smash
all that the industry, the energy, and
the patriotism of four generations
of Americans have built up. They
would, we believe, have been per-
fectly content to have the Socialists
keep their seats; but the Assembly-
men were playing to the galleries,
and that means, though not to the
sober convictions, yet to the emo-
tional susceptibilities, of the people.
The wrong that has been done is
much like the wrong that was done
by a mob here and there to some real
or alleged pro-German during the
war. Such acts are evil, and not to
be excused; yet they had behind
them an impulse of real, though un-
disciplined, patriotism.
It is perhaps not fantastic to
surmise that in the very bigness of
the Assembly's vote against the So-
cialists there may be found a certain
antidote against its evil effect. It
will be difficult for orators to get
people greatly excited about a danger
which the vote itself shows to be
one over which there is no occasion
for immediate alarm. However this
may be, and whether the Socialist
menace shall wax or wane, let us
hope that those public men, news-
papers, and civic organizations that
have borne so honorable a part
in resisting the high-handedness at
Albany will keep up the good work.
There is but one right way, and
there is but one effective way, to
preserve our institutions against
the assault of destructive opinions.
America can remain America only
through maintaining its hold on the
minds and hearts of the great mass
of the people. If they will not be
Americans of their own free will, we
can not make them so by proscrip-
tions and penalties.
The Housing Problem
—Ethics or Economics?
rpHERE has been rushed through
■*• the New York Legislature a
batch of bills designed to protect ten-
ants in New York City against the
hardships of an extraordinary situa-
tion, and to restrict the gains of
"profiteering" landlords. A number
of the bills relate to details of the
relation between landlord and ten-
ant, especially as aflfecting the pro-
cedure of dispossession. The most
notable of the measures, however, is
that which makes an advance of
more than 25 per cent, over the pre-
ceding year's rent presumptive evi-
dence of an unreasonable agree-
ment, which the tenant may contest
in the courts, the burden of proof
resting on the landlord, so that the
tenant may remain in possession on
the old terms, subject to the risk of
a judicial decision against him. It
is not impossible that this law, if
its constitutionality is sustained,
will enable a considerable number of
tenants to continue in occupation at
350]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 48
rents lower than those which their
landlords are now demanding. It
may further be conceded that, in
view of the highly exceptional char-
acter of the situation, such relief,
however abnormal the method, is
justified, provided that it does not
carry with it evil consequences that
outweigh whatever good it may ac-
complish. But it is only too evi-
dent that the Legislature acted in
response to a wild rush of popular
feeling, and without the slightest
consideration of the larger aspects of
the problem.
Every man of sense must know
that no artificial restraint upon the
scale of rents can continue effective
for any length of time if the pres-
sure for housing, due to the scarcity
of accommodations, continues un-
abated. The reasons for that scar-
city are of the most substantial
possible kind. During the war there
was an almost total stoppage of
building. Since the close of the war
there has been but an extremely
slight resumption of operations,
owing in part to labor troubles, but
above all to the tremendous increase
in the money cost of materials and
labor. In the meanwhile there has
been since the armistice a return of
great numbers of men who had been
away, and a large influx of new-
comers. The supply of housing is
hardly greater than it was three
years ago, while the demand, both in
point of numbers and of the money
resources of the population, has been
greatly augmented.
Under the ordinary play of eco-
nomic forces an article of prime
necessity, when the supply is de-
ficient, commands a price increased
in a far greater ratio than the per-
centage of deficiency would indicate.
In the case of ordinary commodities,
however, this increase of price acts
as an immediate and powerful stim-
ulus to production. Not so with
houses. The keen demand which the
exigency brings forth bears not
directly upon houses, but upon hous-
ing— i.e., the occupancy, the rental,
of houses. With no assurance that
the high rents of to-day will continue
for a long period of years, the in-
ducement which high rents offer for
the building of houses is compara-
tively feeble. If the price of shoes
is doubled, and the cost of making
them is also doubled, that presents
no difficulty to the producer, for he
makes his complete turnover at once.
But if rents are doubled and the cost
of building houses is doubled, the
builder has no assurance that he will
come out square, so long as he has
no strong reason to believe that the
increased scale of rents will continue
during something like the lifetime of
the house. Accordingly, even if
there were no legal restrictions on
the scale of rents, uncertainty as to
the future would act as a most
powerful deterrent to building en-
terprise. A Legislature soberly con-
sidering the problem would see that
its first duty was to provide encour-
agement to building enterprise.
What the New York Legislature
has done is the diametrical opposite
of this. The degree of discourage-
ment which the new laws will create
is not to be measured by the char-
acter of their specific provisions,
serious as those are. People think-
ing of entering upon building enter-
prises are put upon notice that any
calculation they may make, based on
the state of demand and supply, may
be completely upset by some act of
the Legislature whose nature it is
quite impossible to predict. To add
to the risks and uncertainties inher-
ent in the situation this novel risk,
of unforeseeable dimensions, is evi-
dently to impede in a disastrous de-
gree any prospects there may have
been of a widespread resumption of
building enterprise; and nothing
short of such resumption can bring
substantial relief to a housing situa-
tion like that of New York.
The failure of the Legislature to
grasp the essentials of the subject
was emphasized by the circum-
stance that the one bill which did
point toward the encouragement of
building failed of passage — a bill
exempting mortgages up to a mod-
est amount from taxation. It should
be understood, however, that such a
measure, while good as far as it goes,
can make but a slight impression on
the situation. The difficulty of bor-
rowing money is a somewhat impor-
tant element in the case, but is very
far from being the most important
one. The great obstacle consists in
the risk of the enterprise. To off-
set this, measures far more effective
are necessary than the relief of
mortgages from taxation. Exemp-
tion from taxation of the houses
themselves, for a considerable term
of years, would be a really powerful
stimulus. If the Legislature had
adopted strong measures of this na-
ture, simultaneously with those de-
signed to restrict increase of rent for
present occupants, there would have
been much more justification for the
latter measures.
A prime cause of the futility
which marks our dealings with all
this class of problems is the tend-
ency, well-nigh universal, to expend
upon invective and indignation the
energy which ought to be concen-
trated on sober thinking. With few
exceptions, even the most level-
headed of the daily newspapers con-
centrate attention upon the "greed"
of the landlords and the wickedness of
the "profiteering" speculators, and
have little thought left over to de-
vote to the question of what can be
done about the trouble. The land-
lords may be greedy, the speculators
may be profiteers, but why does not
somebody else come to the rescue?
Why are not the virtuous people, the
people who are neither landlords nor
speculators, the people who are con-
tent with a moderate return on
their investments, rushing into the
breach? There is nothing to pre-
vent hundreds of millions of dollars
being put into the business of house
building in New York. Yet nothing
of the kind is going on. If wicked-
ness alone is the cause of the high
rents, righteousness plus money —
and surely the combination must
exist — ought to suffice to bring them
down. Yet up they stay, and up
there is every reason to expect them
to stay, for aught that virtue shows
any sign of doing to mend matters.
It looks as though the rest of us
wanted the landlords to be content
with less than what the market
would give them, but were quite un-
willing to take any chances as to
what the market would give us if we
April 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[851
built the houses which the people
need. We are indulging in a lot of
high ethics for the other man, but
don't care ourselves to act on any
higher plane than that of ordinary
economics.
Justice and the Bonus
Is it right to compel another person to do a
disagreeable job for you and then hold him
down to less compensation than you crammed
into your pockets while he was away ? Let
those who are fighting the so-called "bonus"
legislation face and answer this single ques-
tion. To give a soldier $50 more for each
month he was in service will not make him
whole, and every one knows it. If we may
not confiscate property without paying an.
owner its full value we certainly may not in
justice confiscate men's time without equal due
compensation. — New York Tribune.
If the question of military service
to the country is to be put on the
basis of "justice," as applied to the
ordinary affairs of daily 'life, we
must not only pay the proposed
bonus for the "confiscation of men's
time," but heavy damages for com-
pulsory disturbance of their comfort,
injury to their peace of mind, all the
woes which they and their families
suffered through the break-up of
their relations. Mere compensation
for loss of "time" is quite inadequate.
The Tribune does not strengthen its
case, but weakens it, by asserting
that "to give a soldier $50 more for
each month will not make him whole,
and every one knows it." That is
true in many cases, and in many
cases it is the opposite of the truth;
but the more it is true, the more
plain it is that the underlying prin-
ciple is wrong, for upon that prin-
ciple there is no limit whatever to
what might be claimed in the name
of "justice."
We put forth a mighty effort in
the great war, but, in comparison
with other great nations, our sac-
rifices were trifling. If we had suf-
fered as France did, through four
years of desperate fighting, we
should be having a list of three mil-
lion men killed, perhaps six million
seriously disabled, and many millions
more who had served four years
under the colors. To pay for these
sacrifices, upon the principle that
justice requires us really to make
"due compensation," would require
an inconceivable sum of money; and
even if the "due compensation" were
reckoned by the measure of the pro-
posed bonus, it would run up to at
least a hundred billion dollars. A
pacifist might properly assert that
any nation that goes to war is bound
to burden itself with such an obliga-
tion ; in the mouth of anybody else it
is an absurdity.
The nation's call upon its citizens
for military service rests on grounds
transcending those that regulate its
claims in other matters. It must, in-
deed, deal justly with all its citizens,
in the sense of making favorites of
no class and scapegoats of no class.
The draft was conducted on this
principle. Men of certain ages were
called, those of other ages were not;
and within the called ages selection
was made by the impartial operation
of chance. Some who stayed home
have got rich — ^though it must not be
forgotten that millions of those who
stayed home got poor through the
enormous advance in the cost of liv-
ing. Some who went to the war
were killed, some were disabled,
most came home hale and hearty.
What money compensation can equal-
ize these fates?
To take the chances of war is part
of the citizen's duty to the nation;
to demand that these chances be
taken is part of the country's right
to self-preservation. If she can not
rightfully make that demand, she
can not rightfully compel military
service at all; for surely of those
who went to the war there are hun-
dreds of thousands who would not
have gone for any money considera-
tion whatsoever, though they went
gladly for love of their country.
Plausible as the Tribune's argument
may seem to some, the truth is that
the proposed bonus is far more de-
fensible without it than with it.
For a bonus, pure and simple, some-
thing might be said, but the principle
of "due compensation" must be re-
jected outright. It runs counter to
the very essence of the principle upon
which the country's right to call
on its citizens for military service
rests, and the logical consequence of
its acceptance would be nothing less
than the paralysis of the nation in
time of danger.
Ousting the Sultan
TN the conflict between the ad-
■'■ vocates and the opponents of the
Sultan's expulsion from Europe,
sentiment is pitted against practical
politics, the romantic against the
realistic spirit. The creator of fic-
tion who gives to avenging justice
the last word in his story finds a re-
ward for that departure from the
probable in the approval of the
majority of readers. So when there
is a chance of seeing poetic justice
done in this shocking reality of ours,
weighty arguments must be adduced
by those who would hinder it from
taking effect. For little less than
five hundred years the intruder from
Asia has resided in the great city
which was the cradle of European
art and culture. The spirit of the
place had left him untouched; not
even a veneer of western civilization
would stick on his nature. He has
remained the Asiatic despot, blast-
ing the prosperity of the lands un-
der his rule, and since, under the
tuition of his German master, he
learned to foster the ideal of racial
expansion he seeks to realize it in
true Asiatic fashion by the wholesale
massacre of all his Greek and
Armenian subjects. An accomplice
of his master in the great war, he
shared in his downfall, and now that
the cruel despot has been brought to
his knees, who would not hail his
ousting from Constantinople as a just
punishment for his misrule and his
many crimes, and a recovery by
Europe of what she, on historical
grounds, considers to be her own ?
Such is the reasoning of a large
majority in all Christian countries,
and Mr. Wilson's recent note insisting
that "the anomaly of the Turks in
Europe should cease" gave clear and
eloquent expression to their feelings.
But the whole Turkish problem is a
tangle of anomalies. We know from
Professor D. B. Macdonald's illum-
inating article in last week's issue of
the Review that of the three large
groups of Moslems concerned in this
matter — the Turks, the Arabs, and
the Indian Islamites — it is the Turks
that would view their expulsion with
comparative indifference, and the dis-
352]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 48
tant Moslems of India who would
take it ill as an omen of the final
decadence of Islam. The Sultan, con-
sequently, has no better supporters of
his continued residence at Constanti-
nople than the very Mohammedans
who, in loyalty to their British Em-
peror, took up arms to help bring
about his defeat. Mr. Wilson refuses
to believe "that the feelings of the
Mohammedan peoples, who not only
witnessed the defeat of Turkish
power without protest, but even mate-
rially assisted in the defeat, will now
so resent the expulsion of the Turkish
Government as to make a complete re-
versal of policy on the part of the
Great Powers desirable or necessary."
With equal right one might meet this
confession of disbelief with a credo
quia absurdum. But those who dis-
sent from him have more cogent
arguments than a statement of their
belief in such resentment. The All
India Moslem League, uniting both
Sunnites and Ghi'ites, has made a
strong appeal on behalf of the Sultan,
and the "Young" Mohammedan ele-
ments in India form the nucleus of a
systematic agitation against British
rule for which the contemplated
humiliation of the Caliph is excellent
propaganda matter.
President Wilson, indeed, in sup-
port of his disbelief, refers to the
active part which the Indian Mos-
lems took in the Sultan's defeat,
he leaves out of account the dual na-
ture of the ruler in Stamboul, which
made it possible that, as subjects of
the British Emperor, they fought
against the Sultan of the Ottomans,
for whom they have no special affec-
tion, and that, as faithful Moslems,
they now stand up for the Caliph and
the seat of Islam, both objects of
their devout worship.
Neither can the objection to the
Sultan's expulsion be proved futile by
arguing, as is often done, that the Al-
lies were not prevented from throw-
ing the Turks out of three holy places,
Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, by any
consideration for their sacredness.
The sanctity of Constantinople, in
the eyes of the Indian believers, is
an attribute not inherent in the city
itself, but dependent on the Caliph's
residence there. One must not, there-
fore, equate the ousting of Turkish
rule from the holy places in Arabia
and Palestine with the expulsion of
the Sultan from Constantinople. If
the English, on occupying Mecca, had
removed the Ka'ba to the British
Museum, they would, in the opinion
of Indian Moslems, have committed a
sacrilege comparable to the contem-
plated removal of the Caliph from the
Seat of Islam. In the mere fact of
the occupation of the city there is
little that can offend the religious sus-
ceptibilities of the believers.
But whether sentiment or practical
politics will turn the scale against or
in favor of the Sultan, "no arrange-
ment that is made can have any per-
manency unless the vital interests of
Russia in these problems are carefully
provided for and protected, and un-
less it is understood that Russia, when
it has a Government recognized by
the civilized world, may assert its
right to be heard in regard to the de-
cision now made." We quote Mr.
Wilson's words with hearty approval.
They are based on the assumption
that, after the fall of the Soviet Gov-
ernment, which the President ap-
pears to take for granted, a new
united Russia will arise, vital and
strong enough to care for and insist
on its right to have a voice in these
decisions. The rulers of the present
Russia, however, whose Government
can not be recognized by the civilized
world, are taking good care that,
though their delegates are excluded
from the council of the Entente dip-
lomats, the discussions shall be
ruled by fear of their power. It is
not the pressure brought to bear on
them by French capitalists, holders
of Turkish bonds, that will save the
Sultan. The British Government's
conversion to the French point of
view is dictated by a genuine desire
to placate England's Moslem sub-
jects, so as to deprive the Bolshevist
agitation in India of fuel. We have,
and shall shortly print, an article
by Dr. Paul Rohrbach of Berlin, an
authority on Eastern matters, from
which our readers will see that Mr.
Montagu's fear lest Indian resent-
ment over the Sultan's expulsion
should be exploited by Bolshevist
firebrands is far from imaginary.
and is not merely a pretext to be
made serviceable to financial inter-
ests of French and British capital-
ists. Russia is actually asserting
her right to have her interests re-
garded in the decisions, but in a dif-
ferent fashion from what Mr. Wil-
son had in view.
But it must be borne in mind that
the sole object of the Bolsheviki's in-
terference in India is the overthrow
of British rule, and they will not
deem themselves frustrated if the
Entente's clemency towards the Sul-
tan should rob their emissaries of
some of the fuel for the fire they are
to fan. Other matter will be found
by the firebrands to set India aflame.
The danger can not be averted
by leaving the Sultan unmolested.
Though the English escape the blame
of being enemies of the Caliph, they
will still remain the suppressors of
Asia, against whom Madam Bala-
banova and her helpers can stir the
hatred of the suppressed. Great
Britain must maintain her colonial
realm by other means than this
roundabout way involving the per-
petuation of an anomaly which is a
disgrace to Europe. If she can not
rely on her own prestige and the
loyalty of the races under her rule,
the makeshift arrangement with re-
gard to Turkey can not save British
India. It would seem to be a wiser,
because a more self-reliant, policy
for England to scorn the futile pro-
tection which a conciliated Sultan
might afford, and, trusting to her
own resources, to help rid Europe of
the intruder and render to Christen-
dom the ancient city of Constantine.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of Political 0nd
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Corporation
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars a year in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P.. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand. London, W. C, 2, England.
Copyright, 1920, in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Ayres O. W. Firkins
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson
Jerome Landfield
April 10, 19-20]
THE REVIEW
[353
Behind the Financing of China
(IN FOUR PARTS — PART THREE)
JAPAN'S repudiation of the Paris
agreement of May, 1919, is not
an exhibition of bad faith on the part
of the Japanese Government. Her
action — delaying the financial salvage
of the Chinese Republic by interna-
tional cooperation — evidences the dif-
ference betvi^een the de jure govern-
ment of a prime minister with his
cabinet and the de facto star cham-
ber body actually ruling from behind
the Mikado's throne.
When the duly accredited Japanese
delegates met the representatives of
the United States, France, and Great
Britain in a conference at Paris to
settle the destinies of the Far East
under the overwhelming shadow of
the Peace Congress, Japan subscribed
unreservedly to the preliminary
agreement for a new China Consor-
tium. This was a momentous step.
It was a stroke of statesmanship
which, if carried into effect with
shrewd rapidity, might have re-
dressed substantially the wrong just
previously done to China in the abor-
tive Shantung settlement. The four
chief principles drafted for the
guidance of the financial groups asso-
ciated in the Consortium were as fol-
lows:
(a) That no country should attempt to culti-
vate special spheres of influence ;
(b) That all existing options held by a
member of any of the national groups should,
so far as practicable, be turned into the con-
sortium as a whole;
(c) That the four banking groups of the
countries in question should act in concert and
in an effective partnership for the interests of
China ; and
(d) That the consortium's operations should
deal primarily with loans to the Chinese Re-
public or to Provinces of the Republic, or with
loans guaranteed or officially having to do with
the Republic or its Provinces, and in each in-
stance of a character sufficient to warrant a
public issue.
In other words, the edge was taken
off individual financing which threat-
ened China's conquest by strategic
railways and government - backed
banks. The very first clause of this
declaration of purposes was inspired
by the United States in order to check
effectively the recrudescence of the
"spheres of influence" principle in
Far Eastern diplomacy under the
skilful manipulation of Japanese
statesmen. The second was retroact-
ive, striking at the concession
gobbling carried on by Japanese in-
terests under cover of the Great War,
inasmuch as it laid the basis for the
pooling of all options upon which
"substantial progress" had not been
made. The third, fully the equal of
the initial provision in significance,
would appear to have made joint ac-
tion by the financial Powers obliga-
tory; and the idea conveyed in "an
effective partnership for the interests
of China" was obviously the reassur-
ing cry of the New Finance to those
who professed to see in the Consor-
tium a juggernaut of imperialism
overriding Chinese independence.
Finally, it was provided, largely in
deference to Japanese susceptibilities,
that the Consortium's scope extended
only to operations of a public charac-
ter involving the financing of the Cen-
tral Government or the provinces.
Not only were these desiderata
agreed to by all the groups through
their banking and diplomatic repre-
sentatives, but the purport of this
agreement was presented to the Gov-
ernments concerned and approved by
them. The first intimation that
Japan would find it necessary to dis-
sent from these cardinal principles
came months after, when the full im-
port of the agreement had been re-
viewed by the real rulers of Japan.
The veto, it is not without significance,
originated with the Japanese War
Office and those behind it who dictate
the master-policy of the Mikado's
land. The reason quite frankly inti-
mated was Japan's "special position"
in the East.
Reduced to plain terms, this meant
that the old guard in Japan retained
their dominating control of Japanese
destinies behind the screen of pseudo-
liberalism of a Premier Hara and a
Baron Uchida in the Foreign Office.
These men were stalking-horses,
political fictions if you like, behind
which the old diplomacy of the War
Office moved with no faltering steps
in the advance on China. There
would have to be a revision of Japan's
promises, so the fiat went forth to the
Hara Cabinet, to maintain intact the
"special position" which Japan's de-
vious statecraft had labored so indus-
triously to build. Thus it was the
irony of Japanese politics that the
"liberal" Ministry itself was coerced
into administering what the War Of-
fice crowd hoped would be the coup
de grace to the project the Cabinet
had just underwritten.
There is more than a difference
over the interpretation of the Con-
sortium between the inner and outer
circles in Japan's Government. In
assenting to the financial arrange-
ment of Paris, the Hara Ministry
sincerely thought that the best inter-
ests of the Mikado's land were being
conserved — that the old diplomacy
would be Japan's ruin in the East.
The War Office, however, under the
leadership of General Tanaka, saw
no such need for a drastic re-align-
ment of Japan's policies. The Min-
ister of War and his associates in the
background were practical statesmen
of the world. They thought that
when the flurry America was crea-
ting over the financing of China
should have passed, there would be
little trouble in maintaining the old
order in the East. They were also past
masters in compromising a diplomatic
proposal until it no longer endan-
gered the jealously guarded "special
position" of Japan. Indeed, this
process of emasculation had been
known to stalemate in the past diplo-
matic games that threatened to em-
barrass Japan — notably whenever the
missionary instinct so pronounced in
America's temperament found its in-
termittent expression in a fluctuating
foreign policy.
It is just possible that these hard-
headed Japanese statesmen, who had
none of the gilded altruism of youth
in them, were not unmindful of an
approaching Presidential election in
the United States, a calculation which
has been justified by the fate of the
Peace Treaty in the Senate. Perhaps
judicious handling could jockey the
Consortium through 1921 with en-
hanced prospects of its dissolution
in the end. When we understand that
Japan's carefully builded primacy in
the East is at stake, her past fruits
threatened, and her freedom for ex-
354]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 48
pansion at the expense of her neigh-
bors taken from her, why should not
the inner circle behind the Mikado
gamble yet once again?
After all, these Japanese leaders,
strangers to public emotions, could
not be expected to abandon their
handiwork of a generation so easily.
They were asked to turn from the
secure past of spheres of influence,
railway politics, predatory finance,
and all that has made for national
aggrandizement to an uncharted fu-
ture of international cooperation for
a dubious national benefit. Ever
since the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in
1902, they had made the recognition
of Japan's "special position" the goal.
Her snarl in 1910 over our proposal
for the "neutralization" of the
Manchurian communications was
prompted by an excess of confidence
accumulated during the intervening
years. The entrance of Japan into
the Great War, and the subsequent
diplomatic assault on China in 1915,
were reaffirmations of this inverted
Monroe Doctrine of Japan. The
alliance which she consummated with
Russia in 1916 was a partnership de-
signed indubitably to cooperate at
China's expense. Japan's state high
finance, giving her economic priority
in China's development, has become
the trump card in the bargaining
process to which Japanese statesmen
have resorted in their efforts to
defeat the Consortium. Linked to
these loans are railroad rights dif-
ferent from those of any other Power
now concerned in China's fate, be-
cause in Japanese hands they mean
the extension, in a monopolistic grip,
of Japan's extraterritorial jurisdic-
tion over Manchuria, Mongolia, Shan-
tung, and Fukien. This strong posi-
tion was reinforced by the circle of
treaties Japan made in 1917 with
Italy, France, Russia, and Britain, as
well as by the Japanese distortion of
the Ishii-Lansing Agreement so as to
make the United States inferentially
a party to the underwriting of the
"special position" doctrine in the
East.
The only hopeful aspect of this
delicate situation which has arisen is
that, while the Japanese War Office
has dictated Japan's course of action.
a strong part of the Japanese people
are becoming restive.
The responsible business elements
have their qualms about the "rail-
and-iron" policy dominating the
Japanese Government. They at least
know Japan can not pit herself
against the world. The United States,
standing firm on the essentials of
the Consortium, aligned France and
Britain with us. Japan has been in-
duced to reaffirm international joint
action. But Japan's familiar tactics
of indirect obstruction remain a dan-
gerous factor. Our State Depart-
ment's problem is to show the Japa-
nese War Office that the game is up.
Charles Hodges
Helping the Reactionaries
INHERE can be no doubt about the
1
reaction. It is here, and unless it
overreaches itself, it is destined for a
long stay. Its evidences are on
every side. Nor as yet is there
any sign of effective resistance.
What it has already won is but
a preparation for further advances.
The editors of the Review will, of
course, differ with me not only as to
the reactionary character of certain
measures and tendencies, but as to
the extent of the reaction as a whole.
They can hardly, however, reject the
evidences of the general movement.
This movement, true enough, is not
all-inclusive ; it does not carry every-
thing with it in a tidal sweep; for
along with much that is subversive
of progress is to be found much that
is hopeful and promising. But reac-
tion is dominant, and its threat of
further encroachments is menacing.
To the dangers, perhaps diminishing,
of the Bolshevism of the left are
added the increasing dangers of the
Bolshevism of the right.
A strange sequence is this to the
expectation of a new order which
prevailed at the time of the armistice.
The war had been waged to "make
the world safe for democracy." It
had resulted in an overwhelming vic-
tory. Everywhere, except among the
extreme radicals and the extreme re-
actionaries, the confident belief was
held that the old world, with its bitter
evils, had fallen asunder and that a
new world of social justice was to be
ushered in. Even the extreme radi-
cals, though they scoffed at what they
called the delusions of the moment,
prophesied a new epoch. It was to
come, they said, not in the ordinary
course of events, but by a carefully
planned revolution. By one means or
another, according to the general be-
lief, we were to have a new order.
Well, in these United States there
is no revolution and no sign of one.
The embryo Lenins and Trotskys are
mostly in jail or on their personally
conducted tours abroad, while their
American dupes or abettors, as the
case may be, are slated for a bad
time. Nor are the signs of a peace-
fully evolved new order, then so
promising, any longer visible. If, as
Mr. Wiliam Allen White said, in Sep-
tember, 1918, "capital is permanently
hamstrung," the fact but shows that
this lively creature is able to get along
very well without its Achilles tendons.
If, as Mr. Charles M. Schwab then
prophesied, only a short time would
be needed to wipe out all "sharp dis-
tinctions between rich and poor," it
seems probable that the term "short
time" will have to be interpreted, not
according to the calendar, but accord-
ing to the reckoning of a geologist.
And if the President's exhortation to
all of us, a few months earlier, to
"search our hearts through and
through and make them ready for the
birth of a new day," is still to be fol-
lowed, it would appear to demand an
extended period of spiritual prepara-
tion and of watchful waiting. Not
only has the new day not arrived, but
it shows no sail in the offing. A like-
lier happening is the return of an
older day. Reaction rules; it rules,
moreover, not by usurpation, but by a
franchise from the people. It finds
easy the task of persuading the com-
mon run of citizens that it is not the
most evil in the world — that,, in fact,
in the present crisis, it is a refuge
against an intolerable menace.
Any propagandist of the left can
tell you the causes of this great trans-
April 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[355
formation. He can recite a long list
of governmental derelictions and
capitalist aggressions which are re-
sponsible. He can sum up all the
contributing causes, near and remote
— that is, all except the one proximate
and dominate cause which, by reason
of his closeness to it, escapes his
notice. And that is the flood of revo-
lutionist and pseudo-liberal propa-
ganda, inspired first by Germanophil
opposition to the war and later by
infatuation for the Lenin regime.
This propaganda has enabled reac-
tion to arm itself at all points and
steadily to increase its hold. It has
enabled the reactionary to identify
social and political criticism with se-
dition; the pettiest reform with the
extremist overturn ; direct legislation
with direct action as equal subver-
sions of government ; the nationaliza-
tion of railways with the nationaliza-
tion of women ; reformer, reconstruc-
tionist, and revolutionist as common
enemies of society. Of the two in-
spirational sources the Lenin infatua-
tion has, of course, produced the
greater volume of most helpful
propaganda. Mere wartime sedition
could be, to the reactionaries, of only
partial and transient benefit. It is
Leninism that puts the game in their
hands; that enables them to consoli-
date their gains and to move forward
along the whole line for new con-
quests. For Leninism, with its viola-
tion of the most primal right of
human beings, is an evil that comes
directly "home to men's business and
bosoms." All except the fanatic and
the sentimentalist can see and under-
stand what it threatens. Even the
downmost man, embittered by priva-
tion, may regard it with scarcely less
dread than does the comfortable
bourgeois. Every gratulant utter-
ance of the radical and pseudo-liberal
press in behalf of this thing, every
palliation or defense of Bolshevist
tyranny, brigandage, and persecution,
has served to increase the popular
apprehension; and reaction, sharp-
eyed and resourceful, has reaped the
advantage.
Through no power of their own,
through no skill in manoeuvring,
through no measure of press control
possible to them, could the reaction-
aries have come unaided to their
present position. The public in re-
cent years had been anything but
charitably disposed toward the seek-
ers of privilege and the obstructors
of democratic progress. The current
of legislation had long been driving
against their aims and interests. The
vast majority of the votes cast in the
Presidential election of 1912 was
specifically and aggressively against
them. The results of the 1916 elec-
tion are a puzzle no man can ever
read ; but, at least, there is nothing in
them to indicate a marked subsidence
of popular resentment of reactionary
designs. Only by generous and plen-
tiful aid could reaction have come
into its own. Without doubt there
have been contributory causes. The
muddling of the Administration in a
score of vital matters, by lowering
the morale of the people and weaken-
ing its faith, has aided in the con-
summation ; and the prolonged wran-
gle over the peace treaty has added
something more. But all this might
have happened with no serious effect
on the general situation. It is Lenin-
ism, with its propaganda of social
chaos, which has given the reins to
reaction.
In so far as it has been able to do
so, against the interference of the
law, the outright Communist, I. W.
W., and official Socialist press has
steadily carried this propaganda to
the factories and the fields. In the
case of the Communists, the I. W.
W.'s, and other extreme groups the
plain intent has been the incitement
of armed revolution. In the case of
the party Socialists it has been to
furnish the incitement and then let
nature take her course, without ref-
erence to any dogmatic interpreta-
tions as to the best method. The
ballot is good, they say in effect, but
if events choose to move in a more
violent way, who are we that we
should interpose an objection? In
its unbolshevized days the Socialist
party was the first to condemn any
propaganda which even implied the
use of revolutionary force. In those
times it would have furiously de-
nounced these revolutionists as the
tools of reaction, the betrayers of the
working class, the Father Capons
who sought to lead their victims up
against the rifles and machine guns
of the Government, to be uselessly
slaughtered. How often in the old
days was that denunciation thun-
dered from Socialist press and forum !
But times change, and so do parties;
the Bolshevik uprising showed an
easier way of attaining a goal, and its
influence has been to swing the So-
cialist party more than half way over
to the outright revolutionists.
This Leninite propaganda of the
extremist papers is not wholly their
own. Much of it — in some issues
most of it — is drawn from the pages
of the so-called liberal journals of
opinion. One who has followed the
extremist papers for the last fourteen
months can not have failed to be im-
pressed with the number of columns
credited to the New Republic, the
Nation, and the Dial (the last-named
now retired from the pro-Bolshevist
field), and the additional credits oc-
casionally given to the Survey and the
World Tomorrow. One must further
have been impressed with a sense
that the stuff fitted well in its new
setting. It may have been more pre-
tentiously written, more sanctimoni-
ously, or even more daringly and vio-
lently written than the home-made
stuff of the revolutionist editor. But
in point of view and in general adapt-
ability to the needs of revolutionism
it harmonized admirably with the
surrounding text. The readers of the
stuff on its original appearance may
have understood it in any way they
pleased. To the revolutionist editor
who copied it in enormous quantities
it meant what he meant, and what his
readers wanted it to mean. Those
sophistical persons who, in defense
of the pseudo-liberal press, draw sub-
tle distinctions between the Leninism
in these pretentiously intellectual
journals and the Leninism in the
rough-stuff revolutionist papers, are
sufficiently answered by the fact that
so much of the material does duty for
both. Highbrow or lowbrow, far or
near, the stuff is in substance of a
kind. It may be differently trimmed
up for different readers; and its ef-
fect on the cloistered professor or on
the naive seeker of "culture" may be
different from its effect on the per-
356]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 48
spicacious "sab cat" or on his ecstatic
ally, the parlor Bolshevist. But it
differs little in essentials. In the
high-class journals it takes the form
of an arrogant outpouring of passion
and prejudice loudly certified as
judicial opinion; a studied distor-
tion and suppression of inconvenient
facts ; a sweeping falseness of accusa-
tion; a canting defense of tyranny
and repression in the name of democ-
racy and freedom; and a frequent
implication, soft-pedalled or loud-
pedalled as occasion prompts, of prob-
able revolutionary uprisings. In the
case of the rough-stuff papers it is
much the same thing, though with
less arrogance, less disingenuousness,
■and with a refreshing absence of
cant.
It is all so tragically stupid. Re-
action, shrewd old reprobate, pre-
tending to the keenest alarm, and
calling, in the name of the high gods,
on society to arm itself for defense,
chuckles in his sleeve like a Roman
soothsayer. For the time, at least,
the battle is his.
W. J. Ghent
Poetry
Tides
We sat last night by the fire
In the old room;
She, with her work
In her hands,
I with the gray sock
In mine.
I was knitting;
And the things that we said
To each other,
Of war, and its waste
And its woe,
And the talk
Of books and of friends
Was like the froth
On the wave.
For the tide of one's being flowed on
In thought —
Of which speech
Is but so fitful a sound.
» » ♦ « «
Poetry this may not be called.
Yet — were it signed by the name
Of one of the writers
Called poets to-day —
Would you not, reader.
Give pennies of praise
To buy a new leaf
For the crown?
S.N.
Boston
The Outlook in Germany
SUFFICIENTLY accurate accounts
of the German revolution have
been given in the daily press so that
no detailed history of this totally un-
expected reactionary coup d'etat is
necessary. The revolution never
had any chance of permanence be-
cause it was not supported by popu-
lar reactionary leaders who might
have carried the people with them.
The new Government lasted a few
days only because it was supported
by certain troops and because its ad-
vent was so unexpected that there
was no organized opposition. But
with the passing of the reactionary
danger, due to the astonishingly
unanimous stand of the people, has
arisen the more serious menace of
Red revolution. An estimate of this
situation, because of its bearing on
the immediate political and economic
future of the world, should be of
interest.
The success or failure of a Com-
munist revolution in Germany de-
pends, for the moment at least, on
the military. According to the terms
of the Treaty of Versailles, the
German army was to be reduced by
March, 1920, to 100,000 men, but this
stipulation was based on the theory
that the Treaty would be ratified
shortly after signature. As a mat-
ter of fact, the Reichswehr, or ac-
tive army, consists of about 300,000
men, evenly distributed throughout
the country. In addition, there
are the Sicherheits-polizei — called
"Noske's Frogs" because of their
green uniforms. These troops, 75,-
000 in number, correspond roughly
to American State troops. They
have not yet been tested to any ex-
tent but, as they were under the im-
mediate orders of Noske, it can
be taken for granted that their
tendency would be conservative.
Finally, there are the Einwohner-
wehr, numbering perhaps 600,000.
These forces are largely made up of
returned soldiers. They are an en-
tirely volunteer organization, formed
to protect the home from violence
and have been placed under the De-
partment of the Interior in order to
avoid an appearance of excessive
militarism. It may be added that
they exist contrary to the stipula-
tions of the Treaty.
It was obvious that on the at-
titude of these troops, especially the
Reichswehr, must depend the suc-
cess or failure of the reactionary
revolution. Almost immediately well
over half of the Reichswehr de-
clared for the Ebert Government
and, when lack of popular support
for von Kapp became evident, the
balance of the troops wavered, and
turned in their allegiance completely
to the Ebert Government when their
old commander, von Luettwitz, re-
signed as War Minister. The reac-
tionary revolution was a dead issue.
But has its failure strengthened the
regime of the coalition parties?
The Ebert Government was based
on a compromise and suffers from
the traditional weakness of a coali-
tion that has no dominant leadership.
It contains members of the moderate
parties, which represent the major-
ity of the German people, but these
representatives recognize no leader
and spend their time dickering over
trivialities while vital questions are
neglected because no one party is
willing to adopt the programme of
any other party. The Socialists are
disaffected because the Government
has not nationalized industry. The
Democrats are unhappy because, in
the face of economic disaster, and
the prime necessity of resumption of
trade, the Government has given
way too much to Socialist pressure.
The Centre is losing its hold on the
peasant voters because of the Gov-
ernment's food regulations — paper
regulations, to be sure, since no
laws are efficiently carried into ef-
fect, but none the less irritating.
The result of this is that Germany
has become more and more dis-
gusted with a regime which ap-
pears to accomplish little of impor-
tance, which has supplied neither
food nor work. In the meantime the
two extremes have been active and
the Government has been unable ef-
fectually to control the propaganda
April 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[357
either of the Nationalists or of the
Independent Socialists. The Na-
tionalists, or reactionaries, practi-
cally control the schools and the uni-
versities. Their principles appeal
to the enthusiasm of youth and they
have tangible, easily understood
ideals which strike the imagination.
They have national heroes, like Hin-
denburg, to set up as figureheads to
vi^orship — and youth is prone to
hero-worship. They have inherited
the science of organization. They
make fun of the spineless Govern-
ment of "King Ebert, the saddle-
maker" — and youth likes to laugh.
The Independent Socialists, on the
other hand, attack the Government
more grimly. They call it capital-
istic; they sneer at its inability to
control the profiteers and enforce
laws made for the benefit of work-
ingmen. They fatten on hunger and
high prices. And always they point
toward Russia — the great new Rus-
sia where the workingman is king,
where the hated bourgeoisie has
been hunted from its age-old posi-
tion of cynical exploitation of the
common man. Above all, they point
to the Russia with an abundance of
grain that could pour across the
German borders in a life-giving
flood if only the German Govern-
ment would think of the German
people and make peace with the
Soviet. Finally, both extremes agree
in denunciation of the Treaty of
Versailles and the subservience of
the Ebert Government to the humil-
iating dictates of the Entente.
This is the dark side of the pic-
ture, so far as the Ebert Govern-
ment is concerned. The latent
strength of the Government was
proved by the unanimity with which
the people turned to its support
when von Kapp carried out his fool-
ish coup d'etat. This was not a
movement in support of the per-
sonnel of the Government. It was
rather a spontaneous negative to the
threat to take away rights that had
been acquired in the revolution of
November, 1918. The Government
had a great opportunity, and lost it
through lack of any firm policy,
through dallying with the issues
presented, through failure to lead.
The Government itself had called a
general strike, had thereby pricked
the von Kapp bubble, and had put
into the hands of the extreme rad-
icals a weapon which they lost no
time in using to their own advan-
tage. Demands were made on the
Government and agreed to by the
Government in a half-hearted fash-
ion. Resignations were demanded
and Noske, the really strong man in
the Socialist Party, was forced to
get out. The Government would not
go far enough to make the inclusion
of Independent Socialists possible.
It went far enough, if its pledges are
carried out, to make it subservient
to the labor unions. It weakened its
own personnel without gaining new
adherents either through its weak
concessions or through its wavering
attempts at firmness. Throughout it
acted so slowly, with such obvious
hesitation, that it gave the leaders of
the Communists plenty of time to or-
ganize their military forces and
perfect their plans of military ad-
venture.
It is hard to think a spineless gov-
ernment capable of inspiring mili-
tary forces, and if the Reichswehr
stand firm against the Communists,
it will not be through loyalty to
Ebert but through loyalty to an ideal
which the Government has not de-
stroyed. Such loyalty can not be of
long duration because enthusiasm
demands a living embodiment of an
ideal. President Wilson's idealism
appealed theoretically to the people
of Europe but had no active force
until those same people saw the
President himself. There is in
Germany no truly democratic leader
with the power to come out in full
view of the people and lead them into
realization of the ideals which are
latent in the hearts of those who
have been freed from imperialism
and shudder before the menace of a
new autocracy. Therefore, it is
fortunate that the Ebert Govern-
ment has agreed, as one result of the
reactionary revolution, to hold new
elections in June. The troops and
the people know that this Govern-
ment is the only one which can in-
sure a fair and full expression of
the popular will. They know that
an election under Communist con-
trol would be as farcical as are the
elections in Russia, and, since the
time is short, they will probably sup-
port the Government during the in-
tervening months.
Although the Communist move-
ment in the industrial regions of the
lower Rhine has collapsed like the
reactionary movement, the recent
revolution will leave its mark in
one or two outstanding results.
German opposition to fulfillment of
the terms of the Treaty of Ver-
sailles will stiffen. The press has
been a unit in claiming the treaty as
the real reason for the revolution.
The Nationalists have much to say
about "German honor"; the Inde-
pendent Socialists have more to say
about the burden placed by the
treaty on the workingman. At
first Germany trusted to the League
of Nations to revise the treaty.
When hope in the power of the
League went a-glimmering, the na-
tion adopted an attitude of passive
resistance. Now it is hopeful of dis-
sension among the Allies and of the
growth of radicalism in Allied coun-
tries ; but in any case it fully intends
to scrap the economic terms of the
treaty. The second obvious result
of the revolution will be a turning
away from the West and toward the
East. To the Nationalists, Russia is
a prostrate nation to be exploited
for Germany's benefit. To the Inde-
pendent Socialists, Russia is the
hope of the workingman. The
German Government can not put an
end to the Communist revolt without
making large concessions to the left,
every concession being a step toward
the Russian alliance. This is not
opposed by the reactionaries because
they believe themselves able, even-
tually, to cope with Communism.
They are autocrats by nature and by
training and think that they know
how to deal vdth a counter-autoc-
racy. Ludendorff recently remarked
that he should be quite as willing to
work with the Communists as with
the militarists for the defeat of the
treaty.
This, then, is what the German
revolution means. It will immensely
increase both the active and the
858]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 48
passive opposition to fulfillment of
the treaty terms, although opposi-
tion by force of arms appears un-
likely unless a really Communistic
government establishes itself. It
will swing the German Government
far to the left and will hasten an
alliance, or at least close cooperation
with Soviet Russia. It has already
retarded, and will slow down for a
long time to come, the process of
German recuperation. The duty of
the Allies and of America would ap-
pear to be to support the present
German Government by every legit-
imate means, because, in spite of its
weakness, in spite of the concessions
it has been forced to make, it re-
mains the only bulwark against a
radicalism that would almost cer-
tainly develop into anarchy. The
coming elections will determine the
policy of Germany. They will in-
dicate the true national sentiment
only if the ballot is universal, secret,
and exercised without intimidation.
These things, at least, the present
Government can guarantee.
Examiner
Correspondence
High Praise for Senator
Lodge
To the Editors of The Review:
I read with much interest your ex-
cellent article in your issue of March
27, entitled: "The Wreck of the
Treaty." In much that you say I con-
cur; but it contains one sentence against
which, as one of your readers, I want to
enter an earnest protest. After justly
criticizing President Wilson's course in
the treaty controversy, you say:
We do not by any means wish to absolve
others of their share of the blame. Senator
Lodge has shown himself neither a large-
minded statesman nor a competent party
leader and he has given countenance to
many abominable moves in the game.
This would be more convincing if you
had given any specifications for so
severe a criticism of one of the most
experienced and scholarly statesmen now
in the public life of this country. In
my judgment, this criticism is without
justification. I think you have uncon-
sciously fallen into the error of so many
iudges who feel that they give an im-
pression of great fairness by distribut-
ing the praise or the blame. In many
law cases there is much to be said on
both sides, and the judgment of the
Court carries wider conviction because it
fairly measures the pros and cons. But
it is a weakness of some judges that, in
cases where one side or the other is ever-
lastingly right or wrong, their attempt
to be judicial results in an opinion which,
either praising or blaming both sides,
compromises the issue involved by deny-
ing full credit to one side or withholding
full discredit from the other. Such an
issue, in my opinion, was the momentous
controversy just closed in the United
States Senate.
It involved two issues of transcendent
importance.
The first was our form of government ;
for if Mr. Wilson had crowded down the
throats of the American people his
League of Nations, whatever its merits
might otherwise have been, by an un-
constitutional expedient, whereby it was
sought to coerce the Senate into the ac-
ceptance of the League, it might have
meant the destruction of one of the most
salutary features of our Constitution,
which divides the power over the foreign
relations of this Government between the
President and the Senate. It will be an
unhappy day for America when its
destiny in international relations is con-
trolled by one man, and Mr. Wilson's
course in withholding information from
the Senate and in interweaving the
League with the treaty, in order to com-
pel the acceptance of the former, almost
amounted to a coup d'etat.
The second issue was the grave ques-
tion whether America should become a
member of a foreign Council sitting in
Geneva, which could compromise its sov-
ereign powers and fatally entangle it in
the local politics of Europe and Asia.
This meant in any form an abandon-
ment of the great and noble tradition to
which this country had hitherto been
faithful and under which it had grown
surpassingly great. It was not a ques-
tion of isolation, but of independence.
The burden of this terrific struggle fell
upon Senator Lodge. No leader of our
time since Abraham Lincoln has had a
graver responsibility. His party was
divided into three factions — the so-called
"irreconcilables," the "strong reserva-
tionists," and the "mild reservationists."
He owed it to his party and to his coun-
try to keep these interests together, so
far as possible, without sacrificing prin-
ciple or the great purpose of defeating
the President's coup d'etat. It was not
an easy task. From last July, when the
President submitted the treaty to the
Senate, until the present month. Senator
Lodge gave his time and energy to as dif-
ficult a task as any leader in Congress
ever assumed. I did not share his view
that this country could accept even
honorary membership in the so-called
"League of Nations" — which is not a
league of nations at all, but an offensive
and defensive alliance masquerading un-
der the form of a league of nations. I
believed that any participation in a so-
called "League" which challenges the
basic principle of the equality of sov-
ereign nations would have been a mistake
and a dangerous mistake; for if this
country had become a member of the so-
called League, even with the protective
reservations, President Wilson, acting
through his representative at Geneva,
could have continued his fatal implica-
tion of this country in the local quarrels
of Europe and thus completed the work
of destroying the good-will which, at one
time, all our Allies had for us in such
generous abundance.
Senator Lodge, however, was obliged
to reckon with the conflicting views of
his own party in the Senate, and, as the
responsible leader, take the middle
course. He did so with such extraordi-
nary ability that not only was the inde-
pendence of America saved and the
burden of defeating the treaty put upon
the President — where it belonged — but
he kept his party together and won the
support of nearly one-half of the Ad-
ministration forces. The fight, so far as
it was one of personalities, was largely a
great struggle between Lodge and Wilson
• — and Lodge won a complete victory.
I can not recall that a greater triumph
has been won for America since the
Civil War, and I do not recall that, in
the long and acute controversy. Senator
Lodge ever said an unworthy word or
did an unworthy act. Throughout the
whole bitter dispute he was the gentle-
man, the scholar, and the statesman. His
great speech on the League recalled the
best traditions of the Senate.
I wish heartily that he were a younger
man; for, in my judgment, he would be
the ideal candidate to succeed President
Wilson. But the immense burdens of the
most difficult office in the world must of
necessity devolve upon a younger man.
But it would be a calamity to the coun-
try if the next President of the United
States did not have in some capacity,
either in the Senate or Cabinet, the great
ability and exceptional talent for leader-
ship that Senator Lodge has shown in
this great controversy.
Under these circumstances, it does
seem to me unjust for the Review to ap-
portion the blame for the defeat of the
treaty between President Wilson and
Senator Lodge. Did Lodge construct an
indefensible League, which, as stated,
contradicts the basic principle of the
equality of sovereign nations? Did he
interweave it with the treaty so that the
treaty could not be ratified without the
acceptance of a misnamed League which
would have fatally compromised the sov-
ereignty and independence of the United
States? Did he show any indisposi-
tion to accept the treaty — and even
the League — if such independence were
measurably preserved?
April 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[359
It may be that we live too near these
great events to estimate them properly;
but I venture the suggestion that a
future generation, looking back upon the
great controversy in the perspective of a
half century, will say that Senator Lodge
rendered as great a service to his coun-
try as did his great predecessor as the
representative of Massachusetts — Daniel
Webster — when he defended the integ-
rity of the Union against the assault of
Senator Hayne.
This, at least, is my view; and I ven-
ture to state it, not without full recog-
nition that the editors of the Review are
equally sincere in their conviction.
James M. Beck
New York, April 2
Clemenceau and the Left
Bank
To the Editors of The Review:
An editorial paragraph in the Review
of March 27 courteously expresses some
doubt about the correctness of a remark
of mine that M. Clemenceau, until the
special treaties with England and the
United States were proposed, seemed to
have fought with all his skill, resource-
fulness, and pertinacity for the separa-
tion of the left bank of the Rhine from
the German Empire. You quote a state-
ment of M. Stephane Lauzanne, to the
effect that M. Clemenceau and the ma-
jority of the French delegation were op-
posed to this programme, of which Presi-
dent Poincare and Marshal Foch were
the principal sponsors. M. Lauzanne is
doubtless in a position to know whereof
he speaks. Nevertheless, it is a matter
of official record that the French Gov-
ernment and the French delegation in-
sisted, until the middle of March, upon
the adoption of the Rhine as "the west-
ern boundary of Germany." And M.
Clemenceau was the head of the Gov-
ernment and the spokesman of the dele-
gation. I translate from the report
presented by M. Louis Barthou on be-
half of the Commission de la Paix of the
Chamber of Deputies :
The views of Marshal Foch were adopted
... by the Government, whose memorandum
of February 25 defined its opinion with a
clarity, force, and authority which give a his-
toric value to the document. Its title expresses
its object: Memoire du gouvernement franfais
mr la fixation au Rhin de la frontiere occiden-
tale de I'Allemagne et I'occwpation interalliee
des pouts du fleuve. The agreement upon
these points between the Government and Mar-
shal Foch continued up to the moment when,
on March 14, negotiations with the Allies de-
termined the Government to accept another
system of guarantees [i.e., the treaties with
England and the United States].
This evidence appears to me to render
untenable the assertion that M. Clemen-
ceau did not vigorously support in the
Peace Conference the demand for the
separation of the territory on the left
bank of the Rhine. Either M. Lauzanne's
statement is incorrect, or — which is more
probable — it refers, not to the period to
which the remark quoted from me ex-
pressly referred, but to the period sub-
sequent to the proposal of the "other
system of guarantees." In the latter
case there is no conflict between M.
Lauzanne's statement and mine; while
your editorial paragraph, through a fail-
ure to distinguish the periods before and
after March 14, would seem likely to
give the reader the erroneous impression
that M. Clemenceau was from the first,
and irrespective of the alternative guar-
antees, opposed to the demand for separa-
tion. It is true, and is frankly men-
tioned in the official document I have
above cited, that after the French Gov-
ernment had accepted the Anglo-French
and Franco-American treaties as a sub-
stitute. Marshal Foch continued to favor,
and to agitate for, his original pro-
gramme.
It is also true — to pass from past his-
tory to present politics — that if the latter
treaty is not ratified by the Senate of the
United States, the existing French Gov-
ernment may be expected to demand the
other alternative, or at the least, to insist
upon the indefinite prolongation of the
military occupation of the left bank and
of the bridgeheads. Such a policy on
the part of the French, though it may
seem to them necessary for their mili-
tary security, would be absolutely inde-
fensible from the point of view of the
armistice agreement, and would be
fraught with grave peril to France and
to Europe. It lies within the power of
the Senate to avert that peril and at the
same time to exorcise from the French
mind that obsessing fear of another Ger-
man invasion which disturbs their politi-
cal judgment and deflects their foreign
policy into courses dangerous alike to
themselves and to others. Either the de-
fensive treaty with France is a superflous
precaution against future German inva-
sion, in which case there can be no harm
in ratification, or else, as most of the
French people seem to believe, it is a
needed precaution, in which case there is
imperative reason for ratification. That
ratification would have, in any case, an
incalculably steadying and tranquillizing
effect upon the general European situa-
tion seems beyond question.
Arthur 0. Lovejoy
Baltimore, Md., March 27
[We can assure Professor Lovejoy that
Stephane Lauzanne's statement clearly
refers to the period antecedent, not sub-
sequent, to the proposal of the "other
system of guarantees." The conversion
of Tardieu, according to him, took place
before Wilson and Lloyd George, in the
beginning of March, offered the solution
which the French Government accepted.
Lauzanne's disclosures, we admit, seem
to clash with the report presented by M.
Barthou from which Professor Lovejoy
quotes. However, that document speaks
of an "agreement upon these points be-
tween the Government and Marshal
Foch," and although M. Clemenceau was
both the head of the Government and
the spokesman of the delegation, it does
not necessarily follow that his views
turned the scale in the decisions of either
body. In the French Cabinet the ma-
jority, evidently, did not share that mod-
erate view of which M. Lauzanne asserts
him to have been an advocate in the
peace delegation. — Eds. The Review.]
Can a Constitutional Amend-
ment be Unconstitutional?
To the Editors of The Review:
The first ten amendments were placed
in the Constitution to satisfy dissenting
States like Rhode Island, as the Con-
gressional resolution submitting them
for ratification shows upon its face.
They all, including the Tenth, were
limitations upon Federal power for the
protection of individual rights, either
directly or through the States by the
application of the home-rule principle
of the Tenth Amendment.
The Eleventh protected the States
against suit in the Federal courts.
The Twelfth changed the machinery
for electing the President and in no
way affected State power.
The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fif-
teenth were products of revolution;
adopted in form as Constitutional amend-
ments, they were in fact terms of peace
and conditions of reconstruction imposed
upon the States in rebellion by force of
arms.
The Thirteenth recognized the existing
fact of the abolition of slavery which
the triumph of the Northern arms had
already achieved. In itself it effected
nothing new. The police power of the
States over the institution of slavery, to
which its terms referred, was already
non-existent.
The Fourteenth Amendment placed
certain disabilities upon ex-Confederates
and provided for a change in the Con-
gressional representation of the States
in rebellion whereby, as a term of recon-
struction and re-admission, the negro
population was to count in full instead of
three-fifths, as formerly, subject to de-
crease in representation for disfranchise-
ment.
The remainder consisted of the Freed-
man's Bill of Civil Rights. It simply
extended for the benefit of the colored
man, as against the States, guarantees
of individual liberty and property rights
taken almost verbatim from the original
Bill of Rights.
This Amendment neither invaded State
360]
THE EEVTEW
[Vol. 2, Xo. 48
power nor transferred it to the Federal
Government.
The Fifteenth Amendment related
solely to suffrage — suffrage, however,
which by the fiat of the military recon-
struction Governments had already been
conferred upon the negro. Consequently
it made no new voters, as does the pro-
posed Nineteenth Amendment.
The States in rebellion, as a condition
to their re-admission with full sov-
ereignty and Congressional representa-
tion, were required to record their af-
firmative assent and formal ratification
of the three war amendments, as these
are, therefore, appropriately called.
Without such assent and ratification by
the rebelling States, the necessary three-
fourths vote for a Constitutional Amend-
ment could not have been recorded, at
least for the Fifteenth, if not for the
Fourteenth also.
The Sixteenth Amendment, dealing
with the income tax, re-asserted a Fed-
eral right (then in temporary abeyance)
existing from the foundation of the Gov-
ernment and not affecting State power.
The Seventeenth Amendment merely
changed the form of choosing United
States Senators, requiring their popular
election. It diminished in no way the
States' power over such elections, the
regulation of which had always been
ultimately Federal.
In the strictly historical sense, then,
it can be truthfully said that the Eight-
eenth Amendment is the Tirst attempt by
means of a Federal amendment to limit
an existing State power reserved by the
Tenth Article of the Bill of Rights, or to
transfer the same to the Federal Gov-
ernment, or to infringe an individual
right protected by our Home Rule plan.
Whether in the light of a perpetual
union of equally perpetual States that
can be legally done is the question the
Supreme Court must determine; whether
the perpetual scheme of our Government
contemplated the right of the citizen of
Nevada, 3,000 miles away, along with
35 other States of varying distance, to
legislate upon the dining tables and per-
sonal morals of a citizen of Rhode Island
or to prescribe by perpetual mandate
the conditions of suffrage in South Caro-
lina.
Our form of government contemplates
regulation of our intimate personal and
local affairs by a responsible political
agency — the State Legislature — within
reasonable reach of the anger of an out-
raged people. It contemplates govern-
ment in such intimate personal affairs
by those whom we can punish and reward
by our votes; who must look us in the
eye and be subject to social ostracism
and the door of fellowship being closed
in their faces, if by their legislation they
have committed an act of tyranny upon
their fellows, their neighbors.
That is the philosophy of the Home
Rule plan of the Constitution of the
United States. That is the cornerstone
without which it falls.
That and that alone is States Rights
and local self-government.
If that right is invaded, whether in
the form of a Constitutional Amendment
or not, it can only be protected by a
decree of the Supreme Court.
If these amendments can be legally
enacted, all our liberties can be taken
from us by irresponsible, long-distance
political action. The entire Bill of
Rights, including its Tenth Article, can
be wiped away by this new legislative
process.
Jefferson said that the Bill of Rights
was the one essential part of the Con-
stitution.
The people of this nation have no right
to destroy their form of Government
except by actual physical revolution.
If the entire Bill of Rights should be
held to be indestructible and beyond the
reach of amendment, this would not in-
volve a rigid Constitution, but merely a
permanent protection to" the individual
in his person and property, of his right
to government by his neighbors in all
things intimate, personal, and local.
It is plainly as much the duty of the
court to preserve the States as inde-
structible political units for local pur-
poses as it is its duty to preserve their
indestructible union for Federal pur-
poses, and to declare ultra vires a meas-
ure of direct legislation presented in the
disguise of a Federal amendment, if it
wholly or partly destroys the States.
The limitation upon power is as clear
as in the ordinary case of an unconsti-
tutional statute.
The matter, therefore, is clearly jus-
ticiable. It begs the question to say that,
under our dual form of government,
there is no such thing as an unconstitu-
tional Constitutional Amendment. This
at first blush might seem to be the case.
But when such proposed amendment
destroys the Federal form of our Govern-
ment, in whole or in part, or its method
of adoption violates the letter of many
of the individual State Constitutions,
whose legislatures attempted to ratify,
there must be judicial power to declare
such amendment void and such ratifica-
tion illegal.
Otherwise, it must be held that we can
commit governmental suicide, without an
actual physical revolution, by simply in-
voking the forms of the amending clause.
These amendments establish iron rules,
which are practically permanent, and
which the people of no State can here-
after change by any action of their own.
Both the Eighteenth Amendment and
the proposed Nineteenth destroy funda-
mental State powers. Both impose by
force a distasteful policy upon the people
of unwilling sections. The people of
four States are coerced by the former,
and of nine or ten by the latter.
If 36 States finally ratify the Nine-
teenth Amendment, if the question of
legality is held not to be justiciable, or
if the Supreme Court, in its wisdom,
feels it must sustain them as legal acts
of government, then a revolution has
happened, not only in our form of gov-
ernment, but in our political thought,
which foredooms our continued existence
as an indestructible union of indestructi-
ble States — a Federal Republic under
whose home-rule plan we have become
great and until now remained free.
It will doubtless be admitted as a
legal proposition that it would be ultra
vires — and within the power of the Su-
preme Court to so declare — for two-
thirds of a quorum of Congress, backed
by 36 State Legislatures, to impose upon
the people of 12 dissenting States the
so-called nationalization of women; to
establish polygamy; to cede all State
power; to abolish property; to prescribe
a particular religion, or to set up a mon-
archy in place of our Federal Union.
Yet if the question of the power to
pass the so-called Eighteenth and Nine-
teenth Amendments is not a subject for
judicial determination, neither could the
Supreme Court declare any such acts
void in law, provided they were clothed
in the prescribed form of, and adopted
as, constitutional Amendments.
As long as we remain the United States
of America that can not be.
George Stewart Brown
New York, March 30
Intermolecular Space and
the Spirit
To the Editors of The Review:
I have just read Professor Jastrow's
excellent analysis of "The Case of Sir
Oliver Lodge" in the Review. I am not
a believer in "spiritism," though a
very able "medium" gave me private
daylight seances with remarkable mani-
festations. On one occasion a scientific
skeptic of note observed the seance freely
from an adjoining room — after which w^
changed places, and I, too, could not di
cover fraud. Yet I was not convince'
There is, however, one entirely sci
entific argument in favor of the "pos
sibility" of the "astral body," which to
my mind is unanswerable, and on the
strength of which I have frequently con-
soled sadly afflicted mourners who came
to ask my opinion of spiritualism. This
is the well-known acceptance of the "in-
termolecular space," the argument being
that the molecules of the body might
"collapse" in death, leaving the inter-
molecular space of the body "charged"
with "atomic activity" and — for a time —
as a personal entity.
Emile Berliner
Washington, D. C, March 12
scv
April 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[361
Problems of Labor and Capital
Employers' Associations
[This is the first of a series of articles,
which will appear in the Review in successive
wepks, by Mr. Morris L. Ernst, a member of
the New York Bar, who has long given special
attention to many aspects of the labor question,
and especially to the relations between em-
ployers and employed. Mr. Ernst was for sev-
eral years engaged in manufacturing business
as joint proprietor of a plant and afterwards
managed a large retail establishment in New
York City. The law firm of which he is a
member is in the peculiar position of repre-
senting both employers' associations and labor
unions, in various lines. Mr. Ernst is now
chairman of the New York City Club's com-
mittee on legislation. For several years pre-
ceding his selection for this post he was chair-
man of the City Club committees on State
Employment Bureaus, Farm Colonies for
Vagrants, and Industrial Relations. During
the war, as a "dollar-a-year man," he acted as
Assistant Labor Expert to the Shipping
Board.]
SHORTLY after Mr. Wilson was elected
President for the first time, he
wrote to the Federal Trade Commission
requesting it to make a study of trade as-
sociations throughout the United States.
Nowhere is there greater need of such
investigation and of the clearer definition
that may be expected to result from it.
In most industries associations of em-
ployers are a sporadic growth, summoned
into existence to meet the threats either
of labor or of legislation, and their mem-
bership, in consequence, is often hastily
and illogically made up. Yet until the
associations of employers are as highly
developed as the trade unions, and their
jurisdiction as clearly defined, peaceful
and lasting settlements in labor disputes
can not be hoped for.
An illustration of the present difficulty
very quickly made itself manifest to the
men and women who were called upon
to assist in a proposed settlement of the
laundry strike in the City of New York
in the latter part of 1919 ; they realized
at once that, whereas there was supposed
to be a strike in one industry, in reality
there were strikes in three separate in-
dustries. Even a cursory study showed
that the steam laundry, bundle laundry,
and hand laundry trades must each one
be treated separately in the adjustment
of conditions of employment, although
the employers engaged in all three of
these businesses, commonly known as the
laundry business, had illogically com-
bined into one association. As soon as a
strike developed, the employers in these
various laundry industries realized that
their interests were not in common, and
even if the employers had remained in
one association a lasting settlement would
have been impossible because the condi-
tions of employment were in no way simi-
lar among them, and the employees were
not interchangeable.
Employers' associations have, indeed,
very generally been born out of a need
for united action in matters other than
labor, for exchange of credit informa-
tion, or for proper representation in
legislative chambers. In the textile and
garment trades, it has taken years to
develop associations of employers on the
basis of similarity in the type of per-
sons employed. The retail furniture
trade was organized for credit purposes
years before it was put on a basis which
enabled it to deal with labor problems.
In the jewelry industry, until recently,
there were separate associations of plati-
num-smiths and goldsmiths. Although
employees are not interchangeable, that
is, a worker on cheap gold jewelry can not
take a position in a platinum-smith shop,
nor would a worker on platinum be satis-
fied with the pay of a worker on gold,
the amalgamation was inevitable be-
cause the labor unions covered the entire
industry engaged in the manufacture of
jewelry. A form of organization, how-
ever, which is to make possible lasting
industrial peace must be on a basis of
type of labor employed and not on the
basis of the name commonly applied to
the product ; otherwise parties to the con-
flict will discover conflicting interests
within their own ranks, and those who
do finally come to an agreement may be
so far from numerically representative
that no solution they arrive at will long
continue to be held satisfactory.
This desirable symmetry of organiza-
tion is sometimes easy, and sometimes
very difficult, to accomplish. The more
skilled the trades, the simpler it be-
comes to consolidate into a single em-
ployers' association all the plants em-
ploying such workmen. Conversely, the
unions of office-help will always be handi-
capped by the almost impossible task of
gathering into one assocation all the em-
ployers of office help. Even employees,
who have advanced much further than
employers toward proper organizations,
meet with difficulties arising from over-
lapping jurisdictions. The Teamsters and
Chauffeurs Unions, for example, can
never reach lasting agreements with em-
ployers in the retail furniture trade until
the unions include in their membership
the teamsters and chauffeurs working for
furniture departments of department
stores, piano manufacturers, warehouses,
and others employing similar labor. Un-
less agreements between chauffeurs and
employers extend to nearly all employers
of such chauffeurs, competition will
destroy their effectiveness.
In its important investigation, there-
fore, the Federal Trade Commission, and
any State boards or agencies having
similar powers, should receive the hearty
cooperation of organizations such as the
Merchants Associations and Chambers of
Commerce of the larger cities. But un-
fortunately such organizations are com-
posed of individual merchants, who so
far as they represent anything as a
whole, represent capital as a whole. Real
progress is not to be made in that way.
It is surprising that the Merchants Asso-
ciation of the City of New York, for
example, has not organized in the form
of a subsidiary council a group consist-
ing of the official representatives of all
of the different trade associations in the
City of New York. Not only would the
formation of such a council clarify to
some extent the present confused juris-
dictions of the various employers' asso-
ciations, but in the event of conflicting
interests between industries there would
exist a forum for proper discussion.
Another problem which is related to
the question of the definition of jurisdic-
tions is the matter of competition as
affected by different standards adopted
in various competing communities in
regard to labor conditions. Employers
in one city, presented with demands from
their workmen for increased pay or
shorter hours, hesitate, and with consid-
erable justice, to accede to such demands
because the granting of them would place
the manufacturer of that district under
a competitive disadvantage in relation to
other markets. The demand of the Up-
holsterers Unions of New York City for
a forty-four-hour week with a dollar per
hour minimum wage was presented at a
time when practically every other com-
petitive manufacturing market, such as
Grand Rapids, Binghamton, Chicago, and
Medina, was working under a forty-
eight-hour week and no hourly minimum.
In a proper organization of employers'
associations on national lines also lies
greater success for the legitimate aims
of organized labor. Several industries,
it must be admitted, have developed their
organizations of employers and trades
unions along analogous local. State, and
even national lines. In the building and
printing trades great strides have
already been made. The tentative report
issued by the President's Second Indus-
trial Conference also has in mind the es-
tablishment of district boards which
would be cognizant of the fact that con-
ditions of employment, in so far as they
affect cost of production, must be estab-
lished on more than a purely local basis.
What is needed can come only gradu-
ally. Already the continued successful
operation of "impartial chairmen" in cer-
tain trades is a striking token of clearly
defined and comprehensive organization
on the part of employers. Thereunder,
employers have obtained industrial peace,
and labor has been able to speak clearly.
Morris L. Ernst
362]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 48
Book Reviews
A Sheaf of Verse
The Cobbler of Willow Street. By George
O'Neil. New York: Boni and Liveright.
The Pursuit of Happiness. By Benjamin
R. C. Low. New York: John Lane Com-
pany.
Hearts Awake. By Amelia Josephine Burr.
New York: George H. Doran Company.
Youth Riding. By Mary Caroline Davies.
New York: The Macmillan Company.
Shadowy Thresholds. By Cale Young Rice.
New York: The Century Company.
MR. GEORGE O'NEIL, a poet of
twenty-one, is already impressing
critics. Miss Zee Akins takes his verses
to her heart in a preface which is almost
an embrace, and the grave salute of the
Harvard professor, Mr. John L. Lowes,
is hardly less affectionate. I am quite
at one with Miss Akins and Mr. Lowes
in the sense of a real — even a rare —
charm in this fragrant and glancing
verse. It is full of quick, bright, shy,
passing things, like the surprises of the
grove or the cliffside. The means
astonish us sometimes by their simplic-
ity. "0 rolling hills, trees in the wind,
blue sky," says Mr. O'Neil ; and the trees
in the wind are actually consigned to us
in that verse, and the transfer seems so
inexpensive to Mr. O'Neil that at first
we scarcely realize its profit to our-
selves. I quote a six-line poem, common
enough except for the empyreal final
line, which flies skyward, taking its com-
panions with it.
Now summer is a king grown old,
Whose wealth diminishes, whose sway
Over his land ebbs day by day . . .
And soon, with pageantry of gold,
A prince shall come to claim the realm. . . .
(All this is rumored in an elm.)
This is imagination. Let us frankly
and warmly proclaim its worth, and at
the same time curb that impulse to
prophesy which so instantly and curi-
ously follows the eagerness to praise.
Mr. O'Neil is said to be twenty-one, and
at twenty-one it is sometimes a little hard
to say whether the age or the man writes
the poetry. For the lark to sing hymns
at heaven's gate is comparatively easy
at the break of day. The difficulty is to
maintain the song when the east has
ceased to be roseate. In the poem I
have just quoted, Mr. O'Neil's fondness
for dots in punctuation is observable, and
the sensitive reader will note that his
felicities are mainly dots. He is an illumi-
nator, but, as yet, perhaps it is letters
rather than words that he enriches in
his glowing missal. He is overfond of
a few words and images, of lace, for
example, and he falls into fantasticali-
ties like
While cricket Nero fiddles by
Watching his Rome — the summer — burn.
These things are subsidiary. What
troubles me a little more is the inac-
curacy, or perhaps I should more mod-
estly say, the doubtfulness, of some of
his originalities. He speaks of the
"speculative fingers" of the rain. Now
I can conceive of rain as speculative if
it falls slowly enough to suggest the
meditative indolence of Milton's "minute
drops from off the eaves," and I can see
fingers of a sort if it falls rapidly enough
to form lines; but I can not conceive it
as simultaneously finger-like and specula-
tive. To sum up, Mr. O'Neil has proved
in this first volume the rarity of his
endowment. The difficulties I have sug-
gested are conquerable, no doubt, and
there is nothing to preclude the hope
that the strength for their conquest has
been granted to Mr. O'Neil.
I thought well, on the whole, of Mr.
Benjamin R. C. Low's "House That
Was." Of his "Pursuit of Happiness,"
with its ruffed eighteenth-century title,
I think worse and better. It is more
perverse; it is also more original. If
there could be a poetry for the nostril
that was not also a poetry for the mouth,
I should call the fifty-five sonnets which
comprise about half the volume high
poetry. Their effluence — I am choosing
my word — is delectable. Under Mr.
Low's pilotage "Sabaean odours" from
Araby the Blest have blown across my
route; but he has refused to disembark,
and the spice-jars which I as trader had
brought to that coast are unreplenished.
I quote a sonnet:
A summer beach, warm, drowsing; clean, wet
sand
With filling footprints ; boys and girls and sea.
Here, hose and shoon discarded, rapturedly
They run the gauntlet; here, linked hand in
hand.
Adventure off their native bridge of land —
Foam-deep to instep, ankle and then knee —
To scurry home again in panic glee
With clothes caught high, and limbs all shin-
ing tanned.
Beauty wafts inland, Love to seaward blows.
And meeting, part, and parting, meet no more
One golden moment blended, they are still ;
In children, in the bud-break of a rose.
The petals bloom, the childish zest burns chill :
The wind is desolate upon the shore.
Several points may be noted in this
sonnet. First, there is the intricacy
of expression, catching a traditional
thought in the meshes of its superficial
novelty. Second, there is the half-fit, or
misfit, in the leading figure: children
pursue their gambols with the sea with
a perseverance to which the idea of
momentary contact and eternal parting
can not be effectually related by a vigi-
lant mind. Third, there is the exquisite
"in the bud-break of a rose," followed in
the next line by the absurdity of "zest
burning chill" (to which Milton's "burns
frore" is not really comparable). Last
of all, is an undoubted magnificence, a
"proud, free sail," a high and gallant
carriage, in the verse, which remind one
somewhat of the work of Olive Tilford
Dargan. Three of these points, the
arrival at the obvious through the
recondite, the exquisite in phrase shot
with the puerile, and the manner of a
prince of the blood, are pretty constant
in Mr. Low, and make him at the same
time valuable as a possession and stimu-
lating as a problem.
"Hearts Awake" has not the full in-
spiration which made Miss Burr's "Sil-
ver Trumpet" memorable among the
evocations of the war. Possibly the dif-
ference lies less in the blast itself than
in the fact that in its passage towards
us it has crossed the Quai d'Orsay and
Pennsylvania Avenue. Between the "Sil-
ver Trumpet" and "Hearts Awake" there
has come upon the world a change like
the reaction in Scott's stag hunt in the
"Lady of the Lake" from the blitheness
of the morning gallop to the time when
Back limp'd with slow and crippled pace
The sulky leaders of the chase.
Miss Burr's lyrics are still vigorous
and fervent; she has the good gift of
heated epigram, epigram being a figure
whose crystallizations often indicate a
fall of the mercury. She says of the
flag: "Of old it was our heritage — to-
day it is our child." She makes Serbia
say:
Listen to my living ere the hour be sped,
Lest you hear forever the silence of my dead.
This is the simple old idealism — the
traditional idealism— over again. I
admit its beauty, but I feel that the
idealism which can now save us must be
not an inheritance but a discovery.
Two-thirds of Miss Burr's volume,
however, is occupied with a fairy play in
three parts, called the "Pixy." It is a
fairy tale informed with a human and a
Christian spirit; the Pixy who gives it
its name and its impulsion differs from
the other characters rather by the excess
than the shortage of her humanity and
Christianity. She has the zeal of a con-
vert, and it is part of the irony of things
that the moving first act, in which she
is still unconverted, should attract to its
earthy and pagan self the whole dra-
matic vigor of the play. The rest is
dutifully done, but its piety is unaf-
fecting.
There is one law about subjects of
this kind which Miss Burr has permitted
herself to infringe. Old tales and
legends are crusts or shells, the filling
of which is renewable from time to time.
A twentieth-century filling in a thir-
teenth-century shell is entirely proper.
But novelty in the form or body of the
legend — in other words, a new shell — is
hardly permissible. If there is to be
fairy lore in a rationalizing age, it must
be a fairy lore with which we in our
childhood, or the world in its childhood,
was acquainted. Now, Miss Burr's idea
that a fairy by self-destruction can
magically free a beloved human being
from the thraldom of a charm is new to
April 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[868
me in fairy legend. It may not be new
to Miss Burr, but Miss Burr is not writ-
ing for herself. We should like her fairy
better in any case with a smaller allow-
ance of magnanimity. The Pixy turns
into a saint without becoming a woman
in the process.
Miss Mary Davies begins thus in
"Youth Riding":
I will not bow my head
To listen to the dead.
I am alive and I am yoimg,
There is gladness on my tongue,
And my lips are red.
Youth for Miss Davies is no state of
simple, natural well-being. Youth is a
calling; youth is a cult, and its object
is not to forget itself in labor or in joy,
but to recall itself to itself in endless
strains of self-fondling panegyric. Shel-
ley in his "Prometheus" describes cer-
tain dithyrambic beings in a chariot who
"drink the wind of their own speed."
That is the occupation of Miss Davies'
"Youth." Old age is a lingering ailment
from which the examples of recovery are
few. Youth is a more violent malady,
with the compensating advantage that
the cure is speedy and relapse impos-
sible. The peculiarity in Miss Davies'
case is that the inflammation has been
prodigious. She despises age. God is
old, and Miss Davies is almost kittenish
with him on the subject of his infirmi-
ties,
God, his dim old eyes to bless,
Brings back the Spring.
Miss Davies is an emotional poet, or at
least a poet of emotional themes. She
avers, she insists that she feels, and she
is a strenuous and determined young
person whom it would be impolitic to
gainsay. Besides, the testimonies are
overwhelming. It is difficult to deny that
a person is wounded who bleeds visibly,
copiously in one's presence, who stands,
so to speak, in a pool of his own blood.
Even the hardiest doubter must in all
seriousness admit that Miss Davies is
adept in the rhetoric of feeling. I do
not mean the ancient, spurious rhetoric,
but the true modern brand which
preaches simplicity, directness, condensa-
tion. She feels the puissance of mono-
syllables, and she knows that tiny words,
like children, however rebellious to the
tactless hand, are pliancy itself to the
touch that sympathizes. Her formula
for emotion might be defined as measure
in the expression of the unmeasured, and
its excellence as formula is undeniable.
She deploys emotion skilfully; she is sen-
sitive to brevity and climax. There are
rare and fortunate moments in which
cynicism itself could hardly discriminate
her virtuosity from virtue. Who could
ask for anything better than the close of
j the "Door," or than two lines like the
following?
And where the little river cried.
Her grave was made.
But Miss Davies talks too much, per-
mits the adversary too many tests. The
foreigner who wishes to pass himself off
for a native in the Pays du Tendre, or
anywhere else, should not only talk very
well, but talk very little. Miss Davies'
emotion reminds me of that chill, bright
gleam which does duty for flame on the
stage grates in our theatres. It has
every property of fire — but warmth.
Mr. Gale Young Rice has a very active
mind, a mind active in several planes.
The plane of its activity in his latest
volume, "Shadowy Thresholds," is hardly
of a nature to exalt his reputation. Mr.
Rice, like Shakespeare's Richard II, is
too lavish of his commerce with the pub-
lic. He should imitate the reserve of
Bolingbroke:
My presence, like a robe pontifical,
Ne'er seen but wondered at.
Much in "Shadowy Thresholds" is as
good as much in the earlier collections
of lyrics; the inferiority of its best to
their best is the disenchanting circum-
stance. The verse, indeed, is often
melodious, and once in a while becomes
seductive. The four lines that follow
are a hammock for the ear:
To watch along Sumatra
The Bay of Bengal counting
Its fevered pulsing surf-beat
With timeless undertone.
One recalls with some pleasure the open-
ing sketches of a "Poet's Ghildhood," and
the Hawthornesque fantasy, "After the
Symphony," which ends the book. There
is a preface which is worth reading,
though passages occur which breed the
wish that the sharpness of the author's
temper might be transferred to his per-
ceptions.
0. W. Firkins
Domestic and Imported
Models
The Happy Years. By Inez Haynes Irwin.
New York: Henry Holt and Company.
The Board Walk. By Margaret Widdemer.
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
From Place to Place. By Irvin S. Cobb.
New York : George H. Doran Company.
The Blower of Bubbles. By Arthur Beverley
Baxter. New York: D. Appleton and
Company.
Short Stories from the Balkans. Trans-
lated into EngUsh by Edna Worthley
Underwood. Boston : Marshall Jones
Company.
A Lithuanian Village. By Leon Kobrin.
Authorized Translation from the Yiddish,
by Isaac Goldberg, Ph. D. New York :
Brentano's.
THE author of "The Happy Years" is
past-mistress of the type of short
story that is "available" for the benevo-
lent and not unprofitable uses of the
woman's (or ladies') home magazine. A
recent critic of the novel has very well
said that the prime essential in popu-
lar fiction is its linking of the strange
to the familiar. For the flapper, if you
like, wild journeyings into a romantic
void. For the young matron, bring
hither, rather, your "little stories of mar-
ried life." Show her a pair not so unlike
herself and her man, meeting conditions
and problems not so unlike her own;
show her a domestic gear often subject
to strain yet running smooth and safe
in its bath of sentiment; and you have
shown her the pleasantest fare romance
possesses for her. Such is the fare pro-
vided in "The Happy Years." Maywood,
the snug, well-groomed commuters'
town, with its nice average people, its
Woman's Glub, its Business Man's Club,
its comfortable social and civic preoccu-
pations, is the town we all know, whether
we live in it or not. Martins, Storrows,
Warburtons — these are sound Anglo-
American names, a circle of young or
middle-aged couples busy with their prob-
lems of domestic economy, child-rearing,
and connubial adjustment. Such mate-
rials the story-teller handles capably and
not too subtly, always with an eye to the
necessity for everything's "turning out
right" even if it has to be taken by the
scruff and turned out by hand. Miss
Widdemer ("as was") has also often
shown her ability to produce pleasant,
comfortable stuff of similar kind. She
has romanticized the flapper to good pur-
pose, and her "rose garden husband" or
her "wishing-ring man." In "The Board
Walk" she seems to rest from felicity.
This is realism of no timid order. The
light of romance hangs over two or
three of the tales, but not romances of
the "sweet pretty" kind. There are no
commercially agreeable endings; and a
number of the sketches are about dis-
tinctly unpleasant matters, like the be-
trayal of infancy, the cruel snobbishness
of childhood, the brutality of a religious
flock toward its pastor. Our persons are
the "natives" of a little summer place,
with its Boardwalk and its "tawdrily ex-
cited summers" lived at the pace of its
irresponsible visitors and too often to
the cost of the resident maidens who
are dull enough. Heaven knows, the rest
of the year. A fresh scene, to which the
story-teller brings an uncompromising if
not unsympathetic eye.
There is not much to say of any new-
est collection of stories by Irvin S. Gobb
except that they are or are not up to
previous sample. "From Place to Place"
includes some very good "Cobbs." Not
that they are all of a piece. Mr. Gobb,
though he has the endurable misfortune
to be popular, has not only a natural
knack for story-telling, but a liberal in-
stinct for ideas. He can tell you a story
about a hangman, or a crook, or a child,
or a Southern mammy, or a "bull called
Emily," with equal address and effective-
ness. Now and then he is careless about
letting the bones of his plot stick out
or in buttering the action overfreely
with sentiment. But though frankly
364]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 48
enough a smile-and-tear artist, his humor
is sound enough to avoid, nearly always
(in his fiction), the extremes of blubber
and guffaw. In contrast with his easy
professionalism, the amateurishness of
"The Blower of Bubbles" would become
unfairly conspicuous. The five stories
collected were written by a Canadian
soldier at odd times during his "interest-
ing but undistinguished service of nearly
four years" with the Canadian forces.
The title story is a somewhat labored
portraiture of an unusual sort of man.
The other tales, which are more con-
sciously plotted and rounded out, are
better of their kind. One of them, "The
Airy Prince," is a brilliant and tender
little fantasy, involving the war-brought
contact of an English airman and a little
French peasant who, not by chance as
we see, is called Pippa.
The translator of "Short Stories from
the Balkans" has before this published
English translations from the Russian,
Spanish, and Portuguese. The present
volume contains versions from the Czech,
Rumanian, Serbian, Croatian, and Hun-
garian tongues. Each of the tales is
prefaced by a brief note on the author
and his place in national and European
literature. These really do much to
illuminate names like Vrchlicky, Sava-
topluk Cech, Lazarevic, Miksath and Jan
Neruda. It should be a good thing for
the story-reading American to realize
that all over Europe, even in those
tumultuous Balkans which but the other
day we connected with "opera-bouffe,"
men of genius have for many years been
expressing themselves in that form of
the short-story which American maga-
zine editors have held up as a recent
American invention. The translator em-
phasizes the fact that these writers have
not confined themselves to that form.
Versatility seems to have been the rule
among them. Most of them have been
primarily poets, but have essayed all
sorts of writing, and through one
medium or another have expressed all
sorts of moods and points of view. In
theme and treatment the tales here as-
sembled show great variety. But the
striking thing about them is the subtlety
and complexity of mood one feels in
them, in almost every one of them, taken
by itself. For a parallel we must turn
to Scandinavia: Andersen, Ibsen, Bojer,
Nexo. Otherwise Mrs. Underwood's gen-
eralization may safely stand: "The
union of the poet and the wit, the roman-
tic dreamer and the bitter critic of life,
is one of the gifts of Hungary and its
neighboring peoples to the world of
letters. It is seldom found in the Teu-
ton or the Latin, even in a slight degree."
But in the Jew it is surely to be found,
or a blend closely akin to it ; in a Heine,
and in the author of "A Lithuanian Vil-
lage." Leon Kobrin is among the few
leading writers of Yiddish literature in
America. Besides his dramas of the
ghetto and a vast number of tales and
half a dozen novels, he has translated
much into Yiddish from the world clas-
sics, with a range from Faust, Hamlet,
Echegaray, Turgeniev, Maupassant, and
Hugo. His own translator into English
admits that his tales are often "brutally
realistic." In this book, however, though
naturalistic detail is by no means lack-
ing, the atmosphere is war with senti-
ment and memory. The words with which
it begins and ends, "Somewhere in Lithu-
ania there once nestled the little village of
B ", are not without their tender ele-
giac overtones. Out of memory the author
seems to build the homely Jewish nest of
his childhood, a place of poverty and
squalor, yet also a place of ancient faith
and young dreams. It is gone. America
has called it from the old ways ; and it will
never be again. The book is a group of
sketches rather than stories in the maga-
zinable sense, but full of vitality and in-
terest for English readers who, as Dr.
Goldberg says, are at last "gazing toward
wider literary horizons."
H. W. BOYNTON
Echoes of the War
The Stolen Lands. By Marie Harrison. New
York : E. P. Button and Company.
How I Filmed the War. By Lieut. Malins.
New York : Frederick A. Stokes Company.
WRITTEN apparently towards the
close of 1917, Miss Harrison's little
book is a bit of simple and earnest propa-
ganda addressed to the average English-
man with the object of convincing him
that the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine
is not merely a natural desire of France,
but the concern of all nations united for
the overthrow of German militarism. As
such it has served its turn. When the
war ended France reclaimed her prov-
inces, not merely with the acquiescence,
but with the hearty applause of all her
allies. That problem of the war is
settled; one "open sore of Europe" has
been healed, and just so far as that is
the case Miss Harrison's book appears
to lag superfluous on the stage. All that
she says is good and true, but it has
not only been said before, but has been
heard and acted upon.
Yet there is something in the book of
lasting value. Miss Harrison had the
rare chance of visiting during the war
that part of Alsace which was already
regained for France. She went, not as a
member of a personally conducted party,
but independently, to study conditions
and gather impressions at her leisure.
She stayed for the greater part of the
time at Massevaux, not ten miles from
the German trenches; at Thann she saw
shells bursting in the streets and was
presented with a gas-mask by the Mayor
of that little town. What she gives us,
then, are her impressions of life in
Alsace redeemed from the German yoke.
but still under the ever-present German
menace. They may, perhaps, be summed
up in a single phrase: "In all the tumults
of warfare the Alsatians are closer
to peace than they ever were in the days
of Germany occupation." The district
was never more prosperous; factories
were working, vineyards were cultivated,
farmers were making more money than
ever before. There were few food re-
strictions; rules that applied in Paris
were not enforced in Alsace. The menu
of a chance luncheon in a little wayside
inn — creamy soup, a cheese pancake filled
with whipped cream; tender veal, petits
pois, eclairs, coffee, and a bottle of good
red wine, all for three francs — makes
one's mouth water with longing for past
delights. And it was not material pros-
perity alone that the Alsatians enjoyed
— they had that under German rule —
but the sense of liberation. "In the old
days" a teaching sister at Thann told
her "we used to lock the doors and draw
the shutters and in very soft voices sing,
the Marseillaise. Now we can sing it
as loud as ever we like and all the doors
and windows are open." "What did you
feel like when the French came into Al-
sace?" Miss Harrison asked a woman in
Massevaux. "It was like a coming home,"
she answered; "as if someone I had
loved long ago and who had gone away
had at last come back. It was the hap-
piest day of my life; no matter what the
future holds in store for me, nothing
can take away its splendor." Or take the
words of a simple shop-keeper envisaging
the terrible possibility of a German re-
turn. "In that case" said he, "I should
go into a little corner of France and
be glad to die." Actions, however, speak
louder than words, and the strongest
proof of the loyalty of the two provinces
to France is furnished by the fact re-
corded by Miss Harrison that they gave
the French army some 3,000 officers; in
the German army there was but one real
Alsatian officer; five others— only five —
reckoned as such, were by descent half
German.
It is its recognition of the human ele-
ment, the little scenes from Alsatian life,
bits of talk that reveal the heart of a
people, that give lasting interest to what
would otherwise be a book wholly de-
voted to the discussion of a past issue.
There is nothing of the faint or slowly
dying echo in Lieutenant Malins's work.
It is, in fact, the noisiest book imaginable.
Every page resounds with the bursts of
crumps, pipsqueaks, flying pigs, woolly
bears, and other zoological specimens of
high explosives. For Lieutenant Geof-
frey Malins, Official War Office Kinema-
tographer, "filmed" the battle of the
Somme where heavy artillery first showed
its full power, and, to speak in the ver-
nacular, had the time of his young life
doing it. It is impossible to criticise
such a book seriously and yet it is im-
April 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[365
possible to laugh at the author. In his
pursuit of thrilling scenes for the camera
he braved danger in a way that would
be heroic, if it did not seem almost
stupid. He was drenched with German
weeping gas and blinded for hours; he
was blown into a deserted trench by the
explosion of a shell and lay all night on
the body of a German killed some weeks
before; he was hit by a burning frag-
ment in the conflagration of Peronne
and "set up an unearthly yell" as the
flames caught his ear and singed his hair.
But nothing daunted him. He lay all
night in the front trenches to photograph
the explosion of the great mine near
Beaumont-Hammel that opened the
battle. He filmed the first tank that
went into action near Martinpuish and
the first British regiment that crossed
the Somme. When the Germans fell back
on the Hindenburg line he was hot on
the trail, often miles in front of British
troops, "filming" scenes of Hunnish de-
vastation, villages of starving refugees,
and joyous receptions of liberating sol-
diers by the peasantry.
But he was not given to the pursuit
only of scenes of battle and ruined towns.
He "filmed" personages great and small
on all occasions, the greater the better:
naturally, the Prince of Wales, Lord
Kitchener, Sir Douglas Haig, and the
King. Perhaps the most delightful chap-
ter of the book is that which records his
pursuit of King George on his visit to
the Somme battlefield. From this first
moment he followed the King like a
bloodhound, flying after him in cars that
blew out tires ^t inopportune moments,
rushing on before the royal party in
time to plant his camera on the parapet
of an old trench and catch them as they
passed, and especially happy at getting
a picture of the King patting a small
puppy outside a field hospital. At the
last moment he received permission to
return to England on the same boat as
the King. He drove madly to the harbor,
cursing his old "bus" because she could
only "limp along" at fifty miles an hour.
He just arrived in time, dashed wildly
by the King, who was making his official
farewells on the quay, set up his camera
on the ship's deck and "filmed" it all;
"not an incident had passed me."
The book is written in the most re-
markable mixture of styles imaginable.
We have page after page of realistic
dialogue, steeped in the racy slang of
the trenches, and then an outburst of
flamboyant journalism such as no human
being ever spoke and no good Christian
ever wrote. In spite of his journalese,
however, the writer really succeeds in
putting over a most lively picture of
trench warfare. We see and feel the
Flanders mud, up to the bellies of the
pack-mules at times ; we hear the deafen-
ing roar of the high explosives "plaster-
ing" a hostile trench; we snufif the
tainted air on Trones wood, a "fair hell"
of rotting corpses. One of the vividest
pictures in the book is that of the writer
staggering through the ruined trenches
under the weight of his equipment,
"sweating like a bull," with a lighted
cigarette in each corner of his mouth to
keep off the buzzing torment of the
poisonous flies. Lieutenant Malins is
not one of Carlyle's strong silent heroes.
He is a very voluble young person, but
he is something of a hero all the same.
T. M. Parrott
The Run of the Shelves
LACK of interest in the matter is the
reason assigned — and it is the real
reason — for the abandonment of simpli-
fied spelling by the Modern Language As-
sociation. Its adoption some years ago
was the work of an enthusiastic minority,
but the enthusiasm, as time went on,
failed to spread. How "shud" it be ex-
pected to when the Association's papers
"ar red by title"? Too many of the
simplifications adopted by the Associa-
tion were of this highly objectionable
sort. As Mr. Henry Bradley has made
plain, spelling does other things besides
suggesting sounds; a word as a whole
and as it is spelled suggests trains of as-
sociated ideas; "red" for "read" and
"shoes" for "shows" and "shud" for
"should" in two cases out of three not
only do not suggest the desired sound,
but in all three cases do suggest a world
of undesired associations. A great deal
of simplification has been accomplished in
a quiet way since Johnson's Dictionary
regularized English spelling. A great
deal that is illogical and cumbersome still
remains. Possibly we place an exag-
gerated value on consistency in spelling.
The days of Shakespeare and of Milton
afforded in this respect a freer air for
the noble and aspiring spirit. Something
like a return to these go-as-you-please
methods must be the result of any
large simplification of spelling, for such
simplification, besides possessing many
other disadvantages, is generally too com-
plicated for any but its originators to be
able to apply with consistency.
Mr. F. C. Prescott's "Poetry and
Dreams" (Boston: The Four Seas Com-
pany) is described as "a study of the
psychology of poetry, in the light of the
Freudian theory of dreams." Dreams,
according to Dr. Freud, spring from the
attempt of unconscious and suppressed
desires to obtain imaginary gratification
through the images of sleep. "Poetry,"
according to Mr. Prescott, "has its source
in repressed and unconscious desires,"
and its object is the "relief or purga-
tion" afforded by the "expression and
imagined gratification of our desires."
Mr. Prescott is a careful and candid
reasoner, and, if citations prove any-
thing, a learned man. He points out
many clear and strong analogies between
poetry and dreams to which the assent
of cultivated readers will be unquestion-
ing and universal. Indeed so much of
what Mr. Prescott wants will be granted
with perfect ease that perhaps he is
hardly alive to the difficulty of obtain-
ing the other small but momentous ad-
missions which are needful for the dem-
onstration of his thesis.
So far as expression or the poetic
process goes, Mr. Prescott's theory is
unavailing. The poet wants expression
and gets expression, and so far the grati-
fication is not imaginary, but actual.
But what Mr. Prescott has in mind is
the content of poetry; that is drawn from
our unfulfilled wishes. We will not urge
the obvious point that nobody wants to
be Hector or Hamlet or Faust or Brand.
The ungratified desires which poetry
slakes by images are clearly not desires
for happiness, but for intensity and
beauty, though why ungratified desires
for happiness should be so much less
efficacious in breeding poetry than un-
gratified desires for intensity or beauty
is by no means clear. Let us grant to
Mr. Prescott that poetry deals largely
with the images of things that we want
and can not get; he is further bound
to prove, and it seems to us that he has
failed to prove, that images of things
that we want and can get are undiscov-
erable in poetry, or that poetry ceases to
be poetry in the adoption and utilization
of these images. Let us imagine a case.
The familiar lines of Herbert,
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,
are read out-of-doors by a reader in the
full and immediate enjoyment of the
actualities which they reflect. Is it
credible that their charm would van-
ish?
The relation between poetry and unful-
fillment may be comprehensive, and yet,
in a sense, fortuitous. A nation imports
nine-tenths of its coffee. This involves
no fondness for importations as importa-
tions, but merely a practical desire to
get coffee where coffee can be had.
Poetry, likewise, seeks intensity and
beauty where intensity and beauty are to
be had. It abounds in unfulfillments, that
is, completions or fruitions unknown to
real life, not because it loves unfulfill-
ments for their own sake, but because,
in the poverty and stringency of our
present state, nine-tenths of our aspira-
tions toward intensity and beauty are
unfulfilled in practice. There remains
the other tenth — the unsubmerged tenth
— of our actual experience, a tenth that
may be troublesome to Mr. Prescott, un-
less he is prepared to prove its foreign-
ness or worthlessness to poetry.
366]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 48
The first volume of Axel Olrik's "Dan-
marks Heltedigtning" has been trans-
lated by Lee M. Hollander, with several
American scholars acting in advisory
capacity, and under the supervision of
the late Professor Olrik himself. The
book has been issued by the American-
Scandinavian Foundation in a form
which is worthy of the most distin-
guished work of a most distinguished
scholar. "The Heroic Legends of Den-
mark" becomes at once a book of prime
importance to the students of Old Eng-
lish literature. It is the most stimulating
and the most informing treatment of the
Old English poem of "Beowulf" that has
appeared in many years. If only a few
passages from the second and third vol-
umes of Olrik's great work had been
included in the present translation we
should have had available in English the
most complete and authoritative discus-
sion of the important relations of the
"Beowulf" with Scandinavian literature
that has so far been written.
The way in which the two supplement
each other is very pretty. Both the
"Beowulf" and the Scandinavian poems
and sagas here considered deal with the
fortunes of the Scylding (Danish) kings
who ruled at Leire in the fifth and sixth
centuries, their external struggles against
the Heathobards and a struggle within
the family, long and bloodily carried on,
for possession of the throne. The poet
of the "Beowulf," to be sure, chooses to
treat this matter as part of his epic
background, to which he makes allusion
from time to time, allusions that are
immensely effective when you know the
story. In the foreground he has placed
the heroic figure of Beowulf, and centres
attention upon his somewhat tawdry ad-
ventures, first, in killing the monster
that infested the royal hall at Leire and,
later, meeting his death in contest with
a fire-drake that ravaged his own land
of the Geats. Much space, too, is devoted
to the wars of the Geats against the
Franks (a matter of historical record
elsewhere) and against the Swedes,
which, as perhaps matters not so well
known to an English audience, the poet
feels bound to handle less allusively than
he does the story of the Scyldings.
Concerning the Scyldings the Old Eng-
lish poet knows some things that the
later Scandinavian writers do not. He
knows the relationship of the chief char-
acters in the story ; but the Scandinavian
stories tell more clearly the role they
played. For example, he very plainly
indicates that Hrothulf (Hrolf), the
nephew of the great king Hrothgar, who
enjoys honor second only to the king him-
self, will one day grow a little less than
kind to Hrothgar's young sons, Hrethric
and Hrothmund. The "Biarkamal" (the
reconstruction of this poem is one of
Olrik's scholarly triumphs), on the other
hand, tells us of the slaying of the weak
and avaricious king Hroerek (Hrethric)
by Hrolf (Hrothulf), but it is not aware
of the family relationship between them.
Hrolf, who in later Scandinavian tradi-
tion becomes with his attendant heroes
the most brilliant and powerful of the
Scylding kings, is in turn attacked at
Leire and slain by a certain Hiarvarth.
The "Beowulf-poet does not tell the
story, but he does know, what Scandi-
navian tradition had forgotten, that
Heoroweard (Hiarvarth) is the son of
Hrothgar's elder brother Heorogar, who
might, therefore, regard himself as the
rightful occupant of the high-seat of the
Scyldings. In this particular, as in hun-
dreds of others, an understanding of the
one literature is greatly enhanced in the
matter of epic breadth and tragic tensity
by some knowledge of the other.
The "Soul of Abraham Lincoln"
(Doran) is an ominous title. The "True
Story of Abraham Lincoln's Spiritual
Life and Convictions" is an ominous de-
scription. Authorship by an orthodox
pastor is an ominous source. It is bare
justice to Mr. William E. Barton to
affirm that all these omens are falsified
by his performance. Clergyman though
he be, his judgment is incorrupt. Pos-
sibly the only safe judges are the men
for whom judgment as a mere gymnastic
is a stimulus and an enjoyment. Mr.
Barton is a born ganger of evidence, and
is glad rather than sorry to relieve his
own side of those shaky arguments
which, like non-combatants in an army,
increase its liabilities without fostering
its strength. He admits that Lincoln
was a deist or agnostic in his early man-
hood— a state of mind which the intoler-
ance of the times denounced as infidelity.
He is able, however, to draw up a creed
from the words, and practically in the
words, of the riper Lincoln which com-
prises a belief in an all-wise and all-
righteous Providence deeply concerned in
mundane perturbations, in a personal
relation between man and God which
man can modify in his own favor by
supplication and repentance, in the Bible
as God's highest gift to man, and in re-
union with departed kinsfolk in a hap-
pier world. In 1920 this creed will doubt-
less be ample enough to satisfy even those
persons whose fathers or grandfathers
would have been first to deplore its
meagreness in 1860.
The elaboration of Mr. Barton's plea,
to which a hundred pages of appendices
and bibliography are punctiliously added,
may seem to some readers to rest on an
overestimate of the difficulty and the im-
portance of the problem. But the best
way to reduce an inflated problem to its
natural and proper dimensions is to solve
it, and the solution must adapt its own
bulk to the bulk of the testimony. There
is another side on which all this research
and particularity is amply justified. The
ease with which honest people lie is one
of the points in human nature on which
analysts are unanimous and satirists
talkative. But the extent of that lying
and the perfection of that ease are realiz-
able only in the immediate presence of a
stirring question on which the accumula-
tion of testimony has been extensive,
various, dispersed, and contradictory,
Mr. Barton's book is a precious docu-
ment in psychology in which the insuflS-
ciency of sincerity as a check on decep-
tion is exposed, and the difficulties of
truthtelling are made so clear that its
imposition on human nature as a duty
seems, for the time being at least, unjus-
tifiable.
Pierre Loti is not an easy man to put
into English. His peculiarly French com-
bination of sharpness in expression with
delicacy of sentiment seems scarcely
transferable to a language in which senti-
ment is regularly attained by vagueness.
And so one's first impression of S. R. C.
Plimsoll's translation of "Madame Prune"
(Frederick A. Stokes Co.) is likely to be
a sense of what has been lost in the
transference from French to English.
But as one reads on and becomes familiar
— hardens oneself, shall we say? — to
Mr. Plimsoll's rather Gallicized style, one
is likely to feel rather that he has come
closer to success, where complete success
is impossible, than would be expected.
Slowly the Japan of Loti, the Japan of
fragile and superficial loveliness with
hints of terrible cruel power under the
surface, is evoked ; and we almost forget
that we are not reading the author's own
words. Mr. Mortimer Menpes has con-
tributed eight illustrations in color,
which help to perfect this evocation.
Those who know only "Madame Chrysan-
theme" will be glad to have its sequel in
this attractive form.
Three Latin volumes (Ausonius I by
H. G. E. White, Martial I by W. C. A.
Ker, and Livy I by B. 0. Foster) and
one Greek volume (Thucydides I by
C. F. Smith) come to us from Putnams
as a reminder that the Loeb Library has
weathered the war and is slowly building
up for its founder a monumentum aere
perennius and for the editors and con-
tributors an operae pretium. It is not
the function of this column to offer a de-
tailed criticism of these scholarly works,
but we may note especially the excellence
of Professor Smith's translation and an-
notation of the first two books of Thucy-
dides. Some very minor complaints we
might make. Dates should have been
given more abundantly, and might well
have been printed regularly in the run-
ning headlines. Thucydides has been
fortunate in his translators since Hobbes
set his hand at the task (and learnt
much of his philosophy of history
(Continued on page 368)
April 10, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[867
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368]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, Xo. 4»
XCmOimmtd fnm pape 366)
tkoilv). aad PrafcBBor Smith has mil
■antelMdthetzaditian. With its BOtCB
and anvB this is for a "gcBdeman
Uie ideal edition of tiw
■as regarded fagr tiiesi^eat
as the etennl naBwd of
The Tragedy of
Pygmalion
A FEW mtma» ago the pared-poat
IwiM^A ne a beautiful pietuic as
The
the atatae of a iuwc^ vonau. jnst eam-
iSK to life nndcr his cubiate and wiUi
the led hoe of blood alicadr Unidiing
It loaiEed very nice; bat I
hdp a vacne fedinc of dissatis-
vith flw theacL Here was Fys-
peeferring a living
to the vmk of art; is not art, I
from life
a fold to icteiae
tiw pneeaa? To «et more li^t on taj
I loolced op the sbsy and un-
[ the f oBoviw aceooit in the <
had just beei concluded, and Cyprus,
which had bem drawn into them, was
left in an impoverisbod condition. Her
rate of exdiange was vCTy low as com-
pared with that of Phoenicia, from which
Cyprus imported aU artkks of biznry.
Pygmalion easily consented to Galatea's
requests, for his knre for ber was warm
and fresh, but you can easily see that
the expoise made a heavy drain on his
scanty parse.
The historian of those days rdates that
the first organ of Galatea's to cone to
life was ho* tongue, and her feet the
hut. In fact, she never got quite rid
of the habits of immobility which she
contracted on the pedestal; a certain las-
situde still pervaded her; she preferred
repose and wanted to be carried about.
She insistwl on having breakfast in bed.
Now Pygmalion was a gentleman and,
Oieiefore, the owner of a dave. But
Ooae after-war days were di^ of un-
rest; new ideas floated in the air. The
union of slaves was on strike, demand-
ing that tiie state fix a maodmnm to the
number of Mows whidi a master coold
inflict aa his slave. So the work f dl on
Pygmalion's shoaider, and having so far
been a badidor, he was natnrafly voy
awkward in his ways and was justly
scolded by his wiSt.
Ton may have thought that Galatea
had to learn everything from flie begin-
ning. Not dw. Like her more famous
' Minerva, who emerged fnll^ledged
the Jovid head, Gahtfea'-denxBded
the piJflri wifli an her womanly
9ie knew her mind
had ^gmalian under ho-
flahrtifa was a boni (the e^^xea-
is ineorreet but nagr be allowed)
In a dwrt time dw got tired
of yygmaKon and began flirtiag openly
with a poet-friend of
gliwnHy recalled flie ds^T*
still on die pedestaL
dodleand nevn- refused his 1
was without life; but afl his own. Then,
perfect. He was her
but oh! what a gradons ndstxeaa
Now fldt die had eome down
from the pedestal dw was so dUEerent —
fnfl vl tapriee, pdnlairt, eold^^n diort,
IMaHfaisioned, Pygmalian
nidmiiiiii had done; that
everything has its proper fbite, and tint
idnt tte artist esaeeives and creates is
alrigjitoattepeiwtil bat very 1
factmy if tnmafrrred to the
earth.
PygmaHoa made an attempt to i
work. At least Gdatca m^tt pose as a
moddand hdp Mm retam to tiw rcahn
her aaespeded adveat had foteed
to leave Bat no; Galatea waald
staad on the pedestd agaia. Aay-
or re-
Aadaa if
thisi "
di«
Pygmalion to call in other models. SI
did not love her husband but still
didn't like haTing other women in
house.
Pygmalion was drivte to despair4
Finally, he made a resolution. He we
up to Delphi and called upon Apollo
transform his wife into the statue shflf
had beoi. The oracle rqdied that the^
gods never undo vhat th^ once hava^ {
done. Pygmalion came back in a state
of utter dejection.
At last Apollo took pity on him. One
morning the married couple was engaged
in one of their usual quarrds. Galatea
lost her temper and stamped her foot^
Pygmalion lost his courage and implored
forgiveness. But Galatea looked at him
with a cdd stare and the Mood froze
in his vdna. It did, really and literaDy^
Pygmalion was aware of a certain no
ness cieeping into his limbs; he tr
to speak but his mouth would not
He kst consdousneaL . . .
Apollo had turned him into a
and now it was Pygmalion that was
Galatea shed a few tears, but
had tiie statue moved on to her
previous pededal, and ediibited it
friends.
My historian's account stops at
point. We may conjecture that
married again, but noUiiag is
defiuitdy. Personally, I aa
to know wheOicr the statae still
in proper shape. Ezesvations oog^
be started at onee with a view to
ing up this matter. But I most
Oiat to flie ardneologists
Bafjuel Daumi
Drama
The Craft of the Tortoise i
and Other Plays
The CsArr or thk ToanxsE. By
TasML New York: Bom aid :
Thk Powix or a Go* amb Orant OmitJ
FtATS. ]^ ThadMr Hoidaad
tlrixua. IIL: VmHttn^ at OGbom
The Lamt or Hembx. BfMn^L.Wo
Bortoa: The Poor Seas i
flrat'
mn. ALGERNON TASSDf is »
JvX son eminentiy wortii looidiig
Whether he is a pnaoa w
to is a poiat on whidi his first book
to my knawleitee) is iaen
wnk proves b^fond qpestion fhst 1
tJ^eace Is marvdloa*. The
of his indisce aaflke to
strate Us aiasteiy of Eagjidi
Thcae qaalities, vahBHe as they a
woald be still aam vataaUe if their par
tid orig^ ia Mr. Sham wen leas di^-
ceraiMf. I ssQr '>srtiar' witt ddibera-
i; Mr. Taaaiifs rdsfioa to Mr. Shaw
I that of fbe wife who has prop-
^tty ia her owa right.
April 10. 1920]
THE REVIEW
[369
The New York
University Press
Tbe Groand and Goal of
Human Life
By CHARLES GRAY SHAW, PhJ>^
Professor of Ethics in New York
University
Ootk. sii+394 tiff's. Price, $3loO
Ak ir«it> Iv aon of
i
ccTtBBk hnc k Km ill ft fcU af
rmr—fnf. W. E. Haetmm. Btrm
TWI at
Values, Immediate and
Contributory, and Their
Interrelation
By MAURICE PICARD, PhJ),
tectuiei in Pliilosopfay in Barnard
CoBccc In press.
Efficient Composition: A
College Rhetoric
By ARTHUR HUNTINGTON
NASON. Ph_D^ Professor of Eng-
lish ;n New Yock Uancswy.
rr^H-51? fngts. Price, $150
die
-.;k: it is
THE NEW YORK UNWERSTTY PBESS
32 Waverly PUce New York City
Tkrt (rivB.. *»" In |{| I'lTitJ^' «Zff iL
Both Mr. Taasin and Mr. Shaw are
thinker-dramatista, with the thinkor-
dramatist's doable handk^ fhait his
study is draped like a stage while his
stage is famished like a study. Drama
should be based on thoagfat. It sfaoakl
not be ceiled and wainscoted with
thoaght. Mr. Tassin leama fast; he
wants to teach fast; and the diffindtgr
with drama is that, while it paints fmt,
it teaches slowly. Speed ap its tearhing
and yoo retard or conf ose its portrayaL
To have many iaiages and few, bat
strong, ideas is wdl-beiiig for a dnma-
tut. Mr. Taasm is not content to em-
body a thoo^t; he wants to limn a
treatise. Atalanta-like^ he may fese the
race by sbaofiag to pick op the golden
apples of iatdigtaKe.
He may lose the race, hmk tke loas Is
far from certain. His eqa^pmat for
drama is, in some points, rema^idile.
He has a stroog dialogue a compact,
pugnacioos, aoertiTe dialogne^ a dia-
loKae is wtdtek cadi senteBce ii a stand.
He is a dnaaatiat ii kis aoMe «f tite im-
pact of people <9aB eadi otknr; cv-:
qoiet sceaea, ia aare expaaitia% file
is ridged witii paaatag aagei^ jaalaaBieB,
contempts, f awmaga, dictatNaa. He is
a AJDed invoitor, aot of plats, bot of
iacadeate tiiat oncaver rdatiaBa. Bat
hla liMllatiwi as idajwii^t fiea in the
faettta^ while ke earn awii «w tiw
r. be careaMtaafw tlw
caorea awfoy far ne latdhebiH aat-
come : he is satisfied to aadce Ub poiaL
His people are iflaatratr*«L He
tiiera vigorous beeaaae, bciac *
■aa of letters, he lihn to Make Ua iDBB-
tiaUoaa TigoraaaL Bat aa beiaga^ as
Irres, ttcr meaa veqr litOe to hlai. He
has Hairief s iaipaitial aeom for tte two
ddi^ts not hiai;
IsOnreagi
in RomauaatsTs icply to HaBkfs
that ttepjajii'i woald receive 2«al«a «»-
fertacaaMaC fiteaa audi a aiaa?
The ao&or of' "Haadei* hiaaJt
mi^t afaaoat hove been ilaaralad hf tte
bardeaa wldik Ifer. Tassin has laid opoa
his draaiatic facalty. He widMs ta
piwe ttat the art of waraaa perpetaally
theBBastoT from tkeatieagOi of
i; tte aerra^ aa we kaow, eoaiiol ttw
The thill I r has olmoas af-
fiaitieB with th^ of '*lfaB Md
maa." bat Mr. Shaw's pUy is
ponorx- Mr. Taaain's acts are divided
hf <7des. He not only gives as ]
day New York (Act IV.) aad
1260 (Act. nL), bot patriarchal
(Act L). Three daractns appear in
dl foar acts in saecesive iaeaiaatiaaB,
aat of the poaoa cacOr. bat aC tte type.
Hew far are Oese pictorea of Sfe tfoe?
In tte first three acts, plaiair aaKh MBit
be left to fai&; and phdatf
(Ciiafiaaad «i p«f« 370)
James SMrley, Drama-
tist : A Biographical and
Critical Study
By ARTHUR HUNTINGTON
NASON. PhJ)., Proiew of Bag-
lish in New York Uuiiexsiiy.
la tke stadty ^ Ihe Kie
ShiTlv, the taimui
ShMcT's if^ to
the valne of the
basis of ttis critical
constmct a rfimoolagy mare
don has hccB hidKrto avaOiUc .
oo a haoB oi this icvisei chraaolicy, to
le&tudly dK ill ■■nil wtvks of Shiri^.
in Older to deterwine. if |iii iWi, At
co«Kse «rf his ih iihipw iil as a dnaas-
u^; aMi. nini^ nro^ tins saaae cscanma:-
tioa of te plays, to ih li iiaii die lEs-
tiutliie chaiacteristxs of his
works. The tcsok is a aew :
lolczTsting pH.Uue oi obs qk
poet of the te«a of Charles L
I
oni"* — Sir Sidmey Imul
"A ttclJKfc^ to t&e QF^ ami
ai Siricr's En am
Cbnk Ter^J02 pmges. Ckaietiy Hms-
trmud, Pricr. SSM.
TK KW YOBK tiifnmJsnT PKSs
32 Wavcity Pi*:e .New York Oty
II
370]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 48
(Continued from page 369)
Mr. Tassin's demands for credit in three
acts impose on him a quite decisive obli-
gation to furnish cash in the fourth, that
is, to furnish truth which is not only
true but verifiable. But when payday
comes Mr. Tassin wants to renew his
note. His eccentric New York has to be
taken on faith. His Emmeline, the last
and lowest of her vulpine breed, seems
almost as alien to the spectator's experi-
ence as his Em or Emla or Emelie. I
do not say that Emmeline as exception or
aberration is inconceivable. Tradition
and modernity are two species, and in an
age when woman is the offspring of their
union, she is normally a hybrid and po-
tentially a monster. Do I go too far in
suggesting that a successful authoress
who flirts with a workman in overalls is
a monster? Clearly she is not typical,
and Mr. Tassin is pursuer of types.
"This play," says Mr. Tassin in a pref-
ace, which, always coruscating, is some-
times too coruscating to be luminous,
"develops the theme that woman com-
pensates for her bodily inferiority to
man, which, handicapping her in the be-
ginning proved her strength in the
end, by the utilization of her apparel!"
Woman is tortoise; man is hare: the
tortoise wins the race. Shell in the tor-
toise is replaced by dress in woman.
That the tortoise is not crafty and is not
helped by its shell in the race are obvi-
ous objections. Mr. Tassin's is a subtle
mind. One suspects him of a mind as in-
sensitive to the obvious as the obvious
mind itself is impervious to subtlety. In
formal reasoning he is prodigiously
acute, but he is possessed of and pos-
sessed by an ardor for generalities with
which a scorn of particulars is delicately
mingled. In the swiftness of his logic
he resembles Mr. Shaw; both Mr. Shaw
and he resemble the hare; and I doubt
if he is quite wise in recalling inces-
santly to our minds a fable in which
victory was obtained by the hare's plod-
ding rival. The very quickness of his
mind is a bias — a bias towards explana-
tions that presuppose quickness. His-
torically, he makes woman conscious and
inventive where her willingness, if opera-
tive at all, must have been ingenuous and
unreflecting. This is partly no doubt the
dramatist's necessity, but it is also prob-
ably the conscious thinker's instinctive
disallowance of instinct. If women are
the real Machiavels, it is odd that a man
should name the quality. Are they wily
as a sex or only as a class — historically
a serf or subject class? Are they so
wily as eunuchs? Are they wilier than
subject males — than parasites or court-
iers, for example? Mr. Tassin thinks
that the guile of woman is operative to-
day in the attempt to keep privileges
while she gains rights, to demand jus-
tice and chivalry in the same breath;
and, by a comparison in which chivalry
gives up the ghost, likens her to the en-
franchised negro helping herself to her
ex-master's goods and getting wages at
the same time.
Four one-act plays by Thacher How-
land Guild have been collected in a vol-
ume to which commemorative tributes
by Mr. George P. Baker, Mr. Stuart P.
Sherman, and other friends have been
prefixed. The plays show an instinct for
the theatre and a humane spirit which
should fit them for successful perform-
ance by amateurs.
The "Lamp of Heaven," a one-act
Chinese play of the time of the Boxer re-
bellion, is exactly imaged in its heroine,
Mee Fah Kam. She is very pretty, but
her feet are bandaged, and she can
scarcely walk. The diction of Mrs.
Smith's unambitious little play is pleas-
ing enough; what is lacks is the power
to move. 0. W. Firkins
Music
James Huneker on Art and
Occultism
Bedouins. By James Huneker.
Charles Scribner's Sons.
New York:
JAMES HUNEKER, at his best, has
almost genius. And, at his very
worst, he stands alone. There is always
Religion among American Men
The material for this book was gathered
under direction of "the Committee on the
War and the Religious Outlook" — consist-
ing of such men as:
William Adaus Brown
Geokge W. Coleman
W. H. P. Fauncb
Harey Emerson Fosdick
Henry Churchill King
Francis J. McConnell
Charles S. Macfarland
William Douglas Mackenzie
Shailer Mathews
Robert E. Speer
A questionnaire, which sought to obtain not only facts, but their mean-
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Also prepared by "the Committee on the War and the Re-
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The Army and Religion
Edited by D. S. CAIRNS, D.D.
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an exceptional o(>portUDity for an enlightening analysis of an army that
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THE REVIEW
[371
this to be said of what he writes — it
needs no signature. The style, in his
1 case, does denote the man.
i That seems high praise, indeed, in
I these drab days, when twenty writers
I have one single style. But it implies as
j well some faint dispraise. For of late
' years (to be quite frank) it has not been
, only style that has distinguished Mr.
Huneker's short tales and essays. A tend-
ency has now and then become evident,
both in his fiction and his criticism, to
score points with the help of what
Frenchmen call a procede — of which the
equivalent in English is a recipe.
The results are often brilliant, if be-
I wildering. But they are also sometimes
' just the least bit wearying. Not tire-
some (heaven forbid!), but they do tire.
Not everyone can bear the constant
strain of following even such a mind as
Mr. Huneker's through a whole volume
of flamboyant and dazzling fantasies.
In this latest of his many books Mr.
Huneker has gathered up a number of
his reviews, short tales, and essays. The
title is, perhaps, a little vague as a sug-
gestion of a work which deals with
babies, critics, cats, Caruso, Mirabeau,
Luke, Anatole France, and Mary Garden,
to say nothing of His Black Majesty, the
Devil. I grieve to say (though I do not
take him seriously at this point) that, on
the fifth page of his essay on Mary Gar-
den, he frankly names himself, I believe
for the first time, a devout disciple of
that strange but infamous writer, Rene
de Gourmont. The Satanist author of
"A Night in the Luxembourg" might
surely have been excluded from his rare
and audacious study of a star. The
study in itself is a delight, unsparing, to
be sure, in its analysis, but flattering by
the frank and searching thoroughness
with which it is made. I note with in-
terest that, unlike some foolish critics,
Mr. Huneker knows Mary Garden as a
singer of unusual charm, not only as a
wondrous "singing actress." I can not
understand, though, why he proclaims
ler "invincibly Yankee." She is Scotch
Dy birth, and French by education, and
;he language which she projects across
;he footlights is — well, Anglo-French.
He more than hints that she is a rein-
;',arnation of such flaming characters as
Thais, Phryne, Sappho, and the admired
Aspasia. She is also termed an orchid,
;i human dynamo, and an opal. Having
abelled her as American he pronounces
'ler Gaelic. Yet, in the same breath, he
ilwells on her Gallic art. A moment later
le tells us that she swears by Duse. Yes,
iften Mr. Huneker bewilders one. He
ixtols Miss Garden's sweeter and nobler
Interpretations — they are nearly cre-
ations— her exquisite Melisande, her pa-
ihetic Jean (in "Le Jongleur"), her
leautiful Monna Vanna. He detests her
when she appears as crazy lemans of the
'Aphrodite type. When he has scratched
and patted, praised and damned her in
all sorts of ways and keys and moods,
Mr. Huneker sums up, "She is unique."
And so for all her flaws. Miss Garden is.
In "Bedouins" one may find other es-
says, less thorough than those given up
to Miss Garden, but hardly less interest-
ing. An essay about "Melisande and De-
bussy." Another on "The Artistic Tem-
perament" (as to which the author is, be-
yond doubt, an authority). Another
(rather flippant and unworthy of the
tribute of a reprint) is entitled "Caruso
on Wheels." In most, the author hovers
around music — an art of which he knows
more (and writes less) than almost any
other critic in this country. As usual,
when he does discourse on music and on
artists who make music, he often treats
of them in terms of literature. And, as
an offset, when he speaks of painting or
drama he expresses his ideas in musical
formulas. He has, throughout his life,
been a voracious reader of fiction, drama,
science, and philosophy. His memory is
remarkably retentive. But he does
wrong, I think, to crowd so many refer-
ences into his essays. George Moore and
Huysmans, Chopin, Poe and the Sar
Peladan are hurled at one at every oppor-
tunity. It matters little what the theme
may be. The author's favorites must be
quoted and re-quoted.
Now this, though it impresses one at
first, in the long run becomes annoying
to the general. It may be true, as he
himself once said to me, that he "writes
for twelve persons only," not for the
crowd. We may assume, despite all such
assertions, that Mr. Huneker appeals to
a large audience. If not, why does he
contribute to the dailies ? And why does
he reprint what they have published?
Before they were essays, most of his
writings had been articles. And now,
collected, they form parts of a real book.
Not everything in "Bedouins" bears re-
reading. Some short stories, for ex-
ample, might with advantage have been
left out of this volume. Among them
(to name two) are the three slightly
futile tales entitled "Brothers-in-Law,"
"Grindstones," and "Venus or Valkyr."
Moreover, those who most admire the
author may deplore the resuscitation of
two powerful but disturbing little stories
which deal with Satanism.
The short stories referred to will dis-
tress most recent souls, though they will
fascinate some searchers after the occult.
They are morbid, and, to many, will
seem dangerous, though one is founded,
I am told, on actual fact. We know that
there were Satanists in Paris, in the
Quartier Montparnasse. We had heard
that there were Satanists in one, at
least, of our American cities. To go
hunting after cases of the kind may
please Mr. Huneker. To relate what he
has found, with the allurements of his
(Continued on page 372)
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THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2. No. 48
of New York. ]
y of New \ ork, J
STATEMENT OF THE OWNERSHIP, MAN-
AGEMENT, CIRCULATION, ETC., RE-
QUIRED BY THE ACT OF CONGRESS OF
AUGUST 24, 1912, OF
THE REVIEW
Published weekly, at New York, N. \'., for April 1,
1920.
State
County
Before me a Notary Public, in and for the State
and county aforesaid, personally appeared Harold
deWolf Fuller, who, having been duly sworn, accord-
ing to law, dejK)scs and savs that he is the Editor of
THK REVIEW, and that the following is, to the best
of his knowledge and belief, a true statement of the
ownership, management (and if a daily paper, the
circulation), etc.. of the aforesaid publication for the
date shown in the above caption, required by the Act
of August 24, 1912, embodied in section 443, Postal
Laws and Regulations, printed on the reverse of this
form,, to wit:
1. That the names and addresses of the publisher,
editor, managing editor, and business managers are:
Publisher — The National Weekly Corporation, 140
Nassau Street, New York, N. Y.
Editor— Fabian Franklin, 617 West lUth Street,
New York. N. Y.
Editor— Harold deWolf Fuller, 8 East 8th Street,
New York, N. Y.
Managing Editor — None.
Business Managers — None.
2. That the owners are: (Give names and addresses
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and the names and addresses of stockholders owning
or holding 1 per cent, or more of the total amount
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Nassau Street, N. Y. C; Est. of J. R. De Lamar, 43
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Schiff, 52 William Street, N. Y. C; Finley J.
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William Street, N. Y. C; Paul M. Warburg, 17 East
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3. That the known bondholders, mortgagees, and
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securities are: (If there are none, so state.)
None.
4. That the two paragraphs next above, giving the
names of the owners, stockholders, and security
holders, if any, contain not only the list of stock-
holders and security holders as they appear upon the
books of the company but also, in cases where the
stockholder or security holder appears upon the books
of the company as trustee or in any other fiduciary
relation, the name of the person or corporation for
whom such trustee is acting:, is given; also that the
said two paragraphs contain statements * embracing
affiant's full knowledge and belief as to the circum-
stances and conditions under which stockholders and
security holders who do not appear upon the books of
the company as trustees, hold stock and securities in a
capacity other than that of a bona fide owner; and
this affiant has no reason to believe that any other
person, association, or corporation has any interest
direct or indirect in the said stock, bonds, or other
securities than as so stated by him.
H. deW. FULLER, Editor.
Sworn to and subscribed before me this 31st day
of March, 1920.
HOWARD CAMPBELL,
Notary Public, Queens County,
Certificate filed in N. Y. C. No. 263.
(My commission expires March 30, 1921.)
{Continued from page 371)
warm and vivid style, seems almost crim-
inal.
That a man like Huysmans should have
praised "The Vision Malefic" of Mr.
Huneker long years ago will amaze no
one. It will fret most, however, to be
told that Tolstoi, the austere and ec-
static Tolstoi, paid it the tribute of a
dignified rebuke. In times like ours,
when thousands upon thousands in a
distracted world are dabbling with peril-
ous mysticisms, an author should think
hard and then think harder before he
ventures to reprint such disturbing
stories as "The Vision Malefic," and that
other excursion into the diabolic, "The
Supreme Sin."
Charles Henry Meltzer
Books and the News
Libraries
THE work which the American Library
Association did during the war is
described in a very readable volume by
Theodore Wesley Koch, "Books in the
War; the Romance of Library War Ser-
vice," (Houghton, 1919). The most con-
siderable study of libraries as they have
developed in this country is by the pub-
lic librarian of St. Louis, Dr. Arthur E.
Bostwick, in "The American Public
Library" (Appleton, 1910). Similar
books, doing the same thing for England,
are J. J. Ogle's "The Free Library"
(Allen) and, for its chapters on a num-
ber of topics, Richard Garnett's "Essays
in Librarianship and Bibliography"
(Allen, 1899). The American author
previously mentioned, Arthur E. Bost-
wick, has written in "The Making of an
American's Library" (Little,' Brown,
1915) a brief book, speaking of the pri-
vate library, and the effect of the public
library upon it.
Beginners in the art of managing a
library are often referred to J. C. Dana's
"A Library Primer" (Library Bureau),
in which the elementary steps are briefly
described. The architectural points which
a librarian needs to know, or a possible
library architect may be glad to read,
are in Charles C. Soule's "How to Plan
a Library Building for Library Work"
(Boston Book Co., 1912).
There are many books which one may
read for the pleasure of learning a little
of the history of libraries — Ernest A.
Savage's "Old English Libraries; the
Making, Collection, and Use of Books
During the Middle Ages" (McClurg,
1912) is one of them. Nothing, iiowever,
is more quaint and charming than Sir
Thomas Bodley's "Life" and his "First
Draught of the Statutes of the Public
Library at Oxon." J. C. Dana and H.
W. Kent edited an edition in their "Lit-
erature of Libraries" series (McClurg,
1907). The Statutes must have been the
origin of many of the tales about
librarians who guarded their books like
dragons.
The book which suggested this brief
list is not primarily about libraries, but
is P. B. M. Allan's "The Book-Hunter
at Home" (Philip Allan, 1920). It has
a long chapter about libraries, but is
really intended to instruct and entertain
the book-collector — and the collector who
is after fairly big fish. The pleasant
art of hunting the minnows of the book
world — the books which bought at sec-
ond-hand leave one some change from a
two-dollar bill, yes, even from a dollar —
this harmless sport is always beneath
the dignity of the gentlemen who write
of book-collecting.
Edmund Lester Pearson
Books Received
FICTION
Bailey, H. C. Barry Leroy. Dutton. $2.00
net.
Banning, Margaret Culkin. This Marrying.
Doran.
Bojer, John. Treacherous Ground. Moffat,
Yard.
Cadmus and Harmonia. The Island of
Sheep. Houghton Mifflin. $1.50.
Capes, Bernard. The Skeleton Key. Doran.
Chamberlain, George A. Taxi. Bobbs-
Merrill.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. This Side of Paradise.
Scribner. $1.75 net.
Gale, Zona. Miss Lulu Bett. Appleton.
Galsworthy, John. Tatterdemalion. Scrib-
ners. $1.90 net.
Haggard, H. Rider. The Ancient Allan.
Longmans. $1.75 net.
Holding, Elizabeth S. Invincible Minnie.
Doran.
Humphreys, Mrs. Desmond. Diana of the
Ephesians. Stokes.
Jepson, Edgar. Pollyooly Dances. Duffield.
Maurois, Andre. The Silence of Colonel
Bramble. Lane. $1.25 net.
McMasters, Wm. H. Revolt. Small, May-
nard.
Spofford, Harriet P. The Elder's People.
Houghton Mifflin.
Washburn, Claude C. Order. Duffield.
$2.00 net..
ESSAYS AND CRITICISM
Mackenzie, J. S. Arrows of Desire : Essays
on British Characteristics. Macmillian. $3.75.
Macmichael, William. The Gold Headed
Cane. New York: Hoeber. $3.75.
Parker, Carleton H. The Casual Laborer
and Other Essays. Harcourt, Brace & Howe.
Symonds, John Addington. In the Key of
Blue and Other Prose Essays. Macmillan.
MISCELLANEOUS
Bleyer, Willard G. How to Write Special
Feature Articles. Houghton Mifflin.
Crowder, Maj.-Gen. E. H. The Spirit of
Selective Service. Century.
D'Annunzio, Gabriele. Tales of My Native
Town. Doubleday, Page.
Grey, Viscount. Recreation. Houghton
Mifflin. $1.25.
Harrison, Jane Ellen. Aspects, Aorists and
the Classical Tripos. Cambridge Universitj
Press.
Klickmann, Flora. The Lure of the Pen
Putnam.
Shaw, Leslie M. Vanishing Landmarks
Laird & Lee.
THE REVIEW
513
Vol. 2, No. 49
New York, Saturday, April 17, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment 373
Editorial Articles:
The Chances at Chicago 376
Information from Russia 376
The Preservation of Our Wild Life 378
A Question of Longevity 379
Theodore Dreiser, Philosopher. By
P. E. M. 380
The Case of Maurice Maeterlinck. By
Joseph Jastrow 381
Gone German University Days. By
G. R. Elliott 384
The Revival of the Classic Drama.
By James M. Beck 386
Correspondence 388
Book Reviews:
John Redmond 390
Studies in Honor of Dr. Osier 391
Gardens and Garden Books 392
New American Novels: The Indi-
vidual Bobs Up 392
The Tragic Years 394
Bulgarian Apologia 395
A New Brand of Modernism 396
The Masquerade 398
The Run of the Shelves 400
Books That Appear in the Spring. By
Edmund Lester Pearson 402
The Ship's Library. By Robert Pal-
frey Utter 404
The Nature Lover. By William Beebe 406
Problems of Labor and Capital:
II. Honest Ballots for Unions and
Employers' Associations. By Mor-
ris L. Ernst 408
Bcoks and the News: Primaries 409
Educational Section:
The University President 410
Universal Training 412
Education for the Cotton Industry 415
"FHE railroad workers' strike is a
^ vivid reminder of the coal strike.
\.n both there are the same elements
|)f doubt as to the true inwardness of
,he move. In both there is the same
absence of any doubt as to the intol-
hrableness of the method resorted to.
\.nd in both there is the same element
if just grievance on the part of the
trikers. The greatest point of dif-
erence is in the attitude assumed by
he heads of the great railroad
brotherhoods. The strike is dis-
inctly of "outlaw" character, and the
?rotherhood chiefs seem to be thor-
ughly sincere in their energetic
'Pposition to it. Moreover, it is a
atisfaction to note that President
iCe, of the Brotherhood of Railway
Trainmen, expressly says this good
word for the railroads :
There have been rumors that the new or-
ganization, known as the Yardmen's Associa-
tion, and made up of deserting members of the
older bodies, was inspired by the railroads as a
means of destroying organized labor. But I
can not say emphatically enough that I do not
beheve this true. The railroads themselves
have honorably kept their contracts with us,
and it is the aim of the Brotherhood to treat
them as fairly. To this end I have issued
orders that the unlawful strike by deserting
members be broken even at the cost of placing
loyal Brotherhood men in their places.
npHE strike deserves the designa-
-*• tion of "outlaw" for more rea-
sons than one. Primarily, it is ap-
plied, of course, to indicate that the
strike was inaugurated without
authority of the recognized labor or-
ganizations, and in defiance of their
heads. But this defiance takes the
shape not only of insurgency against
those leaders, but of the breaking of
the contract which they had made as
representatives of the men. The most
serious phase of the outlawry, how-
ever, is one that has nothing to do
with any question either of contracts
or of organization, but with the
method of the strike itself. In at-
tempting to gain their objects by a
sudden attack upon the life of the
community, the strikers have put
themselves into the position of a pub-
lic enemy. Some look upon the move
as a revolutionary manifestation;
most probably it is in the main simply
• a strike for wages, which the revolu-
tionary element is trying to make the
most of. But whichever it is, its
threat against the well-being of the
whole people must be met with all the
energy that the people and their Gov-
ernment can command.
A S regards wages, the facts are not
■^ sufficiently known to warrant a
confident statement; but it looks as
though the men were justified in the
assertion that their wages have
lagged far behind the rise in the cost
of living, as well as behind the ad-
vances made in many other lines of
work. And there is one special point
that must not be forgotten. When
the President appealed to the rail-
road men, last August, to refrain
from striking until the Government
had been given a chance to carry out
its programme for reducing the cost
of living, what he was asking for was
not an indefinite postponement. He
and his advisers were looking for-
ward to the inauguration of a great
"drive" to bring down prices, from
which they expected speedy and de-
cisive results. Seven months have
passed since, and prices are not lower,
but distinctly higher, than they were
then. There was never any good rea-
son to believe that the measures
which the Government had in view
would have any appreciable effect in
the lowering of prices. They were
directed at superficial and minor
evils, which were mere symptoms of
a deep-seated difficulty. The hope
that anything of large importance
could be accomplished in those ways
has long been abandoned, and the
men who were asked to wait for
something that has not happened,
and that nobody is expecting to hap-
pen in the near future, can not be
blamed for demanding that their case
be attended to. If they had made the
demand in a decent and proper
manner, it would undoubtedly have
gained a friendly hearing from the
public.
Tj^NGLAND and France are passing
'-^ through a critical moment in
their relations to each other and to
Germany. The situation contains
elements that can not be thought of
without grave anxiety. But it is rash
to say, as does Mr. Frank Simonds,
that "the present crisis foreshadows
the end of that alliance which saved
Europe by insuring German defeat in
the World War." If the maintenance
of that alliance were necessary to
374]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
France and not to England, or neces-
sary to England and not to France,
this dark view might be justified ; but
it is just as true that France saved
England as that England saved
France. The trouble between them
over the Ruhr situation, whatever its
deeper causes, arises directly from
the contrast between the intensity of
French apprehension of the German
danger and the laxity of British feel-
ing about it. There is no reason why
a middle ground should not be found,
between these two extremes and
more in accord with the actual facts
than either. Both countries have too
much at stake in the preservation of
the Entente for either of them to sac-
rifice it if there is any way to pre-
serve it — and it would be strange
indeed if a way could not be found.
For Americans the most comforting
element in the situation, at this mo-
ment, is the apparently well-estab-
lished fact that our own Government
has, in the presence of a most delicate
situation, maintained not only a "cor-
rect" but a really helpful attitude.
To keep Britain and France good
friends, and America a good friend
of both, should be regarded as the
most vital of all our international
aims.
npHE Navy inquiry has revealed no
-'■ substantial defect of organiza-
tion. Indeed, that system must be ex-
cellent which worked reasonably well
under a chief who didn't know his
own mind. The main trouble, in a
word, was that Secretary Daniels
would not promptly accept a general
strategic plan, but preferred to feel
his way. Admiral Benson, Chief of
Operations, whose task it was to per-
suade the Secretary of the Navy to
adopt a plan based on the actual sit-
uation, was unequal to the feat. A
stronger man would naturally have
resigned and made the situation clear.
Admiral Benson hung on patiently,
and urged one thing at a time on the
Secretary. Thus in six months or so
the Navy achieved the necessary team
play. The delay had been serious, but
not fatal. It is clear that the Bureau
of Operations was negligent in not
preparing an anti-submarine plan
from the moment of our first clash
with Germany. The Navy was un-
fortunate in having a Chief of Opera-
tions who could not cope with Mr.
Daniels's idiosyncrasies. Yet Ad-
miral Benson deserves rather sym-
pathy than censure. He was dealing
with one of the strongest things in
the world — the will to procrastinate.
Mr. Daniels, on his side, could not
suddenly divest himself of the men-
tality of a petty politician. His
indecision and confusion of mind un-
questionably slowed down our naval
effort by three months or so — and the
critical months of the anti-submarine
campaign.
Navy and laity will join in the
sentiment that, considering that Mr.
Daniels was in charge, it was lucky
things went as well as they did.
Charge the delay, confusion, and
needless expense to Mr. Wilson's
cult of unpreparedness and to Mr.
Daniels's psychology. The Navy it-
self displayed an energy that largely
compensated for the absence of any
initial policy. The organization more
than responded to all appeals. The
appeals were not made intelligently
or promptly. War is merely an ex-
tension of policy, and until we had
been at war for three months Mr.
Daniels, and consequently the Navy,
had no policy. Such is the chief re-
sult of the inquiry.
I
WOULD rather be a cow than be
of genuine disillusion are now begin-
ning to be heard. What else was to
be expected from those who built up
hopes of an entirely new order of
civilization coming into being after
the war? It is the price of a "vision"
which they are now paying. The
Review has repeatedly called atten-
tion to the cruel awakening that
would come to trusters in such false
hopes. China, with its Shantung
episode, was the first of the nations
to experience it, and the weaker peo-
ples, generally, have begun to see that
absolute justice is not to be obtained
— or even defined — all of a sudden.
But it is the American boosters of the
President's programme who have re-
ceived the greatest jolt. If the Presi-
dent himself is disillusioned, he is
careful to hide his feelings. Utopias
of any magnitude have always failed,
and one great reason for their failure
has been the food problem. Food —
the lack of it — is what is spoiling Mr.
Wilson's dream. While conditions in
Europe each day cry louder for our
help, for a resumption of effective
economic conditions, the President
holds out for the realization of every
detail of his huge programme. When
a man's house burns down, he re-
builds according to a better plan —
if he can afford to. If the house is
not insured, he may have to make
shift until, after some years of plod-
ding, he can rebuild it nearer to his
ideal. Europe is close to exhaustion.
Are we to go on bickering over the
prospect of a perfect, or nearly per-
fect, world before helping to bring
some sort of order out of the chaos?
The desire (if it has any real vitality,
as we believe it has) for a better
civilization to come later on will not
be destroyed by our getting back to
a peace footing and lending much-
needed assistance now. j
THE present tower of high prices is builded
upon something infinitely more firm than
the sand of the profiteers. It is built upon the
ivory of twenty or thirty million consumers
who are too busy consuming to produce. —
Kansas City Star.
Yes, yes; but how do they get the i
money with which to pay the prices?
Like the famous Hebrides Islanders
who make their living by taking in
each other's washing?
T^HE institution of freedom of
•*• speech and of the press suffered
intrusions in time of war, and some
good people have been alarmed lest
these intrusions threatened the very
existence of our democracy. But it
will not be abandoned by those who
have for generations cherished it.
The violent protests which we have
heard come chiefly from an entirely
different class of people. They come,
indeed, from people who themselves
are most intolerant of freedom of
speech in others. They are not in
the least concerned when the opin-
ions and the appeals of the sober,
thoughtful, and truly progressive ele-
ments of a community do not re-
ceive publicity. They are only con-
cerned with securing the widest
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[375
forum for those who voice unrest, dis-
content, disbelief in our institutions,
and wild revolutionary doctrines.
WHY these agitators arrogate to
themselves the role of defend-
ers of the freedom of speech is
made clear by Mr. N. Bukharin, chief
spokesman of the Bolshevik regime at
Moscow. In 1918 he published under
the title of "The Communist Pro-
gramme" an authoritative exposition
of their principles. A portion of this
book was published in America by a
revolutionary organization, but it was
careful to omit from it Chapter VII,
in which Mr. Bukharin states the Bol-
shevik attitude toward freedom of
speech with an unlooked-for cynicism,
a cynicism that comes out like a yel-
low streak following the Bolshevik
triumph. Thus Mr. Bukharin vvrites :
If we have a dictatorship of the proletariat,
the object of which is to stifle the bourgeoisie,
to compel it to give up its attempts for the
restoration of the bourgeois authority, then it
is obvious that there can be no talk of allow-
ing the bourgeoisie electoral rights or of a
change from soviet authority to a bourgeois-
republican parliament.
The Communist (Bolshevik) party receives
from all sides accusations and even threats
like the following: "You close newspapers,
you arrest people, you forbid meetings, you
trample under foot freedom of speech and of
the press, you reconstruct autocracy, you are
oppressors and murderers."
It is necessary to discuss in detail this ques-
tion of "liberties" in a Soviet Republic.
At present the following is clear for the
workingmen and the peasants. The Com-
munist party not only does not demand _ any
liberty of the press, speech, meetings, unions,
etc., for the bourgeois enemies of the people,
but, on the contrary, it demands that the Gov-
ernment should be always in readiness to close
the bourgeois press ; to disperse the meetings
of the enemies of the people ; to forbid them
to lie, slander, and spread panic; to crush
ruthlessly all attempts at a restoration of the
bourgeois regime. This is precisely the mean-
ing of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Another question may be put to us : "Why
did the Bolsheviki not speak formerly of the
abrogation of full liberty for the bourgeoisie?
Why did they formerly support the idea of a
bourgeois-democratic republic? Why did they
support the idea of the Constituent Assembly
and did not speak of depriving the bourgeoisie
of the right of suffrage? Why have they
changed their programme so far as these ques-
tions are concerned? "
The answer to this question is very simple.
The working class formerly did not have
strength enough to storm the bulwarks of the
bourgeoisie. It needed preparation, accumula-
tion of strength, enlightenment of the masses,
organization. It needed, for example, the
freedom of its own labor press. But it could
not come to the capitalists and to their govern-
ments and demand that they shut down their
own newspapers and give full freedom to the
labor papers. Everybody would merely laugh
at the workingmen. Such demands can be
made only at the time of a storming attack.
And there had never been such a time before.
This is why the workingmen demanded (and
our party, too), "Freedom of the press I" (Of
the whole press, including the bourgeois
press.)
rpHAT the solution of the Danish
-*- crisis is not exclusively a Social-
ist victory, but rather a democratic
victory of common sense over chau-
vinism, is shown by the constitution
of the new Ministry. The reinstate-
ment of Mr. Hansen as Commissioner
for Slesvig affairs seems even to in-
dicate that the settlement, from the
King's standpoint, is a compromise
rather than a surrender. Mr. Han-
sen was formerly editor of Heymdal
in Apenrode, in which capacity he
was a strong protagonist of the Dan-
ish element on Germany's northern
frontier. As a member of the Zahle
Government, it is true, he advocated
moderation, until, shortly before the
plebiscite in the first zone, he deliv-
ered an address at Flensburg in which
he confessed to holding the opinion
that Flensburg ought to be Danish.
Among the Germans of North Sles-
vig this change of attitude was
looked upon as a time-serving device
evidencing the growing influence of
the annexionist group in Denmark,
and not as the expression of Mr. Han-
sen's real conviction. His reappoint-
ment seems to confirm that impres-
sion. But, all the same, the annexion-
ists can claim him as one of theirs
by reminding him of his Flensburg
speech.
P E. M., whose spirited article on
-*- • Mr. Theodore Dreiser is printed
on another page, was somewhat
abashed (or was it exhilarated?) by
our invitation to write about so slip-
pery a modern. And it must be con-
fessed that even in the diversified
gallery of the Shelburne Essays the
portrait of Mr. Dreiser would create
a scandal. What shall a critic of Mr.
More's classical lines do with one
who, as is pointed out, can praise
"The Prince" of Machiavelli as the
truest of books, and the next minute
flock enthusiastically with flabby
humanitarians? Yet it will not do to
pass him by in silence, for he and a
few others of his kind have the floor
to-day. We suggest that our best
critics might well defer for a time
the study of the Church Fathers and
such like dignitaries and repair to the
forum of present-day problems. The
best French critics have never been
averse to tackling all comers.
'T'HE discussion of Mr. Frank E.
-*■ Spaulding's proposal for a com-
pulsory year of training in "civic
responsibility" has very definite bear-
ing on the conditions of the present
moment. With Princeton students
volunteering in a body for service on
the railroads, with Morristown com-
muters ("millionaires," no doubt)
firing the train that carries them to
the city, it is evident that there is a
point beyond which the public is not
willing to suffer while the grievances
of any small industrial group, how-
ever just they may be, are awaiting
a settlement.
A spirit of adventure, the ama-
teur's keen delight in discovering that
he can do fairly well something that
he has not regarded as his proper
job, may always be counted on to
furnish some help in a pinch of this
sort. But if such crises multiply in
number and severity something more
will be needed. If society finally
breaks down because it has grown
too complicated, because any fool
who can possess himself of a mon-
key-wrench can wreck its delicate
mechanism, it will be society's own
fault for not taking in time steps
which will make its functions less
highly specialized and the services of
its members more readily inter-
changeable. To any plan which looked
to the accomplishment of such ends a
good deal of opposition might be ex-
pected. But nothing like an organ-
ized nation of professional strike-
breakers would result from even the
fullest establishment of it. The spirit
of adventure, the spirit of the ama-
teur, would still control, and this is
a spirit which is warmed by fires
that burn brightly but can not be
counted on to burn long. So far as
the plan functioned publicly, it would
function only to meet a crisis which
is potentially destructive. Meanwhile,
the chief benefits would accrue to the
individual. Mr. Spaulding's plan, at
any rate, points in a direction which
gives promise of rewarding further
exploration.
376]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
The Chances at Ch i cago
'T'HE political sky shows little sign
-'■ of clearing up. On the Demo-
cratic side there is almost literally
nothing doing. On the Republican
side there came a sudden flash with
the Michigan primaries, which quite
dazzled people for a while, but which
has shed little if any real light on
the situation. The approaching pri-
maries in New Jersey and Illinois
may prove significant, but there is no
very strong reason for expecting that
they will. With the Republican Con-
vention less than two months off, the
field continues to be as nondescript
as ever.
Senator Johnson's victory in Michi-
gan was superficially striking, and
certainly was a surprise. But as an
index of the state of mind of the
country it has no importance what-
soever. First and foremost, a feature
of the case must be noted which has
attracted little or no attention. Quite
apart from the fact that the victory
is wholly accounted for by the highly
peculiar Detroit vote, it was essen-
tially the victory of a united vote
against a divided one. . The votes cast
in the entire State for Wood, Lowden,
Hoover, and Pershing were in the ag-
gregate far greater than the vote cast
for Johnson. His vote represented
all the elements of radicalism and of
discontent — including many forms of
racial ill-feeling, pro-German, pro-
Irish, pro-Russian; the non-radical
and non-racial vote was split up
among the other four candidates.
Johnson beat Wood by a plurality of
perhaps 45,000, but he fell short of
the combined vote of the four by about
55,000. Now the fact that there were
four important candidates in the field
besides Johnson, all of them repre-
senting a standpoint sharply con-
trasted with his, is merely an acci-
dental feature and robs the result of
all authority.
But the significance of Johnson's
victory in Michigan is further dimin-
ished by consideration of the part
played in it by the vote of Detroit.
With that vote left out, the other four
Ciindidates beat Johnson by about
32,000 ; their combined vote was con-
siderably more than the double of
his. And the reasons for Johnson's
extraordinary majority in Detroit
are highly peculiar. Not only is that
city a hotbed of radical sentiment,
but Senator Johnson's aggressive and
spectacular opposition to the retain-
ing of American soldiers in Siberia
was doubly effective in winning votes
for him in Detroit. It got him the
Russian vote as such, and it got him
the vote of thousands of friends and
neighbors of the Detroit boys who, as
it happens, formed a large part of our
Siberian troops. When to all these
points is added the big makeweight
against Wood which the charge of
lavish use of money for his campaign
had naturally produced, coming on
the heels of the Newberry conviction,
it is obvious how little ground the
Detroit vote furnishes for any infer-
ence as to the state of mind of the
country at large.
If any inference at all be permissi-
ble from the Michigan elections it
would seem to be one favorable to
the chances of Mr. Hoover at Chi-
cago. With almost no campaign, and
with the announcement of his can-
didacy hardly a week old, he polled
about 45,000 votes in Michigan, al-
most exactly the same as Governor
Lowden, and more than half as many
as General Wood. This, together
with the showing he made in the
Democratic primaries, in spite of his
having announced himself as a Re-
publican candidate, gives substantial
proof, if any were needed, of the exis-
tence of a large spontaneous senti-
ment for Mr. Hoover among the
people throughout the country. But
it is not upon this circumstance that
the inference favorable to his chances
at Chicago rests, for the vote merely
confirmed what was already sufl[i-
ciently well known. The point is that
anything that makes Johnson strong
tends to make Hoover possible; and,
although the Michigan figures have
little evidential value as regards
Johnson, they certainly have estab-
lished the fact that a strong, fight
is going to be made for him. Mr.
Hoover will have no show at all
among the Chicago delegates, on the
face of things; not only will very
few of them be committed to him, but
nearly all will be strongly adverse to
taking him. His only chance is that
of his being turned to by the Con-
vention as the clear means of rescue
from a dangerous situation. He will
not be nominated in order to prevent
the Democrats from nominating him,
and we do not believe that this would
have been at all likely to happen even
if he had not plainly declared, as he
now has done, that he would not take
the Democratic nomination. But he
may be nominated in order to keep
the party united; and the more for-
midable the manifestation of the
Johnsonites at Chicago, the more pos-
sibility is there of such an outcome.
Information from
Russia
TF one is to judge from the numerous
-*■ correspondents who have recently
been permitted to visit Russia and
send out the results of their observa-
tions and interviews, the rulers of
Moscow are now seeking publicity in-
stead of concealment. But corre-
spondents seem to have been person-
ally conducted with the utmost care,
and it is evident that not one of them
was admitted without careful scru-
tiny. The matter they send is there-
fore not to be taken at its face value ;
but to the careful student of Russia,
who has a background of Russian ex-
perience, and who analyzes the in-
ternal evidence of the articles, they
present valuable sources of informa-
tion.
The most prominent and intelligent
of these recent journalistic visitors
to the land of Communism is Mr. Lin-
coln Eyre, and the series of articles
by him in the New York World con-
tains a mass of concrete information.
It is evident that he was able to put
searching questions to the Soviet
leaders in his interviews, and that
frequently he was able to see beyond
the screens whereby they sought to
limit his vision. Nevertheless, they
were able to confuse him consider-
ably, and the result is that his mate-
rial must be carefully scrutinized and
evaluated in order to get a just esti-
mate of present-day Russian affairs.
One of Mr. Eyre's recent articles
is devoted to the administration of
justice under the Russian Soviet sys-
f
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[877
tern. He describes in an interesting
manner how he attended the session
of a revolutionary tribunal trying a
noble and ten priests for treason
against the Soviet Republic, and then
goes on to a general consideration of
judicial procedure and crime statis-
tics. He draws the conclusion that
order now prevails and that crime is
on the decrease, and lays considerable
emphasis on the improvement of
prison conditions. The casual reader
will gain the impression that the Bol-
shevik regime, in spite of its utterly
lawless and arbitrary character, had
succeeded not only in establishing
order, but in raising the general
moral tone of the country.
Yet Mr. Eyre unconsciously dis-
proves all this in the same article.
He bases his conclusion that there is
less crime upon a comparison of sta-
tistics, but in this he fails to take
into consideration that for such a
comparison statistics must refer to
the same things and must have a
common basis of interpretation. Call-
ing attention to a sharp diminution
in the total of criminal cases tried,
he says: "During the Soviet fiscal
year 1918-1919, November to Novem-
ber, there were only 47,120 persons
tried for crime in Petrograd, as
against 160,000 in 1914. The popula-
tion for the former capital in the
same period decreased more than 50
per cent., but still the reduction in
crime is very considerable." The
cases of those tried in 1914 were, of
course, those of persons accused of
offenses against a regularly estab-
lished code of criminal law. The cases
in 1918-1919, however, are entirely
different, as shown by Mr. Eyre's
own statement to the effect that
"judges are obliged not only to ap-
ply, but to create, the laws under
which, according to the Peoples' Com-
missaries' rule, they are to be gov-
erned 'by a sense of Socialist concep-
tion of right.' " In other words, Mr.
Eyre compares the statistics of crim-
inal cases before regularly organized
courts under an established penal
code with the loose and valueless rec-
ords of cases before revolutionary
tribunals, themselves making as well
as administering the laws, according
to some rude ideas of justice, in-
fluenced by popular emotion. He
does not even call attention to the
fact that these tribunals were for the
most part self-chosen or appointed by
irresponsible Commissars, or that
they were frequently composed of
men who themselves were criminals
but recently released from jail.
Having proved to his own satisfac-
tion that crime is on the decrease in
Russia, Mr. Eyre proceeds to explain
this, on the ground, first, of the iron
order imposed by the Soviets in the
informal ruthlessness of their treat-
ment of criminals, and secondly, of
the ban on vodka. This latter reason
is distinctly ludicrous. The ban on
vodka was imposed in 1914 under the
old regime, ajid was made effective,
because the old regime had in its
hands, through the spirits monopoly,
the complete machinery necessary for
its control. At the present time it is
a notorious fact, frequently attested
in the official Bolshevik journals
themselves, that vodka is being manu-
factured everywhere clandestinely
and moonshine spirits abound. Even
the Bolshevik authorities themselves
complain of the extent of drunken-
ness among the Commissars, and
peasants are upbraided for turning
grain into vodka instead of sending it
to the starving towns. But for com-
plete refutation of this theory that
there is a decrease in crime, thanks
to the abolition of vodka, one has only
to refer to the official report of Mr.
V. Milutin of the Supreme Council
of National Economy, published in
its official organ. Economic Life,
on November 7, 1919. After stating
that the sugar-beet industry has fur-
nished the initial step in the creation
of the rural industries, he reports:
"The brandy-distilling industry oc-
cupies the next place, and its develop-
ment has been begun by the Supreme
Council of National Economy during
the last few days." In other words,
the manufacture of vodka as a Gov-
ernment monopoly was resumed
last year and is considered next in
importance after the beet-sugar
industry.
One could multiply such examples
at will in Mr. Eyre's interesting
articles if space permitted. One ad-
ditional illustration, however, will
suffice to show the limitations of a
correspondent, however honest in his
intentions, if he speaks no Russian,
has no background of Russian expe-
rience, and is dependent upon un-
scrupulous Bolshevik leaders for his
information. Much has been written
about education in Russia under the
Soviets, and the radicals have cir-
culated assiduously the fine-sounding
but utterly baseless reports of
Lunacharsky, according to which he
had opened some dozens of popular
universities and ten thousand new
schools, and had devoted billions of
rubles to education. As a matter of
fact, an examination of the news
items in the official Bolshevik press
shows that these popular universities
were closed because no one cared to
attend them, and that, so far from
starting new schools, thousands of
schools were discontinued all over
Russia from lack of teachers. What
is still worse is that in such schools
as remained, the only Instruction that
is given is that devoted to instilling
in the minds of the children Com-
munistic ideas, and all serious educa-
tion, even of the simplest sort, is
neglected. All this is inadvertently
borne out by Mr. Eyre in the very
article In which he describes at
length the Bolshevik claims with ref-
erence to education. But what is most
interesting of all is his description of
education among the soldiers. It is
here that the Soviet Government has
centred its greatest efforts, and so
Mr. Eyre states: "It was claimed
that within two years, if demobiliza-
tion did not intervene, there would
not be a single uneducated Red
soldier." Under the old regime, every
soldier was given a simple education
during his military service, so that
the idea of education among the sol-
diers is not a new one. What is note-
worthy is that at the present time
this is all being directed along the
lines of Communist propaganda, and
further that the admission is inad-
vertently made of a lengthening of
the term of service, which stamps
the Soviet regime as definitely
militaristic.
Such articles as those by Mr.
Eyre, who may be considered as one
of the best of the journalists that
878]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
have been permitted to visit Soviet
Russia, illustrate very clearly how
necesstiry it is to analyze and pick
to pieces the material which is being
sent out of Moscow. If such a task
is properly performed, much valuable
information can be obtained and real
light thrown upon the situation. But
if one takes the correspondence, even
of thoroughly reputable writers,
without such analysis and evaluation,
a wholly distorted impression is cre-
ated, and the Bolshevik authorities
succeed in producing the effect at
which their propaganda aims.
The Preservation of
Our Wild Life
npHERE is scarcely a session of any
•^ American State Legislature, or
of Congress, which does not have be-
fore it some measure for the alleged
protection of fish, wild animals of
the land, or birds. And yet we are
told by the most trustworthy authori-
ties on the subject that many species
of these three classes of wild life —
especially those sought as game by
the sportsman — are passing swiftly
toward extinction It seems quite evi-
dent, therefore, that the legislation so
far enacted is hopelessly defective.
Perhaps the main difficulty with
Congress and the State Legislatures
has been the lack of a suitable body
of scientific information on which to
base a complete, consistent and effec-
tive code of measures for wild life
conservation. Some single phase of it
is brought up, such as the limits of
the open season for bass in Ohio
streams, and classes, or individuals,
of sportsmen's leagues immediately
interested supply such information as
will make for their view — generally
a narrowly limited and one-sided view
— of the matter in hand. The legis-
lator knows not where to turn for
any complete and impartial treatment
of the subject, and the result is likely
to be the triumph of the most skilful
and persistent lobbying. Good legis-
lation in some narrow corner of the
field results, now and then; but per-
manent advance along the entire line
is impossible, so long as the matter is
handled in this piecemeal way.
The situation leads us to suggest
the possibility of a National Com-
mission on the Conservation of Wild
Life. Because of the migratory
habits of certain forms of this life,
the scope of such a commission should
include the whole of North America.
We have already entered the field of
international regulation concerning
this subject, and must enter it still
further to secure the desired ends.
The commission would be expected to
consider the matter in every impor-
tant relation which it might be found
to possess. There is, of course, the
direct value of many of our fishes,
wild animals, and birds as part of
our food supply. What regulations
are necessary to maintain them as a
permanent element in the feeding of
the nation? Others serve as an in-
direct aid in the food supply, such as
the birds which feed upon insects
injurious to fruit, the lesser forms of
aquatic life which furnish needed
food to edible varieties of fish, and
animals which feed upon noxious
forms of life. Forestry also has its
vital interest in the preservation of
such birds as feed upon borers and
insects destructive to trees. Another
phase of the subject is the proper
classification of birds and other ani-
mals which are predominantly harm-
ful, and should be exterminated either
everywhere or in particular districts.
Mistaken legislation has more than
once been passed in this branch of
the field. Information is wanted, too,
as to feasible methods of counteract-
ing harm occasionally done by birds
and animals which are predominantly
useful, and which should be protected
by law.
Such a commission might well be-
gin with an analytical criticism of the
mass of legislation now in existence,
showing what in it is good, what is
rightly intended but wrongly drawn,
and what is essentially vicious, either
because it was so intended by its pro-
ponents, or was bedeviled by crafty
amendments in course of passage.
An analysis of this kind would be
the proper clearing of the ground for
the proposal of a body of State legis-
lation absolutely uniform in its pur-
pose— ^the permanent maintenance in
normal quantity of all desirable forms
of wild life — and differing in form
just where, and just as, local condi-
tions would demand a difference, for
the sole purpose of securing the uni-
form end. One of the most difficult
of all points to be considered would
be the proper adjustment of the
rights of the hunter to the rights of
the landowner, particularly the owner
of lands under tillage, over whose
fields he desires to hunt. Theoreti-
cally, the cooperation of the farmer
in the preservation of game birds and
animals ought to come as a matter of
course. As a matter of fact, it has
generally been very hard to get, just
because his unquestionable rights are
often not duly respected in the law
itself, and are very generally disre-
garded by hunters, even when the
law under which they are licensed is
all right as far as it goes.
Of course the success of such a
commission as we have suggested
would depend wholly upon the fitness
of the men composing it, assuming
a sufficient appropriation to meet any
reasonable expense in the prosecution
of its work. Every one of its mem-
bers should be recognized as capable
pf appreciating and representing the
broad national interest in the sub-
ject, and not merely the point of view
of some class or organization, how-
ever much that class or organization
may have done to promote the public
interest in wild life conservation, or
to secure the passage of protective
laws. The interest at stake is not the
interest of him who carries the rod
or gun, of the "nature lover," of the
farmer, or of the market-man, but of
the whole people. A commission is
needed which would be broad enough
and courageous enough to tell the
hunter, for example, that his hunting
license should cost several times what
he now pays, and give only a fraction
of the privileges which it now gives;
that open seasons should be generally
shortened; and that certain kinds of
game, in certain places, should be
subject to no open season whatever
for a number of years in succession —
if any or all of these restrictions
should appear necessary to the con-
tinued existence, outside museums
and game "sanctuaries," of the wild
life now threatened with extinction.
\
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[379
A Question of
Longevity
■pvR. WILLIAM H. WELCH, the
■'--' eminent pathologist, beginning
his seventy-first year with undimin-
ished vigor and activity, has natu-
rally been asked some questions about
old age, and his answers have both
the good sense and the cheerfulness
which all who know him would have
expected. There is one point, how-
ever, that must leave a critical reader
of the interview in a certain per-
plexity of mind. Asked about "the
Biblical three-score and ten years,"
Dr. Welch exclaimed: "Oh, but we
have changed that. The span of life
has been lengthened. Our greater
knowledge of life and its preserva-
tion has added twelve and a half
years to the span of life in the last
century, and mostly in the last half-
century." But he goes on to state
the familiar statistical fact that the
gain has been made in "the early
period of life," that "infant mortality
has been greatly reduced," that "we
have learned how to control and rem-
edy conditions and diseases which
have made high the death rate among
individuals between birth and the at-
tainment of fifty years of age," but
that in the way of promoting longev-
ity for those who have passed their
fiftieth year "little has been accom-
plished."
Of course, this offhand answer to a
reporter's questions was not intended
to be taken as a scientific dictum.
Yet it is interesting to note that, on
the face of it, the second part of
what Dr. Welch says eats up the
first; if all the gain that has taken
place relates to people under fifty,
people who have reached or are ap-
proaching their three-score and ten
are in the same case as they ever
were. But Dr. Welch is not likely to
have said, even in haste, that we have
"changed all that" without pretty
substantial basis, and one is tempted
to speculate as to the possibility of
reconciling the two statements.
He who judges by his own impres-
sions will feel, as Dr. Welch appar-
ently does, that the man of sixty or
seventy is not as old as he used to be
in former times. Such impressions, to
be sure, are untrustworthy; but sta-
tistics has its own pitfalls, and so has
medical observation. Several years
ago, before the great war had cen-
tred attention upon infinitely more
menacing aspects of the state of the
world, a number of high authorities
were persistently urging upon pub-
lic attention the deterioration in
American vitality which they found
disclosed in the statistics of mortality
above the age of fifty or thereabouts.
Their conclusion from the figures was
that present ways of life had a lower-
ing effect upon vitality which mani-
fested itself in a steady increase in
the percentage of deaths among peo-
ple past middle age. The conclusion
seemed to contradict most people's
observation ; yet if there was no flaw
in the reasoning the statistician was
clearly entitled to the last word. It
was pointed out, however, that there
was reason to doubt the adequacy of
the statistical inquiry; and, for our
part, we regard Dr. Welch's remark,
though a casual one, as a valuable
confirmation of scepticism, coming
from the source that it does.
There are several reasons for
doubting the conclusiveness of the
figures that seem to contradict the
general impression as to the improved
vitality of middle-aged and elderly
people. Immigration is a factor that
obviously complicates the question.
But there is one consideration, less
obvious and more interesting, that
has not received the attention it de-
serves. Paradoxical as it may seem,
it is quite possible for longevity to
be advancing all along the line, and
yet for the death rate among people
above the age of fifty to be increas-
ing. If we think of the population
as divided into two parts, the first
consisting of those among whom the
conditions of life and work are so
hard as seriously to shorten life, and
the second consisting of those that are
favorably placed in this regard, an
improvement of conditions in the first
class might have just the paradoxi-
cal effect we have indicated. For a
great number of deaths in that class
which had formerly taken place be-
fore the age of fifty would now fall
in ages above fifty, and the increased
death rate in those ages might mean
not that the type of people who form-
erly did well at those ages are now
doing worse, but that a type of people
who formerly died before the age of
fifty now live — and therefore also die
— at ages beyond fifty. Shorter hours
and better conditions mean longer
lives for glass-blowers or miners —
clear gain in vitality ; yet in the mor-
tality tables it would look as though
the gain in vitality for ages below fifty
(or forty-five, or whatever it might
be) had been offset by a loss of vital-
ity in ages above fifty.
In the absence, then, of an authori-
tative determination of the question,
we incline very strongly to the be-
lief that people of fifty, and sixty,
and seventy, are younger than they
were in former generations. They
are both better cared for and take
better care of themselves. They live
under better sanitary conditions ; and
when they fall sick they have better
nurses and better hospitals, as well
as the advantages of the splendid
progress of medicine and surgery.
Moreover, in spite of the rush of mod-
ern life, people take life easier than
they did twenty-five or fifty years
ago. They work fewer hours; they
take more holidays; they have not
only greater facilities for comfort,
but are more inclined to make them-
selves comfortable. The middle-aged
business man of to-day, whether play-
ing golf or going to his office in a
Palm Beach suit, not only looks but
feels ten years younger than did his
predecessor of half a century ago,
who sweltered through the New York
summer in his starched shirt and
broadcloth coat.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Corpokation
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars a year in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright, 1920, in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Avres O. W. Firkins
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson
Jerome LANoriELO
380]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
Theodore Dreiser, Philosopher
THE editors of the Review are great
jesters, though this is a secret not
commonly known, and it was in a moment
of unseemly merriment that they asked
me to write an article on the views of
Mr. Dreiser as expounded in his volume
of essays entitled "Hey Rub-a-Dub-
Dub." Now, as these same editors prob-
ably suspect, I have never been able to
read to the end of one of Mr. Dreiser's
novels, and shall never again try to read
one; but under their cynical compulsion I
have read these essays, and, to tell the
truth, have been rather interested by
them. The publishers, Messrs. Boni and
Liveright, kindly inform all prospective
buyers or critics of the book just what
to expect. "If philosophy can ever be
made exciting," they announce on the
jacket, "Mr. Dreiser has here achieved
that feat. Here is Life — mysterious,
terrible, wonderful — and Dreiser look-
ing at it unafraid" (as one can see him
in the photograph furnished with the
book). Well, these publishers, like their
friends the editors, are great humorists,
and it is their jest to evoke the picture
of Mr. Dreiser, in a Jersey City bed-
room, confronting Life, the mysterious
and terrible, and staring the monster out
of countenance. And Mr. Dreiser him-
self, who may or may not have provided
the publishers with the notion of his
heroic eye-duel, has his funny side. For
instance, he has a humorous way of deal-
ing with Logic. "In England," he writes,
"they hung men for sheep-stealing a few
hundred years ago, and yet sheep were
and still are stolen in England. It is
death to kill your neighbor, and yet when
did man ever cease killing his neighbor?"
Argal, the statute books are void of
effect and human conduct is governed
solely by "the first or pyknotic law of
energy as laid down by Vogt."
A good deal of amusement might be
got out of Mr. Dreiser's logic, his
pyknotic scraps of learning, and his por-
tentous solemnity. But cui bono? Prob-
ably he would not laugh at his own jests,
and I certainly should not. And so I
prefer to take him rather seriously as a
sign of the times; his originality and
egotism are a mere pose, while in reality
he is voicing, somewhat hoarsely, the sen-
timents of a large class of men who take
their uneasy muddle of ideas for phil-
osophy. He says it himself: "Philoso-
phers have dreamed, poets have written ;
and I, mussing around among religions,
philosophies, fictions, and facts, can find
nothing wherewith to solve my vaulting
egoism, no light, and no way to be any-
thing more than the humblest servitor."
He is a "servitor" in two things. In
one mood he is the voice of Nietzscheism :
"The race has always been, and will so
remain, of course, to the swift, and the
battle to the strong. . . . The best
that can be said for the theories laid
down in the American Declaration is
that they do more credit to the hearts
of those who penned them than to their
heads." Nietzsche is right, and no truer
book than Machiavelli's "Prince" was
ever composed. Even the masses of men,
dull as they are, yet know in their hearts
that they are of small importance here or
there. Our captains of industry, as we
name our "blond beasts," have been cun-
ning and greedy and relentless; they
have bought legislatures and robbed the
people; they have been a failure in so far
as they have not realized their mission
to create the genuine superman; yet,
after all, they are the best we have, and
out of their slyness and ferocity are pro-
duced whatever scant gleams of art and
beauty have fallen to our lot in a demo-
cratic country.
All this is harshly expressed by Mr.
Dreiser and with a needless swagger, but
in fact it is a view of Life more com-
monly held, though often inarticulately,
by poor as well as by rich than we like to
admit.
And so Mr. Dreiser, swimming with
the tide, is a Nietzschean — on one page.
On the next you will find him the sleek
and orthodox humanitarian; and why
not? He has worked as a day-laborer
at the building of a railroad, and been
promoted to foreman of a gang; and in
both positions he has revolted from the
grinding burden imposed upon the
masses, while, as it seemed to him in the
trenches, their employers were wallow-
ing in slothful ease. And so, in a mo-
ment of pity and dejection, he threw up
his job of driving foreman, with a cry
of bitterness against the injustice of life.
One is rather drawn to Mr. Dreiser by
this honest report of his experience;
whatever one may say of his philosophy,
he put into personal practice the sym-
pathy which generally exhausts itself in
vague whimperings or wild threats or at-
tempts to reform somebody else.
This, I should say, is the distinguish-
ing note of the book, this oscillation
between a theory of evolution which sees
no progress save by the survival of the
rapaciously strong and a humanitarian
feeling of solidarity with the masses who
are exploited in the process. It even
looks occasionally as if Life had called
Mr. Dreiser's bluff.
The remarkable thing is not that Mr.
Dreiser should be intellectually in this
state of unstable equilibrium, but that
he should pose, or be posed by his pub-
lishers, as an original thinker. The fact
rather is that, like a good many other
vociferous egotists, he is merely tossed
about by the contrary currents of popu-
lar opinion. In his chapter on "Some
Aspects of Our National Character" he
has written rather a telling indictment
of the "psychological flounderings and
back somersaults" of the American peo-
ple before and during and since the war.
For instance, we went into the war under
the plea that the world had to be made
"safe for democracy," yet once in the
war we, the people, submitted to an au-
tocracy worse than that of Russia, and
so on, and so on. The account is brilliant,
and humiliating; but, oddly enough, Mr.
Dreiser never seems to guess that the
flounderings of democracy— as democracy
now is — are the sure result of just this
polarization of the popular temperament
between Nietzscheanism and humanitar-
ianism of which he himself is a conspicu-
ous example. Nor does he see that this
swaying from one extreme of emotion
to the other follows naturally on the
denial of all those laws of moral ac-
countability and the abrogation of all
those spiritual values which we sum up
under the name of religion.
Oh, I know that Mr. Dreiser, like
others of his kind, has a good deal to
say about balance and equilibration and
that sort of thing. But if there is no
purpose in the unfolding events of crea-
tion, no certain law of justice perceived
by faith and truer intuition through the
apparent chances of life, no incorrupti-
ble tribunal, no inner rewards and penal-
ties besides those which a man can grasp
in his hands and feel in his flesh, no
ideal world of which this material world
is the illusory shadow; if man is nothing
more than a product of chemic and me-
chanic forces, a blind cog in a blind ma-
chine, if the great achievement of phil-
osophy is "to rid the human mind of all
vain illusion concerning things spirit-
ual," if life is a mere "social or chemic
drift," to be reckoned in the end only
"errant and nonsensical," if "so-called
vice and crime and destruction and so-
called evil are as fully a part of the uni-
versal creative process as are the so-
called virtues, and do as much good" — if
these things are true, what compelling
power is there in such fine words as "bal-
ance" and "equilibration" and the like,
and what remains to save a man from
oscillating restlessly between the poles of
his temperament, practising a more than
Nietzschean hardness when his cupidity
is excited, urging an indiscriminate hu-
manitarianism when his sympathies are
touched without too much cost to him-
self? I do not mean to imply that man-
kind in general to-day would assent to
the blatant logic of materialism which
glares in Mr. Dreiser's eyes when he
confronts Life; but it is true, neverthe-
less, that he is symptomatic of social
disease, in so far as masses of mankind
have lost their hold on any save mate-
rialistic values. Just to this extent
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[381
democracy has in fact become a victim
of evolutionary philosophy, and Mr.
Dreiser is a victim of democracy. But
I for one refuse to believe that the equa-
tion of democracy and materialism is
necessary.
In one respect Mr. Dreiser has out-
stepped the popular mind, though in this,
too, the multitude may soon be at his
heels. I refer to his unmitigated alle-
giance to the theories of the man whom
our inquisitive college youth are begin-
ning to speak of reverentially as "Frood."
Mr. Dreiser has much to say about the
"shabby little pinchbeck repressions" of
the moralists. "In no law code and in no
religion of any nation," he declares, "has
the sex question, the need of moderation,
duty to family and the like, been ignored ;
but in all that time the social expression
of sex has never been so much as modi-
fied, let alone done away with." (His
facts are as false to history as his logic
is funny; but we pass that.) And then
to illustrate this truth, as he holds it,
he paints a lurid, and, alas, not wholly
falsified, picture of the inconsistency of
one of our traditionally Puritan towns,
where a lofty code of ethics is still
preached officially and decreed legally.
while in practice the literature, the
movies, the dancing, and the women's
dress are all devised to keep the sexual
emotions in a state of excitation. The
actual results as he sets them forth in
"Neurotic America" are not pleasant
reading — except to the author. A rea-
sonable man might suggest that the way
out of such a morbid dilemma would be,
not to repudiate all laws of repression,
but to look to the imagination, where
alone restraint can be normally effective ;
and this reform in the realm of imagina-
tion, he might add, is impossible until
men have been taught again the reality
of those values which are not of the
body. But Mr. Dreiser, naturally, will
have none of this ; he admits, in fact, no
quarrel with neuroticism, but only with
those who reject the full consequences
of Freudianism for some antiquated
folly of faith and decency.
We are told that Mr. Dreiser has made
philosophy "exciting" and has confronted
Life unafraid. Perhaps he has only sunk
down in terror of true life into the cur-
rents of decomposition that have been
flowing in dark, ill-smelling places from
the beginning of time.
P. E. M.
The Case of Maurice Maeterlinck
THE gift of imagination is a precious
power, likewise an insidious lure.
How to give it play without letting it
run wild is a persistent problem. The
grindstone routine of harsh reality
crushes its claims; but suppressed in-
stincts crowd for escape, and, along with
romance and day-dreams, the occult of-
fers satisfaction to those weary of a
severely rational diet. Balanced rations,
bom of domestic science under chemical
rule, are disagreeably nutritious, monot-
onous, and unstimulating. The artist,
the poet, and the dramatist cater to an-
other palate, in which calories are irrele-
vant and taste rules supreme. So may
, it ever be !
The troubles of the denied imagination
make a sorry tale, to be recited to school-
boards and other hard-headed officials of
the intellectual life. The present inquiry
concerns the surfeited and unregulated
imagination of the irreconcilables with
; reality. The case of Maeterlinck, the
occultist, commands attention by reason
I of its compensation in the dramatist.
There is also the bourgeois mysticism of
jthe essays, drifting on a calm moonlit
isea of speculation, scorning harbors and
lighthouses that make the irregular ven-
jture possible. Questioning in his fav-
orite mood, one may wonder by what
;fateful spell, by what malicious Lorelei
|he was enticed to the charted realms
jguarded by the prosaic sentinels of
Iscience! There is no need to suppose
that the fertile fantasy of the dramas
debouches in the fantastic credulity of
the essays, with their amazing depar-
tures from the ordinary standards of
plausibility; one must be content to
record that logical compunctions have
yielded disastrously to the aesthetic satis-
factions of bizarre belief.
It may seem needlessly didactic and
cruel to apply intelligence tests to a
poetic mind. Intelligence testers at
times find great disparity between the
mental and the physical age; when the
instincts and desires of maturity appear
without the responsible control of rea-
son, those thus defective may become a
menace to the community. The lack of
relation between emotional and intel-
lectual development in the higher
reaches of personality can not be simply
plotted, though the uncongeniality of the
poetic and the objective temperament —
what William James called the "fem-
inine-mystical" and the "scientific-aca-
demic" mind — is a matter of common
comment. Ungenerous as it may appear
towards one richly honored as a master
dramatist in his genre, the suspicion can
hardly be avoided of a critical de-
fect in logic that passes the bounds of
normality.
The imposing Proceedings of the So-
ciety for Psychical Research and the
Annates des sciences psychiques are not
responsible for such temperamental lean-
ings— only for their confirmation. In
the older, deeper sense, Maeterlinck is
not an occultist — not a searcher or re-
searcher into mysteries, and the devotee
of a cult — and by his own avowal he is not
a spiritualist ; he is a collector of psychic
rarities — a miraculist displaying his
trophies under the seal of psychical re-
search. To that type of mind the miracu-
lous must be real because it is so inter-
esting; the apparently incredible must be
true because so inviting. The world of
the common man becomes a pitiable
torso, to be restored to its pristine integ-
rity by the revelations of mediums and
the "psychic flashes" of rare men (or,
more commonly, women) and — be it
anticipated — equally rare horses. Men
of science live pitiably in a dark cave,
with their backs to the entrance, and
their eyes closed.
To the miraculist, the truly signiflcant
places are not the formal chambers of the
earthly mansions, nor the busy floors of
the workshops, but the obscure corners
of the attic. The temple of wisdom is
to be built of rejected stones, and pre-
pared for the reception of "The Un-
known Guest." We have "table-turning
with its raps; the movements and trans-
portations of inanimate objects without
contact; luminous phenomena; lucidite
or clairvoyance; veridical apparitions or
hallucinations; haunted houses; biloca-
tions and so forth ; communications with
the dead; the divining rod; the miracu-
lous cures of Lourdes and elsewhere;
fluidic asepsis; and lastly the famous
thinking animals of Elberfeld and Mann-
heim." Ghosts that haunt until their
mortal remains are "decently interred";
"scattered limbs; pale, diaphanous, but
capable hands" suddenly appearing in a
physiological laboratory in the presence
of the notorious Palladino; seeing and
hearing at any distance in space; fore-
telling the future; solving police mys-
teries by trance-revelations; reading a
life-history by a lock of hair or a scrap
of writing; warning of danger by
mystic voices; presentiments; premoni-
tions; exploded tales of Indian jugglery;
mathematical and philological equine
prodigies ; — anything, everything, that
is sufficiently unusual, incredible, and
discredited is invested by the omnivor-
ous miraculist with the crucial signifi-
cance of the rare psychic ray that
penetrates the dark ignorance wherein
ordinary men spend their dull skeptical
days.
That a man of distinction in an in-
tellectual profession should be convinced
that the shallow survivals of superstition
to which he subscribes are demonstrated
and momentous facts, should undertake
to inform the public that many of them
are now a "matter of scientific experi-
ment," will be set down by the charitable
as a naive lack of critical sense, and by
the plain-spoken as an amazing instance
382]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
of twentieth-century gullibility. But no
enumeration of the strangely assorted
wares which are to be found upon the
shelves and in the cupboards of M.
Maeterlinck's sanctum can convey an ade-
quate sense of the state of mind of the
convert who finds comfort in their ac-
cumulation. For this, we must go to the
attests of their genuineness and the de-
scriptions of their virtues.
When, in September, 1913, the obscure
M. Maeterlinck went upon his pilgrimage
to the miraculous horses of Elberfeld, his
wife (likewise incognito) took a letter
of his to a clairvoyante medium, Mme.
M., who — wonderful to relate — "without
a second's hesitation, declared that I was
very far away, in a foreign country
where they spoke a language which she
did not understand." Also that the un-
known traveler was standing in a court-
yard examining horses ; also that he was
wearing a long coat (common among
hostlers). In this remarkable instance
of clairvoyance there are "two rather
curious mistakes," M. Maeterlinck ob-
serves; the one that he was no longer
in the stable-yard when Mme. M. saw him
there, and the other that he did not
wear a long coat. Otherwise, the vision
is scrupulously, if cautiously, correct,
even to the insight that the horses were
exhibited, not in the drawing-room or the
counting-house, but in the courtyard.
Whereupon M. Maeterlinck comments :
The transmission of thought is remarkable;
but this is a recognized phenomenon, and one
of frequent occurrence, and we need not,
therefore, linger over it. The real mystery
begins with the description of a place which
my wife had never seen and which I had not
seen Mther at the time of writing the note
which established the psychometrical com-
munication. Are we to believe that the ap-
pearance of what I was one day to see was
already inscribed on the prophetic sheet of
paper; or more simply and more probably tl;at
the paper which represented myself was
enough to submit either to my wife's sub-
consciousness or to Mme. M., whom, at that
time. I had never met, an exact picture of
what my eyes beheld three or four hundred
miles away?
On a later occasion, M. Maeterlinck
took to the same clairvoyante a letter
containing a request for his autograph.
"She began by describing us, my wife
and myself, who both of us had touched
the paper and consequently impregnated
it with our respective 'fluids.' "
On the one hand, we shall have to admit that
the sheet of paper handed to the psychometer
and impregnated with human "fluid" contains,
after the manner of some prodigiously com-
pressed gas, all the incessantly renewed, in-
cessantly recurring images that surround a
person, all his past and perhaps his future, his
psychology, his state of health, his wishes, his
intentions, often unknown to himself, his most
secret instincts, his likes and dislikes, all that
is bathed in light and all that is plunged in
darkness, his whole life in short, and more
than his personal and conscious life, besides
all the lives and all the influences, good or bad,
latent or manifest, of all who approach him.
We should have here a mystery as unfathom-
able and at least as vast as that of generation.
which transmits, in an infinitesimal particle,
the mind and matter, with all the qualities and
all the faults, all the acquirements and all the
history, of a series of lives of which none can
tell the number.
On the other hand, if we do not admit that
so much energy can lie concealed in a sheet of
paper, continuing to exist and develop in-
definitely there, we must necessarily suppose
that an inconceivable network of nameless
forces is perpetually radiating from this same
paper, forces which, cleaving time and space,
detect instantaneously, anywhere and at any
distance, the life that gave them life and place
themselves in complete communication, body
and soul, senses and thoughts, past and future,
consciousness and subconsciousness, with an
existence lost amid the innumerous host of
men who people this earth. It is, indeed, ex-
actly what happens in the experiments with
mediums in automatic speech or writing, who
believe themselves to be inspired by the dead.
Yet here it is no longer a discarnate spirit, but
an object of any kind imbued with a living
"fluid," that works the miracle ; and this, we
may remark in passing, deals a severe blow to
the spiritualistic theory.
All this elaborate obfuscation, because
a shrewd medium guessed and "fished"
and pieced together a simple situation
into which the believer injected what
trivial mystery it may be made to as-
sume. There is more of this tinsel, end-
less tangled skeins of it; let one other
sample suffice :
Nevertheless, there are two rather serious
objections to this second explanation. Grant-
ing that the object really places the medium
in communication with an unknown entity dis-
covered in space, how comes it that the image
or the spectacle created by that communica-
tion hardly ever corresponds with the reahty
at the actual moment? On the oAer hand,
it is indisputable that the psychometer's clair-
voyance, his gift of seeing at a distance the
pictures and scenes surrounding an unknown
ijeing, is exercised with the same certainty and
the same power when the object that sets his
strange faculty at work has been touched by
a person who has been dead for years. Are
we, then, to admit that there is an actual, liv-
ing communication with a human being who is
no more, who sometimes — as, for instance, in
a case of incineration — has left no trace of
himself on earth, in short, with a dead man
who continues to live at the place and at the
moment at which he impregnated the object
wiih his "fluid" and who seems to be unaware
that i:e is dead?
The insane reveal their infirmities not
so much by what they believe as by the
reasons they give for their delusions and
the confidence with which they hold
them, and also by the obvious explana-
tions which they overlook. To maintain
that a powerful medium can see across
a few hundred miles seems a mild and
rational assumption compared with this
absurd speculation about "fluids" and
energy and compressed gas and genera-
tion and nameless forces, jumbled into a
vapid cloud of verbiage. Without quota-
tion-marks the reader may well refuse to
believe that this drivel emanates from
the author of "The Blue Bird" and
"Monna Vanna." Nor is this a diversion
or a lapse of an otherwise sober dis-
course. The writer is deadly serious ; to
question these vagaries is heresy :
I consider it necessary to declare for the last
time that these psychometric phenomena, aston-
ishing though they appear at first, are known,
proved, and certain, and are no longer denied
or doubted by any of those who have studied
them seriously. I could have given full par-
ticulars of a large number of conclusive ex-
periments ; but this seemed to me as super-
fluous and tedious as would be, for instance, a
string of names of the recognized chemical
reactions that can be obtained in a laboratory.
There is mystery here: the mystery
that the dramatist and the miraculist —
at least so unreserved and abandoned a
miraculist — should occupy the same tene-
ment of clay and use the same cerebral
hemispheres for their writings. Perhaps
Andrew Lang suggested the explanation :
There are also people who so dislike our
detention in the prison-house of unvarying
laws that their bias is in favor of anything
which may tend to prove that science in her
contemporary mood is not infallible. As the
Frenchman did not care what sort of scheme
he invested money in, provided that it annoys
the English, so many persons do not care what
they invest belief in, provided that it irritates
men of science.
Or did George Eliot hit the mark when
she observed that the absurd is "a per-
fectly juicy thistle" to certain types?
Gnats and camels, mediums and horses,
are all swallowed without any sign of
strain. The prologue of the miracle-play
called "The Elberfeld Horses" goes back
to Berlin twenty years ago. A stallion
earned the title of "Kluger Hans" by con-
vincing his master and tutor, Herr von
Osten, as well as a host of better-educated
Berliners, that a horse, under proper
schooling, could count, add, multiply, sub-
tract, divide, convert decimals into frac-
tions, tell time by the watch, name the
notes on the musical scale, tell what tone
is missing to make a harmony, spell out
the name of an object or a picture, give
the day for any date, repeat a sentence
after a lapse of twenty-four hours, catch
the meaning of words when whispered —
in fact, reach the intellectual status of a
fourteen-year-old child. Berlin was ex-
cited, and rushed into pamphlets and
controversy — a favorite Teutonic indoor
sport. To quiet the uncertainty, a com-
mission was appointed, including eminent
university professors and psychologists.
By a shrewd and painstaking analysis,
they solved the mystery. As the ques-
tioner finishes the question, he bends his
head ever so slightly, which Clever Hans
has learned to accept as a signal to begin
tapping with his foot; as the questioner
follows the tapping, his interest causes
him to bend forward more and more, and
then to straighten his posture when the
correct number is reached, which is the
signal for Hans to stop. Herr von Osten
was honest, but as self-deceived as table-
tippers; the signals were wholly invol-
untary, and Hans deserved his title, and
his sugar and carrots, for his part in the
performance. According to Maeterlinck,
the result of the report was that "people
felt a sort of half-cowardly relief at be-
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[383
holding the prompt collapse of a miracle
which was threatening to throw con-
fusion into the self-satisfied little fold
of established truths." Von Osten died
of a broken heart. Maeterlinck is his
avenger.
A new champion of equine genius
promptly appeared. Herr Krall of
Elberfeld discovered two Arab steeds,
Muhamed and Zarif (as is well known,
we derive our number lore from the
Arabs), whose mathematical genius
makes Hans's accomplishments seem a
kindergarten exercise. After three weeks
of instruction, Muhamed could count,
add, subtract, multiply, divide, in whole
numbers and in fractions; in the second
month he learned to reply to questions
in French as well as German; within
four months he learned to spell; thence
by leaps and bounds he galloped to erudi-
tion. Having read these accounts Maeter-
linck was "wholly persuaded of the
genuineness of the incidents" before
starting upon his pilgrimage.
At length he stands before the sacred
animals. Herr Krall speaks :
"Muhamed, attention ! This is your uncle
[pointing to me] who has come all the way
to honor you with a visit. Mind you don't
disappoint him. His name is Maeterlinck.
. . . Now show him that you know your let-
ters and that you can spell a name correctly."
Muhamed gives a short neigh . . . strikes first
with his right hoof and then with his left
the number of blows which correspond with
the letter M in the conventional alphabet used
by the horses. Then one after the other, with-
out stopping or hesitating, he marks the let-
ters ADRLINSH, representing the unexpected
aspect which my humble name assumes in the
equine mind and phonetics. His attention is
called to the fact that there is a mistake. He
readily agrees and replaces the SH by a G and
then the G by a K. They insist that he must
put T instead of the D ; but Muhamed, con-
tent with his work, shakes his head to say
NO and refuses to make any further correc-
tions.
In a second experiment, Maeterlinck
proposed the name of the hotel at which
he was registered, Weidenhof: which ap-
peared in hoofiform spelling as WEIDN-
HOZ (the Z upon request corrected to
an F), and elicited this comment:
"Observe, by the way, the logic of his
phonetic writing: contrary to his habit,
he [Muhamed] strikes the mute E after
the W, because it is indispensable; but,
finding it included in the D, he considers
it superfluous and suppresses it with a
high hand," — or low hoof.
It is the "by-the-ways" that reveal the
complete abandonment of the miraculist
to the spell of conviction, cost what it
may. The philological comment is fol-
lowed by a rhapsody :
Was all this what they hid in their eyes,
those silent brothers of ours? You blush at
man's long injustice. You look around you
for some sort of trace, obvious or subtle, of
the mystery. . . . It is as though a sort of
higher instinct, which knows everything and
is not ignorant of the miracles that hang over
our heads, were reassuring us in advance and
lielping us to make an easy entrance into the
regions of the supernatural.
We approach the climax of credulity.
After the Mahlzeit, the experiments are
resumed :
Pointing to me, he asks Muhamed if he re-
members what his uncle's name is. The horse
raps out an H. Krall is astonished and utters
fatherly reprimands : "Come, take care ! You
know it's not an H." The horse raps out an
E. Krall becomes a little impatient : he
threatens, he implores, he promises in turn
carrots and the direst punishments [at the
hands of the groom, for Krall does not punish
the horses, for fear of losing their confidence].
"Come now, are you going to be more care-
ful and not rap out your letters anyhow?"
Muhamed obstinately goes his own way and
strikes an R. Then Krall's open face lights
up : "He's right," he says. "You understand :
HER standing for Herr. He wanted to give
you the title to which every man wearing a
top hat or a bowler has the right. He does it
only very rarely and I had forgotten about it.
He probably heard me call you Herr Maeter-
linck and wanted to get it perfectly."
While this ridiculous fable amply
proves the completeness of Herr Krall's
delusions, it may be capped by a still
wilder tale told by Krall and swallowed
whole by his distinguished guest; that
one day quite spontaneously "an abso-
lutely human sentence" came letter by
letter from Zarif's "ouija-board" hoofs;
" 'Albert [the groom] has beaten
Hanschen' [the pony]. Another time
I wrote down from his dictation,
'Hanschen has bitten Kama' [a young
elephant]. Like a child seeing its father
after an absence, he felt the need to in-
form me of the little doings of the
stable."
In such a paranoiac atmosphere
miracles generate spontaneously. Square
roots and cube roots are as familiar as
turnips; and it is Maeterlinck's shocking
arithmetical limitations and not those of
Muhamed that stop the performance.
Horses explain their inability to speak by
striking out: Weil ig kein Stim hbe
(because I have no voice). The 4th root
of 7890481 is given as 53 even when the
answer is unknown to the questioner.
But it is the explanations that disclose
how completely they who enter here have
abandoned all reason. Horses are clearly
mediums; they do not solve these prob-
lems by our clumsy systems but by
"psychic flashes"; telepathy is seriously
discussed as a partial factor; when the
horses make a mistake and tap 73 for 37,
the question arises whether this is due
to mirror-writing; the equine subliminal
consciousness is always functioning and
supplies that mysterious intuition known
as horse sense. Nothing less than a
weary reading of the 140-page essay can
suggest the possessed irresponsibility of
the "facts" and the extravagant irrel-
evance of the befuddled explanations.
But the insult of it all is the persistent
attempt to square these accounts with
what is known of animal psychology. In
the good old credulous days Pegasus and
the Unicom were accepted on faith; their
zoological afliinities were not a problem.
But the equine Euclid is demonstrated
"with the convincing force of photo-
graphic records," which only the stupid
prejudices of psychologists refuse to
accept.*
The pilgrimage to Elberfeld may well
prove the occultist's undoing. Despite
their versatile gaits, horses can not side-
step and cover their tracks as mediums
can. Without this coveted specimen Mae-
terlinck's collection of psychic miracles
might have imposed upon the uncritical
and retained its prestige. With it the
quality of the entire collection becomes
suspicious. Not that Maeterlinck stands
alone in succumbing to the lure of animal
mythology ; many another well-known in-
tellectual has come to test the intelligence
of the horses and by his report has
shown that the horses tested his — and
found it wanting. But Maeterlinck is in-
sistent. One might have thought that
he would show some respectful atten-
tion to the report, repudiating equine
geniuses, signed by Professor Stumpf,
the psychologist of the University of
Berlin; or to the monograph of Dr.
Pfungst, which was deemed worthy of
an English translation with a laud-
atory introduction by Professor Angell,
psychologist of the University of Chi-
cago. This admirable investigation,
which has been generally accepted as con-
vincing, is dismissed as a "monument of
useless pedantry," based on "a cumbrous
and puerile theory." The irresponsibility
of the verdict offsets its imperinence;
it suggests a more fundamental dis-
qualification for judgment than a blind
prepossession explains.
Such is the case of Maurice Maeter-
*With apologies to the reader for implying that any
further detailed explanation of this preposterous farce
IS necessary, let it be briefly stated that the signs
(whatever they are) by which Muhamed, like Hans,
knows when to begin and when to stop pawing with
both left and right foot, are irregularly given and
easily missed. Consequently, wholly irrelevant letters
appear; for, in his eagerness, the horse may stop
pawing a little too soon, or not catch the clue quite
soon enough. The arrangement by which each letter
IS indicated by a combination of two numbers is wholly
arbitrary. Thus "Pferd"—A word commonly asked
for — IS spelled" by the phonetic Muhamed in over
thirty different ways. That the questioner and not the
horse perfoms the operation (while the horse is intent
only upon the sign which spells carrots) is amply
shown by the analysis in the case of both Hans and
of Muhamed. When the questioner knew the answer
to the question, from 90 per cent, to 100 per cent, of
the horse's answers were correct; when the questioner
did not know the answer, from 6 per cent, to 10 per
cent, were correct; this for Hans, as appears in the re-
port of Dr. Pfungst. For the Elberfeld horses, the
successes when the questioner did not know the .-inswer
were from 8 per cent, to 1 1 per cent. The small residue
of successes .may well be due to the constant repeti-
tion of certain combinations (as in number habits)
and the increased chance of the favorite tapping pat-
tern asserting itself at the right time. The further
fact that the simplest problems are answered with no
greater accuracy than the most complex ones, tliat the
horses start at once upon the answer without any
hesitation, that they do not look at the figures or
boards upon which the problems appear, abundantly
show that no question of ealculatinif or reasoning
enters.
While there has been no definitive examination of
the Elberfeld horses, the critical accounts warrant the
conclusion of Professor Watson (who includes an ac-
count of them in his authoritative book on "Behavior"
for the sake of the light which they throw upon
animal intelligence as well as upon human lack of it)
that their responses do "not rise above the level of
those given by Hans.**
386)
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
always chasing some notion or other
which had no possible relation to prac-
tice— witness German transcendental
philosophy — and that all such stuff would
not amount to anything in the end: it
was all "mere ideas." Perhaps after
further reflection upon the war and upon
antecedent history, the Anglo-Saxon
mind will decide that mere ideas are
the fuel of all great fires ; that in schools
and colleges this fuel is piled up day by
day, waiting for sparks; and that it
would be good economy, even if certain
more "practical" subjects had to be dis-
placed in the process, to require all young
students to take a course in elementary
ethics (and religion, when possible) as
applied to political life. So far, however.
this point has not been loudly emphasized
in plans for post-bellum reconstruction.
I must recall words uttered in London
ten years ago by a young Englishman—
a representative Oxford graduate, who
had spent four years in Germany, and
with whom I was comparing notes — "0
yes, they talked all that political tommy-
rot to me, too. Mere pedantry, you know.
Just pedantic book-notions that never
come to anything. They'll get over it.
But my word, what a joy to watch them
do tennis! Throw themselves into it as
if the whole of civilization were at stake.
And what a terrible mess they do make of
it, eh?"
G. R. Elliott
The Revival of the Classic Drama
IN a recent address to the League for
Political Education, I took occasion
to speak of the degradation of the stage
as a great organ of public instruction.
A fragment from this speech was used
as the basis of an article in the New
York Tribune, of Sunday, February 15,
and among those who commented upon
my indictment of the stage in recent
years was Mr. David Belasco.
I confess to considerable surprise that
Mr. Belasco, who as a producer has had
high ambitions for the stage, while ac-
cepting my premise, seems to dissent
from the conclusions which I drew. He
appears to justify the frivolous play as
though it were the chief end of the stage.
He says: "It is a theatrical manager's
duty at times to crowd the stage with as
many pretty women, as much youth, and
light and charm, as possible." And he
proceeds to state that each Friday night
finds him at a musical comedy, "as near
the front as I can get," where, as he
states, he is refreshed and invigorated
by "the love-making of the handsome
tenor and the beautiful soprano."
I did not question that, even on the
stage, a little nonsense, now and then,
is very much relished, and the real ques-
tion, which Mr. Belasco did not discuss,
was as to the relative proportion which
the amusing should bear to the instruc-
tive and inspiring. Shakespeare could
blend both in one play to great advan-
tage; but it may be cheerfully admitted
that there are few Shakespeares.
Mr. Belasco proceeds to make the
amazing statement that there are "fewer
frivolous plays in New York than in any
other big city in other lands." If this
be so, then the titles to New York plays
are very misleading, and matters of
great pith and moment can be found
"Up in Mabel's Room." Mr. Belasco
finally says that he pays out twenty
thousand dollars a year in advance royal-
ties, and yet "can not get the sort of seri-
ous play that I want." He rejects many.
because, in his judgment, they are
"overly serious and altogether too
gloomy."
My contention was that most of the
fifty theatres now producing plays in
New York devoted their energy to the
exploitation of the very lightest and most
frivolous of productions. I cheerfully
recognize that there are some honorable
exceptions. While recognizing that the
stage, as a great and potent instrumen-
tality of society, has as one of its func-
tions to amuse and entertain the public
in this work-a-day age, yet I also em-
phasized that its larger functions were
to instruct and inspire, and that, in these
latter functions, the American stage had,
in recent years, largely failed.
Those of us who would like to see the
stage restored to its true position, as
one of the four great pillars of society,
may well feel discouraged when the fore-
most of American producers seems to at-
tach so little importance to the stage as
a serious medium for public instruction
and inspiration.
Feeling some curiosity to contrast the
opportunities of a young man of this
day to hear the best and noblest in the
drama with those of the period when the
writer was a young man, I took occasion
to consult my diary for the year 1883,
and I found that in that year I had seen
in my native city (Philadelphia) the fol-
lowing plays: Robson and Crane in "A
Comedy of Errors"; Salvini in "Lear"
and "Othello"; Janauschek in Schiller's
"Mary Stuart"; Salvini in "The Civil
Death"; Langtry in "She Stoops to Con-
quer"; Modjeska in "Cymbeline," "As
You Like It," and "Twelfth Night";
Sheridan in "King Lear"; Rose Eytinge
in "A Winter's Tale"; Rhea, the noted
French actress; Irving and Terry in
"The Merchant of Venice," "Charles the
First," and "Hamlet."
Even the plays then produced which
were not classics had at least the merit
of intelligence, and Boston, New York,
and Philadelphia each had its stock com-
pany with an extensive repertory of
classic and modern plays. Why can not
New York with six millions of people
have another company like Daly's?
As the fish that were discovered in the
dark recesses of the Mammoth Cave were
found to be blind, because they had never
been privileged to see the light, the dis-
appearance of the classic drama has been
followed by the passing of the actor who
could read the lines. I have been in-
formed by those who ought to know that,
to establish at this time a Shakespeare
theatre in any of our leading American
cities, would involve the preliminary
necessity of training a school of actors,
even to read the lines, much more to
interpret the roles. Raw material is not
wanting. To-day there are more good
actors and actresses than ever before.
But there are few great ones, because so
few great plays are given.
The present seems to be the psycholog-
ical time to start afresh in this matter.
After the Civil War was ended, there
came to the American people a deep seri-
ousness, which found its reflection in the
revival of the classic drama. Only a
few years after Appomattox, Edwin
Booth played "Hamlet" for one hun-
dred consecutive nights in New York,
and then followed it with a revival
of "Romeo and Juliet" for sixty-eight
nights. Thus the public demand for two
serious Shakespearean tragedies was so
great that for nearly a half-year these
plays ran successfully — and New York
at that time probably did not number
over a million people.
It seems fruitless to urge these ob-
vious facts, which all intelligent men
must recognize with regret and humilia-
tion, if we depend upon the theatre as
a business enterprise. The knowledge
of the syndicates that own and control
nearly all the American theatres consists
largely in the old aphorism that "Shake-
speare spells ruin." They believe that
the taste of the public is confined to the
class of plays which revolve around a
bedroom, as that eminent theatrical man-
ager, Mr. Vincent Crummies, caused his
dramatist to write a play around a pump.
But it might be suggested, even to these
gentlemen, that there are bedroom
dramas with a very serious purpose.
"Othello" is one of them, "Cymbeline,"
another.
All this leads me to believe that the
work that requires the earliest attention
is to found a classic theatre by com-
munity effort that will, so far as one
theatre can, lift the stage above the
dull and sordid mediocrity of its pres-
ent management.
It may be admitted that the revival of
the classic drama can not be accomplished
as a mere business enterprise, or through
some of the human agencies which to-
day control the American stage. They
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[887
much prefer the moral scum of the
Great White Way. The appeal should
be made to the parents, who ought to
feel not a little real concern with respect
to the intellectual as well as the aesthetic
advancement of the rising genera-
tion.
The more serious problem presents it-
self as to how a competent stock com-
pany could be recruited at this time,
when there are so many competent
actors and actresses for modern plays,
but so few who any longer have any
training in the classic drama. Undoubt-
edly such a theatre would necessarily be
a matter of slow growth. It would be
necessary to build up a stock company
slowly, and, at first, with disappointing
results. There are, however, actors who
would willingly drop the trivial parts
they now play and attempt something
more worthy of their noble profession.
Those who saw George Gaul last season
play the part of "Job" in the dramatized
version of that wonderful book of the
Bible, will never forget the consummate
skill with which he read the most re-
markable poetry, perhaps, that the litera-
ture of the world knows. I have fol-
lowed the theatre from the time of E. L.
Davenport down to the present time, and
have seen nearly all the great actors of
England and America and some of the
great actors of France and Germany, and,
in my judgment, George Gaul's perform-
ance of "Job" was a real achievement,
considering that the play had almost no
action and that the actor was obliged
to rely upon the skillful rendition of his
lines. There are doubtless many Gauls
in the profession wasting their talents
upon trivial parts. It certainly would
be a crowning reflection upon the Amer-
ican stage if, from the thousand actors
and actresses who have not yet become
stars, a company could not be recruited
which, with adequate training and with
the wise guidance of students of Shake-
speare, would become a very competent
company.
But, after all, "the play's the thing."
Better a Shakespeare play, even though
inadequately done, than not to have
Shakespeare played at all; for even an
indifferent performance of "Hamlet" is
a delight to those who have seen far
greater actors in the role; because it is a
delightful reminiscence of all the Hamlets
who have paced the battlements of Elsi-
nore while waiting the coming of their
ghostly father. Never will the writer
forget the impression made upon his
mind, at the age of thirteen, when, from
a gallery in the old Walnut Street The-
atre in Philadelphia — once the home of
the classic drama — the wonderful mys-
tery of "Hamlet," as interpreted by E. L.
Davenport, sunk into his soul. He can
only feel sorrow for those of the rising
I generation whose theatrical pabulum con-
sists of "Nightie Night," "Roly Boly
Eyes," "The Midnight Whirl," "Linger
Longer Letty," etc.
To many, the revival of the classic the-
atre will seem an impossible dream. We
shall be quickly reminded of the disas-
trous failure of the New Theatre, which,
while devoted to serious drama, did not
have as its raison d'etre the revival of
the classic drama, and which failed for
a variety of reasons to which it is not
necessary to make allusion. My faith in
the possibility of developing a classic the-
atre, not only in New York, but in a
hundred American cities, is based upon
the extraordinary development of the
public taste for music. It does not re-
quire a long memory to recall the time
when it was difficult for more than one
symphony orchestra to find any public
response in New York, and when, in
Philadelphia, only meagre audiences
greeted the orchestral concerts of Theo-
dore Thomas. Even the opera spelled
ruin quite as much as the Shakesperean
drama is proverbially supposed to do. In
less than two decades, a taste for music
has been developed that is marvelous. In
New York, five symphony orchestras give
successful concerts, and seats for the
opera — possibly the best in the world —
are sold out in advance for almost daily
performances for a season of twenty-
three weeks. In New York the thirst
for music seems to be well-nigh un-
quenchable.
The difference between the two situa-
tions is that, while the taste for the
symphony concerts had to be developed,
the love of the theatre as one of the
great primitive passions of mankind has
always been with us, as witness the
alacrity with which the public frequent
even the poorest drivel of the stage, and
the popularity of the moving-picture
shows. With this love of mimic repre-
sentation it should not be difficult to de-
velop in a city of six millions of people
a demand for a classic theatre which
would be distinguished from all other
theatres, not only because it was not
conducted for profit, but also because it
would produce no play that was not at
least one hundred years old. Therefore,
it would be called the Classic Theatre.
This would open an extensive rep-
ertory— Shakespeare, Sheridan, Gold-
smith, Moliere, Racine, Schiller, Goethe
— not to omit the masterpieces of the
greatest stage that the world has ever
seen, that of Athens, with .^schylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides.
Fortunately, there are unmistakable
evidences that the same reaction from the
frivolous which followed the Civil War is
again slowly taking place. There is a
reasonable possibility that next season
will witness four or five serious attempts
to revive the classic drama. Already the
Vrooms are to give a series of classic
matinees. Walter Hampden, whose
"Hamlet" matinees were so successful
last season, is understood to be develop-
ing as a business enterprise a stock com-
pany with a classic repertory. That
ever conscientious actress, Margaret
Anglin, whose productions of classic
Greek plays have been so successful on
the Pacific Coast, has under considera-
tion a somewhat extended season in New
York. Barrymore has given us "Rich-
ard III," and Sothern and Marlowe have
again taken the stage with their familiar
Shakespearean roles.
Even more promising, however, is the
prospect that the Stratford Players may
visit America next year. This company
of actors represents the most serious at-
tempt in the English-speaking world to
put Shakespearean representation on
a sound artistic basis. They have dis-
carded the star system, and their ap-
peal to the public is based upon the care
with which every part in a Shakespearean
play is enacted. Each year they give
two seasons in Stratford, one an early
spring season and then a long summer
season. The company consists of fifty
players drawn from all parts of England
and especially trained to render the plays
of Shakespeare not for the mere ex-
ploitation of a star, but as an artistic
whole. These players, whose chief sea-
son is in Shakespeare's birthplace and
who have all the inspiring influence of
an artistic enterprise which is devoted
more to the memory of Shakespeare than
to commercial profits, have been im-
mensely strengthened by the elimination
of some who had outlived their useful-
ness and by recruiting younger and
fresher talent from the English stage. I
have received a letter from Sir John-
stone Forbes-Robertson that speaks in the
highest terms of the artistic excellence
of the Stratford Players. It is, therefore,
gratifying to know that there is this
prospect, and that efforts are now being
made to bring the Stratford company to
America; as they have more than thir-
teen Shakespearean plays in their rep-
ertory, it is possible that the American
people may see the production of master-
pieces which have not been seen by Amer-
ican theatregoers for many years.
I have always been impressed in read-
ing "Hamlet" with the marked distinc-
tion which Shakespeare makes in his
greeting to the two courtiers, Rosen-
crantz and Guildenstern, and to the
players. To the former, his attitude was
the formal one of a prince; but he hails
the latter — not once, but many times —
as "friends." Whether the Stratford
Players come to America or not, if the
players of America shall use their in-
fluence for the revival of the classic
drama, and especially of the Shake-
spearean drama, then the public not only
should, but assuredly will, say:
Good, my lord, will you see the players
well bestowed?
James M. Beck
388]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
Correspondence
Congress's Right to Declare
Peace
To the Editors of The Review :
In the course of the discussion which
has been aroused in Congress by the
proposal to declare hostilities with
Germany at an end by joint resolution,
Senator Thomas of Colorado has brought
forward evidence showing that on one
occasion the Convention which framed
the Constitution voted down unanimously
a motion to vest Congress with the
l)0wer to "make peace." This evidence
is good so far as it goes, but it does
not support all of Senator Thomas's de-
ductions from it, nor indeed has he given
a quite complete account of it. The pro-
posal in question was made and rejected
by the Convention on August 17, 1787.
One ground for its rejection was that the
making of peace would naturally fall, not
to the Executive, as Senator Thomas
would have it, but to the treaty-making
body, which was, by the plan at the date
before the Convention, the Senate alone.
And the principal argument which was
offered against the proposal Senator
Thomas ignores altogether. It was the
argument made by Ellsworth and re-
peated by Madison, that "it should be
more easy to get out of war than into
it" — the obvious deduction being that
the making of peace ought therefore to
be lodged with a less cumbersome body
than Congress. The Convention was
apparently unacquainted with the "sin-
gle-track mind" !
The mere fact that Congress is not
specifically authorized to make peace
does not prove that it does not possess
powers in the exercise of which, on
proper occasions, it may bring peace
about. Congress was also denied by the
Convention of 1787 the power to charter
corporations; notwithstanding which it
has repeatedly exercised this power, and
has been sustained by the Supreme
Court in so doing. Nor again does the
fact that peace, whether domestic or in-
ternational, may be, and ordinarily is,
attained by the treaty route prove that
all other roads thereto are closed. To
cite some parallel cases: certain busi-
nesses are subject to both the taxing
power of Congress and the police power
of the States ; treaties may be abrogated,
at least so far as the United States is
concerned, both by act of Congress and
by agreement between our Government
and the other parties thereto; certain
international conventions may be en-
tered into by the President alone, upon
authorization by Congress, or by the
President and Senate without such
authorization; certain types of breaches
of the law may be cured either by an
executive pardon or by a legislative act
of indemnity; and so on. In short, it
frequently happens that the same legal
result may be produced by very different
powers of government; nor need this
fact lead to confusion, since as soon as
any of the competent powers has acted,
the result is produced.
Congress may repeal or otherwise cur-
tail the legal operation of any measure
which it had the right to enact in the
first place, though naturally it can not re-
peal the acts already done under the
sanction of such measure while it was
still operative. Congress can not now
invalidate, nor does it wish to, what was
properly done by virtue of its declara-
tion of war upon Germany; but it can
withdraw its sanction from any further
hostilities against our former foe. But
the proposed Porter resolution has also a
second purpose, namely, to force the
German Government, by the threat of
cutting off all commercial relations with
it — relations which are now going on in
the midst of "war" — to proclaim the
cessation on its part of hostilities against
this country and the renunciation of any
claims against this country which the
German Government "would not have
the right to assert had ti.e United States
ratified the Treaty of Versailles." This
provision, at least, it will be contended,
amounts to an attempt on the part of
Congress to usurp the treaty-making
power. In fact, however, the proposal
is grounded on the securest of prec-
edents, on Madison's Non-Intercourse
Act, on the "reciprocally unjust" clause
of the McKinley Tariff Act, which was
sustained by the Supreme Court in the
case of Field v. Clark (143 U. S.)
against the objection just recited, on
the "maximum and minimum" clause of
the Dingley Act, on the Canadian
Reciprocity Act passed during Presi-
dent Taft's Administration and at his
special instance. In all these cases Con-
gress did just what it is proposing to
do at the present moment; it was using
its power to regulate "commerce with
foreign nations" to force certain coH-
cessions from those nations.
Congress has the right, then, simply
by virtue of its power to repeal its pre-
vious enactments, to declare hostilities
with Germany to be at an end, and its
declaration to this effect, once duly en-
acted, will be binding upon the Courts
and the Executive alike. Also, it has
the right by virtue of its power to regu-
late "commerce with foreign nations"
and to "pass all laws necessary and
proper" to that end, to curtail or
even to prohibit American trade with
Germany, and this it may do either
forthwith, or conditionally upon the oc-
currence or non-occurrence of certain
events the ascertainment and proclama-
tion of which may be left with the Pres-
ident. Both these propositions rest upon
practice, precedent, and unchallengeable
principles, while the opposing view rests
upon the fallacious supposition that since
peace in a legal sense would undoubtedly
ensue upon the ratification of a treaty
of peace with Germany, a treaty of
peace is the only way to obtain it. But
there is more than one road leading to
peace, as to Rome, and a sovereign gov-
ernment, which the United States un-
doubtedly is in the field of foreign rela-
tions, must be regarded as having access
to them all, until at least it can be shown
to have been cut off therefrom by some
very definite Constitutional prohibition
such as no opponent of the Porter reso-
lution has as yet produced. There is, in
other words, no good reason either in
law or common sense why Congress
should not turn off the current which it
turned on three years ago to-day, and
so allow Uncle Sam to relax his wearied
grip from an altogether useless and ex-
cuseless live wire.
Edward S. Corwin
Princeton, N. J., April 6
The Excess Profits Tax
To the Editors of The Review:
General Wood, President Nicholas
Murray Butler, and the New York
Times have ventured to criticize the ex-
cess-profits tax, and the Neiv Republic
has rushed to the defense. The argu-
ment of the editors seems to run like
this : These people who say that the ex-
cess-profits tax is bad are not to be
trusted in any way: that ought to be
enough. But for those who might other-
wise be misled it may be pointed out that
such a tax does not discourage produc-
tion, because it takes only $2.40 out of
$12 excess profit on $100 of invest-
ment. The $2.40 is not added to the
price of goods, because the manufacturer
will charge all he can get anyway, and
he can get more than the tax just now.
The real remedy is not less excess-prof-
its tax but more. Take one hundred per
cent, of the profit above an adequate
minimum — say, ten per cent., or even fif-
teen. Divert more and more of the prof-
its of "trusts" and "barons." The result
must be that the plunderers will reduce
prices. There is nothing to be gained by
making profits for Uncle Sam's sole
benefit.
All this is familiar tactics. Discredit
your opponents; fix unpopular names on
them; set up and beat down a man of
straw ; above all, state with violence some
half-truths and suppress everything that
disproves their application. It's not dif-
ficult and it works.
In that respect it differs from the ex-
cess-profits tax, which doesn't work. And
the income super-tax, which doesn't work.
And every other tax intended to put un-
due burdens on a few, which never works.
Nobody in his senses contends that the
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[889
excess-profits tax cuts any figure in
prices when the economic situation per-
mits the producers of goods to secure
enormous profits. When demand far
exceeds supply the tax becomes negli-
gible. Nor does any one suppose that
such a tax, in times like these, discour-
ages any corporation from producing all
it can under the circumstances of inef-
ficient labor, short coal supply, and other
handicaps. But it is conceivable that
even General Wood, President Butler,
and the New York Times may be telling
the truth when they say that the excess-
profits tax will be added, at least in part,
to prices when a more normal situation
returns.
Nobody has ever succeeded in beating
into the heads of a certain kind of "econ-
omist" that 8 per cent, or 10 per cent, on
capital invested is not necessarily an ade-
quate return in all cases. And yet for
at least a century there has been a
strong inducement to every form of in-
dustry to turn back earnings into the
business, because nearly every enterprise
that did not do that has failed. Those
which grew strong, including such of the
railroads as have not been through re-
ceivership, put earnings into extensions
and improvements. Now all that is to
be changed. High authority has pro-
nounced that shippers can not be ex-
pected to provide interest on invested
capital and new capital besides. The un-
derlying theory of excess-profits taxation
in peace time must be that manufac-
turers and dealers ought to make no
more than a "fair" profit (whatever
that may be) on invested capital. With
the exception of a very moderate allow-
mce for depreciation, the Act of Con-
gress does not permit deductions for re-
)lacements and none at all for extensions
)f plant. Then the new capital, which
nust be had if there is to be healthy
growth, must come from the profits re-
naining after payment of taxes. The
imount needed for this purpose differs
n different industries and it may vary
rom year to year. It may very much
xceed 10 per cent, on the capital in-
ested in some industries. There can be
0 fixed "adequate minimum" unless it is
ut so high as to cover the most needy
ases.
The New Republic points to the recent
ailroad law and suggests that nobody
lought of allowing even as much as 8
er cent, profit. True. And it remains
) be seen how it will work. If profits
le to be limited to a small return on
ipital, there must be some guarantee
lat they will be steadily earned and paid
jfore investors will care to put new
oney into railroads. It may be that
le recent Act of Congress provides such
guarantee, though there is as yet no
sible eagerness to buy railroad securi-
3s. If that guarantee is not provided.
the railroads must fail and the New
Republic will clamor for Government
ownership and the Plumb plan.
The manufacturer does not expect, and
he certainly will not get, any guarantee
whatever. If he can not strengthen his
position, he knows what will happen ; he
will fail, as so many others have before
him. He is not allowed to deduct the
cost of strengthening his business before
his taxes are levied. Then it must come
out of net earnings, after taxes, and go
into the price of goods after we have
reached the time when cost of produc-
tion counts. It is conceivable that the
gentlemen who have incurred the sov-
ereign contempt of the New Republic
have perceived this and would prefer to
have our house set in order while there
is still time.
But all this is beside the point. It is
the man of straw, set up to be knocked
down. The real issue would be incon-
venient for the "economists" who prefer
to deal in half truths. That issue was
adequately stated by Mr. Glass, when he
was Secretary of the Treasury. Speak-
ing of the excess-profits tax in his an-
nual report, he said, "It encourages
wasteful expenditure, puts a premium
on overcapitalization and a penalty on
brains, energy, and enterprise, discour-
ages new ventures and confirms old ven-
tures in their monopolies." Everybody
who has had experience of its actual
effects knows that this is true. Will any
one contend that these results have had
no effect on prices? Will any one assert
that they will not have a marked effect
in preventing a return to lower prices
when other conditions permit? To those
who are not "economists" it certainly
seems likely that extravagant manage-
ment, inertia, and safety in an en-
trenched position will make goods dearer.
Secretary Glass failed to carry his
criticism to its logical conclusion. Ex-
actly the same objections are valid with
respect to the super-tax on earned in-
comes. Everybody who has come in
contact with its actual effects is aware
that it encourages waste, puts a penalty
on brains, energy, and enterprise and
discourages new ventures. But fortu-
nately General Wood, President Butler,
and the New York Times have appar-
ently confined their criticism to the ex-
cess-profits tax. One can imagine the
New Republic dealing faithfully with
them if they had ventured to touch the
sacrosanct super-tax ; one can foresee the
sneers, the imputation of sinister mo-
tives, the magnificent assumption of
wisdom, and one can be grateful for be-
ing spared the spectacle.
But there is cause for gratitude in
the threat with which the second
article on this subject concludes. "Ex-
cess-profits taxes offer one solution of
the problem of monopoly. There is one
other solution compatible with democ-
racy. That is nationalization. Every-
thing else has failed." Really our polit-
ical leaders ought to be told this. Per-
haps they ought to paste it in their hats.
It is so neat and sonorous. Let us draw
comfort from the existence of two
possible solutions. One might have sup-
posed that there was not even one.
Philip Dexter
Boston, Mass., April 3
Compulsory Medicine
To the Editors of The Review:
We are facing a deplorable condition
of the times in respect to compulsory
medicine. Commercialism has so sur-
rounded, invaded, arrogated the fields of
intelligent personal prerogative, that
good citizenship wonders where it will
stop. The privilege of preserving health
has been practically assailed, and the
healthy are confronted with so many
forms of compulsory medicine that good
judgment rejects them all, not, however,
without being assured by some pseudo-
authority that legal penalty will follow.
The question before the public is a
large one, but a simple one of sense and
justice after all. It is this: Are labora-
tory foundations which are endowed by
multi-millionaires in the name of philan-
thropy to be the nucleus of experimental
activities beginning with the lower and
higher animals and extending to free
human beings who may be assembled for
the purpose in various grades of submis-
sion? Is there any science in it? Any
art? Any humanity? Any philanthropy?
No. The whole fabric as to its exploita-
tion for benefit of human health is an
affliction. Witness tuberculosis, influenza,
and numerous infections in our camps
and armies following inoculations of
healthy recruits for diseases which are
known to be non-existent under properly
regulated sanitation.
The human organism is very tenacious
of its integrity as against foreign in-
vasion. It revolts when its blood and
other tissues are contaminated, especially
so when that contamination is most in-
appropriate as to immediate demand.
The need of the organism is evidenced
by very delicate signs, and it is the
height of unscientific imposition to in-
stitute laboratory theories and practice,
wholly speculative as they are, to replace
the best ideals of normal hygienic habits
of life as a basis of health, as well as
sane medical aid from the physician in
times of sickness to restore health.
We can not have our children infected
by any therapy which forces into the
bloodstream an agent of any kind. The
foreign element is a menace, since it is
foreign; when it is also a product of
disease it is doubly dangerous. The
Shick test, diphtheria antitoxin, typhoid
390]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
prophylaxis, all the serums and vaccina-
tions are to be regarded with more than
suspicion, for they have already too large
a mass of testimony to their discredit.
Public health demands that public
places be kept clean and sanitary beyond
anything which obtains at present. Pub-
lic health will not endure human infec-
tion from any agents whatever, though
they be industriously promulgated by all
the endowed systems of so-called medical
research.
John Hutchinson, M.D.
New York, April 10
The New Home Rule
Proposals
To the Editors of The Review :
Is not the following a reasonable inter-
pretation of the Irish situation, as it
stands at present?
The British Government is bound by
the Home Rule Act of 1914. The condi-
tions which led to the adoption of that
Act have been altered during the prog-
ress of the war by the disloyalty of the
Nationalist, and Sinn Fein people of the
South, and by the patriotic loyalty of
Ulster. To carry out the provisions of
that Act and to place Ulster under the
control of a Dublin Parliament without
her consent and contrary to her wishes
would be a return for her loyalty which
is inconceivable and would be a harm
alike to the people of Ulster, to the Brit-
ish nation, and to the friends of Great
Britain throughout the world. The
question which Mr. Lloyd George must
solve is how to dispose of the obligations
resting upon the Government under the
Act of 1914. Every proposal hitherto
made to the disaffected element in Ire-
land has been rejected, and every pro-
posal that can be made — consistent with
the welfare of the Empire — is likely to
be rejected. To meet this situation the
Prime Minister has tendered a measure
which represents the extreme concession
which the Government can offer. The
South will reject it. Were Ulster to
reject it she would be placing herself
upon the same basis of disaffection as
the South. Sir Edward Carson under-
stands and supports the purposes of the
Prime Minister. Ulster therefore as-
sents. When the South rejects, as it
undoubtedly will, the Government will
be freed from all obligations under the
Act of 1914, and can then deal untram-
meled with the Irish situation as the wel-
fare of the Empire may require. All
friends of Great Britain — and they
doubtless include a great majority of the
citizens of the United States — must sym-
pathize with the British nation in its
difficulties, and must hope for an early
and rational solution of them.
Alba B. Johnson
Philadelphia, March 22
Book Reviews
John Redmond
John Redmond's Last Years. By Stephen
Gwyiin. New York : Longmans, Green
and Company.
AMID the abundant and increasing
literature on Irish affairs it is
seldom indeed that there comes into a re-
viewer's hand a literary treasure such as
this. It is not simply a fascinating and
convincing sketch of Redmond in the
final phase of his career, though if it
were estimated on this ground alone it
must be ranked among the finest achieve-
ments of recent times as a psychological
portrait of a public man. It is also a
study of the conflicting currents of Irish
life during a period which was crowded
with events of world-wide significance,
and in which the clue to the inner mean-
ing of what has happened may well elude
even the most patient and industrious of
outside inquirers. Much that has been
given to us upon this subject is, on the
face of it, either inflamed rhetoric or
well-intentioned literary incompetence,
and it leaves us as far as ever from real
insight into the situation it tries to pre-
sent. Mr. Gwynn writes as one having
knowledge and authority. He has had ac-
cess to Redmond's private papers covering
the whole period under review. He is
not biased by religious creed, for he is a
southern Protestant, of a family that has
long been distinguished in the social
circles of Dublin. As a Nationalist Mem-
ber of Parliament he was himself among
the first to respond to his leader's pa-
triotic call in August, 1914, and his judg-
ment upon the upheaval in Ireland since
then is given us from the point of view
of one who served for years with an
Irish regiment at the front. On his
periods of leave from service he con-
stantly revisited the House of Commons
to watch the turbid political whirlpool
that was mingling its waters with the
flowing river of national effort, and he
sat as a member of the ill-fated Irish
Convention of 1917 whose fair promise
of public spirit was so soon darkened by
the mists of sectional intrigue. He is
thus able, so far as any man can be, to
tell us how Redmond's later policy was
conceived, how it was pursued, and how
it was balked. Incidentally we learn
from him much about those forces,
hostile to Redmond, whose achievement
is to be seen in the chaotic Ireland that
lies before us to-day. And though strong
language may rise often to the reader's
lips as he follows the record, it is the
spirit of charity by which, as the best
tribute to his dead leader's example, the
biographer is unfailingly inspired.
Perhaps what strikes one first in the
book is just this judicial balance by
which it is everywhere marked. Mr.
Gwynn is keenly aware of the tempta-
tions against which he must struggle as
he depicts the last years of John Red-
mond. He had to write the last sad
chapter of a public life which he in-
tensely admires, and he was writing it
within a few months of the tragic gloom,
amounting almost to martyrdom, in
which it closed. He had to explain the
causes by which a noble enterprise was
defeated, the prejudices by which a high
scheme of constructive statesmanship
was misunderstood, and the implacable
passions by which an exalted character
was maligned. If the execution of this
literary task had not been made impera-
tive by its obvious bearing upon certain
problems that have waited too long for
settlement, it is safe to say that this
writer, with his vivid sense of its diffi-
culties, would have deferred the attempt
until a more propitious season. The soil
is indeed still too hot and too convulsed
for an historian's quite steady tread.
But we have all reason for thankfulness
to one who has ventured a work of such
immediate urgency, bringing to it a
power of sustained self-control for which
we so often look in vain even where
lapse of time and cooling of tempers
have made historical work comparatively
simple.
Mr. Gwynn, knowing the risk that a
disciple may idolize his master and vilify
his master's enemies, is always careful to
point out wherein Redmond may be
judged deficient, and the strength which
belongs to much that was urged against
him from the camp of his opponents. The
figure drawn for us in this book is that
of a great Party Chairman, devoted heart
and soul to the twin causes of Irish self-
government and Anglo-Irish reconcilia-
tion, a leader far-sighted, with admirable
tact, unfailing courtesy, an almost unique
gift for presiding over and guiding de-
bate. But joined to these qualities
through which he shone in every public
meeting, and which even his Ulster ene-
mies in the Convention of 1916 were
among the first to acknowledge, were
some less fortunate characteristics that
made one remember his Norman descent
and his own deep-seated conservatism.
Owing to a temperamental aloofness,
Redmond was less accessible than he
might with advantage have been to in-
dividual members of his own group, so
that he sometimes misjudged the depth
of new currents and the changes which
were in process underground. "It
needed some courage," says Mr. Gwynn,
"to go to him with a question in policy,
and if you went, the answer would be
simply a 'Yes' or 'No.' " His was not a
notably "magnetic" leadership; he some-
times annoyed those whom he might
easily have won over by taking them
more into his confidence; he lacked ir
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[391
some degree the personal touch. Thus
within his own party he was admired
rather than idolized, the object of liking
and profound respect, rather than of love
and passionate enthusiasm. His high
standard of honor made him recoil from
all that he thought of as intrigue, so that
he shrank at the same time from frankly-
opening his mind to the legitimate in-
fluence of others. The integrity which
was part of his own nature, and which
he assumed in those opponents to whom
he held out the hand of fellowship in
August, 1914, made him forget how few
were capable of his own vision, and how
slowly the unclean methods of party
strife are discarded.
The problems upon which one most de-
sires light are such as these: Why did
Redmond's appeal for recruits succeed so
magnificently during the first eighteen
months of the war, and then so disas-
trously fail? What were the forces that
so sapped his strength as to reduce with-
in four years a solid Parliamentary block
of eighty-three to an insignificant group
of seven? How far was he justified in
the belief that the increasing displace-
ment of the constitutional Nationalists
by the violent Sinn Feiners was due to
mismanagement by the British Cabinet?
Mr. Gwynn has supplied the most in-
telligible and the most credible answer
which has yet been put before us. Red-
mond, as his biographer sees him, was
confronted with two kinds of hostility.
On the one side was the party, small at
the beginning of the war though destined
to reach ominous proportions before long,
in which hatred of England and distrust
of English promises had become an un-
conquerable passion. On the other side
was the party of Ulster extremists,
backed by the least reputable of the Eng-
lish Tory Opposition, to whom a recon-
ciled Nationalist Ireland would be a posi-
j tive offense. It was the business of the
I first of these parties to prevent enlist-
ments in the south and west, as it was
the joy of the second to prove that such
enlistments were not taking place. Mr.
I Gwynn thinks that Lord Kitchener, in-
I valuable in the field, was lamentable at
■such a time as Secretary for War, but
it was as Secretary for War that he in-
sisted upon acting. He knew how to use
all other forms of force, but not the
force that belongs to timely conciliation.
Hence the wretched failure in the man-
agement of Irish recruiting, the use of
Protestant and Unionist propagandists in
ntensely Nationalist districts, the refusal
!o recognize and officially equip the Na-
ional Volunteers, the staffing of Irish
'atholic brigades with officers alien in
sentiment to all the men whom they com-
nanded, and innumerable other blunders
0 which Redmond again and again called
ittention in vain. Lord Kitchener's wild-
est hope was for ten thousand recruits
rom Redmond's following! Even when
this number had been multiplied many
times, he would accept no advice from
the leader who had so far surpassed his
expectations. Mr. Asquith's promises in
his Dublin speech were thus consistently
falsified; one scheme after another to
bring the organization of Ireland defi-
nitely under Ireland's natural and thor-
oughly loyal chiefs was adopted only
to be again cast aside at the bidding of
politicians. The inevitable result fol-
lowed. Sinn Fein gained by leaps and
bounds. Redmond with his constitution-
alism was branded as a failure, while Sir
Edward Carson with his counsels of vio-
lence had been a conspicuous success. A
southern and western Carsonism became
the new gospel. The Government had
discredited its friends and stimulated its
enemies. As one reads Mr. Gwynn's
pages one recalls the trenchant summing
up by Macaulay generations ago of that
spirit which, then as now, spoiled the
British administration of Ireland; "wait-
ing that you may once again hit the
exact point at which you can neither re-
fuse with safety nor concede with grace."
It is a sad story, but a very plain one.
It is sad in its outcome for the fate of
the best and truest leader whom Ireland
has had within living memory, sadder
still in that effect upon Anglo-Irish re-
lations which all men can now see, and
which some are making remorseful ef-
forts to undo. Mr. Gwynn again and
again reminds us how hard was the Cab-
inet's task, how little time amid the
burdens of the war could be spared for
inquiry into the situation across the
Channel, how much allowance we must
make for the men in Downing Street who
had to ride the whirlwind and direct the
storm. Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd
George may be excused if they missed
their way when they had to choose be-
tween forfeiting one sort of support and
forfeiting another, at a moment when so
much was at stake, and the maximum
support was so sorely needed. Lord
Kitchener must not be too harshly
blamed if he was not a statesman as well
as a soldier. Of the politicians, both
Carsonite and Sinn Fein, who involved
the Government in such desperate
dilemmas, and who seem to have been
fishing on their own party's behalf in
those troubled waters, the reader of this
biography will have to judge, and the
materials for such a judgment are before
him. But the more carefully this record
is read and studied, the deeper will be
the reverence of all true men, both Irish
and English, for the heroic figure of Red-
mond, greater in the high purpose which
failed than even in those unforgettable
services of a long political life which had
succeeded. His follower and friend has
erected a noble memorial to one who, like
those of old, had to live and die in faith,
not having received the promises.
Herbert L. Stewart
Studies in Honor of Dr. Osier
CON'TRIBUTIONS TO MEDICAL AND BIOLOGICAL
Research. Dedicated to Sir William
OsLER, Bart. M.D., F.R.S., in honor of his
Seventieth Birthday, July 12, 1919, by his
pupils and co-workers. 2 vols. New York :
Paul B. Hoeber.
SIR WILLIAM OSLER practised and
taught his art in three countries
and in four universities. He had pupils
and he won friends everywhere. A mis-
cellany offered in commemoration of the
birthday of such a man could not well
be less than the volumes before us: well
printed, for he loved a well-made book;
possessed of literary distinction, for he
was himself a charming writer on a
wide range of subjects, and at the time of
his death president of the Classical As-
sociation, succeeding Professor Sir Gil-
bert Murray ; and finally, though rigidly
technical in parts, confining itself to
no narrow view of the field of medicine.
Osier's own range was as broad as hu-
manity itself. Accordingly, of the hun-
dred and fifty articles fully half deal with
historical medicine, education, books, so-
cial problems, and the humanities.
"The Eye of the Burrowing Owl," by
Dr. Casey Wood, arrests one by the title
and the vivid color of the illustration —
it — this glowing eye — reminds one of
Mr. Butler's painting of the Solar
Eclipse. The article is an interesting
contribution to natural history as well
as to comparative anatomy.
Dr. Charles Singer and Dorothea
Singer of Oxford have also a fascinating
color print of "A Miniature Ascribed to
Mantegna." It depicts an operation by
Cosmas and Damian, the patron saints of
medicine. A patient wearing a look of
placid enjoyment has just had his can-
cerous leg removed and replaced by the
leg taken from a dead Moor. The ap-
proximation is perfect and the operation
a success.
Here is a verse showing something of
what Cosmas and Damian suffered:
Victi, torti, carcerati,
Crucifixi, lapidati,
Sagittati, cruciati,
Per tormenta varia :
Ignem, aquam transierunt,
Ferro mortem pertulerunt,
Dulce mori sic duxerunt
Pro coelesti gloria.
There are only six war articles, but
these are authoritative and valuable.
The late Professor E. E. Southard haa
an article which is entitled "Prothymia;
a Note on the Morale-Concept in Xeno-
phon's Cyropedia." Dr. Southard bases
his paper on a long and well-balanced
discussion on the art of war between
Cyrus and his father Cambyses. Prothy-
mia is a word which Southard would
suggest as indicating at least the morale
situation in Xenophon's day. Xenophon
was a master of morale, and he used
definite behavioristic means to secure it.
His prothymic procedures were enheart-
392]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
ening, inspiriting measures within the
domains of the emotions and the will.
Southard was fond of neologisms, and
he often made a good one.
Dr. Burton Holmes contributes a page
devoted to a "Votum Medici" (The
Doctor's Prayer). It begins with the
difficult aspiration:
Ut conata mea sine ratione lucrandi
Aut perpendi perficiam.
It contains a sentiment which applies to
all good citizens:
Ut onus ofHci suspiciam potius, et muneribus
Quae ad me atque ad homines pertineant
Maxime perfungar quam mihi ipsi.
In another page Dr. Gerster pays hom-
age to Osier through the medium of a
stanza from the "Clouds" of Aristoph-
anes. The quoted verse expresses in
Greek, Latin, and English a wish that
the mellow ripeness of genius and of
cultured wisdom might produce more
work from Sir William. It was not to be.
Sir Auckland Geddes, who earlier in
life was a teacher of anatomy, during
the war became Minister of Reconstruc-
tion, and has since been named British
Ambassador at Washington, speaks with
authority in his article on "Social Re-
construction and the Medical Profes-
sion."
It seems to be a law that once Science is
SCIENCE, the emotions of human betterment
and of beauty are perverted. We have seen
all that in Prussianized Germans, and it need
not now be labored.
The point that it is necessary to make most
clear is this : In the world with which states-
manship has to deal, mass emotion is infinitely
more powerful than accurate knowledge. It
follows that those who play their part in demo-
cratic states must understand the human emo-
tions, more especially the spiritual emotions of
beauty, human betterment, and truth.
Dr. Fielding H. Garrison contributes
an article on Physicians' Letters. The
best known are, of course, those of Guy
Patin. In modern times the quality of
such letters has probably declined, but
in the last century there were many in-
teresting collections. Dr. Garrison quotes
largely from a correspondence between
Sir Lauder Brunton and the late Dr.
John S. Billings.
Dr. Henry Barton Jacobs in an article
on "Edward Jenner, a student of Medi-
cine, as illustrated in his letters," has
drawn a most interesting picture of the
intimate life and varied scientific in-
terests of a man who through his con-
tribution to vaccination belongs to the
world as well as to medicine.
Perhaps the most charming contribu-
tion in the volume is a proem written
by Sir Clifford Albutt, the Regius Pro-
fessor of Medicine at Cambridge Uni-
versity. His tactful and eloquent con-
tribution to his colleague at Oxford reads
the more impressively when we remember
that Sir Clifford is a man over eighty
years of age.
Charles L. Dana
Gardens and Garden Books
A Little Garden the Year Round. By
Gardner Teall. New York: E. P. But-
ton and Company.
TIME was when the last word in
garden seductiveness was spoken by
the seed catalogues. The text, forcing
its way through a gigantic vegetation,
miraculously contrived to suggest an even
huger hugeness, profusion even more
profuse, than was pictured by obese
tomatoes (an elderly gentleman, still
smiling, is bowed beneath the weight of
two or three of them), fat-podded peas
that have burst into a dentifricial smile,
and roses that are easily to be distin-
guished from the cabbages by their color.
Times have undoubtedly changed.
Catalogues of the older fashion continue
to appear and people continue to buy
from them, for the world has long since
comfortably reconciled itself to the fact
of dining off cauliflower less perfectly
curded, lettuce not quite so close-packed,
and onions less ambitious to emulate the
great globe itself than the pictures hold
forth promise of. And man still loves
to stick flower seeds into the earth and
sense the thrilling fact that some of them
do indeed come up. But in the literature
of the subject we demand a great deal
more. We demand the gardening book.
At any rate, we get it in abundance and
often of very high quality.
The garden book does not picture
flowers ; it pictures gardens. It does not
dangle before us the hope of bumper
crops; it speaks, sometimes just a little
cloyingly, of the spiritual satisfactions
that come to one who is the genuine
possessor of a garden. Such books— and
the garden magazines, too — have played
a large part in the change that has come
over American gardens in the last
quarter century. The rediscovery of the
hardy perennials of our great-grand-
mothers, the establishment of firm struc-
tural relation between garden and house,
the conversion of the central flower bed
into borders, the massing of "spotty"
shrubs and trees into richly gradated
walls enclosing a little universe of open
grass and open sky, and the intelligent
use of garden furniture have combined
to make the garden what it should be, a
place where one lives out of doors, pass-
ing from room to room, each with its
special purpose and its peculiar charm.
Mr. 'Teall's book is a good specimen
of its kind. There is poetry for those
who want it, and explicit and practical
planting directions, and some good pic-
tures. It is impossible not to feel a con-
viction that we are here moving along
sound lines. Fashions in rock gardens,
in pools, in trellises may change, but the
elements with which the modern gar-
dener composes are those which have
stood the test of centuries. On only one
point are books of this sort a trifle reti-
cent— how the work of making and car-
ing for the garden is to be done. One
of them a few years ago let drop the
secret somewhat in this way: Speaking
of the desirability of marking certain
plants to be kept for seed, the author, a
lady, said "my maid keeps me supplied
with boxes containing strips of different
colored cloth." No doubt one of the un-
der-gardeners tied them on for her as
she directed. If, indeed, one did all the
things these books lay out for the oc-
cupation of the ambitious gardener one
would do little else. But it is not neces-
sary, though it is a temptation hard to
resist, to plan more nobly than one can
realize with a single pair of hands and not
too abundant leisure. The logic of the
modern garden vindicates itself in that
it may be reduced to the narrowest strip
and still remain complete and satisfying.
The man who thinks he will not care
for gardening, or who dreads to involve
himself lest he should not be one of those
— there are some — who succeed in re-
covering from the pleasant malady, must
not at his peril open this book of Mr.
Teall's and the others like it. Those who
are gardeners already will run through
it, as apparently they run through all the
others, feeling amply rewarded when
they get a single fresh suggestion.
New American Novels : The
Individual Bobs Up
Peter Kindred. By Robert Nathan. New
York : Duffield and Company.
This Side of Paradise. By F. Scott Fitz-
gerald. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons.
The Cresting Wave. By Edwin Bateman
Morris. Philadelphia : The Penn Publish-
ing Company.
Fairfax and His Pride. By Marie Van Vorst.
Boston : Small, Maynard and Company.
Order. By Claude C. Washburn. New York:
Duffield and Company.
Revolt, An American Novel. By William H.
MacMasters. Boston : Small, Maynard
and Company.
Bertram Cope's Year. By Henry B. Fuller.
Chicago : Ralph Fletcher Seymour.
Miss Lulu Bett. By Zona Gale. New York:
D. Appleton and Company.
LOOKING over a chance assortment
of new novels, the latest American
product, one may discover, rather unex-
pectedly, that most of them are frankly
individualistic. With two shoulders to
the war and one to peace (as such), and
a careless elbow for humanitarian or
proletarian millennia, they proceed
earnestly with the old but not yet an-
tiquated business of that Everyman upon
whom, as far as he, according to his
secret conviction, knows, the earth pivots
and the stars focus their beams. They
breathe the air of modernism, but it is
primarily important as the air they have
to breathe. They are full of youthfu
flutterings after theory and practice as
abstract objects; but the main point if
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[393
whether youth is gaining its own ends of
self - discovery and "self - expression."
Often they are the attempts of mature
youth to express its own experiences to
date, of the graduate to interpret a world
still apparelled in undergraduate mys-
tery. Andover and Lawrenceville, Har-
vard and Princeton (yes, yes, and Yale!)
are being dealt with as minutely and as
seriously as Harrow and Eton, Oxford
and Cambridge by the younger novelists
of England. It must be owned that
young America writing novels owes
much of its inspiration and its technique,
or lack of it, to the example of young
England. At all events, it is busy with
the affair of its own self in its own home.
From among the novels of the past year
or so any diligent novel-reader will re-
call various books of the teens and the
twenties by authors of a suitable age:
such as "Peter Middleton," by Henry K.
Marks; "The Groper," by Conrad Aiken;
"The Iron City," by M. H. Hedges, and
"Youth Goes Seeking," by Oscar Graeve.
To these but now are added eager and
brilliant improvisations (as they seem)
like "Peter Kindred," by Robert Nathan ;
"This Side of Paradise," by F. Scott
Fitzgerald, and "The Cresting Wave,"
by Edwin Bateman Morris.
All of them, needless to say, heroically
eschew the official hero, the worthy or
the all-conquering idol of the discredited
past. They will to deal uncompromis-
ingly not quite with the average young
man or woman of our days, but, let us
say, with that young man as he appears
to himself and his females. Above all,
let not firm or self-contained character
be attributed to him. Let him be un-
certain of impulse and infirm of purpose,
open to the tempting lure of every sexual
zephyr or intellectual cross-current. Give
him "temperament," give him talent, let
him be snob and cynic and poseur by
turns, but in Heaven's name don't let
him be sure of anything except his own
mystical importance. So like you and
me, if we would only admit it! . . .
Notably this nearly average young man is
parted from the average by his extraor-
dinary hankering to write. If himself
is nothing better than a series of moods
or a catalogue of recognizable qualities,
himself must still be "expressed," re-
corded, set down in black and white.
He lisps in numbers, or their currently
accepted equivalent. He proses faith-
fully, in the latest manner, when the
innumerable numbers fail. Usually he
writes a novel before we are done with
him. No doubt writing men rightly
write about writing youths, since there
is a direct draft from experience. But
it is a little hard on mere reading men,
one may suspect. . . . What we sigh
over, it may be, in these ingeniously
ingenuous fables, is that they represent
the average with variations, instead of
embodying and sublimating and indi-
vidualizing the average or the typical
in the really creative manner. If you
read half a dozen salad novels of this
kind, full of talent and cleverness, and
permit your mind to relax for a moment,
and then try to see or hear one of their
protagonists in fancy, you find available
only a vague composite figure, ardent,
sceptical, self-centred and elaborately
commonplace.
So it is with "Peter Kindred." The
boy is a tolerably nice boy, and he does
and thinks and says the things a toler-
ably nice boy would. We do not deny
that he is true to fact. But what of it?
Who cares? Since the author has failed
to make us care about him as a person?
Well, there is the feminine reader, with
her inexhaustible maternal instinct for
making a swan of a goose; she can be
counted on to do the author's work for
him. And there are the actual nice boys,
thousands of them, peopling their Har-
vards and their Princetons and perhaps
eager to see how they look in print ; but
one doubts it. For them the romantic
superman who breaks rocks with his fist,
or the "wiseguy" who cracks the world's
nut without the aid or handicap of a
bachelor's degree. The young and too
clever chronicle "This Side of Paradise"
concerns a youth of more accredited
brilliancy. Amory Blaine is the only
son of an abnormal marriage, and "in-
herited from his mother every trait ex-
cept the stray inexpressible few that
made him worth while." He is born a
snob, an egotist, and a philanderer. He
takes his well-bred schooling at St. Regis
and Princeton. He has various amours
with others of lower degree. He finds
himself fairly landed at last in the blind
alley of disillusion. Even women —
"women — of whom he had expected so
much: whose beauty he had hoped to
transmute into modes of art; whose un-
fathomable instincts, marvelously inco-
herent and inarticulate, he had thought
to perpetuate in terms of experience —
had become merely consecrations to thei <■
own posterity. Isabelle, Clara, Rosalind,
Eleanor, were all removed by their very
beauty, around which men had swarmed,
from the possibility of contributing any-
thing but a sick heart and a page of
puzzled words to write." In brief, poor
Amory is all dressed up, intellectually
and aesthetically, with no place to go.
And the brave lad has thrown up his
job as copy-writer in an advertising
agency. Now he turns his back (tenta-
tively) on the worship of beauty and
the pursuit of art, and inclines to be
"a certain sort of man." It is true that
he appears to be still quite at the mercy
of his own language. He has a notion
of turning radical in earnest, and he
has also (at the same time) a vague
leaning towards the Church as a refuge.
Perhaps we do not quite share his au-
thor's vision of him as a new-made "per-
sonage"— as one who without at all know-
ing where he is going is at last dis-
cernibly on his way.
However, one marks with some pleas-
ure that these new novels almost in-
variably end with the rising inflection. It
is no longer the fashion to leave youth,
at the end of a few chapters, wallow-
ing helplessly in a quasi-Russian bog of
"reality." If a man is a worm, let us
at least see him lift his head towards
the light. "The Cresting Wave" is built
upon one of the very oldest of ideas or
morals: namely, that it is better to be
decent than successful, better to serve
than to grasp. It is less chronicle and
more fable than the stories mentioned
above, the immortal fable of youth
stretching out its hand without scruple
towards wealth and pleasure, and finding
them ashes in his palm. Perhaps my
gratitude to young William Spade for
neither trying to write a novel nor spout-
ing free verse nor hanging about cafes
and studios in search of "life" prejudices
me unduly in his favor. He is a straight-
forward business boy who, having im-
bibed the current doctrine of "success,"
goes after it under the flexible rules of
the game. In the end he is man enough
to turn against this doctrine and the ac-
companying laxities which threaten to
"make the name of America stand for
misrepresentation and fraud and short
change methods throughout the world."
And he swears allegiance to the older
faith in which his father was bred, in
the day when the clipper ships spread
spendidly "the world-wide reputation of
American thrift and fairness."
The Fairfax of "Fairfax and His
Pride" is, alas, still another mighty
genius, whose achievement we must take
on faith. His pride is Southern and
he brings it North with him to New
York, where he has come to make his
fortune. He aspires to enter the studio
of the great Swedish sculptor Ceders-
holm. He forthwith produces offhand
certain work which the great man
promptly appropriates as his own. There-
upon Fairfax takes the road, becomes a
railway engineer, marries an Irish wait-
ress. Years later he resumes his career
again under another name, wins fame,
and at last is free to take to himself
the little cousin Bella, the "honey-child"
who has been aimed at him by the author
from the first page. "His personality
had not yet developed to the point where
he was at peace. He knew that such
peace could only come to him through
the companionship of a woman." Lucky
Bella. . . . "Order," by Claude C.
Washburn, and "Revolt," by William H.
Macmasters, are self-titled novels of
ideas. The order at stake in the first-
named story, however, is not the social
or political but the moral order — conven-
tion, if you will. And the sadly reaction-
ary idea appears to be that the conven-
394]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
tion of personal morality may not be
a bad thing, after all — that, at all events,
many persons actually base their happi-
ness on its maintenance. A charming and
predatory Englishman creates a flurry
for a time in a certain elegant American
suburb, plays havoc with more than one
feminine temperament, but retires de-
feated by the quiet forces of order upon
which, despite their will, life really rests
for these women. "Revolt," interesting
as a symptom, is a raw and energetic
tract concerning the struggles of the
American "people" against the machina-
tions of the capitalists and their kept
political parties; and the final triumph
at the polls of the Presidential candidate
of the new Revolutionist party which is
to make America safe for all duly ac-
credited "people." The narrative is sul-
lied by no touch of characterization, that
subtle diiferentiation of personalities
which will no doubt be clearly recognized
and condemned by proletarian critics as
the trail of the capitalistic and individ-
ualistic serpent.
Meanwhile there remain artists, even
in America, whose interest lies in the
interpretation of life through character.
By contrast with the confused ingenuity,
the elaborate formlessness and inconclu-
siveness, or the thin didacticism which
so often finds shelter under the charitable
eaves of current fiction, two novels of the
moment take on importance for that
quaint person the "serious" reader. In
a sense they are all foreground; no vast
concerns of race or class or humanity
crowd in upon their simplicity. Time
and scene are then and there, not now
and here — then when America remained
at ease with herself and the world ; there
where, as it seems, the chronicler
chanced to pass one day and to see vividly
a bit of life so inconspicuous that we
other passers might have glanced upon it
without seeing it at all. If there were
such a thing as photography in story-
telling, we should not find it in "Bert-
ram Cope's Year." Mr. H. B. Fuller's
realism is the real thing; in seeming to
register it interprets and portrays.
Therefore your initial reservations as to
Bertram Cope's importance or saliency
as a subject may well have been forgot-
ten if not consciously withdrawn when
the full portrait is before you. He is a
nice, clean boy of the midlands who not
long after his respectable graduation
returns to his old university for what
turns out to be a single year's service as
instructor. He has literary leanings, but
we are not given to suppose that he has
anything more than a mild talent for
writing concealed in him, and are on the
whole grateful that it remains concealed.
He can sing pretty well, and has a kind
of boyish freshness and energy which
attract people. He is tolerably successful
with his work and happy in it, but we
are chiefly concerned with his extra-pro-
fessional experiences. These are limited
enough in range, and follow upon his be-
ing "taken up" by two rather wistful
persons of middle age who crave contact
with his invigorating youth. They begin
as recognizable types of the customary
university entourage, but we feel them
clearly as persons before we are done
with them. Randolph, the not quite
elderly bachelor, a broker by calling, by
avocation a collector of odds and ends,
among them choice specimens of the
priceless article Youth; Medora Phillips,
the comfortably "left" widow, whose
taste runs, more diffusively, in similar
paths. They have a sort of rivalry for
the intimacy of Bertram Cope. Both fail ;
and half-laughingly condole with each
other when he has passed along casually,
after his year at Churchton, to a new
post in the "important university in the
East" which is the natural next step
forward in his modest career. For the
rest, his year has produced blameless
excursions and alarms in the field of
young love, one of which, we gather,
may lead to an actual encounter later
on. A mild affair altogether whose sole
and sufficient distinction lies in the deli-
cate perfection of its setting forth.
The "Miss Lulu Bett" of Zona Gale is
another firmly moulded novel of the
shorter kind. In "Birth," its immediate
predecessor. Miss Gale showed a surpris-
ing growth not only as "localist" but as
ironic interpreter of character. This
story is firmer in tone as well a? more
compact in form. It is a study of char-
acter in the light of a culminating epi-
sode. The situation of the spinster aunt
who has become the household drudge
and is more or less put upon by all the
members of the family she serves is
among the staples of Victorian fiction.
Let us own that this is an American-
Victorian family, with its action by no
means necessarily in the past. Mr. Dea-
con, the tiresome paterfamilias, with his
stale jests and his pompous authority, is
familiar enough as a type. But Miss
Gale lifts him away from the type by
revealing the pathos of his limitations,
and the slender but true vein of emotion
that runs alongside his petty egotism
and petty malice. To his sister-in-law
he is pitiless, to his children and his wife
he deals out indulgence or censure purely
as his whim may determine. Yet there
is a warm bond between him and the
silly wife, and she is tenderly devoted
to her cantankerous old mother as he is
to the foster-mother to whom he "owes
what he is": "In both these beings,"
says the chronicler with a kind of won-
der, "there was something which func-
tioned as pure love." But this does not
help Miss Lulu Bett, with whom the story
as narrative is concerned. Hers, sub-
merged but indestructible, is the only
strong character in the tale. It is for
us to see it come to the surface, and.
first vainly, then successfully grasp at a
rescuing hand. A happy ending, which
is, after all, no bar to any but the most
"uncompromising" realism.
H. W. BOYNTON
The Tragic Years
Now It Can Be Told. By Philip Gibbs. New
York: Harper and Brothers.
"Some day," we said, "the history
of the war will be written; then we
shall know the truth about these things."
We said it in days of dark confusion,
when we were trying to approximate
truth by a blind process of averaging
official reports from both sides with
rumors and guesses, discounting the re-
sult to allow for overweening hope, and
adding ten per cent, to offset sheer
despair.
"Now It Can Be Told" says the title
of Mr. Gibbs's book. "It" is the thing
as he saw it, which can be told now with
freedom from censorship, too soon per-
haps for a true perspective, but not too
late to put facts and impressions, emo-
tions, reactions and reflections on record
before they fade, "as a memorial of men's
courage in tragic years." "The purpose
of this book," says the author, "is to get
deeper into the truth of this war and
of all war — not by a more detailed narra-
tive of events, but rather as the truth
was revealed to the minds of men in
many aspects, out of their experience;
and by a plain statement of realities
however painful, to add something to the
world's knowledge by which men of good-
will may try to shape . . . some new
code of international morality, prevent-
ing or at least postponing another mas-
sacre of youth like that five years' sac-
rifice of boys of which I was a witness."
"I have not painted the picture blacker
than it was, nor selected gruesome mor-
sels and joined them together to make a
jig-saw puzzle for ghoulish delight. . . .
I have tried to set down as many aspects
of war's psychology as I could find in my
remembrance of these years, without ex-
aggeration or false emphasis, so that out
of their confusion, even out of their con-
tradiction, the real truth of the adventure
might be seen as it touched the souls of
men."
The things that touched the souls of
men — and the things that did not, and
the men who had no souls to touch —
these are the material of the book. It is
not a sensational tale of horror, though
no painted horror could well surpass it.
He who wants cold-blooded atrocities will
not find them here; they are curtly dis-
missed as "not authenticated." Men's |
souls were raw to the touch throughout
the four years of grinding horror in the
trench and volcanic horror in battle; that
of Mr. Gibbs at least did not become
calloused, or subdued to what it worked
in. The book moves on a current of
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[395
sympathy which sometimes dims the
glow of his heat against those who lack
understanding. His heart is with the
line; he can scarcely mention the staff
save in words that bite, "elderly generals
who liked their little stroll after lunch,"
"young Regular officers released from
the painful necessity of dying for their
country." Montreuil as occupied by
G. H. Q. becomes the "City of Beautiful
Nonsense." It takes General Sir John
Harrington to reveal the science of war
as "not always a fetish of elementary
ideas raised to the nth degree of pom-
posity as I had been led to believe by other
generals and staff officers." He dips his
pen in acid to write of generals who com-
pete with one another on paper in games
that rot the souls of men in trenches,
blow their bodies to bits and churn them
into the mud, with no result but the
score on the office records, of profiteers,
of people of all sorts who express blood-
thirsty sentiments and play safe at home,
of "little ladies" in fancy dress uniforms
or bare-backed at bazaars or dancing
bare-legged "for the dear wounded."
There are times when his feeling clearly
belies his words. He depicts with all
possible skill the ghastly tragic confusion
at Loos, the fate of the 21st and 24th
Divisions, and that of the Scots on Hill
70. He cites Lord French's own despatch
to show that the plan and timing of the
attack were directly responsible for the
pitiful and useless slaughter, that Lord
French was directly responsible for the
plan and time-table. By that time it is
too late for him to say:
I do not blame Lord French. I have no
right to blame him, as I am not a soldier nor
a military expert. He did his' best with the
highest motives. The blunders he made were
due to ignorance of modern battles. Many
other generals made many other blunders, and
our men paid with their lives. Our High Com-
mand had to learn by mistakes, by ghastly
mistakes, repeated often, until they became
visible to the military mind and were paid for
again by the slaughter of British youth. A
writing-man who was an observer and re-
corder like myself, does not sit in judgment.
He has no right to judge.
Judgment it is none the less, and the
reader who must take such things largely
on authority finds confidence in it as he
goes on. Clearly enough Mr. Gibbs is not
that cold-blooded impossibility, "an im-
partial observer," but he has an effect of
impartiality, perhaps the best sort, com-
ing from the quickness and breadth of
his sympathy embracing all suffering
wherever he finds it. Against Heinie in
the trench he has no more rancor than
had Tommy in the trench ; that he saves
for those who fattened on the war.
Withal he had almost unparalleled op-
portunity to see and judge. With im-
perfect knowledge and observation we
may sometimes say of generalship as of
divine providence, "Perhaps if we could
see the whole we might see in this
slaughter or that a justifying purpose."
As often as not Mr. Gibbs shared the
plan of battle with G. H. Q. before the
first attack, and had full information as
to what was to be done and why, and of
what came of it at last he saw all that
human eyes could see. He went through
the whole; he was one of the first group
of unchartered correspondents in civilian
clothes who went over in the first weeks
of the war, and was with the British
forces steadily till the end beyond the
Rhine. If his sympathies are such that
you feel that you can not trust his judg-
ment, at least you gather from his work
material on which you may form a judg-
ment of your own.
Americans will look in vain in the book
for anything more than mention of their
exploits, but it will be wholesome read-
ing to any who think they "won the war."
On President Wilson we have comment
much like that of Mr. Keynes :
President Wilson had raised new hope
among many men who otherwise were hope-
less. . . . His Fourteen Points set out clearly
and squarely a just basis of peace. His advo-
cacy of a League of Nations held out a vision
of a new world. . . . Here at last was a
leader of the world ... In the peace terms
that followed there was little trace of those
splendid ideas which had been proclaimed by
President Wilson. On one point after another
he weakened, and was beaten by the old mili-
tarism which sat enthroned in the council-
chamber, with its foot on tne neck of the
enemy. The "self-determination of peoples"
was a hollow phrase signifying nothing. Open
covenants openly arrived at were mocked by
the closed doors of the Conference. When at
last the terms were published their merciless
severity . . . which would lead as sure as the
sun would rise to new warfare, staggered
humanity.
The book is interesting from begin-
ning to end; that is part of its quality
as journalism, for journalism it is,
though it needs not be ephemeral. The
essence of the style is speed. In a pass-
age of agonizing tension the author tells
of writing his long newspaper despatches
against time at the end of a wracking
day at the front. This habit of speed has
become chronic. The narrative rushes
through a smother of words, lifts on a
wave of emotion and races like a ship's
engine. It has the effect of having been
sent to the printer sheet by sheet with-
out possibility of revision, and the reader
wonders that the style can be so good as
it is. Mr. Gibbs says things well; his
fault is that he says them too often.
Passages to the same effect as some of
those here quoted could be quoted from
almost every chapter. He says a good
thing, forgets that he has said it, and
says it again. Some of the repetition is
clever emphasis that drives home the
point while the speed saves the effect of
boredom. If the book lasts it will be as
a record of matters which properly be-
long to history, but with which history
does not always deal. As such it would
be much more valuable if it had an
index.
Bulgarian Apologia
Balkan Problems and European Peace. By
Noel Buxton and C. Leonard Leese. New
York : Charles Scribner's Sons.
CRITICS will find much to dispute
in this presentation of the reasons
which governed Bulgaria's entry into the
war on the side of the Central Empires,
and the treatment she ought to have re-
ceived in order to prevent that unhappy
event. Although this small book goes
by a comprehensive name, which seeks
to include all the Balkan peoples, it is
essentially, if not frankly, interested only
in Bulgaria. Its value depends on the
light it sheds on Bulgarian aspirations
rather than on any impartial discussion
of new material.
The book's main argument is that Bul-
garia could have been brought into the
war on the side of the Allies by paying
her price, and that the price she de-
manded was reasonable and just. With
the first half of the thesis there can be no
dispute. But leaving out of account the
consequences of such "practical diplom-
acy" there is a fallacy in the second half
of Mr. Buxton's proposition — the fallacy
that Macedonia, Bulgaria's sine qua non^
is predominantly and indisputably Bul-
garian, and that there exists a clear
ethnic and historic Bulgarian right to
that province, a right which has been
obscured through all latter history by
the machinations of Greece and Serbia,,
carried on with the connivance of the
great Powers. This is not a suitable
occasion for arguing the subject at
length, but it must be stated that the
existence of such a right is not clear.
It is not frivolous to remind Mr. Buxton
that the inextricable conglomeration
of many ingredients bearing the name
maccdoine was not so called without rea-
son. Every established rule goes by the
board in Macedonia. In a Macedonian
family bearing a Bulgarian name, for
example, one of the sons may be fighting
in the Serbian and another in the Greek
army; the father may once have been a
Turkish agent and may still profess to
be a follower of the Prophet; the son in
the Serbian army may call himself a
Vlach and belong to the Orthodox
Church, while the Greek son may think
he is an Albanian and a good Catholic.
Bulgaria was the earliest of the rival
contestants to go into Macedonia with
her propagandists. And she has had
several special pleaders among British
statesmen (most of the present genera-
tion of whom have at one time or other
served a term at the Sofia Legation).
Robert College at Constantinople, also,
with its close Bulgarian ties, has the
keen interest of many philanthropic and
influential Americans; that M. Pana-
retoff, the Bulgarian Minister at Wash-
ington, was once a professor at Robert
College proved a considerable factor-
396]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
in determining the American attitude
toward his Government during the war.
But that Bulgaria, as a possible ally, was
clearly entitled to a big slice of the
Macedonian territory of Serbia, already
an ally and fighting the battle of the
Allies alone, while British and French
policy went blundering up and down the
Balkans, is difficult to prove.
Part three of the volume begins with
the following bald statement : "It is not
forgotten that a political assassination
committed in the cause of Greater Serbia
was the spark which set Europe ablaze."
This is one of those absolute statements
which so often are wrong. The world
will probably never know what the au-
thor here assumes we all know so well
that he makes no effort to prove it. What
forces really were behind the murder of
Francis FerdinandatSarajevo? Whatpart
was played in the tragedy by the Mag-
yars, extravagant haters of the Archduke
because of his opposition to Magyari-
zation schemes in Croatia and Slavonia
and his determination not to permit Mag-
yar domination of the Government after
he came to the throne? What part was
played in it by the extreme imperialists
of the Dual Monarchy (almost one might
say of the Royal House), who greatly
feared the Archduke's pet scheme of
"Trialism," a proposal to federate Aus-
tria-Hungary and the Jugo-Slav provinces
on a more or less equal footing? How
largely was the murder part of an ill-
advised and immature plot of Slav sub-
jects of Austria-Hungary, how largely
the work of irresponsible anarchists, how
largely instigated by the war party in
Germany, working through Vienna and
Budapest? It is a profound and sinister
mystery, not likely ever to be satisfac-
torily solved. If we assume the com-
plicity of Austrian officials, certain ex-
traordinary incidents connected with the
lack of precautions taken to protect the
Archduke in a town notorious as a centre
of anti-Hapsburg feeling, the searching
of the murdered man's pockets by the
police, the hurried and unattended
funeral, can be better understood; but
nothing is certain. Probably the one
agency we can absolve from suspicion is
the Serbian Government itself, which
was in a peculiarly bad situation to meet
such a crisis, with a general election
impending and on the eve of the con-
summation of important foreign negotia-
tions. Serbia, indeed, stood not the re-
motest chance of profiting by such an
event and was pathetically unprepared to
meet the armies of a great power, as is
evinced by her readiness to go all lengths
save the sacrifice of independence itself
in order to avoid the war in which she
must inevitably be overwhelmed. M.
Jonescu, the Rumanian ex-Premier, tells
us in his "Personal Recollections" how
violently the theory of Serbian instiga-
tion was propagated in London during
the days when war was trembling in the
balance, and the steps those who knew
Vienna well had to take to counteract the
effects of this Red Herring. In the last
analysis it can only be repeated that noth-
ing is certain — least of all anything to
warrant a generalization with such dis-
tinct implications as that which Mr. Bux-
ton takes for granted we all will swallow.
Hamilton Fish Armstrong
A New Brand of Modernism
Outspoken Essays. By William Ralph Inge,
Dean of St. Paul's. New York: Long-
mans, Green & Co.
THE Dean of St. Paul's describes his
new volume of essays as "out-
spoken," and the word is none too strong.
Here is a voice from perhaps the most
influential pulpit of the Anglican Church
calmly rejecting the virgin-birth and the
resurrection of Christ, translating the
hope of immortality into some metaphy-
sical conception of an impersonal "eter-
nity," and deprecating the continuance of
the Church as an institution — it is in-
deed outspoken. But frankly avowed as
are these negative views, they are intro-
duced rather as obiter dicta. Dean Inge
has also a positive message, for which he
prepares the way by showing the inade-
quacy of the principal modem movements
in the Church; and whatever may be
thought of his scepticism and of his ovm
attempt to rise through doubt to a posi-
tion of inexpugnable faith, his destruc-
tive analysis of the various other at-
tempts of the sort is the work of a
master hand. The religious papers in
this volume — of the sociological group
we shall say nothing — display what is
rare in contemporary English literature,
a highly trained philosopher in the pul-
pit.
The exposition begins with Bishop
Gore (probably the most generally es-
teemed of the orthodox Anglical theo-
logians) and his theory of a Catholic
Church which yet shuts itself off from
communion with half the Christian
world by its repudiation of the authority
of Rome, and which looks for a new
empire over the masses by courting dis-
establishment and flirting with social-
ism. "The Church of England," Dean
Inge observes, "has been freely accused
of too great complaisance to the powers
that be, when these powers were oli-
garchic. Some of the clergy are now
trying to repeat, rather than redress,
this error, by an obsequious attitude to
King Working-man. But the Church
ought to be equally proof against the
vultus instantis tyranni and the civium
ardor prava jubentium. The position of
a Church which should sell itself to the
Labor party would be truly ignominious.
It would be used so long as the politi-
cians of the party needed moral support
and eloquent advocacy, and spurned as
soon as its services were no longer neces-
sary."
To Dean Inge at least the foundation
of reform, if the Church is to be made
alive again, must be laid deeper than
Bishop Gore's plea for humanitarian in-
stitutionalism; it must go down till it
reaches the rock of philosophic belief.
The Dean is a modernist, but not of the
school of Loisy and Tyrrell and the others
who have usurped the name. His attempt
to get below the doubts now troubling
religious faith begins with a criticism,
sympathetic but unsparing, of Cardinal
Newman, whom he regards, justly, as the
father of the whole modernist movement.
"Newman," he says, "was only half a
Catholic. He accepted with all the fervor
of a neophyte the principle of submission
to Holy Church. But in place of the offi-
cial intellectualist apologetic, which an
Englishman may study to great advan-
tage in the remarkably able series of
manuals issued by the Jesuits of Stony-
hurst, he substituted a philosophy of ex-
perience which is certainly not Catholic.
. . . To deny the validity of reason-
ing upon Divine things is to withdraw
one of the supports on which Catholicism
rests. . . . For Newman, as for his
disciples the Modernists, theological
terms are only symbols for varying
values, and he holds that the moment
they are treated as having any fixed
connotation, error begins. It is no won-
der if learned Catholics thought that
Newman did not play the game." Dean
Inge does not mean to impugn Newman's
sincerity or to deny the depth and reality
of Newman's faith; his point is rather
that Newman, by rejecting the orthodox
rationalism of the Catholic theology and
introducing in its place a symbolical
pragmatism, was opening the door to a
kind of double-faced scepticism from
which he himself would have shrunk
back in detestation. "It is one thing to
admit that dogmas in many cases have
a pragmatic origin, and quite another
to say that they may be invented or
rejected with a pragmatic purpose. The
healthy human intellect will never be-
lieve that the same proposition may be
true for faith and untrue in fact; but
this is the Modernist contention."
What is meant by rejecting or invent-
ing dogma with a pragmatic purpose
Dean Inge expounds at length in the
essay on "Roman Catholic Modernism."
Thus, according to M. Le Roy, one of the
ablest apologists of the movement, the
dogma "God is our Father" does not
state an objective fact or offer a ration-
ally comprehensible definition, but signi-
fies that we are to behave to God as
sons behave to a father. "Jesus is risen"
means simply that we are to think of
him and act as if he were living amongst
us. The dogma of the Real Presence im-
plies that we ought to have the same
(Continued on page 398)
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[397
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This essay pictures Ireland in the new light of an outpost
not only of England but also of Europe, which has been pro-
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MOSLEM ARCHITECTURE
Its Origins and Development
By G. T. RivoiRA Net $21.00
.\n original work of the greatest value describing the devel-
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A valuable and timely volume throwing a clear light on the
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DIPLOMACY AND THE STUDY OF
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
By D. P. Heatley Net $3.75
.\n attempt to portray diplomacy and the conduct of foreign
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At all Booksellers, or from the Publishers.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Please mention The Review in writing to aavertisers.
398]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
THE
PEACE TREATY
IN THE PRESENT CBISIS EVERY
AMERICAN SHOULD KNOW WHAT
IS IN THE PEACE TREATY AND
WHY IT IS THERE.
An Introduction to
tlic Peace Treaties
By ARTHUR PEARSON SCOTT,
the University of Chicago, gives val-
uable information regarding the
causes of the war, the aims of the
belligerents, the peace proposals, and
the framing of the Treaty of Peace.
It is also a comprehensive explana-
tion of the League of Nations and
the location of new national boun-
daries. Illustrated. Ready May 15.
$2.00; postpaid, $2.15.
OTHER BOOKS
A Short History of
Belgium
By LEON VAN DER ESSEN, of
the University of Louvain. $1.50;
postpaid, $1.60. It is a fascinating
and authoritative account of the past
of this country from 57 B.C. to the
Olid of the Groat War.
The Religions of the
World. (Revised Edition)
By GEORGE A. BARTON. $2.00;
postpaid, $2.15. The author gives a
keen and sympathetic interpretation
of all the great religions, as well as
such facts concerning their origin
and history as one must have in or-
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The Neiv Orthodoxy
By EDWARD S. AMES. $1.00;
postpaid, $1.10. Every person dissat-
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The Problem of
Democracy
Edited by SCOTT W. BEDFORD.
Vol. XIV. Papers and Proceedings
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230 pages, royal 8vo, paper; $1.50;
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The Relation between Re-
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logical Approach
By ANGUS S. WOODBURNE.
Paper ; 75 cents ; postpaid, 85 cents.
The author has shown that religion
and science may exist side by side in
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A Manual for Writers
By JOHN M. MANLY, University
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$1.50; postpaid, $1.65. A book de-
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The University of Chicago Press
5786 Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Illinoii
{Continued from page 396)
feelings before the consecrated Host
which we should have if Christ were
really present before us. "The same
treatment of dogma," Dean Inge adds,
"is advocated in Mr. Tyrrell's very able
book 'Lex Orandi.' The test of truth
for a dogma is not its correspondence
with phenomenal fact, but its 'prayer-
value.' " That is to say, modernism is a
transference to religion of the als-ob,
"as-if," development of Kant's meta-
physic; having no knowledge of truth
or means of acquiring truth, we are
nevertheless to act as if certain things
were true. "Let the dogmas be inter-
preted in this way," exclaims M. Le
Roy, "and no one will dispute them."
Naturally! But such a form of prag-
matic assent is merely a parasitic growth
on the faith of genuine believers, and
can have no power over the conduct of
men so soon as the genuine faith from
which it draws its vigor is dead. As
Dean Inge says, "the crisis of faith
can not be dealt with by establishing a
modus Vivendi between scepticism and
superstition."
We have not the space to set forth
Dean Inge's substitute for a feeble and
intrinsically insincere pragmatism. In
brief his plan embraces two recommen-
dations. First, for the institutional
Church he would propose a religion of
personal mysticism, and would do away
with the creeds and confessions and
rely on the immediate sense of spiritual
values in the soul. That may sound well
and may seem to offer an escape at once
from orthodoxy and pragmatism; but
apart from the extraordinary spectacle
of a man in Dean Inge's position advo-
cating the suppression of institutions,
it is clear that such a scheme ignores
the great and wholesome restraints
which flow from tradition and solidarity ;
an institution may become a prison-
house of the spirit, but a pure indi-
vidualism makes demands on human na-
ture far beyond its strength and must
end in spiritual distraction and moral
license. Dean Inge's other recommenda-
tion would seem to admit as much, by
offering the suggestion — we do not know
how seriously he means it to be taken
— of a new institution, or at least asso-
ciation, of a kind and a new creed of a
kind. The reader who is curious to
learn the full regula of this "league for
mutual protection" of the spiritually
minded against a debased and material-
istic civilization will find it on page
twenty-eight. Here it is sufficient to
note the religious basis of the society.
This "will be a blend of Christian
Platonism and Christian Stoicism, since
it must be founded on that faith in abso-
lute values which is common to Chris-
tianity and Platonism, with that sturdy
defiance of tyranny and popular folly
which was the strength of Stoicism."
Dean Inge has written a remarkable
book, and his conclusions are more prac-
ticable than they may seem to be in our
abridgment.
The Masquerade
Maskerade. Door Jo van Ammers-Kiiller.
Amsterdam : N. G. van Kampen.
IT is a long-established custom among
the students of the Dutch universi-
ties to celebrate, once in five years, the
anniversary of their Alma Mater with an
historical pageant, a so-called masquer-
ade. The title of Mrs. Jo van Ammers-
Kiiller's latest novel must be understood
in that sense of the word, so far as the
first of its three parts is concerned. This
centres upon the students' historical
pageant and the various festivities that
are attendant on it. But in the back-
ground of this gay, light-hearted gala
the author has painted a darker scene of
intrigues and hungering desires, the
cruel reality behind the bright show of
gaiety and pomp. Thus the title ac-
quires a second meaning: not only the
costumes of a bygone age make this life
in a university town a masquerade, but
also the outward demeanor of those who
move in it, worn as a mask to hide the
inner life of the souL
There is Mrs. Van Ravensberg, the
cool and stately professor's wife, who
taxes all her mental and financial powers
for the attainment of the one great aim,
the betrothal of her daughters to
wealthy, aristocratic students. There is
the student, Fritz van Warmelo, who
plays a cruel, deceitful game with her
eldest daughter Hanny. These two are
the most typical actors in the great so-
ciety play of hypocrisy, where behind
the mask of amiable faces lives the fierce
desire for money and sensual pleasure.
The students gratify the lusts of the body
in riotous nights with venal women.
Tine, the youngest of the professor's
daughters, the heroine of the story, has,
at one time, had a glimpse of that other
life of the male, at a fair, in a merry-
go-round, where a girl friend belonging
to a less respectable class of people had
taken her one evening. And when all
those men, so distinguished and well-
mannered, sit conversing at the dinner
party arranged by her mother with diplo-
matic intentions, Tine realizes as an ob-
session, behind the attractive outward
show, the dark inner life which every
one of them so cautiously conceals.
With great talent and mastery of lan-
guage the author suggests to her readers
how this constant dissembling strains
the relations between the two sexes, how
Tine, the warm and simple-hearted girl,
is stunned by it and how her passion
for the one strong man who irresistibly
attracted her suddenly fails her at the
very moment when he whom she has once
happened to see with "one of those
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[899
The New York
University Press
The Ground and Goal of
Human Life
By CHARLES GRAY SHAW, Ph.D..
Professor of Ethics in New York
University
Cloth, xii+S94 pages. Price, $3.50
An attempt by means of Individualism to
elaborate a super-scientific and super-social
view of human life.
"The book bears throughout the evidence
of Professor Shaw's forceful individuality, and
will certainly have a distinct field of useful-
ness."— Frof. IV. E. Hocking, Harvard.
"Full of erudite reasoning and cogent
thought." — San Francisco Chronicle.
"In the background, Professor Shaw presents
a rich landscape of literary experience." — The
Dial.
"A valuable work, and in the right direction,
teaching good, sound doctrine much needed to-
day."—Fro/. W. H. Sheldon, Dartmouth.
Values, Immediate and
Contributory, and Tlieir
Interrelation
By MAURICE PICARD, Ph.D..
lecturer in Philosophy in Barnard
College. In press.
This book purposes to discuss, in a fresh,
empirical, and concrete manner, two great
classes of values. Its premises are grounded
in biological and psychological data, rather than
in transcendental and metaphysical pre-supposi-
tions. The origin, the development, and the
co-existence of values are successively treated.
There is an interesting discussion of the pos-
sible value of false judgments. Altogether, the
book lays a solid foundation for research in
several new fields of philosophical investigation.
Efficient Composition: A
College Rhetoric
By ARTHUR HUNTINGTON
NASON, Ph.D., Professor of English
in New York University.
Cloth. ;rwu+518 pages. Price, $2.50
A thought-provoking textbook for the ad-
vanced student of rhetoric, with more than one
substantial contribution to the philosophy of
composition; yet 50 clear in structure that none
can fail to follow; so human in detail that
freshmen have been known to read more than
the assignment.
The Evolution of Indus-
trial Freedom in Prus-
sia, 1845-1849
By HUGO C. M. WENDEL, Ph.D.,
Instructor in History in New York
University. In preparation.
THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
32 Waverly Place New York City
women" confe.s.ses his love for her.
Henceforth her life is a constant failure,
a suffering from lack of mental balance,
for which she finds only a partial cure
in a marriage contracted at the cost of
a compromise with her feelings. The
lyrical element is uppermost in the sug-
gestive portrayal of Tine's tragic figure.
The descriptions of the house and garden
of the Van Ravensbergs, where Tine has
her still fight of the soul with life's
cruelty, are touched with the pathos of
autobiographic reminiscence. In Tine the
author has revealed herself. This tend-
ency towards self-portrayal and lyrical
effusion, though the source of many beau-
ties in detail, has warped the book as a
whole. In the first part the composition
is faultless, and to it the title in both
its real and symbolic meaning is fully
applicable. But the author, once en-
grossed in the analysis of her own self,
continues, in the two following parts,
the psychological study of Tine's tor-
tured soul in a multitude of details, often,
indeed, suggestive and interesting, but
out of all proportion to the introductory
volume, in which not Tine alone, but a
great many other women and men were
introduced as representative figures of
that life of pretense which the author, as
her title shows, intends to portray as a
masquerade. The author, by gradually
concentrating her interest on the nervous
suffering of Tine, makes the reader lose
sight of the vivid scene in which she
was to be the most pathetic figure. Not
Tine in the scene but the scene itself
should have remained the centre of inter-
est, and the harmony of the whole is
disturbed by this growing prominence
of the heroine which hides the scene
from our sight.
The book, though far from faultless
in its composition, deserves to be intro-
duced to a wider circle of readers than
the limited range of its language permits.
Foreigners will take a special interest in
it because of the typical Dutch milieus
with which it makes them acquainted.
They are described with delicate feeling
and sympathy for the peculiar poetry
of Dutch surroundings, which, small
though they are, form a part of this
wide world, and in which the same great
human passions, to which the Hollanders,
of course, react in their peculiar way,
are the rulers of life and the begetters
of its sorrows and its joys.
J. L. Walch
The Hague
{Continued on page 400)
THE REVIEW'S EDUCATIONAL
SECTION IS A BI-WEEKLY
FEATURE.
James Shirley, Drama-
tist : A Biographical and
Critical Study
By
ARTHUR HUNTINGTON NASON
Professor of English in New York
University.
Among the dramatists of the reign of
Charles the First, James Shirley stands
pre-eminent: the last of the Eliza-
bethans, the prophet of the Restoration.
Born in the spacious times of great
Elizabeth, in the very year in which
Raleigh and Lord Howard of Effingham
took and sacked Cadiz ; schoolboy, uni-
versity man, and teacher, in the reign of
James the First; favorite dramatist of
the court of Charles, friend of the King
and champion of the Queen ; follower of
the Duke of Newcastle in the Civil
War; and then, through the Protectorate
and the first six years of the reign of
Charles the Second, schoolmaster again
and miscellaneous writer: James Shir-
ley, in the course of three score years
and ten, embodied in himself as man and
dramatist, something of the chivalric
spirit of the Elizabethans, something of
the impetuous loyalty of the Cavaliers,
something of the fine patience of the
great poet of the Puritans.
In this study of the life atid works of Shircly,
the endeavor is threefold; first to examine the
little that we know of Shirley's life, to deter-
mine, fact by fact, the value of the evidence,
and, on a basis of this critical examination, to
construct a chronology more accurate than has
been hitherto available^ second on a basis of
this revised chronology, to restudy the dramatic
works of Shirley, in order to determine, if pos-
sible, the course of his development as a drama-
tist; and, third, from this same examination of
the plays, to determine the distinctive character-
istics of his dramatic works. The result is a
new and most interesting picture of this the
principal dramatic poet of the reign of Charles I.
Cloth, .rvi+472 pages. Choicely illus-
trated. Price, $5.00.
THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
iSclling Agents)
32 Waverly Place New York City
400]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
The Run of the Shelves
THERE are greater achievements
^ doubtless in the world of drama than
Mr. Charles Rann Kennedy's "Army with
Banners" (B. W. Huebsch), but one
doubts if there are greater exploits. It
blends incongruities and actualizes fan-
tasies in a manner that allows no rest
and sets no bound to admiration. Writ-
ten in 1917, it was produced April 9,
1918, in New York City at the Theatre
du Vieux Colombier. As a play it is far
from exemplary. It is long and its ac-
tion is naught, and the culmination, ar-
riving finally at the end of five dilatory
acts, has the effect of being prostrated
by the fatigues of its journey. Some
of the characters speak in a double dic-
tion which from moment to moment is
enriched or impoverished. The play is
mediaeval in setting, quasi-modern in
manners, and millennial in its purport.
There are seven characters, of whom five
are earthworms and two are saints;
one of the saints is whimsically meek
and one is piously mischievous. About
three-fourths of the play consists of the
raw dialogue of low characters; the rest
is in a fashion apocalyptic. How are
these things to be reconciled? By over-
charging the naturalism till it becomes
in its turn a form of extravagance and
by turning the idealism into whimsi-
cality by the insertion of quirks and
crotchets; after which the whimsicality
and extravagance join hands. The savor
of reality in a play which flouts the
probabilities at every turn, the savor
of delicacy in a play which fairly tram-
ples the refinements under foot, are
things that make one rather proud of
Mr. Kennedy. The play closes with the
coming of the Lord in a burst of sun-
shine and heavenly music. But its pos-
session of a religious bottom may be
questioned. Its saints are quite as much
elves as saints. The Christianity which
it rebukes is sour and formal and lying
and greedy beyond a doubt, but the
Christianity which it praises is caper-
ing and audacious and a little mocking
and condescending. Admitting that the
caterpillars can not save us, we may
yet be oversanguine in the hope of
salvation from the butterflies; 1917 de-
manded other helpers.
Miss Flora Klickmann, of London,
whose "Lore of the Pen" is offered to
the American public by G. P. Putnam's
Sons, is an editor who undertakes the
tutorship of the immature and unin-
formed contributor. Miss Klickmann's
experience has made her keenly sensitive
to the follies of aspirants; it has ap-
parently left her without any proper
sense of the general folly of aspiration.
It is very hard to conceive that the grade
of intelligence to which her instructions
are addressed could turn those instruc-
tions to the profit of successful author-
ship. The groundless confidence in
himself with which the raw contributor
begins is often succeeded by an equally
groundless confidence in the efficacy of
teachers, and the book, which will almost
certainly prosper, will prosper in too
many cases by the extraction of cher-
ished dollars from the meagre purses of
persons whom its counsels can not help.
It is quite true that people capable of
writing books that sell sometimes dis-
play elementary ignorance. Miss Klick-
mann, for instance, in the second sen-
tence of her preface, and therefore the
second of her book, employs the solecism
"as though the difference . . . is" and
the tautology "newspaper journalism."
But while it is true that in this topsy-
turvy world the learned are often unin-
formed and the gifted often incompetent,
one feels that one should reckon on
their powers even when one is coping
with their aberrations. Miss Klickmann's
work is adapted not only to people with-
out knoweledge but to people without
brains. There is an iteration of the
familiar, an elaboration of the simple,
an elucidation of the clear, which hardly
agrees with Miss Klickmann's own pic-
ture of a "nervous, hurrying age" in
which sentences and articles must be
"sped up." It is curious that an age
so hurried should find time for so many
repetitions.
Miss Klickmann is zealous for train-
ing and presses very hard the familiar
and favorite analogies between the un-
trained writer and the untrained violin-
ist or dressmaker. Now there is some
truth, but more fallacy, in these com-
parisons. The equipment of a strong
writer divides itself into three parts.
There is, first, the part he shares with
other educated people, a very large ele-
ment, since his instrument, language,
unlike the violin, is everybody's instru-
ment used daily and hourly in every
species of transaction. There is, sec-
ondly, the part, often the large part,
which even his fellow-craftsmen do not
share, the part which rests on his pe-
culiarities as an individual. There is
lastly, between the other two, and re-
duced to a narrow strip by the encroach-
ments of its neighbors on either side,
the third part, shared with his fellow-ar-
tists, but not shared with the educated
public. The slightness of thin residue
is sufficiently revealed in the meagre-
ness and indigence of almost all the
pompous textbooks on the vaunted art of
composition. The thinness of Miss
Klickmann's own teaching lends more
color to the novice's cheerful supposition
that anybody can write than to her confi-
dent assumption that teaching is indis-
pensable. Both notions are exaggera-
tions, but the point to be made here is
that the relation of the tyro to the adept
in literature is not the relation between
the novice and expert in shoemaking,
breadmaking, or carpentry. In litera-
ture, even where the difference in
capacity is far greater, the difference in
training is far less. So small is the
latter difference that talent is often
evinced in the anticipation by instinct
of the very methods which practice and
theory laboriously drill — or laboriously
fail to drill — into the unpliant and un-
furnished mind. Teaching of composi-
tion is a pitiful thing. Tolstoi was a
shoemaker and a man of letters; it is
far harder to write good books than to
make good shoes : yet Tolstoi would have
been ashamed to teach shoemaking in
the fashion in which he would have been
obliged to teach writing.
"The Opium Monopoly" (Macmillan)
is the title of a little book by Miss Ellen
H. La Motte in which facts and figures
are given to show the extent to which
the British Government is directly re-
sponsible for the production, sale, and
distribution of nearly all of the world's
supply of opium. In British India the
growing of the poppy plant is officially en-
couraged by the Government; the manu-
facture of opium from its juice is a
Government monopoly; and the drug is
disposed of by monthly sales to the high-
est bidders. The largest purchasers at
these sales are the Japanese who, while
strictly controlling the use of opium
within their own islands, introduce it
into Korea and smuggle it in very large
quantities into China through the ports
of Dairin and Tsingtao, which they con-
trol. In the Straits Settlements and the
Federated Malay States more than fifty
per cent, of the public revenue is ob-
tained from the traffic in opium; in
Hong Kong one-third. In British India
itself something over $15,000,000 is an-
nually derived directly from this trade;
and this does not include the "excises"
on drugs and liquors, which in 1915-
1916 amounted to some $50,000,000.
Since 1917 Great Britain has permitted
China wholly to exclude Indian opium
from its markets, but in the "Settle-
ments" and "Concessions" at the vari-
ous treaty ports opium divans and drug
shops licensed by the foreign Powers
continue to supply the drug to those
who wish to use it. Miss La Motte's
book is intended as a severe indictment
of Great Britain's policy with regard to
opium. Her account would, however, be
a fairer one if consideration were given
to the British side of the case as pre-
sented, for example, by Sir John
Strachey in his "India: Its Administra-
tion and Progress."
Probably the introduction for most of
us to "mio Cid" was made through
Southey's "Chronicle of the Cid," which
melted into an indistinguishable mass
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[401
the "Cronica," the "Poema," and the
"Romances." From it little idea of the
Poema could be gained, although Southey,
it is true, printed in an appendix some
really wonderful scraps of translation by
John Hookham Frere, an earlier Fitzger-
ald remembered now especially for his
then and since unapproached renderings
of Aristophanes. Into such a perilous
adventure R. Selden Rose and Leonard
Bacon have now entered with the "Lay
of the Cid translated into English Verse"
(University of California Press) one of
the semi-centennial publications of that
university. The metre, "warts and all,"
is that of the original, but it would have
been well if the translators could have
found, as Spanish editors have done and
as Hookham Frere did, some way of
marking the caesura. The translation is
left to speak for itself without notes of
any kind, and the short introduction, half
historical, half literary, has almost as
little bottoming; there is not a word on
the text; there are two words on the
date, and the inquisitive reader is left
with almost no clues to further informa-
tion. He may well wonder who is the
Pidal casually mentioned on p. xii, and
he should know, if only for his wonder
and gratitude, that the "Poema," like
"Aucassin et Nicolette" and Catullus, is
one of the miraculous survivals through
a single MS. from the older world. He
will probably know himself that the re-
mark about the Cid, quoted on p. xiv,
was not made by Don Quixote, but by the
Canon (Don Quixote, Parte I, Cap. xlix).
All the wisdom in that wisest of Spanish
books was not that of the Knight. But,
all such things having been said, the
translation is a solid piece of work and to
be received with gratitude.
FRENCH NOTES
After an interval of two years the sale
of the late Jules Claretie's library, which
he was over a half century in collecting,
was concluded last month in Paris. The
catalogue for this sixth section of the
library listed 283 volumes devoted to
poetry and 768 to the theatre. Many vol-
umes on these subjects were disposed of
at the earlier sales. A large number of the
plays were enhanced in value by eJivois
d'auteur and by inserted autograph let-
ters.
A recent number of the Revue des
Deux Mondes contains an article by Pro-
fessor Gustave Lanson on Lamartine,
apropos of the centennial of his "Medita-
tions," where the name Elvire appears
frequently as that of the poet's in-
amorata. When this collection of elegies
and lyrics first appeared, it was taken
for granted by the more sentimental
readers that there was of course but one
Elvire. But M. Lanson shows that there
were not less than four women who
{Continued on page 402)
DYNAMIC SYMMETRY:
THE GREEK VASE
By JAY HAMBIDGE
Editor of "The Diagonal."
An explanation of the fundamentals behind active symmetry in
design. Fully illustrated.
"The rapid spread of the system of Dynamic Symmetry
will lay the foundation of our artistic salvation."
Walter G. Raffe.
Cloth, $5.00
HELMETS AND BODY ARMOR
IN MODERN WARFARE
By BASHFORD DEAN
Curator of the Armor Collection of the New York Metropolitan
Museum of Art.
The first authoritative account of the important part played by
armor in the World War. This volume, with its many unusual and
striking illustrations, is published by permission of the Unittd States
War Department.
Cloth, $6.00
A GRAY DREAM
AND OTHER STORIES OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE
By LAURA WOLCOTT
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said of Laura Wolcott's work that
it was the "best since Hawthorne." The sketches in this book are
chiefly of New England life in the thirties and forties, a stern enough
time, but lightened up by the author's quiet humor and kindly obser-
vation. Lovers of New England will find here the same charm and
atmosphere that is theirs in Cranford and Old Chester.
Cloth, $2.25
Spring List of selected titles sent on request.
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
143 Elm St., New Haven, Conn. 19 East 47th St., New York City
402]
THE REVIEW
rVol. 2, No. 49
(Continued from page 401)
touched the heart of the sensitive poet.
M. Paul Souday's commentary is that
Lamartine loved more than once; but
this does not mean that he did not
love profoundly." But M. Lanson lets
it be seen that he thinks it would have
been better, at least from the poetic
standpoint, if there had been but one
Elvire.
Comcvdia, the Paris theatrical daily,
states in a recent number that when
the Theatre Frangais produced Victor
Hugo's "Hemani," after a long interrup-
tion, a curious incident occurred. It will
be remembered that at the end of the
fourth act the group of soldiers, con-
spirators, and nobles acclaim the new
emperor with "Hurrah for Germany!"
But at the dress-rehearsal two of the
actor-conspirators refused to give this
shout, whereupon the director and some
of the older players tried to get this
ultra-patriotic twain "to follow the
text"; but in vain, especially as this
same theatre at a recent revival of "Kuy
Bias" substituted, at the end of a verse,
campagne for Allemagne, and had Queen
Maria of Neuburg say, instead of "Pas
■un livre allemand,"
Pas un livre amusant, tout en langue espagnole,
which, by the way, was not very com-
plimentary to Spain and her literature.
In the Temps for March 5 and the
Revue Contemporaine for February, M.
Paul Souday and M. Andre Therive differ
as to whether' Sainte-Beuve and Eenan
were on really friendly terms. The
former pronounces their friendship
"touching and lasting," whereas the lat-
ter contests this assertion and speaks of
"the feline duplicity of the hermit of
Montparnasse." In the Minerve Fran-
faise of last October M. Therive treated
the same subject. It seems to us that
M. Souday comes off second best in the
argument.
On March 30 was celebrated at Paris
the tenth anniversary of the death of the
French poet, Jean Moreas, and the Revue
Critique and the Minerve Fran^aise
devote special numbers to his memory.
Though the publishing department of the
Mercure de France has issued not less
than eight volumes of his — short stories,
essays, plays and poems — there still re-
mains among his papers enough finished
material to fill two or three additional
volumes, which his literary executor, M.
Raymond de la Tailhede, has promised
to bring out.
A peculiarly interesting man has just
disappeared from the scientific world of
Paris. M. Marcel Dieulafoy was a civil
engineer, a lieutenant-colonel, a member
of the Institute, and a traveler, whose
explorations in Persia brought about the
discovery of the palaces of Darius and
Artaxerxes, the bas-reliefs of which form
part of his celebrated Asiatic archaeo-
logical collection in the Louvre. In this
last work he was ably seconded by his
wife, who always wore male attire. The
tall, slim husband and the rather squatty
wife, both neatly attired in their Prince
Alberts, gloved and topped with silk hats,
were well-known figures in the Passy
quarter of Paris, Mme. Dieulafoy always
awakening the often indiscreet curiosity
of the passers-by who could not exactly
make out "the queer little gentleman."
Last August the President of China
informed the University of Paris that
the Pekin Government would contribute
annually 20,000 francs for the establish-
ment at the Sorbonne of a department
of Chinese studies, and last month the
French Government announced that it
would contribute a like sum. President
Deschanel is the patron of the new de-
partment, which opens with three courses
of lectures — the History of Chinese Civi-
lization, the Applied Sciences in China,
and Chinese Painting, Music, and Poetry.
During the war the American Library
Association organized a fine book service
for furnishing reading matter to our
Expeditionary Forces in Europe. Its
headquarters were in the spacious man-
sion in the Rue de I'Elysee, formerly
occupied by the Papal Nuncio, overlook-
ing the gardens of the Elysee Palace, the
White House of France. In this connec-
tion Mr. Herbert Putnam, the Librarian
of Congress, who was the principal agent
in bringing this about, wrote us recently:
The library is remaining at the Rue de
I'Elysee. The American Library Association
has undertaken to maintain it during the pres-
ent year and residents of Paris, that is to say
especially members of the American and Brit-
ish "colonies," have organized a Committee
and subscribed nearly 200,000 francs towards
a further maintenance. An arrangement has
been, or is being, effected between this Com-
mittee and the authorities of the American
Library Association, which will insure not
merely the maintenance, but the development
of the collection and suitable professional ad-
ministration of it. The interest of the Ameri-
can Library Association is something more
than in a library for local use; it is in a
bureau of information available to any in-
quirer from any part of Europe, upon Ameri-
can library methods, and the promotion of the
knowledge of American institutions and
affairs, in addition to such service as may be
rendered to American commissions that may
be operating in Europe in relief, commercial
and educational undertakings. Mr. Burton E.
Stevenson, head of the Chillicothe, Ohio,
library, who so efficiently managed the Paris
enterprise during the war, is returning, leav-
ing in temporary charge Mr. Henry O. Sever-
ance, librarian of the University of Missouri.
The general direction of the administration
still remains on this side; not with me, how-
ever, for I withdrew from the War Service
last October; but with Mr. Carl H. Milam,
"until recently head of the public library at
Birmingham, Alabama, who succeeded me with
the residue of the work.
Books That Appear in
the Spring
AN amiable critic of current literature
has complained that the satirists!
are all poking fun at the "new" thingsj
at the vers libristes, the futurists, the
expounders of the soviet. This is most
unfair, he thinks ; the province of satire
is to ridicule things as they are, the worn-|
out systems of the past. He might have
a hard time to prove it — satirists have
fashion of tilting now at the new, and
now at the old, and when either side com^
plains, or whines "We don't object to the
ridicule, but to the manner of it," thatj
side is confessing the weakness of itii
position. When we are permitted to
select the weapons of our enemy we have
him beaten at the start. If the radicals
in literature, in painting, and sculj
ture, or in politics, can not survive
laughter, they may as well begin to shoui
"Kamerad !"
Is it because what they call radicalisr
is so often merely a campaign towarda
the triumph of a school? If I were in-
vited to choose between drinking abH
sinthe with M. Gauguin, Miss Amy
Lowell, and Mr. Max Eastman, or taking
a dish of tea with Sir Edwin Landseerj
Miss Felicia Hemans, and George III,
should be hard put to it, the company*
would be so delightful at either table.
Absinthe, although it sounds wicked, is
as insipid to me as tea. But I might
expect to hear as much liberalism, as
much sympathy with freedom and
democracy, in one place as the other.
M. Gauguin's friends tell me that
Heaven didn't know everything when it
made man somewhat thinner in the ankle
than the thigh, but that they have
changed all that. Miss Lowell's admirers
call my attention to the fact that a white
beard on the chin of Longfellow is the
sign of toryism and reaction; attached
to Walt Whitman it means democracy
and progress. And Mr. Eastman, grow-
ing eloquent against tyrants who wear
golden crowns or plug hats, wishes to
commend me to one who wears a greasy
cap.
George Ade is one of the satirists com-
plained about, and Heywood Broun is the
plaintiff. Both of them have books in
the spring lists. Mr. Ade's "Hand-Made
Fables" (Doubleday) is a bit more mel-
low, a trifle more ponderous, than in
the days (1899!) when his first fables
were published. But he is still telling
the truth, to the discomfort of pretense
and humbug. When I listen to readings
of Rabindranath Tagore I am still re-
minded of Mr. Ade's preacher who quoted
the great Persian theologian Ramtazuk,
"that the Soul in its reaching out after
the Unknowable was guided by the
Spiritual Genesis of Motive rather than
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[403
by mere Impulse of Mentality." Mr.
Broun's book has a title halfway between
Victor Hugo's "Things Seen" and one of
Eugene Field's poems, "Seeing Things
at Night." In other words, he calls his
book "Things Seen at Night" (Har-
court), and it presumably discusses some
of the plays — and other things — which a
dramatic critic may expect to see. Mr.
Broun's observations of books and plays
are better, not worse, for being un-
weighted with solemnity, and his humor
never deserts him, except momentarily
when he asks to have the artillery of the
satirists trained only upon conserva-
tives and academicians.
F. P. A. has a rather well-worn catch-
word for the title of his new book,
"Something Else Again" (Doubleday),
but the selections will, as usual, present
the cream of his newspaper column, and
his deftest verse. Of Albert Bigelow
Paine's compilation, "Moments with
Mark Twain" (Harper), it is certainly
not priggish to say that the best thing
about such a book is that it may cause
you to read the books from which the
extracts are taken. Mr. Paine's life of
Mark Twain is yet to be esteemed as it
deserves; it tells of adventures more
varied than Lockhart related in his Life
of Scott. Both books have their tragic
and heart-breaking chapters.
If you can enjoy the rebels without
hating the tories, or take tea with the
tories without despising the rebels, you
may have pleasure in the nicety of Wal-
ter De La Mare's "Collected Poems"
(Holt), or in Vachell Lindsay's new book,
the very name of which is glorious —
"The Golden Whales of California"
(Macmillan). Walt Whitman's genius
for splendid titles — flamboyant titles, I
suppose some would say — is repeated
here. But it is a tame thing to sit down
and read Mr. Lindsay's poems, after
hearing him recite them. In "Others,
for 1919" (Brown), edited by Alfred
Kreymborg, there is a circus in verse,
the genuine acrobats, the clever clowns,
and the mere freaks. It is to poetry
what the exhibition of the Independent
Artists is to the Academy. How many
of the poseurs therein would not gladly
write such iinished verse as in Arthur
Guiterman's "Ballads of Old New York"
(Harper), if they had the ability and
the honest respect of the artist for his
art?
The announcement of Winston
Churchill's "The Green Bay Tree" (Mac-
millan) is interesting to readers who
enjoy the religious-political novel; less
earnest souls will look eagerly for "Mrs.
Warren's Daughter" (Macmillian), by
Sir Harry Johnston. This is Vivie War-
ren, daughter of Mrs. Warren of in-
famous repute, in Mr. Shaw's play, and
we are assured that she comes out all
right in the novel. Of course she would ;
(Continued on page 404)
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The first succinct, practical volume for
the layman who wishes a comprehensive
knowledge of the Einstein physics. $1.00
STANDARD OPERA GLASS.
By CHARLES ANNESLEY
A new and revised edition, brought
strictly up-to-date, making this the most
complete book of opera synopses ever
published. $3.00
Publisher*
BRENTANO'S
5th Ave. & 27th St.
New York
404]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 4!)
(Continued from page 403)
she was so coldly virtuous and calculat-
ing that Jier mother's easy-going lack of
all respectability was tolerable by com-
parison. Who are the other characters?
in "The Gay-Dombeys," Sir Harry John-
ston had the whole Dickens gallery to
draw upon, and a fascinating book he
made — in part a good story, and in part
a literary and political puzzle. Many a
pleasant evening could be spent in iden-
tifying the persons of the tale. In Rider
Haggard's "The Ancient Allan" (Long-
mans) the author is reversing the proc-
ess of the Elsie books — they carried Elsie
from childhood to her grandmotherly
days. Now, Allan Quatermain, friend
and comforter when our worst troubles
were improper fractions and Harper's
School Geography, is being projected by
his creator into an earlier incarnation,
in the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
Wallace Irwin has a little fun with the
drawing-room Bolshevists in "Trimmed
with Red" (Doran), while Arthur
Train's "Tutt and Mr. Tutt" (Scribner)
will contain, I hope, some lawyers and
rascals as lively as those in "True Stories
of Crime" and "The Confessions of
Artemas Quibble."
It is customary, in commending a book
to-day, to say that you read it under fire,
in a trench at the front, with German
shells bursting round. I can not say
I read Christopher Morley's "Kathleen"
(Doubleday) that way, when it first ap-
peared in a magazine, but I did read it
while in a guardhouse (not, I aver, as
a prisoner) and sitting under a stove-
pipe which had just been drilled with a
Springfield bullet, let off in the course of
experimentation by one of the guard.
"Kathleen" is a capital story (Mr. Morley
refrains from mentioning pipe-smoking,
to the best of my recollection) , and it kept
me from pondering too nervously upon
how soon some one of the guard might
perforate his commanding officer, as that
person sat steeped in literary calm, be-
hind the thin pine boards which divided
the orderly room from the rest of the
shack. The republication of two books by
James Branch Cabell, "The Cords of
Vanity" and "The Cream of the Jest"
(McBride), recalls the stupid prosecution
of his "Jurgen." Many books, sup-
pressed or attacked, are no great loss;
their persecution is an affront to liberty,
not to art. In the instance of "Jurgen"
it is different; there is imagination,
humor, beauty in it, and a suggestion of
eeriness that is like Dunsany's best. It
was unwisely advertised by its friends;
fervid persons brandished it before the
"Puritans," with the lamentable result.
The defense of it has sometimes been
disingenuous; to deny its double mean-
ings is as hypocritical as Comstockery
itself.
Professor William E. Dodd's "Wood-
row Wilson and His Work" (Doubleday)
is a good partisan volume; if you trust
the author you are led to the conclusion
that nobody has opposed the President
except those actuated by greed for money
or thirst for human blood, but it is a
good partisan book, nevertheless. Sir
George Arthur's "Life of Lord Kitch-
ener" (Macmillan) is promised. "George
von L. Meyer" (Dodd), by M. A. De
Wolfe Howe, and "Some Letter of Augus-
tus P. Gardner" (Houghton), contain
interesting sidelights upon our foreign
and domestic politics. Observations
upon Presidents Taft and Roosevelt are
contained in Mrs. Larz Anderson's
"Presidents and Pies" (Houghton), and
informal biographical material about Mr.
Roosevelt in "Talks with T. R." (Hough-
ton), by John J. Leary, Jr., and "The
Political Adventures of Theodore and
Me" (Macmillan), by William Allen
White.
An attempt to clear away the ancient
grudge against England is the purpose
of Owen Wister's "A Straight Deal"
(Macmillan). Philippe Bunau-Varilla in
"The Great Adventure of Panama"
(Doubleday) lays the refusal of Colom-
bia to ratify the treaty with this coun-
try to German intrigue. It needs rather
more evidence to make it strong enough
— especially as the defenders of the
theory that our Government was in the
wrong about Panama, would hardly care,
now, to find proof that we and not Co-
lombia were right. Philip Gibbs's "Now
It Can Be Told" (Harper) searches over
the notebooks of this able correspondent
and tells us what the censor would not
permit to be published before the armis-
tice. It is that war is terrible; high-
explosive shells have a frightful effect
upon the human body; and that the man-
ners of men under the awful strain of
war are not always nice. A useful book
if it serves to keep anyone from think-
ing that war is glorious and much to be
desired; a pestiferous one if used by
pacifists to prove their contention that
the safety of our bodies is the end and
aim of existence. Sir Reginald Bacon's
"The Dover Patrol" (Doran) is one of
the books which I am sure I wish to read,
when I can get a chance, and Bashford
Dean's "Helmets and Body Armor in
Modem Warfare" (Yale Univ. Press)
should be one of the curious literary by-
products of the war.
A new Kipling book is announced,
"Letters of Travel" (Doubleday). "Modes
and Morals" (Scribner), by Katharine
FuUerton Gerould, is another annoyance
to the radicals. Professor George L.
Kittredge's "The Old Farmer and His
Almanack" (Harvard Univ. Press) has
happily been reprinted. A new index to
St. Nicholas is announced (H. W. Wil-
son Co.). It might be dangerous to own.
I have a few volumes — covering that
golden period when Cleveland and Har-
rison were Presidents — and if some caller
finds them, some caller who was of the
St. Nicholas age in the years 1880 to
1888, I get no more out of him. At mid-
night I hand him his hat and coat, and
push him out. He keeps murmuring
"Just a minute, just a minute — here's
that story by Frank Stockton I used to
read."
Edmund Lester Pearson
The Ship's Library
I CAME aboard the transport reviling
my luck. My locker and bedroll were
in France and I had neglected to bid
them good-bye; I had nothing but
musette and kit-bag, in which I had been
living for a month. The limping old
Mudjekeewis was the shabbiest tub in
the service, slow, devoid of comfort. Her
engines took a day off every week. Her
smoking room was given over to clack-
ing typewriters which manufactured col-
ored tissue paper orders for the decora-
tion of the main companionway. The
white and gold music room was no place
for one who was constitutionally unable
to derive solace from craps or poker. But
when I discovered that the ship's library
had survived the ravages of war, I be-
gan to see the hand of providence. As
I reviewed the backs of the fifty and odd
most respectable volumes in tough brown
calf, my locker and bedroll "fell from my
back and began to tumble, and so con-
tinued to do" till I thought of them no
more. I was free as air in spite of the
livery I wore. I tossed a polished copy
of "Mr. Midshipman Easy" into my
berth, cast off my shining greaves and
brass-mounted regalia, chinned myself
on the T-iron that ran across the top
of the stateroom, swung my legs over the
edge of the berth and dropped after them.
I opened the porthole to the deck and
the summer night, disposed tobacco and
other necessities in the wall-pockets,
started the fire in a well-crusted briar
bowl, and forthwith I was in company
with an old friend whom I had not seen
for years — "By nine o'clock that evening
Mr. Jack Easy was safe on board his
Majesty's sloop Harpy."
With him I sailed for uncounted hours,
a midshipman six weeks in the service
who practically single-handed captures a
vessel, cuts loose on a cruise in her,
quells his mutiny, and captures . more
ships. It is like a child's dream of
piracy, like the picture of the chubby
four-year-old with cocked hat, sash, and
pistols, standing with folded arms on
the quarter-deck surrounded by bearded
cutthroats and ruffians who bend to re-
ceive orders from the baby lips. The
dream rises from the child's desire to
escape restraint. Here is the sailor as
an overgrown child, slipping free of the
iron discipline of the navy and gamboling
through a dream of heroic conquest of
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[405
Spaniards and French, pirates and
bandits, howling gales and crashing surf.
"Jack knew that his life depended on
holding to the yard, which he did, al-
though under water." Or again, "Our
hero and his comrade had both drawn
their pistols, and just as they burst open
the door the old gentleman who defended
himself against such odds had fallen
down. Jack seized one of his assailants
by the collar of his coat and held him
fast, pointing the muzzle of the pistol to
his ear; Gascoigne did the same by the
other." And who could have guessed
that the old gentleman had a beautiful
daughter and chests of coined gold ! On
and on it flowed, a racing stream of ac-
tion, melodramatic but always lively and
artlessly engaging; leagues of open sea,
with sun, wind, and cloud that fail not
from the face of it, the wind on your
cheek and the spray in your teeth, breezy
stretches of flight and pursuit across
whole oceans of blue water. It was mid-
night and more before my three room-
mates came in and began to unbuckle
the harness of war, prating of sevens and
elevens, of broken flushes and fallen kings.
A barren recital; a noise and a shaking
of dry bones! What were their paltry
stakes to me? Why, there were fourteen
thousand Spanish dollars on the Nuestra
Senora del Carmen alone, not to mention
prize money, and Donna Agnes was safe
aboard the privateer.
But the privateer was sold, Jack Easy
was married and done for, and it be-
hooved me to ship again. I looked in vain
for "Wing and Wing" ; I longed for Clark
Russell (I could have relished "A Three-
Stranded Yarn"), but was fain to em-
bark on a land voyage. I took up with
"Guy Mannering," and set out with the
Colonel in "the brief and gloomy twilight
of the season," on the road from Dum-
fries to Kippletringan "through a wide
tract of black moss extending for miles
on each side and before." We came
safely to EUangowan ; the heir was born
and his perilous fate foretold. The sound
of a jazz orchestra recruited from among
the enlisted men came down the gang-
way like the chorus of a summer swamp,
mosquitos, peepers, and hylas — "zing,
zing, zing, zing, ze-e-e-!" The cigarettes
of the deckwalkers drifted past the port-
hole like fireflies, the smoke of my pipe
swirled out, and genial scraps of pro-
fanity floated in. From the walls of
EUangowan we "saw a lugger with all
her canvas crowded standing across the
bay, closely pursued by a sloop of war
that kept firing on the chase from her
bows, which the lugger returned with
her own stern chasers." Dirk Hatteraick
landed, Kennedy met his death, and the
heir was carried off. Meg Merrilies came
and went with stately maledictions and
oracular scraps of ballads. Dominie
Sampson expressed his elementary
(Continued on page 406)
pHILIPPE BUNAU-VARILLA, the engi-
■*■ neer of the old French Panama Canal Com-
pany ^ Organized the Panama revolution ^
Signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla treaty between
Panama and the United States ^ And finally
was wounded in defence of his country at
Verdun.
There never was a more romantic story
than his of "the great adventure of Panama" and its
connection with the Great War — of the trail of the
Kaiser's government in the Caribbean — of
starting a Revolution from the Waldorf-
Astoria — of his relations with Roosevelt and
Hay, and the final happy ending of one of the
great dramas of history.
THE GREAT ADVENTURE
OF PANAMA
And its Relation to the World War
By PHILIPPE BUNAU-VARILLA
Published by
$^ -75 ^^ ^^^ bookstores
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO , Garden City, N. Y.
406]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
(Continued from page 405)
thoughts in ponderous Latin, and his
elementarj- emotions in ponderous capers.
Mr. Pleydell brought himself and a brace
of wild duck to supper, and whispered
to the cook his "poor thoughts" about
the sauce. With them all I was well con-
tent. The cover of any novel of Scott's
opens like a magic casement on a fair
prospect of a safe passage to the islands
of the blest and a happy sojourn there.
Only you mustn't be in a hurry. If you
expect sixty miles an hour, high tension,
and the clatter of a flat wheel, you won't
get what you want. Don't embark on
the old three-decker if you have the
speed-mania of realism. I like realism
as I like beer; it is a good drink, and
there are times when it is just the thing,
but when the table is spread with silver
let beer remain below stairs. The true
romantics bring me the vintages of Bur-
gundy. Scott is Chambertin — or Riche-
bourg — anyway, he is the king of them
all. Stevenson is Clos de Vougeot, either
still red or sparkling. From Anthony
Hope I get an occasional glass of spar-
kling Volnay — and even the ordinaires
come from the Cote d'Or. Sip them
gently; let them settle into your being
with finality, with warmth and a happy
glow — if you want to get drunk quickly
and have it over with, choose another
bottle. I was loth to tuck the book in
among the cork jackets over my head at
the midnight incursion of noisy room-
mates. The F. A. lieutenant had
"cleaned 'em up," and we were to have a
nightcap. I had supped with Mr. Pley-
dell and had my liquor in a smuggler's
cave, but I accepted my modest share of
his winnings since I could not share mine
with him.
Again I explored the narrow shelves.
The steward began to recommend his
wares. "John Halifax, Gentleman"?
Bah ! — Richardson and milk ! "The First
Violin"? No, Bronte and water. "West-
ward, Ho!"; "The Cloister and the
Hearth"? Just the thing; take them
both — no restriction on hoarding food
for the imagination. Here are scenes
roomy and bustling; for stage the one
has the whole Spanish Main, the other
the entire continent of Europe. Of "The
Cloister and the Hearth" my memory
from earlier readings held only dramatic
scenes of action, the escape from the
tower, the fight with the bear, the
stealthy hand pinned to the doorpost by
a bolt from Denis's crossbow. Now I
think of it as the Middle Ages passing
in review, a flickering stream of life in
every form, under all conditions, crowded
inns and swarming streets of villages
and cities, hut and palace, university and
monastery, highway and footpath. It
is not a placid stream ; too often I found
myself shooting a series of rapids with
nerves taut and muscles braced. I was
tempted to lay it aside till a time when
I might want a thriller and be too lazy
to seek one at the movies, but it was
impossible to leave such a tale half told.
With the calming aid of the even rise
and fall of the ship under me, and restful
periods of vacant gazing through the
porthole to watch the sea's "long moon-
silvered roll," I came safe and rather
breathless to the end — and promptly
shipped with Amyas Leigh for the Span-
ish Main. Here were stalwart fair-
haired heroes, militant Christians such
as think little and mope never. Either
they are right by instinct or else mag-
nificently wrong. They are chivalrous
and romantic, but they do not concern
themselves very greatly or very long
about love. They have no time to stand
tied to apron strings; great deeds are
toward, and women and children had
better stand out of the way. What shall
we say of a romance in which a heroine,
all that the heart could desire in the
earlier chapters, is burned by the Span-
iards as a Protestant heretic in the mid-
dle of the book? Merely that if you
read the tale at the right age (what-
ever your years), the matter does not
trouble you much; it is lost and left be-
hind in the swift forward surge of the
action, the bustle and activity of scenes
of arrival and departure, brilliance and
pageantry of crowds of soldiers and
courtiers, the spirit and manhood of
sailor and knight, magnificent fighting
by sea and land, and the peril of enforced
marches across unknown continents. We
thrill with these exploits when wa read
them in the unemotional pages of his-
tory; here they are not unemotional;
Kingsley presents them instinct with life
and color, "vivid and resolute."
On the last night of the voyage there
was no poker, no craps, no reading; we
stood at the rail watching the shore
lights come up out of the dark till nearly
one o'clock, when we anchored off Quar-
antine.
"When I get my discharge papers,"
said the F. A. lieutenant, "I'm just go-
ing to put on long pants and narrow
shoes, and put my feet up on the mantel-
piece where I can admire them."
"Me for the overalls," said the Q. M.
captain, "and digging in the garden."
"My specifications," said I, "call for a
stationary bed with a reading light, and
anybody that wants to can bring in my
meals."
I was thinking of the Clerk of Ox-
ford who preferred his twenty books to
the polyphonies of a jazz orchestra.
They were old books, and he kept them
at the head of his bed, sagacious man.
Robert Palfrey Utter
"BOOKS AND THE NEWS" FUR-
NISHES, EACH WEEK, A
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
ON TIMELY TOPICS.
The Nature Lover
THE nature lover of 1920, whose inter-
est has been aroused, and attention
focused on the appearance and lives of the
plants and the animals of this earth of
ours, is to be both envied and pitied.
Envied, because of the wealth of litera-
ture and illustration, guiding and help-
ful, at hand; pitied, because of the nar-
rowed field of work and the diminished
necessity for personal endeavor.
In past years one would rush off to the
nearest berry tangle or grove, in the
early morning before school, find birds
and describe them, recording size, color,
song, and habits on stray scraps of paper.
Then, at the week's end, go to the Nat-
ural History Museum, and after careful
search, and analysis of notes whose sin-
cerity outweighed their clarity, there
would come conviction that the bird was
a fox sparrow and not a brown thrasher!
That kind of thing brought the same
thrill as my first Baedekerless walk in
London, when Westminster took form
and flashed into recognition without
warning or mapped anticipation. It was
an alchemy of method which transformed
the drab confidence of certainty into the
poignant delight of discovery.
In those early years the writings of
J. G. Wood filled one's mind with much
truth and considerable error, and one
revelled in the lurid, stiff-necked crea-
tures in the plates of De Kay and others.
Thoreau and Burroughs were text-books
as well as essays, and I used to make
classified lists of the birds in "Wake-
Robin." For tales of animals in strange,
foreign lands there were Fenn and Hud-
son, Kingston, Bates, Waterton, and
Belt. Years afterward came the identi-
fication books, with colored plates and
keys, condensed summaries of seasons
and songs, patterns and plumage, notes
and nests. And when Chapman's Hand-
book appeared, the high-water mark was
reached, for to-day no other has ap-
proached it.
But the law of compensation is inflexi-
ble, and the places where formerly, when
eyes failed, one could resort to a 22-cali-
bre shot cartridge, are now become a
no man's land, fenced either with real
barbed wire, or with blatant signs mak-
ing trespassing a sin and flower-picking
immoral. So to every succeeding genera-
tion the country near at hand becomes
less like wild planet land and more like
a museum. This is inevitable, and only
those who love nature enough to make
sacrifices of time and effort win through
to the few wild places left in far distant
corners of the world.
It is possible to detect faint adumbra-
tions of a cycle of change in nature inter-
est. At first nature books were for read-
ers in libraries. Gilbert White and Audu-
bon were read far more frequently in an
arm-chair before a fire than in anticipa-
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[407
tion of a coming walk, or expected direct
acquaintanceship. But closer contact
began to be established, as soon as people
ceased for a moment their struggle for
wealth or position, and, looking out upon
the strange world beyond factory and
bank, fashioned the queries "What?" and
"Why?" The demand began to be met
at once, and ushered in the era of iden-
tification books, the colorful host of
"How-to-Knows." And now the interested
layman can call by name many of his
lesser fellow creatures, bound like himself
by gravitation, and with him breathing
and eating and playing upon our planet.
"What?" being answered in part,
"Why?" still remains, and to-day,
strengthened by the staff of identifica-
tion, we have begun to trudge hopefully
along the path of interpretation.
To-day the literature of biology is of
appalling extent. A specialist finds it dif-
ficult to keep up even with the writings
of his own limited field. Inquiry in any
direction reveals regiments of volumes
and cohorts of periodicals awaiting the
reader. And in the midst of this techni-
cal desert — a desert absolutely necessary
and desirable for the advance of knowl-
edge— the layman finds now and then a
rare oasis of balanced popular literature,
not in words of one syllable, nor of sen-
timentalized nature, but of real litera-
ture, of facts so clothed in simple dig-
nity, so interpreted, that their appeal is
instant and universal. I recall espe-
cially Levink's "Antarctic Penguins,"
Hudson's "Idle Days in Patagonia," "The
Story of Radium," Slosson's "Creative
Chemistry," Roosevelt's "A Book-Lover's
Holidays in the Open," as well as the
writings of Vernon Kellogg, Thompson
Seton, the Peckhams, Wheeler, and J.
Arthur Thompson.
In certain ways the cycle becomes a
closed spiral, and to-day we can often
do no better than to reach up to the books
on the higher shelves, blow the dust off
the tops, and reopen those wonderful
pages of Audubon, Fabre in the original,
Izaak Walton, Gilbert White, Darwin,
and Huxley.
We realize eventually that the law of
compensation works both ways and the
devastating advance of civilization out-
strips itself by means of its superlatively
efficient means of travel, and thus brings
the very wilderness of the antipodes to
the sophisticated doryard of the nature
lover. Roosevelt has summed this up in a
single perfect paragraph:
The grandest scenery of the world is his to
look at if he chooses; and he can witness the
strange ways of tribes who have survived into
an alien age from an immemorial past, tribes
whose priests dance in honor of the serpent
and worship the spirits of the wolf and the
bear. Far and wide, all the continents are
open to him as they never were to any of his
forefathers; the Nile and the Paraguay are
easy of access, and the borderland between
(Continued on page 408)
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THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
From NEWTON
to EINSTEIN
By BENJAMIN HARROW, Ph. D.
An interesting, clear, simple, non-mathe-
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It will enable you to understand the
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Lodge's ether, theory of relativity, and
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84 pages. Portraits and Illustrations. $1.00
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D. VAN NOSTRAND COMPANY
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savagery and civilization ; and tlie veil of the
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He will take books with him as he journeys;
for the keenest enjoyment of the wilderness is
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wisdom of the present and the past.
William Beebe
JUST PUBLISHED
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or
The Testimony of Science Re-
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Problems of Labor and Capital
II— Honest Ballots for Unions and Employers' Associations
not often, to-day, that the leadership
either in the union or in the employers'
association is genuinely representative.
The leaders on both sides, in a great
majority of organizations, are elected
without a sealed ballot, and, if there is
a sealed ballot, there is no guarantee
of an honest count. The secret ballot
and an honest count is no less important
in industrial reform than it was in politi-
cal reform. Secrecy and honesty should
apply, too, quite as much to votes on
strikes or lock-outs, as the election of
officers.
A RECENT statement issued by the
Industrial Council for the Build-
ing Trades in Great Britain reads as
follows :
Industry needs no truce, no compulsory ar-
bitration, no provisions for postponement of
disputes. What it needs is confidence and a
courageous forward movement, supported by
the constructive genius of both sides in com-
mon counsel. Industrial peace must come, not
as a result of the balance of power with a
supreme court of appeal in the background.
It must arise as the inevitable by-product of
mutual confidence, real justice, constructive
good-will.
One of the greatest obstacles, if it is not
the greatest, in the way of collective bar-
gaining agreements is the lack of confi-
dence on both sides. This lack is due
in great measure to a belief on each side
that the other is organized in an undemo-
cratic way and is led by a group of or-
ganizers, in the case of the union, or a
clique of large employers, in the case of
the employers' association. Confronted
with the suggestion that collective bar-
gaining might lead to industrial peace,
an employer engaged in an industry
which has never attempted collecti>7e bar-
gaining usually declares a willingness to
deal collectively with unions, but refuses
to deal with the particular union in his
trade because of the type of leadership
which, it is alleged, controls the work-
men. It is a common belief among em-
ployers— and to a great extent the facts
justify the belief — that the members of
the unions do not freely choose their
leaders, that they are, indeed, often
under the domination of agitators and
demagogues. The fact that many leaders
of local unions have been successfully
bribed by employers in the past, coupled
with the fact that many employees con-
fidentially state to their employers that
they should prefer to continue at work
were they not in fear of the leaders of
the union, has gone far to destroy the
confidence. The labor unions, on the other
hand, with no less justice, have lost
faith in the leadership of the employers.
They have contended for years that
in all employers' associations a few
large employers have control through
a small executive committee. Organ-
ized labor is of the opinion that small
manufacturers are often denied a voice
in the management of the employers'
associations.
Reasons for the lack of confidence on
both sides, then, exist in plenty. It is
Instead, we have a situation typically
as follows. If it is proposed in the
union to make a demand upon the em-
ployers, an employee must possess ex-
ceptional daring publicly to address the
union in opposition to the proposed de-
mands. On a question of a strike, it is
true, there is apt to be a division of
opinion, and a small minority might fee-
bly mumble its dissent. But in many
unions the more representative skilled
workmen not only fail to record opposing
votes on questions of prime importance,
but actually refrain from attending the
union's meetings. In some industries
employees opposing a demand for in-
creased pay or shorter hours have even
suffered assault at the hands of their
more aggressive fellows.
The situation is equally serious among
the employers. Action looking toward a
lockout, or the refusal of the workmen's
demands, is agreed upon either by a ris-
ing vote or by a call of "ayes" and
"nays." Representatives of small con-
cerns, through timidity or other reasons,
follow perforce what appears to be the
sentiment of the larger concerns. Fur-
thermore, the usual constitution and by-
laws of the employers' associations, with
a view to greater efficiency, create execu-
tive committees vested with full power
and not subject to review by the asso-
ciation as a whole. It is not unusual for
such an executive committee of five to
decline a proposal of arbitration without
even presenting the question to the sev-
eral hundred members of the associa-
tion.
Though the honest count may be
harder to obtain than the secret ballot —
so it has proved in political life — in both
the employers' associations and in the
unions, the secret ballot is the first step
toward effective understanding between
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[409
them. And it is unlikely that either
the unions or the employers' associations
would be heard to argue against the man-
datory installation of secretly cast and
honestly counted ballots. The method
of enacting legislation which would make
this mandatory in such organizations is
contingent, possibly, upon bringing under
Government supervision all organizations
of employers or employees. The plan
most generally discussed is that of the
compulsory incorporation of unions and
of employers' associations. Whether
such compulsory incorporation is im-
practicable and likely to prove barren of
the results sought will be discussed in a
subsequent article. The alternative pro-
posal of mere compulsory licensing of all
employees' and employers' associations
will be set forth. The choice between
them should be made to depend on which
gives the better promise of establishing
swiftly and finally a control of the affairs,
both of the union and of the employers'
associations, which is not only genuinely
representative at this moment of its elec-
tion but continues to be representative
through seeking, frequently and in all
frankness, validation of its acts at the
hands of the body which created it.
Morris L. Ernst
Books and the News
Primaries
THE primary elections have trans-
formed our Presidential campaigns
into something resembling a general elec-
tion in England. As they extend over
a period of five or six months it is pos-
sible to see their merits and defects.
Their virtues, as contrasted with the old
convention system, were negatively dis-
played in' 1912, when the managers of
the Republican Party contrived to give
the members of the party a candidate
who it was clear was not wanted. Their
defects, in doubling the work, expense,
and effort of the campaign, are always
apparent. Perhaps their greatest merit
is that indicated by Mr. Charles Willis
Thompson, in the book mentioned below :
they tend to make a candidate honestly
declare himself, and so do a great deal to
destroy that hoary old humbug of Ameri-
can politics, based upon a perversion of
the historical facts about Washington —
the "reluctant" candidate, "in the hands
of his friends," protesting against his
nomination in public, but privately pull-
ing every string in sight. Whatever
else might happen, this sham, in all his
shades and degrees, would have to dis-
appear if there were complete Presiden-
tial primaries.
Frederick W. Dallinger, in "Nomina-
tions for Elective Office in the United
States" (Longmans, 1897) contributed
(Continued on page 410)
DM-
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HARVEST By Mrs. Hampbry Ward
Author of "Helena," "Missing," etc.
Mrs. Ward's heroine is a striking woman of thirty, one of England's woman farmers. At the
period of the full ripening of her life, there comes to her a wonderful iove affair. But in her
girlhood she had married badly, tragically. That is the dark cloud that hangs always on her horizon.
Mrs. Ward wove the warp and woof of this story in a way that showed her ripened and mature
art at its best.. Illustrated. $2.00
MANY JUNES By Archibald Marshall
Atiihor of "The Honour of the Clintoni," "Sir Htrry," etc.
Another of those leisurely, sane and delightful stories of real, everyday people, in the telling
of which Mr. Marshall excels. As the New York Times says: "Readers of Archibald Marshall soon
learn that to read one of his novels is like being introduced into a pleasant home and sharing the
lives of its inmates." $2.00
THE GREAT MENACE : Americanism or Bolshevism?
By George Whlteileld Mead
The Great Menace is the subtle, determined movement for the complete overthrow of the present
social order, including the Church, and the creation of an "Industrial Republic" Mr. Mead discusses
this insistent and vital problem in a sane and enlightening way and nis book carries a powerful
message to loyal and intelligent Americans. $1.25
THE COLLECTORS' SERIES
Edited by H. W. Lewer
Written by authorities, these volumes are designed both for the beginner in collecting, and the
more experienced collector. They are profuscdly illustrated. Each $2.50
The China Collector
A guide to the Porcelain of the English Fac-
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The Stamp Collector
A Guide to the World's Postage Stamps. By
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The Glass Collector
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The Earthenware Collector
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BOOKS With Vision
IT is significant that never has the social and
religious conscience of the world b?en so
stirred as at the present time and nowhere is
tllis so apparent as in this country. Mtn and
women in all w,ilks of life are reaching out for
the reality of the vision that was the result of
the world struggle. No longer can the spiritual
aspect of life be disassociated from the economic,
and it is to prove the truth of this that some of
the clearest minds of the day are working.
The following books, chosen from tlie exten-
sive lists of The Abingdon Press, while diver-
gent in theme, all have this thought in common.
Some Aspects of Interna-
tional Christianity
The Mendenhall Lectures, Fifth Scries, 1919
By John Kelman
There are questions of the most vital impor-
tance on which every man must form an opinion.
The bearings of these questions arc not confined
to the regions of expert knowledge; and there
is a i)lace for the impressions of the man on the
street — his general sense of moral values, his
common-sense view of relative importances, and
the free play of his conscience upon the ques-
tions of the hour as he understands them. It is
in his name and from his point of view that I
have prepared these lectures. — From Author's
Preface. 12mo. Cloth. In press.
Steps in tlie Development
of American Democracy
By Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin
A study of democratic origins that flashes a
vivid light upon the problems of the present day.
A high-hearted call to America to play her part
and act the democrat in the world life. 12mo.
Cloth. Net $1.60
The Church and World
Peace
By Bishop Richard J. Cooke
A strong and timely discussion of the church
in relation to the League of Nations and World
Peace. 12mo. Cloth. In press.
The Rebirth of Korea
The Reaioakening of Its People, Its Causes and
the Outlook
By Hugh Heung-wo Cynn
'Mansci! Mcnsei! M-a-n-s-c-il' 'Ten thou-
sand years for Korea I Long live Korea!' Thus
in the midst of mighty shouts the Korea that
had been 'dead and buried' for eight and a half
years 'rose from the dead' at two o'clock in the
afternoon of the first day of March, 1919."
With these striking words Professor Cynn begins
hjs authentic account of recent happenings in
Korea — a story at once graphic and compelling,
pathetic and inspiring. 12mo. Illustrated. Cloth.
Net, $1.50
The Spiritual Meaning of
"In Memoriam"
An Interpretation for tfie Times
"By James Main Dixon
A vital and original study and appraisal of
Tennyson's great poem. An interpretation not
only of Tennyson but of the basic philosophy of
an enduring civilization. 12mo. Cloth.
Net, $1.00
Premillennlallsin
N on- Scriptural N on- Historical Non-Scientific
Non-Philosophical
By George Preston Mains
A terse and trenchant critique of premillennial
claims. It will be difficult for the advocates of
this aggressive cult to confute the reasoning of
these logical and close knit arguments. 16mo.
Cloth. Net, $1.00
New York
THE ABINGDON PRESS Cincinnati
410]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
(Continued from page 409)
to the series of Harvard Historical
Studies an excellent history of the de-
velopment of the nominating system. He
describes the abuses of the caucus and
the primary, the abuses of the conven-
tion, and the proposed remedies. The
book's one fault to-day, of course, is its
date of publication.
Somewhat later, but still before the
Presidential primaries had been tested,
there appeared one of the few books de-
voted singly to the primary — Charles E.
Merriam's "Primary Elections" (Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1909). This
is a small book, of about three hundred
pages, but it traces the primary in this
country from its earliest forms; it has
a bibliography referring to articles and
to separate chapters in books; and it
summarizes the laws in various States
so far as there were any such laws when
the book was published.
In the "Proceedings of the Academy
of Political Science," January, 1913,
Volume III, No. 2, may be found a report
of a debate upon the primary — a debate
in which Professor A. B. Hart partici-
pated, and various active politicians of-
fered their comments. An extensive
study of the primary in one State may
be found in "The Direct Primary in New
Jersey," by Ralph S. Boots (Published
by the Author, 1917). This also contains
a bibliography.
In the Debaters' Handbook Series
Clara E. Fanning has edited "Selected
Articles on Direct Primaries" (Wilson,
1918). This is very good for its compila-
tion of articles and arguments for and
against the direct primary, its list of
further references, and its tabulation of
the opinions of politicians. It is more
up to date than most other publications
on the subject; many of its discussions
are based upon the actual workings of
the system, rather than upon theories.
Charles Willis Thompson's "The New
Voter" (Putnam, 1918) has a chapter on
the direct primary; it also discusses in
the form of conversations the "things
he and she ought to know about politics
and citizenship," and should prove di-
gestible to the reader who usually finds
politics tough and dry. Another new
book, on a related topic, is "How the
World Votes; the Story of Democratic
Development in Elections" (2 vols. C. A.
Nichols Co., 1918), by Charles Seymour
and D. P. Frary. It describes political
parties and elections all over the world.
Edmund Lester Pearson
EDUCATIONAL SECTION
The University President
AT the moment, it is said that no
fewer than seventeen presidents of
American colleges and universities have
resigned or announced their intention of
resigning. With so many important posi-
tions soon to be filled again — the presi-
dency of Yale, of Cornell, of the Uni-
versity of Minnesota, and so on — the
question of the right man for leader in
^ucation, and the proper functions of
such a man, calls for thoughtful discus-
sion. It is not often discussed on the
basis of principle alone, and it should be
discussed on no other. Personality, tact,
qualities that defy analysis, pertain to
the individual case; they do not enter
into a general consideration of the topic.
First of all, should the position of col-
lege or university president exist at all?
Certainly not, with the indiscriminate
functions now attached to it. Strive as
he may to save himself as a leader of
scholars and a promoter of scholarship,
the American college president — at the
beck and call of the undergraduate, the
parent, the impecunious instructor clam-
oring for an increase in his stipend, the
world clamoring for tangible "results,"
and expecting vast external growth in
the "plant" — finds himself unable to
keep up more than a show of the con-
templative life, and sooner or later — in-
sensibly and slowly, or promptly and with
open eye — makes his compromise with
the crowd and with Mammon; if indeed
he has not fully compromised himself be-
forehand in order to win the position.
The position as it now exists is truly
anomalous. It originated in the small
colonial institution that was modeled
after the English college, and, by ac-
cident as it were, has been transferred
to institutions that have grown, at least
in externals, to resemble the populous
and many-sided university of Conti-
nental Europe, with a polytechnic school
superadded. The president of an Amer-
ican university combines the functions
of the head of a small college with those
of the Vice-chancellor of an English uni-
versity and those of the Rector of a
German, though not with those of the
head of the College de France. But the
term of the Vice-chancellor of Oxford is
four years, ordinarily enough to spoil his
best energies for the rest of his life, as
was the case with Jowett. And the
tenure of office for the Rector of a
German university is one year. The post
has often been refused by eminent men,
such as the geographer Ratzel, who pre-
ferred not to interrupt their usefulness
in research and publication even for so
brief an interval. No man can adequately
perform the duties of an American uni-
versity president as they are now gen-
erally conceived, having come to be what
they are by force of circumstances,
through the numerical growth and ever-
increasing complexity of institutions,
and through the process of uncritical
imitation, each man deeming that he
must undertake all the activities of his
predecessor and of his fellows who are
similarly placed.
The first thing to suffer is his
scholarship. The rare individual like
Pepper of Pennsylvania, or Harper of
Chicago, working nineteen hours a day,
and able to tire out three stenographers,
may succeed in preserving an active in-
terest in the specialty for which he was
trained. As a rule, however, an eleva-
tion to the presidency of a large institu-
tion has ended the participation of the
new incumbent in systematic research,
and therewith his complete understand-
ing of the men who form the true kernel
of the university.
There is much to be said for abolish-
ing the position ; for university admin-
istration by some form of commission
government, with a changing committee
and a rotating chairman. But since we
are not likely to see it generally abol-
ished in the near future, the question of
what is expedient under present condi-
tions becomes more pressing. How can
the position be transformed from one
that no productive scholar dare accept
into one the incumbent of which will
not lose his scholarly soul?
In two ways. First, by limiting the
tenure of office to four or six years. Sec-
ondly, by relieving the president of
every function (save his duty to
scholarship) of which he can easily be
relieved. The budget of the university,
for example, though subject to his ap-
proval— yet not to his alone, nor even
his in the main — should not be his pro-
duction. He should not in effect have
the financial responsibility of the organ-
ization; and, above all, it should not be
considered his duty to secure funds for
the institution. And again, the respon-
sibility for the relations of the institu-
tion with all sorts of individuals — stu-
dents, their parents, and the like — should
not be his. Three-fourths of the duties
now performed by him should be the
affair of a secretary of the university
and a secretarial staff. At a Continental
university there is a clerical force that
the average person sees but twice a year
(Continued on page 412)
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[411
BOOKS
BOOKS
FIRST REFLECTIONS ON
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1918
By Major R. M. Johnston
An entertaining discussion of the organiza-
tion of the A. E. F. and a constructive criti-
cism of its work in France, by a former offi-
cer of the Historical Section, General Staff.
Price $1.00.
THE TURN OF THE TIDE
By Lt.-Col. Jennings C. Wise
An authoritative account of the operations
of American troops from April i to Augfust
13, 1918, by a former member of the Historical
Section of the General Staflf attached to the
A. E. F. With original maps and sketches.
Price $1.50.
ARMY MENTAL TESTS
j By C. S. Yoakum and R. M. Yerkes
I A study of the methods of psychological ex-
i , amining in the Army, and a discussion of the
I I practical application of intelligence tests. This
I I book will be of special interest to personnel
: managers and psychologists. Profusely illus-
trated. Price $1.50.
Fall Books Still in Demand
De Morgan's
THE OLD MADHOUSE
"No English-writing novelist since the days
of Dickens and Thackeray has won such a
peculiar homage as William De Morgan." —
New York Times. Price $1.90.
Charnwood's
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
This is the book which formed the chief
source for Drinkwater's famous play. Price
$3-00.
Romain RoUand's
COLAS BREUGNON
"To live in the company of Breugnon is a
tonic," says The Bookman, and The Review
says, "Seven or eight hours of delight." Price
AT FAME'S GATEWAY
By Jennie Irene Mix
An absorbing romance with an unexpected
ending. It is full of action, humor and vivid
characterization. The action takes place in an
oil-boom town and New York City. Price
%i-75.
THE GIRL
FROM FOUR CORNERS
By Rebecca N. Porter
The very human love-story of a girl who,
alone, has to make her way in a great city.
There is ample incident in this stirring narra-
tive and the plot moves with a swiftness that
American readers enjoy. Price $1.75.
WILDERNESS SONGS
By Grace Hazard Conkling
Songs of joy and of sorrow, of war arid of
peace, of children, and of the hills and the
woods and the fields by the author of "After-
noons in April." Price $1.50.
MANY MANY MOONS
By Lew Sarett
"The loon and the lingo, the sand and the
syllables of North America are here. 'Many,
Many Moons' says yes to life." — Carl Sand-
burg. Price $1.50.
THE CAIRN OF STARS
By Francis Carlin
Delightful Irish poems filled with the wit
and the spirit and the legends of old Ireland.
Price $1.60.
THE WORLD'S
FOOD RESOURCES
By J. Russell Smith
Consulting expert for the War Trade Board
An important and comprehensive study of a
world-wide problem. This book gives a vivid
account of the history and distribution of the
main sources of food. Profusely illustrated.
Price $3.50.
ALL AND SUNDRY
By E. T. Raymond
Brilliant, witty word-pictures of famous
contemporaries, including Foch, Wilson, the
Prince of Wales, Conan Doyle, and others, by
the author of "Uncensored Celebrities." Price
$2.25-
JANE AUSTEN
By O. W. Firkins
An analysis of her novels from a twentieth
century point of view, a special study of her
realism, and an account of her life, her method
of work and her narrow little world. With
an Appendix, List of References and a com-
plete Index. Price $1.75.
MASKS
By George Middleton
The sixth volume of one-act plays of modem
American life by the author of "Embers,"
"Tradition," "Polly with a Past," "Adam and
Eva," etc. Mr. Middleton is a recognized mas-
ter of the one-act play. Price $1.60.
Recent Reprints
DAWN AND OTHER
BRIEF PLAYS
By Percival L. Wilde
Short, sharp and decisive one-act plays of
modern life. Perhaps the most popular col-
lection of plays for acting in the Little The-
atres. Price $1.60.
THE TORCH AND OTHER
PATRIOTIC PAGEANTS
By Misses Thorp and Kimball
Four pageants suitable for children's pa-
triotic festivals. They have stood the test of
frequent performance. Price $1.60.
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
Publishers of The Unpartizan Review
19 West 44th Street
New York City
Please mention The Review in writing to advertisers.
412]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
(Continued from page 410)
who render most of the services with
which the time of our university leaders
is squandered; that force is not a part
of the administration proper.
By relieving the president of unneces-
sary burdens, we should make it possible
for him to know his faculty. A man in
his position may commonly be fairly well
acquainted with one thousand persons;
but the thousand or five hundred mem-
bers of a university faculty are not
usually- the persons whom the president
knows well, or desires to know best. The
present nature of his position leads him
to wish for an influential acquaintance
outside the institution. He is likely to
know all the trustees better than he
knows all the faculty. He usually knows
but a few of his faculty well. He ought
to know everj' one of them, down to the
newest assistant, before knowing any one
else in the world. As it is, instructors
come and go, meeting the head or chair-
man of a department often after the
barest contact with the president, some-
times with none whatever.
By relieving him of all needless
burdens, we should also render him free
for a certain amount of intensive study
in the field that was his before he be-
came president; such freedom is even
more necessary than that he should try
to teach. In this way he would retain
his ability to estimate the promise of
candidates for positions on the faculty,
and especially of those at the bottom of
the ladder, from whose ranks are to be
drawn the professors of the future.
Meanwhile, if the duties of the uni-
versity president are to be reconstructed,
a much better system should be intro-
duced for the selection of faculties, and
the advancement of the men already com-
posing them; that is, if there can be
said to be any system at present. Pro-
motion should in some sense be an affair
of the academic community, not a de-
partmental one. This, as well as the se-
lection of new professors who are called
from other institutions, should be ar-
ranged at least by a committee of the
faculty concerned, with the advice and
consent of the president. His should be
the veto power, but his vote in favor of
a candidate should not be worth more
than the vote of a member of the com-
mittee who understands the subject to
be taught. As an executive, he should
see to it that competent men examine
every line the candidate has written, in
order to determine, in the first place,
whether the man is at bottom a scholar,
and, in the second, whether he has the
ability to communicate that sound learn-
ing which is a part of character.
Our country has run too far in the
direction of what is called "administra-
tion." Everywhere we have developed a
kind of genius for rendering administra-
tion complex and difficult. That the
national tendency has invaded the realm
of education hardly needs remark; there
the mechanism of administration has be-
come so involved as almost to throttle
independent scholarship. Given the real
scholar and teacher, the mechanism of
teaching is simple. And whatever "ad-
ministration" may signify at Washing-
ton, or in the collection of an income-tax,
in the university it means, not govern-
ment, but service.
The chief function of the university
president is to be the intellectual leader
of the institution — of its faculty, who
are the intellectual leaders of the stu-
dents. His first duty is to create a cur-
rent of ideas in the organism of which
he is the head. In choosing our univer-
sity leaders, let us go to Europe in
order to learn what sort of men are
taken on the Continent for the heads of
educational institutions, and what they
do after they have been raised to places
of eminence. And having chosen real
scholars, let us make it possible for them
to retain their scholarly leadership while
they occupy the posts to which they
have been advanced. Make the pay in
money less, and the pay in honor more.
The president of an American univer-
. sity is, or should be, the intellectual
leader of what is at once an aristocracy
and a democracy of intellect and spirit.
A true democracy is possible among
scholars. How strange that, in this
American commonwealth, the one place
where true democracy might hope to
flourish so frequently tends to become a
pure bureaucracy, or an affable tyranny
in the guise thereof.
Professor
Universal Traininpf
THE war has taught us the possibili-
ties of universal training for civic
responsibilities. An excellent article on
the subject in the April Atlantic by Mr.
Frank E. Spaulding has now the addi-
tional merit of timeliness. Four years
ago somewhat similar suggestions were
made timidly here and there, but the
country had not yet been shown what
the instruction of the draft army could
accomplish; even the advocates of pre-
paredness, with the emergency of war
before them, felt that anything not
strictly military was out of considera-
tion. Now, with the war over and with
peace nevertheless no nearer than when
war was on, the moment is peculiarly
"psychological" for people to think na-
tionally on such a subject as education.
A new crop of cures for national ills,
political, economic, social, springs up
almost every night; but, fortunately, the
American people, in spite of their good-
natured toleration of quacks, have the
habit of looking solidly to education for
permanent results.
Whatever may be the pros and cons of
purely military training, not many per-
sons who visualize the problems that face
us remain still unconvinced of the educa-
tive value of a year of compulsory train-
ing of some sort. It would serve as a
redeemer of those physically below par.
It would make sure, as isolated school-
ing with its variations could never do,
that every man before he reached vot-
ing age spoke the English language and
knew something of American institu-
tions and ideals. It would supply, if
properly conducted, technical skill to mil-
lions who would otherwise go untrained
or poorly trained. Much more than this,
it would bring together from every walk
in life and subject to an indelibly demo-
cratic influence young men at the most
formative period of their lives.
Indeed, it is not conversion to the gen-
eral idea that people need so much as a
specific plan. This Mr. Spaulding gives.
His article, moreover, is not merely a
statement of a plan for universal train-
ing, but reviews admirably, if briefly, the
whole problem of its title, "Educating
the Nation." The year of training for
"civic responsibility" would therefore
come as a related part of the whole
scheme, concluding logically the years
devoted to "essential elementary knowl-
edge, training, and discipline" and to
"occupational efficiency." Thus con-
ceived and viewed in perspective, it takes
on a reasonableness which it would in
many cases lack if it were an isolated
year stolen from a man already in full
career. The plan has further merits: it
provides a sufficient flexibility to meet
the needs of those who would go to
college and of those who would not, as
well as of those, at present the majority,
who would not even complete the regu-
lar secondary stage. Another important
point is the advocacy of a Federal De-
partment of Education, with its head a
member of the Cabinet. In this connec-
tion the author speaks of "a certain de-
gree of national direction," when he ap-
pears to mean "an uncertain degree";
but this uncertainty is not to be regretted
for the present: in fact, it will scarcely
be possible to determine the degree till
the office is in working existence.
One serious defect of the plan is that
the final year of training is to provide
only for the "male youth of the land."
Even though military training is part
of the scheme, women gave abundant evi-
dence during the late war that they were
indispensable in war work which re-
quired special instruction. Further-
more, why should they be deprived of the
benefits which the plan would bestow, and
why should the country not enjoy a
quickened sense of service in the "better
{Continued on page 414)
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[413
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Please mention The Review in writing to advertisers.
414]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
THE HUDSON COAL CO.
CELEBRATED
LACKAWANNA
THE ARISTOCRAT OF ANTHRACITE
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1920
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(Continued from page 412)
half" of its citizens? A couple of gen-
erations ago the men might have replied
gallantly to such a question, "Ah, the
women ! They do not need it !"— but now
that we have reduced woman to a human
being, who works and experiences cere-
bration, who pays taxes, who votes or is
about to do so, we must care also for
her education in civic responsibility. Not
only are there many lines of technical
work in which she takes an important
part; she needs also the physical benefit,
above all the democratizing experience
of mixing for a year with young women
from all walks of life. It may be con-
tended, to be sure, that to double the
number to be provided for would double
the cost, while to supply special training
for women, so different from that for
men, would greatly complicate the prob-
lem. Such a contention may have a tem-
porary, practical cogency, but it has no
more logical force than a contention
in favor of restricting the number of
men called to one-half the actual num-
ber available. Sooner or later the year
of training should include both sexes.
This would not be true, of course, if
the training were to be purely military,
but though there is provision for mili-
tary training in the Spaulding plan —
perhaps wisely if it is to meet with favor
at the present time — the emphasis is
rightly placed on training for civic re-
sponsibilities in time of peace. It is not
merely that military training, by itself,
is not constructive or productive in the
normal life of a community or nation,
or that, as the imminence of war recedes,
it tends to become perfunctory, even vi-
cious; the best training for war, as for
peace, it has been found, involves a
great deal that can not even remotely
be called military. One of our schools,
during the war, was greatly agitated
over the question of what sort of war-
work it should adopt. The boys naturally
wanted to be as military as possible, but
they did not take kindly to close-order
drill, recommended by an army oflRcer.
It happened just then that a great man,
back from the front, visited the school
and reported that he had left the British
soldiers in Houtholst Wood chopping
trees and building pontoons. Noticing
that there was a serious shortage of
fuel in the neighborhood of the school,
he said, "Why don't you chop wood, like
the British soldiers?" — then added
wisely, "You can call yourselves an en-
gineer corps if you like." This is
scarcely the whole field of military effort,
to be sure, but it may serve to remind
the fearful that military training may
be more constructively useful than its
name would imply, and to remind the
zealous champions of isolated military
training that any scheme of universal
service which does not provide mainly
for the occupations of peace will fail.
April 17, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[415
There is one important point on
which Mr. Spaulding might have placed
a different — or at least an additional —
emphasis. "In no sense," he says,
"would this year be a year out of the
life of each one, a year simply donated
to the service of the nation, or to prepara-
tion for such service. Quite the con-
trary: this year, considered solely from
the standpoint of the individual's advan-
tage, would prove to be the most profit-
able year in the life of every young
man." It may be quite necessary to call
attention to the benefits which the indi-
vidual will enjoy (and they are unques-
tionable) if only to meet the objections
which might be made my many members
of the A. E. F., who apparently represent
much of the opposition to universal train-
ing at least of a purely military char-
acter. That is, it might be impossible
to "sell the idea" if the man who is to
pay taxes to support it, and is to give
his time as well, does not clearly realize
that he will benefit personally. The most
important feature of any such plan,
nevertheless, is the fact that every citi-
zen will have not merely an opportunity
but an obligation to give himself, to give
more than mere cash, to his country.
During the recent draft, though many
received great benefits and appreciated
the fact, none went with the delusion
that he was going primarily for the bene-
fit to himself. It was an act of service,
and from it resulted an exaltation which,
though too often temporary, did actually
make many men into finer stuff. It is
a grave question whether this idea, fun-
damental in any plan of universal ser-
vice, can be "infiltrated" successfully if
the work is launched with other avowed
motives. Without universal service as
the idea behind universal training, any
plan is likely to be still-bom.
Walter S. Hinchman
Education for the Cotton
Industry
As one passes from Richmond, Vir-
ginia, to Birmingham, Alabama, one
is never long out of hearing of the
whistle of the cotton mill. By its sound,
over half a million people are called to
their daily toil, largely people of Anglo-
Saxon lineage, called from an agricultural
life among the hills and mountains of
North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee
DIVIDEND NOTICE
Westinghouse Electric
& MANUFACTURING COMPANY
A Dividend of two per cent. ($1.00 per share) on
the COMMON Stock of this Company, for the quarter
ending March 31, 1920, will be paid April 30, 1920, to
stockholders of record as of April 2, 1920.
H. F. BAETZ, Treasurer.
New York, March 24, 1920.
down into the industrial centres of the
Piedmont. The homes of these opera-
tives are a part of the mill property, and
the mill superintendent is in many re-
spects their absolute monarch, benevolent
or otherwise according to the individual
bent of his character. These superintend-
ents, and the lesser officials under them,
are men who have risen from the ranks
during the generation now passing away,
and the call for new leaders to take their
places is heard throughout the textile mill
region.
The most hopeful answer, so far, is
the founding of the Textile Industrial In-
stitute, of Spartanburg, South Carolina.
In connection with it, a model cotton mill
has been constructed, providing a self-
help department for students and a prac-
tical laboratory for textile work, thus
constituting an endowment for the
school. It is claimed to be the best built,
best equipped, and best organized cot-
ton mill in existence, and will be oper-
ated as a kind of "service station" for
the cotton industry of the entire South.
Incidentally, it is experimenting with the
plan of eliminating the cost-increasing
middle-man by selling its product direct
to the consumer through the parcels post.
Its promise of helpfulness to the entire
cotton industry is vouched for by the fact
that cotton mills generally, as well as the
manufacturers of cotton working ma-
(Continued on page 416)
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The strictest confidential relations are adhered to in our trans-
actions with customers.
Alex. Brown & Sons
(Oldest Banking House in the Untied Stales)
Baltimore, Maryland
416]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 49
THE ROAD TO UNITY
AMONG THE
CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
By CHARLES W. ELIOT, LL.D.
President Emeritus of Harvard
University.
This address demonstrates that creeds
and dogmas have always failed to pro-
duce either uniformity or permanence in
religious thought and practice and pre-
dicts that if the divided churches would
submerge their theoretical differences
they would find society generally favor-
able to union for the worship of God
and the service of man.
It is particularly fitting that this book
should appear at the moment when the
attention of the laymen of the several
denominations is concentrated upon the
future welfare of the churches.
So Pages. $i.oo Net.
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Books of Permanent Worth
Send for Complete Catalogue.
THE BEACON PRESS
25 Beacon Street Boston, Mass.
RADICAL propaganda
finds in the present period
of world changes a greater
opportunity for its spread and
potent influence than it has
ioiown heretofore.
THE REVIEW was
founded to dispute the teach-
ings of the intellectual radical
journals. They have made
dangerous headway even
among loyal Americans.
THE REVIEW is making
real headway in the work of
tempering radical aspirations
to the condition of true liber-
alism and of promoting con-
structive measures instead of
destructive experiments.
THE REVIEW
$5 a year
140 Nassau St.,
Xew York
{Continued from page 415)
chinery, have made liberal donations to
its construction.
This model mill, just going into oper-
ation, is to be operated entirely by the
student body of the Textile Industrial In-
stitute. The plan divides them into two
sections, each with its own superintend-
ent, overseers, section hands, loom fixers,
and operatives. These organizations will
operate the plant on alternate weeks. For
the week of work in the mill, the student
receives pay sufficient to support him for
two weeks. The section in charge in any
given week is subdivided into two shifts,
each working ten hours a day, but for
four hours of this time the shifts over-
lap. By this arrangement the student
runs his job alone for six hours, runs it
and teaches a student of lower rank for
two hours, and works as a learner on a
new job, under a more advanced student,
for the remaining two hours. In this
way no student is put in charge of any
new work until he has had a turn at it
under direct supervision of one who has
already had experience. Everything from
the opening of the bale of raw material
to the taking of mailbags of the finished
product to the train will be done by stu-
dents, and no student will be admitted
to the classroom work who is not willing
to work alternate weeks in the model mill.
In its classroom work the Institute
does not aim to give a general education,
but frankly confines itself to its narrow
specialty. Its text-books are those of the
textile industry alone, with the exception
of a somewhat broader outlook in the
commercial department, where the prin-
ciples of cost accounting, etc., of course
have a more general application. As the
primary purpose is to provide leaders for
the industry, not simply to increase the
efficiency of the rank and file, the class-
room work gives opportunity for special-
ization in such branches as loom-fixing,
designing, bleaching, dyeing, merceriz-
ing, carding, and spinning. On the finan-
cial side, it is not the intention to treat
the model mill as a mere adjunct of the
school, not necessarily self-supporting,
but to keep it steadily on an efficient pro-
duction basis.
Grace Orb
MISS ORB describes a very commend-
able educational project, all the
more commendable because it is just
what it purports to be — education for a
highly specialized purpose only — and be-
cause it is just where it ought to be —
within the precincts of the cotton indus-
try itself, dealing with those who have
already given themselves to that special
industry, and not attempting to form
an integral part of a more general and
fundamental course of education. No
thoughtful person would wish to belittle
the importance of special education of
just this type. But it should pass for
what it is — technical preparation for a
particular task, and not that education
of broader scope which must be sought
from studies not so closely harnessed up
with the material necessities of the pres-
ent hour. The important thing is to
realize that they are two different things.
THE University of the State of New
York is engaged in active coopera-
tion with the public schools for the con-
servation of birds and trees. A recent
bulletin, sent to all the schools, is filled
with material well adapted to interest
school children, from the pens of John
M. Clarke, of the State Museum; Homer
D. House, State Botanist; Edward F.
McCarthy, of the State College of For-
estry, and George D. Pratt, Conserva-
tion Commissioner. The birds, we are
told in this bulletin, are the main re-
liance for holding in check the noxious
insects which constitute the greatest
menace to the food supply of mankind.
The Visual Instruction Division of the
University has a list of 700 lantern slides
to lend, illustrating 162 species of the
birds of New York, made from living
specimens of the birds themselves, their
nests and eggs in normal position, their
habitat, etc. A proper utilization of this
opportunity would be of immeasurable
value in putting bird conservation on
an intelligent basis.
MISS L. W. HILL, formerly director
of physical education at Wellesley
College, called much needed attention at
the recent State Conference of Massa-
chusetts high school principals to the
"Relations of Correct Muscular Habits
to Personal Efficiency." Of one hundred
and ninety-seven high schools which re-
sponded to a questionnaire one hundred
and twenty-three reported that they had
no gymnasiums, and of these ninety re-
ported no courses in physiology, hy-
giene, or health habits. These figures,
though they do not cover all the schools
of the State, are fairly representative
of a region which in educational matters
is among the most forward-looking.
What is perhaps equally significant,
physical education, where it does exist,
is often little more than a name. It is
not merely that competent instructors
and adequate equipment are rare. In
many schools where there is a possibility
of better things physical training is still
classed with athletics as something to
be permitted if the pupil has satisfied
the scholastic requirements. It may be
that our Puritan inheritance tells us to
distrust anything which might prove to
be fun. At all events, it is unusual,
almost unknown, to find a school where
a pupil is given more physical training,
even more athletics, because he is doing
poorly in his studies ; though such a pre-
scription might conceivably, if not com-
monly, be the best one.
THE REVIEW
nv1
Vol. 2, No. 50
New York, Saturday, April 24, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment 417
Edftoriat Articles:
"The Review" and the Treaty 420
Governor Smith's Opportunity 421
The Vatican 422
Turks and Germans 423
Greek at Oxford 424
Lord Bryce on Turkey and Armenia 425
The Naval Inquiry. By S. P. 425
The Bolsheviks' Horn of Plenty. By
Jerome Landfield 428
Correspondence 430
Book Reviews:
"The Real Nature of Man" 433
America Unveiled 434
Italy Warm and Cold 434
The Autumn of the Middle Ages 435
The Run of the Shelves 436
Heine's Buried Memoirs. By Michael
Monahan 438
"Impressions de Voyage." By Caspar
F. Goodrich 440
Drama:
Andreyev at the Neighborhood Play-
house. By O. W. Firkins 441
Problems of Labor and Capital:
III. — Compulsory Filing of Collec-
tive Bargaining Agreements. By
Morris L. Ernst 442
Books and the News:
New American Books. By Edmund
Lester Pearson 443
GENERAL WOOD'S campaign for
the Presidential nomination
rests fundamentally upon what he
■has done. The signal success of his
administration in Cuba, his leader-
ship in the organizing of officers'
training during the years preceding
the war, and his efficiency in the
execution of every duty that has de-
volved upon him constitute a very
respectable claim to support. But a
candidate, either for nomination or
for election as President, is judged
not only by what he has done but
quite as much by what he says. In
response to a formal request by the
New York Tribune, General Wood
has answered the question "What do
you regard as the most important
issues of the Presidential campaign ?"
in two columns of utter banality. If
he had said in a few words that he
regarded it as premature, or for any
reason unwise, to define the issues at
this time, the answer might have been
disappointing, but it would not have
been ridiculous. To talk about
twenty things, and say nothing worth
while about any of them, is a desolat-
ing performance. It would not take
many exhibitions of that kind to put
General Wood out of the running.
TI/TR. HOOVER, if he should be nom-
-'-'-*■ inated at Chicago, will have one
specific advantage that will make
great play in the campaign. All the
candidates will doubtless talk about
cutting down the enormous expenses
of the Government, but Hoover is the
one man whose promises on that sub-
ject will be taken at anything like
par. Not that others may not be
equally sincere, and also fairly able;
but bringing down the vast structure
of governmental expense is a task
which calls for much more than sin-
cerity and fair ability. The public
has been too often disappointed, in
the States and in the nation, to put
more than a very faint trust in the
expectations aroused by even the
most well-meaning pledges of econ-
omy. The prospect of a budget sys-
tem, now very favorable, is an en-
couraging element, to be sure ; but no
system will automatically work out
the great task before us. In the field
of administration and coordination,
in the field of scientific adjustment of
ways and means, Mr. Hoover is a
master. It is coming to be recog-
nized, too, that Government expendi-
ture is a not inconsiderable factor in
the high cost of living. The candi-
date who embodies in his own person
a real pledge of improvement in this
vital matter will have a preferential
standing with the voters which it will
take mighty solid claims on the part
of his opponent to overcome.
ONE of Senator Johnson's man-
agers states that he is "author-
ized to say for the Senator that it is
not intended to let him be nominated
for a hitching-post." Whether the
contemptuous designation of "hitch-
ing-post" is justified or not, Mr. John-
son is quite right in declaring that he
wants the Presidential nomination or
nothing. The Vice-Presidency is in
fact an oflfice of very great impor-
tance, for experience has but too
often taught us that the succession
to the Presidency is not a merely
theoretical attribute of it. The nom-
inee for Vice-President ought to be a
man of Presidential calibre. But by
the same token he ought to be a man
whose candidacy is in keeping with,
and not in contrast to, that of the
head of the ticket. The very worst
thing that the Chicago Convention
could do would be to make its
ticket a "good Lord, good Devil"
combination.
TJERESY-HUNTING legislation at
■'■-'- Albany may have one conse-
quence which will put the New York
lawmakers into the class of those who
build better than they know. They
are doing their best to discredit
the existing political institutions of
America, but it is quite possible that
their performance may result in giv-
ing an unexpected "boost" to one of
the most essential of those institu-
tions. The bills which are designed
to exclude the Socialist party from
the official ballot, and to disqualify
the individual members of that party
from holding public office, appear
quite clearly to collide with the civic
rights guaranteed to all citizens by
the Constitution of the State of New
York. If those two bills are passed,
there can be very little doubt that the
courts will promptly and emphatic-
ally make waste paper of them, and
then won't it be delightful to see what
the radicals will have to say about
that fossilized remnant of mediaeval-
ism, the American judiciary !
T LOYD GEORGE and Millerand
^ are fighting a duel at San Remo,
with their Italian and Belgian col-
leagues in attendance as witnesses.
418]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 50
Opportunism is pitted against con-
sistency, each buttressed with an
equal amount of sagacity. The
tactician of expediencies has found a
strong antagonist in the Frenchman,
who stubbornly refuses to join him
in his living from hand to mouth.
Lloyd George looks a day, Millerand
a generation, ahead, and confronted
with so widely different perspectives,
they will hardly succeed in viewing
in the same light the objects of their
common observation. The policy
towards Germany is one, the treat-
ment of Turkey is another. A year
ago Lloyd George used the threat of
an economic blockade to meet the
danger of Spartacism in Germany;
to-day he has recourse to it again as
a preventive against a militarist re-
volt. France always insisted, and
still insists, on the necessity of mili-
tary coercion to repress any attempt
on Germany's part to violate the
peace terms she has signed. In the
Turkish problem French suspicion of
British aims is at the bottom of the
dissension. As to the chief puni-
tive measures to be taken the two
Premiers seem to be in perfect agree-
ment, but the question how to deal
with the new situation that will arise
after the signing of the treaty
threatens to prove a source of fresh
discord.
SUBSTITUTES for cocktails" the
disappointed hard drinker would
doubtless call the little sallies into
the emotional which are now so
plentiful. Warm regard for Bolshe-
vism, which is insinuated here and
there by decorous people, is the most
peculiar phase of this outburst. It is
not explained by the confused in-
formation coming from Russia. It
springs from the heart and the im-
agination. The overthrow of the
Tsar's Government let loose an idea
of brotherhood which proved to be
all too stimulating to many mortals.
Somehow, somewhere Liberty was to
set up its residence on earth, and the
tyranny practised by the Bolsheviks
has not been quite able to destroy
the vision. One recalls the lookers-
on at the festival of the Romanticists
during the few decades after the
French Revolution. Pantisocracy,
Shelley's new plan of government, the
dreams of the Schlegels thrilled in
those days the hearts of many who
had no intention of practising the
new proposals for living. From these
they merely extracted a heady sort
of vicarious experience. If there is
haunting beauty to be found in the
Bolsheviks' order of government, we
pray that some artist may perpetuate
it in verse or fiction so that the emo-
tional in man may worship it at a
distance instead of, as now, flirting
dangerously with it as a possible in-
gredient of our democracy.
TT is difficult these days not to be
■'- the bedfellow of a radical, espe-
cially the sentimental radical. As a
liberal, you may be constantly fight-
ing his views, and yet as you confront
the various practical issues of the
day, there he is by your side. You
opposed the Treaty in the form in
which it came from Versailles, and
so did he — but for a different reason.
You have a kindly feeling for Mr.
Hoover, so has he. You think that
the five Socialists should not have
been excluded from the Albany As-
sembly, so does he. You disapprove
of giving soldiers the bonus, he does
too. Yet the more he is with you, the
more you are against him. For you
realize how dangerous is his propa-
ganda, which, in the name of liberal-
ism, is seeking not only to prevent
the return to power of reactionary
forces, but to wipe out those preroga-
tives of the individual which have
been the cornerstone of our democ-
racy. The situation is one which re-
quires all good Americans to have a
real reason, and not merely a vague
feeling, for the politics which they
espouse.
T^HE movement to put the men of
■'• the nation into overalls discovers
at the outset one grave disadvantage
— the first step, and one which bids
fair to cost more and more, is the pur-
chase of a suit of overalls. Denim,
being made of cotton, is not cheap
now, and by the time the ingenuity of
tailors has had opp-^rtunity to con-
spire with the natural \rT\ity of man
a really natty suit of overalie will cost
almost anything you choose to pay.
If the weather is warm enough to
wear the new garment in lieu of a
suit of alleged wool, well and good;
cotton is the only wear for hot
weather. But if the overalls are
worn in the old-fashioned way over
one's ordinary clothes, economy sick-
ens and dies. There is more to be
hoped from a general consent to go
on wearing old clothes. Possibilities
in that direction have not yet begun
to be realized. The patched suit, the
battered hat, the quite impossible
shoes have not yet appeared. Let
them come forth. The business de-
mands courage, but it need involve
no lowering of morale. The spirit of
the summer holiday will put us
through, the spirit which delights to
honor the camper whose sartorial
ruin is most nearly complete. It is
not necessary to make this the occa-
sion for the upbuilding of an elab-
orate clothes philosophy, though
there may accrue to society some in-
direct benefits from anything which
will remind both those who, formerly
ill-dressed, are now at least expen-
sively dressed and those who, accus-
tomed of old to go well-clad, now hold
their patch a badge of honor, that
clothes do not make the man. What-
ever benefit accrues will be chiefly to
the individual, who thus has it in his
power to save a little money for
something else, and who in many
ways will profit through having the
advantage of this particular bit of
economy brought strikingly to his
mind.
A NOTHER army that has not de-
■^^ mobilized with the cessation of
major hostilities is the Salvation
Army. They go marching on, and,
that they may march the better, they
are planning to ask the public, in
May, for ten million dollars. To
make up this sum a good many pen-
nies will have to rattle into the old
tambourine, but a good many pennies
are needed if such enterprises as the
recently dedicated Memorial Train-
ing College in the Bronx are to be
successfully carried forward. Be-
yond doubt, the pennies will be forth-
coming in a sufficient abundance.
The Salvation Army has made good.
The immortal cruller proclaims it.
April 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[419
Success, however, is not without its
perils, and the Salvation Army might
profitably ponder the history of the
Friar movement, which, though it is
a matter of some eight hundred years
ago, still carries a lesson that is worth
heeding.
CWEDEN'S experiment with an ex-
^ clusively Socialist Cabinet will be
watched by her neighbors with in-
tense interest. The Socialism of the
new Ministers is of that moderate
type which during the war did not
refuse to share the responsibility for
the Government with the liberal
party. The political crisis, which put
an end to the cooperation of the entire
left, was brought on by the friction
between Liberals and Socialists over
the municipal taxes bill proposed by
the Socialist Minister of Finance
Thorsson. Hjalmar Branting's ac-
ceptance of the King's request to
form a new Ministry was the logical,
though not generally expected, solu-
tion of the crisis. Branting's pro-
gramme, as outlined by him to a
correspondent of the Associated
Press, has little of the revolution-
ary in it. Socialization of certain
branches of production and commerce
is, of course, a plank in his plat-
form, but the question will first be
thoroughly investigated by commit-
tees composed not entirely of friends
of such social legislation, but also of
able men of other opinion. He wants
the Parliament to determine to what
extent the development or evolution
of the country shall go in accord with
the Socialist programme. Without
the Liberals' support the Socialists
will not be able to realize their leg-
islative plans. It remains to be seen
whether Branting's moderation can
resist the pressure from the left wing
of his party which, if Minister Thors-
son's taxation schemes should be de-
feated, will demand, as they openly
declare, the dissolution of the Parlia-
ment and new elections so as to ob-
tain an absolute Socialist majority in
both Chambers. "This Government
is for the whole of the people and not
a party government," said Branting
to his interviewer. The Premier's
more radical comrades will put his
impartiality to a severe test.
ly/fR. MIRZA'S communication on
•^" the Anglo-Persian treaty, which
appears in our correspondence col-
umns, combines with an expression of
distrust in England's sincerity a just
appreciation of the cultural task
which the English-speaking people
perform. The Persian nation has a
great history, and is, for the part it
played in the distant past, entitled to
the respect due to culture and age.
But former greatness, the traces of
which are preserved in its monu-
ments, lays obligations on the people
which it has failed to fulfill. The
peasant and the fellah are in a miser-
able plight, and the men in power are
ready to barter their own honor and
their country's freedom for money.
In a country where high and low are
thus demoralized the right of self-
determination should be applied with
the greatest caution. For the deter-
mining factor would be the small in-
telligentsia from which the backshish-
taking Cabinet members are re-
cruited, and the peasant's and the
fellah's lot would remain just the
same. English supervision of the
government, though humiliating for
the educated class, may redound to
the welfare of a larger portion of the
people than would benefit by absolute
political independence. We do not
defend the treaty by which Great
Britain, contrary to the spirit of the
League of Nations Covenant, has
gained control of Persian affairs, but
disapproval of the course taken
should not make us blind to the ad-
vantages which may be won at the
goal.
"jVTIGRATORY birds are no longer
^^^ at the mercy of the most lax
State legislation, or absence of legis-
lation, with which their habits may
bring them into contact. The Su-
preme Court has handed down a de-
cision sustaining the migratory bird
act, passed by Congress in 1918. This
act put into effect, with suitable pen-
alties, our treaty with Great Britain,
negotiated shortly before, for the pro-
tection of birds whose seasonal move-
ments involve both British and
United States territory. The law was
attacked by authorities of Missouri,
on the ground that it interferes with
the sovereignty of the State and the
property rights of its citizens. The
decision is an important victory for
the policy of wild life conservation,
and clears the field for whatever Con-
gressional action may still be neces-
sary to protect migratory birds from
extinction on American soil.
■pXTERMINATION of any form of
■'-' bird life not positively harmful
is becoming more and more repug-
nant to right-thinking people; but
when it threatens the most beautiful of
all birds, just because they are beauti-
ful, the wrong is greatly aggravated.
Add to this the most revolting cruelty
in the methods by which extermina-
tion is being accomplished, and it
might seem that nothing could delay
the adoption of preventive measures.
But where both feminine fashion and
selfish financial interests are involved,
the problem is not so simple, as we
have learned from the long fight
necessary to secure such protective
legislation as has been adopted in our
own country. In England, just be-
fore the war. Sir Charles Hobhouse
had pushed to the committee stage
in the House of Commons a bill to
restrain what the Spectator de-
nounces as "the barbarous and
grossly uneconomic trade" in bird
plumage for millinery purposes, but
the stress of war legislation crowded
the matter out. The fight has now
been renewed, through bills intro-
duced into the House of Commons
by Colonel Yate, and into the House
of Lords by Lord Aberdeen, with an
apparently fair chance of favorable
action. At present London is the
great feather market of the world,
and about the best the interests in-
volved can say by way of defense is
that if the trade is driven from Eng-
land, it will go to Paris and Amster-
dam. One recalls the defense which
Cowper put into the mouths of the
slave traders long ago:
Besides, if we do, the French, Dutch and
Danes
Will heartily thank us, no doubt, for our pains.
The editor of the Spectator suggests
that women who wear the feathers of
the albatross should read "The An-
cient Mariner" once a year, to develop
a duly haunting sense of remorse.
420]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 50
"The Review" and
the Treaty
MR. JAMES M. BECK'S letter in
the Review for April 10 has
brought out several interesting letters
which appear in our issue of to-day,
some upholding and some opposing
Mr. Beck's view of Senator Lodge and
of the treaty. One of our correspond-
ents makes a point concerning the
whole position of the Review through-
out the treaty debate which is worthy
of special attention. He complains
that our treatment has not been
"definite and clear" and has been
lacking in a "large conception" of
the subject. We freely admit that
there is a great deal of truth in this
criticism. But we do not feel that we
have anything to apologize for.
From beginning to end there has
been in our mind one dominant
thought. The world was in the pres-
ence of a situation of such appalling
gravity that any language that could
be applied to it would fall short of
the reality. To bring to bear upon it
the united wisdom and good will, the
united power and resources, of the
leading nations of the world was from
the start, and is to-day, the supreme
need of the hour. If anyone had pre-
dicted on the day of the armistice
that division of opinion in the United
States was going to result in inter-
national paralysis extending over a
period of eighteen months or two
years, and that at the end of that time
our country would still be in the non-
descript position that now confronts
us, he would have been pronounced
a ridiculous pessimist. But if, in
some way, people had become con-
vinced that there was real danger
of such an outcome — that, in fact,
this thing was sure to happen unless
we got together on some practicable
basis — what would have been the at-
titude of men of sense upon the ques-
tion? Can there be any doubt that
they would have stood together as
one man and insisted that a way be
found to avert such a calamity?
"Large conceptions" are very well
in their place. But there are times
when that is truly the largest concep-
tion which centres itself upon the
practical need of the moment. Mr.
Wilson had been feeding the world
on the East wind of his large con-
ceptions, with practical results that
there is now little joy in contemplat-
ing. Then came the "100 per cent.
Americans" of the type of Borah and
Johnson, with their large conceptions
of America, the hem of whose gar-
ment must not be soiled by any touch
of obligation to work in concord with
other nations to save the world from
chaos. Mr. Wilson's large conception
was to the effect that by a stroke of
the pen all the nations of the world
could be brought immediately into
Utopian harmony. Mr. Borah's and
Mr. Johnson's large conception was
that that same stroke of the pen
would reduce America to a state of
servile dependence, a condition in
which her best blood was to flow on
Old-World battlefields at the behest
of a council of foreign statesmen. It
was a small conception, perhaps, that
both these views were the product of
an inflamed imagination. It was an
uninteresting view to hold that the
League Covenant was neither the
herald of the millennium nor the
doom of liberty. But to one who
did hold it, nine-tenths of the dis-
putes upon which the great flood of
oratory and argument has been ex-
pended were matter of indifference
in comparison with the supreme need
of practical action.
That supreme need the Review has
recognized from the beginning. The
one reservation that it has felt to be
important to make in the Covenant
was that relating to Article X. Upon
the exact definition of the obligation
which that Article imposes, with, and
without the proposed reservations,
and of the degree of obligation which
we ought to be willing to accept,
we have, to the best of our ability,
repeatedly expressed our views. We
have regarded nothing else in the
way of reservations as vitally neces-
sary, and have said so.
What we have regarded as vitally
necessary is that President and Sen-
ate should get together on any basis
that was possible. It must be remem-
bered that before the treaty was com-
pleted the two points chiefly insisted
on by objectors to the original form
of the Covenant were that our partic-
ipation should be terminable upon
short notice, and that the Monroe
Doctrine should be safeguarded. In
the treaty as submitted, both these
points had been conceded; in a form
open, indeed, to some objection, but
surely the slight modification required
offered no fatal obstacle to the adop-
tion of the treaty. With these points
covered, and with Article X inter-
preted or modified by a reasonable
reservation, there was nothing in the
Covenant which, in a dispassionate
view, furnished occasion for patriotic
alarm — unless, indeed, such alarm
was justified by any form of League
whatsoever. Borah and Johnson
were fundamentally opposed to any
League ; their position, whether right
or wrong, was a perfectly intelligible
and respectable one. The Lodge posi-
tion, on the other hand, was one that
made mountains out of molehills ; and
we saw little profit in applying a
microscope to the molehills.
The great question before the na-
tion, from first to last, was this : Was
there any possible way of putting the
treaty through without danger to the
future of the country? Mr. Wilson
had — very wrongly in our judgment
— made the League Covenant part of
the treaty. To reject the Covenant
and save the treaty was absolutely
out of the question. It only remained
to consider whether any reservations
which Mr. Wilson and the Allies
might reasonably be asked to accept
would suffice to make the treaty
safe for America. Borah and John-
son have consistently answered this
with an emphatic No. The Repub-
lican "mild reservationists" answered
it with a distinct Yes. Mr. Lodge has
all along been virtually saying both
Yes and No. It is true that on the
face of the record he stands opposed |l
to the "irreconcilables" and in favor
of acceptance with reservations. We
believe that in fact he has been de-
sirous of such acceptance. But he
has not made the country feel that
he was sincerely devoted to that ob-
ject. Probably at least half the
people who applaud what he has done
are thankful to him not because he
has modified the Covenant, but be-
cause in their opinion he has de-
April 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[421
stroyed it. Not for one moment has
he made the country feel that he re-
garded the adoption of the treaty as
an object of supreme moment. Yet
nothing would have been easier, if
such was really his conviction, than
to make it perfectly clear to all. Had
he done so, he would have had behind
him the overwhelming support of
public sentiment.
The country has never sympathized
with President Wilson's position that
the Covenant must be adopted with-
out the dotting of an i or the cross-
ing of a t. Had Mr. Lodge made it
plain from the start that there
were certain definite and reasonable
changes that he wanted, but that if
these were made he and those who
followed him would be heart and soul
for the treaty, he would have put the
President into an absolutely unten-
able position. Mr. Wilson's obstinacy
might have been proof against even
such a situation ; but the blame would
have rested squarely and exclusively
on his shoulders. Mr. Lodge has pre-
sented the figure not of a great cap-
tain leading his forces towards a clear
objective, but of a guerrilla chief
harrying his opponent by a series of
haphazard manoeuvres, and winding
up at the end in a position dictated
by chance rather than by design. In-
deed, at the close, he presented the
queer spectacle of matching the
President's insistence that not an i
should be dotted nor a t crossed, by
his own insistence that unless every
i was dotted and every t crossed just
as he had done it the treaty could not
be allowed to go through.
An intense conviction that the
League of Nations is a bad thing, root
and branch, is full justification for
the position of the irreconcilables.
And a conviction far less extreme
would in ordinary times justify an
indefinite amount of hesitation or ob-
struction. But in the situation of the
world as it was at the close of the
great war, and has continued ever
since, all considerations of re-
mote possibilities of evil shrink into
nothingness alongside the stupendous
evils that have come, and that will
continue to come, through our failure
to take our place alongside the other
great nations in the restoration of
settled conditions in a distracted
world. To discuss the treaty as
though it were a fresh proposal, upon
which every one could seek to engraft
his own views of what is theoretically
best, is to substitute for the duties of
statesmanship the exercises of a de-
bating society. There is no little re-
semblance between the clamor for
perfection in the treaty and the
clamor of the pacifists during the war
for an exact definition of its aims.
The business during the war was to
make war ; the business after the war
was to make peace, and gradually to
restore the world to a normal condi-
tion and a normal state of mind. If
anybody can see in the minutiae of
the various minor reservations an ob-
ject as important as that, he is quite
welcome to the enjoyment of his
"large conception." As for ourselves,
the bigness of the immediate duty
has quite dwarfed any interest we
might otherwise have taken in the
intellectual disputations to which
those minutiae have given rise.
Governor Smith's
Opportunity
"W7HAT seemed at the opening of
" the session of the New York
Legislature to be a hasty act of folly
has proved to be the precursor of a
series of deliberate violations of the
first principles of American liberty.
Four bills, all of them bearing the
name of Mr. Lusk, chairman of the
Senate Legislative Committee, and
aimed at the suppression either of So-
cialistic teaching or of Socialistic ac-
tivity in the political field, have been
running a triumphant course in the
Legislature. Two of them have been
passed, and there is no doubt of the
speedy passage of the other two. It
rests with the Governor to decide
whether these bills shall actually dis-
figure the statute-book of the State
of New York, at least with the con-
sent of its chief executive.
No greater opportunity for an act
of courage, and of signal importance
to the future of American institu-
tions, has presented itself to any
American Governor in many years.
What evil genius has taken posses-
sion of the Legislature, and impelled
it to the adoption of a course repug-
nant to the deepest feelings of every
man who knows what civil liberty is,
we can not undertake to determine.
But we feel confident that a ring-
ing word from Governor Smith, as-
serting the inviolable principles of
freedom and the fundamental rights
of citizens in a republic would meet
with an enthusiastic response, and
break the spell under which the
bulk of the members of the Legisla-
ture have been following the lead of
a few shallow politicians.
It requires no legal learning, nor
anything but an ordinary sense of the
spirit of our institutions, to realize
the sinister nature of these bills. But
fortunately the Bar Association of
the City of New York has a standing
committee whose duty it is to report
on the character of proposed legisla-
tion of importance. This committee,
consisting of nine eminent lawyers,
chosen, of course, with no reference
to any such question, has registered
its unsparing condemnation of the
bills. Of the education bills, the com-
mittee says:
These bills may be aptly described as bills
to Prussianize the educational system and the
intellectual activities of the State of New
York, although it may well be doubted whether
the late Imperial German Government, de-
stroyed by the over-development of its regu-
latory powers, even in its heyday ever perpetu-
ated such a frank and undisguised attempt at
casting into a rigid mould the thought and
intellectual development of its subjects.
The essential feature of one of the
education bills is that which forbids
the operation of any school, or the
giving of a course of instruction on
any subject, except under a license
from the Board of Regents, which
license shall not be granted unless
the Regents are satisfied that the in-
struction proposed will not be "detri-
mental to the public interest." The
obvious consequence of this, as the
Bar Association committee says, is
that the members of that board are
to be permitted to suppress any and
all opinions with which their precon-
ceived ideas do not correspond. The
other education bill empowers the
Commissioner of Education to revoke
the certificate of qualification of any
teacher in the public schools if, in
his opinion, the teacher is not "loyal
422]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 50
to the institutions of the United
States and of the State and laws
thereof." And upon the exercise of
this blanket power of indefinite pro-
scription no check is placed, since
there is no provision for a hearing
on proceedings for the granting or
for the revocation of a certificate.
The two political bills are even
more extraordinary in their charac-
ter. One of them excludes from the
definition of a party under the Elec-
tion law any organization which ad-
vocates "principles, doctrines, or poli-
cies" that "tend, if carried into effect,
to the destruction, subversion or en-
dangering of the existing govern-
menls of the United States and of the
State of New York, and of the rights,
privileges and institutions secured
under such constitutions." The other
bill makes ineligible to public office
any person who is a member of such
organization. There is evidently no
limit to the possibilities of this
proscriptive decree. There is hardly
any change of a really important
kind that does not tend to endanger
some of the "rights" or "privileges"
or "institutions" which at a given
time are secured by the Constitution
of the State or of the United States.
If such a law had been in operation
before the Civil War, no advocate of
the abolition of slavery could have sat
in Congress, or even in a State Legis-
lature. Members of any association
devoted to the propagation of Henry
George's doctrine of the single tax
would be ineligible to public office to-
day if the principle of this bill were
put into execution. And there have
been times when in the opinion of
large numbers, sometimes indeed of a
majority, of the people of some of our
States, members of the Catholic
Church came very distinctly under
the ban which the bill pronounces.
But without invoking these examples
— which, however, are by no means
fantastic — it ought to suffice for any
man grounded in the principles of
liberty to recognize that the bill is
intended to suppress the voice and to
extinguish the political rights of those
of our fellow-citizens who honestly
believe in the principles of socialism.
If the bills become law the State of
New York will have the shameful dis-
tinction of having set the first exam-
ple of a kind of tyranny to which not
only the liberal nations of Europe, but
the despotic government of Prussia,
had not found it necessary to take
recourse.
The most flagrant evil of these
measures lies in their departure from
the American tradition, their betrayal
of the principles of liberty. But they
are as pernicious from the standpoint
of expediency as from that of prin-
ciple. Every enemy of our institu-
tions will have reason to rejoice in
their passage. The Socialist and the
Communist will find in them the seed
of thousands of conversions. Even
more welcome will their enactment be
to the unavowed Socialists and Com-
munists who, without perhaps know-
ing just what they are after, delight
in discrediting the existing order.
They will exultingly point to these
laws as confirmation of all that they
have been saying about the eclipse of
liberty in America. Those who have
felt, as we have, that these assertions
were in the main exaggerations and
vain imaginings will find it impossible
to deny that, so far as the Legislature
of the leading State in the Union is
concerned, the charges have received
substantial confirmation. Those are
doing the best work for the strength-
ening of our Government, and for re-
sistance to the Socialist danger, who
speak out without mincing matters
upon this course of folly and outrage.
The New York Tribune in particular
is splendidly performing this duty.
Again and again, in the course of this
anti-Socialist madness, the Tribune
has lifted up its voice in most em-
phatic protest. Of the Lusk bills it
declares that "they represent apos-
tasy to all the deep principles of
Americanism." In spite of all that
has happened, we still believe that the
action of the New York Legislature
is a political freak, and that "the
deep principles of Americanism" will
before long triumphantly reassert
themselves. To Governor Smith is
given the rare privilege of making
himself the spokesman of those prin-
ciples in a way that will be of vital
service to his State, and that will gain
for him the respect and admiration
of the whole country.
The Vatican
f\P the two great international or-
^-^ ganizations, the Roman Catholic
Church and the Socialist Interna- '
tionale, it is the Church alone that
has stood the test of the war. The
rigidity of the Socialist doctrine drove
a wedge between its orthodox and
its temporizing adherents. But the
Mother Church has not lost part of
its fold to a third Catholic Interna-
tionale. It has, on the contrary, come
out of the war with its power and
prestige considerably increased, in |
spite of the overthrow of ancient
dynasties which had always been
looked upon as pillars of the Curia.
The fall of the Hapsburgs, the re-
duction of Austria to a small and
powerless state, the change from
monarchic to republican government
in Germany, meant a diminution of
influence for the Vatican necessitat-
ing an entire re-orientation. But the
Roman Church has always shown
great pliability in adapting itself to
unavoidable reverses. The readiness
with which the German Centre Party
accepted co-responsibility for the
Government with the Socialists af-
fords a striking example of that
elasticity which easily yields where
resistance would bring on disaster.
In Belgium also Roman Catholic Min-
isters sit in the Cabinet which counts
Socialists and Liberals among its
members. And in Italy Signor Nitti
receives the support of the Roman
Catholics newly organized as a politi-
cal party. The universal fear of the
red danger has facilitated this change
in political conduct, as the other
parties readily accepted the coopera-
tion of the Catholics, who, as mem-
bers of an international church, were m
better organized than they to oppose '|
the spread of Communist tendencies.
The Vatican, therefore, could view
with indifference its exclusion from
the counsels of the Peace Confer-
ence. The veto of Italy, which pre-
vented the Curia from being repre-
sented at Versailles, could not prevent
its power from affecting the destinies
of the new Europe. France had to
recognize it officially by the resump-
tion of diplomatic relations with the
Vatican. The anti-clericalism of
April 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[423
Combes had proved a cause of weak-
ness to France during the war; it
had alienated clerical sympathies in
neutral countries, and thus prepared
a fertile soil for German agitation
against France. A reconciliation with
Rome would strengthen the country's
international position. The return of
Alsace-Lorraine afforded a welcome
pretext for such a step. For these
provinces the Concordat was still in
force, and as their population is pre-
ponderantly and devoutly Catholic
it would have been a reckless and
foolish policy to arouse its resentment
by extending the effects of the rup-
ture with Rome to the recovered ter-
ritory. So Millerand chose the wiser
course, which is no "truckling to the
papacy," as VHumanite called it, but a
step in the interest of France. For
by the use of this pretext it regained
the good-will of the Vatican, which
the French Government needs in re-
establishing its former right to ex-
tend its protection over the Catholic
missions in the Near East. As the
» League of Nations' mandatory over
Syria, France would lack prestige in
the eyes of the Christians of that
country if her protectorate over those
missions were not recognized by the
Holy See.
In her policy with regard to Po-
land, France has a natural ally in
Rome. The revival of Poland is a
compensation to the Vatican for the
fall of the Hapsburg and German
dynasties. For the Poles, in their
long resistance against the encroach-
ments of the Greek Orthodox Church
of Russia and German Protestantism,
have tenaciously adhered to their
Roman Catholic creed and may be
reckoned among the faithfulest of
Rome's fold. French political inter-
ests in the satisfaction of Poland's
ambitions coalesce with the interests
of the Vatican in the establishment
of a strong Roman Catholic state.
England also can ill afford to ig-
nore the influence of Rome. It has
been said that the last word in Irish
politics is with the Roman Church.
The approaching conference between
the Irish Bishops and the Curia may
have a beneficial effect on the solu-
tion of the Irish problem. A deliber-
ate campaign of murder can not com-
mand the approval of the Church. If
by the influence of the prelates in
Rome the action for Home Rule is
restricted within legal bounds, it will
be possible for the British Govern-
ment to yield where, under present
conditions, yielding would be inter-
preted as an admission of fear.
Thus the Holy See brings its influ-
ence to bear on the gravest problems
that Europe is called upon to solve in
the near future. No invitation to
join the League of Nations has been
sent to the Pope. Not representing a
nation. His Holiness was not eligible
to its membership. But the Church
of which he is the spiritual head, and
which, unlike the League, has a
strong hold on the hearts of the
masses, plays a real and effective part
as a bond of union among the nations.
Turks and Germans
T^HERE is a close analogy between
•*■ Greece and France in the posi-
tions they have assumed toward Tur-
key and Germany respectively. The
war of revenge, against which the
French Government is moving heaven
and earth to guard the country, is no
less to be feared by Greece from the
side of Turkey. But Greece is not
allowed to take her own precautions
against Turkish reprisals, as France
did a fortnight ago. Lest the resis-
tance of the Turks should be intensi-
fied by their being placed under the
control of a hated neighbor, the En-
tente will supervise Turkey's future
behavior ; but, as the Entente shrinks
from the sacrifice which such a super-
vision entails, it hopes to reduce the
necessity of it by a reduction of the
terms to be imposed upon Turkey.
It is questionable whether leniency
will have the effect of making the
Turk more amenable, and a less dan-
gerous neighbor for Greece. The les-
son which Germany's recent history
has taught us makes one skeptical on
that score. Just when the Entente,
at the instigation of London, had
initiated a more lenient policy
towards Germany, involving eco-
nomic support for the country's re-
construction, the Junker and mili-
taristic elements made an attempt to
restore the old order, which was, and
would again be, a menace to France.
To these people the shame of defeat
is intensified, rather than softened,
by a clemency which they themselves
would not have shown had they been
victors. Besides, the parties which
are bent on revenge, the Nationalists
in Turkey, the Junkers in Germany,
are in opposition to the Government
which bears the responsibility for
submitting to the imposed peace
terms. A successful attempt on their
part at ousting the submissive Gov-
ernment will endanger the execution
of the peace, whether its terms be
justly severe or lenient. No mercy
from the side of the Entente will
withhold them from making that at-
tempt.
The disclosures of Marshal Foch
about the camouflaged army which,
under Noske regime, was organized
in Germany, furnish an amazing
proof of insincerity on the part of
the former Cabinet. It matters little
whether Noske was dupe or accom-
plice. He was officially responsible
for the carrying out of the peace
terms providing for the reduction of
the army, and the violation of these,
whether in spite of his control or
with his connivance, tends to prove
that the militarist party is still a real
power in the country. The failure
of Herr Miiller's Government to pun-
ish the leaders of the Kapp revolu-
tion is another indication of its lack
of authority over the partisans of
the old regime.
In Turkey matters are of a similar
ambiguity. The Government which
is to sign the treaty is powerless in
Anatolia, where Mustapha Kemal
with his nationalist forces defies both
the Sultan and the Allies. Kemal,
unlike Ludendorff, makes no attempt
at camouflage. He will deny the
binding force of peace terms signed
by the Cabinet in Constantinople. If
the Entente shall fulfill its promise of
protection for Greeks and Armenians,
it is not .by the mitigation of peace
terms that it can do so, but only by
showing Kemal its determination to
enforce them, if necessary, by violent
means. The victory gained at po
great a sacrifice can not be main-
tained by cheapening the price to be
paid by the defeated.
424]
THE REVIEW
Greek at Oxford
ARISTIDES, we are told, was
-^ ostracized from Athens because
certain classes of his fellow Athenians
were annoyed to hear him continually
spoken of as "the just." There are
those to-day who would gladly ostra-
cize what is left to us of ancient
Greece, for a similar reason. It irks
them to hear Greek continually men-
tioned as a superior instrument of
higher education. To persons in this
frame of mind, the news that students
may hereafter compete for the aca-
demic honors of Oxford University
without the study of Greek doubtless
comes as a source of joy. Aha ! The
enemy has at last been forced from
his chief stronghold! Nwnc est
bibendum (bibulousness metaphori-
cal, of course) nunc pede libera pul-
sanda teUus.
But it would be rash to assume that
Oxford and Old England are thinking
to drop out of their future that part
of Greek life and thought— its mar-
velously effective language and eter-
nally vital literature— which has been
so fruitful an element in making Eng-
land and Oxford what they have been
in the past, and what they are to-day.
The statute recently passed by the
Oxford Congregation does make it
possible that the honors of Oxford
may be taken hereafter without
Greek. That the privilege will be
followed, however, by a very serious
reduction in the attention given to
Greek studies is not an inevitable
conclusion. In the newer universi-
ties of Great Britain, where classical
studies have not been compulsory,
there has been of late a very marked
grovd;h of interest in both Latin and
Greek. In the six midland and north-
ern English universities, for instance,
the number of students in both these
tongues has more than doubled in re-
cent years ; and the pages of the Edu-
cational Supplement of the London
Times, during the past few weeks,
contain evidence that the discussion
of the new Oxford statute has at
once set in motion a very active agi-
tation in favor of Greek studies.
Says a recent writer in the Times :
[Vol. 2, No. 50
the world will cease to rely on a compulsion
tnat was outworn, and come to rely on a
teaching which can not be outworn— the teach-
mg that Greek, and all that Greek implies is
a gift which the new democracy can not
forgo.
The Oxford decision will mean not less
Oreek, but more, since all who love Greek and
who realize what it has meant, and means to
The currents of human history
have so run as to throw upon the
great universities of England the re-
sponsibility of educating men for the
solution of many of the most vital
problems of all time. In the build-
ing up of her mighty empire, her
military and naval commanders, her
colonial officials, her diplomatic rep-
resentatives and the agents of her
great business organizations, have
had to meet and adapt themselves to
every important race and type of
human kind. In organizing the lands
and peoples gradually incorporated
into her empire, and fitting them for
eventual autonomy in local interests
and increasing participation in im-
perial control, she has had to adapt
herself to almost countless types of
local government, and to develop
numerous and constantly changing
variations in the relation of outlying
parts to the central body. Such have
been her tasks, and unless she had
met them with a fair degree of suc-
cess, the chances are that the world
to-day would be shivering in the chill
shadow of an uncurbed Prussian
despotism. And the eflfective leader-
ship in these great tasks which have
meant so much to the world's prog-
ress, not to that of England alone,
has been taken in an extraordinary
degree either by Oxford men, or by
men educated after the Oxford type,
in which the intellectual achievements
of the Greeks — the most acute, most
original, and most versatile of all an-
cient races— have always formed a
very important part.
One example out of many, the mar-
velous administrative career of Lord
Cromer in the reorganization of a
corrupt and impoverished and chaotic
Egypt, finding rest and renewal of
strength and keenness of insight for
his all but superhuman task in the
pages of the Greek poets, orators and
philosophers, shows how little valid-
ity there is in the assertion that
classical studies disconnect the mind
from the life of to-day, and unfit the
student for participation in its prac-
tical problems. In a recent pamphlet I
issued by the Bankers Trust Com-
pany of New York, setting forth the
opinions of leading financial authori-
ties in Great Britain on the tremen-
dous problems of post-war finance
and the restoration of Europe, the
foremost place is assigned to the
views of Walter Leaf, Chairman (or
President, as we say) of London
County, Westminster and Parr's
Bank, which carries deposits of over
a billion dollars, and which was, of
course, one of the strong supports of
British finance during the war. But
to many men in various lands, Walter
Leaf is known chiefly, if not solely,
by his accomplishments in the field
of Homeric scholarship.
With the supposed aid of the Ox-
ford compulsory requirement now
eliminated, the friends of classical
studies will feel an obligation to ac-
tive propaganda, and this will possi-
bly prove to be the more effective
method of the two. It must be remem-
bered that Greek has not been com-
pulsory in the English schools, and
that the students of these schools
were not confined to Oxford for their
future education. On the whole, we
may be fairly confident that England
will remain essentially true to the
conservatively progressive principles
on which her civilization has been
built up, and that while she will ad-
mit into her educational system such
new elements as may prove desirable,
she will not eliminate that which has
proved its fundamental and continu-
ing value by many generations of ex- i
perience. Greek is an intellectual
leaven of which no high modern civil-
ization can afford wholly to deprive
itself.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Cokporation
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars a year in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
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cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
<Lf%l"-,H- ^:, Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright. 1920. .h the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
„ Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Ayres O. W. Firkins
A. J. Barnouw w. H. Johnson
Jerome Landfield
April 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[425
Lord Bryce on Turkey and Armenia
[Mr. R. Fulton Cutting has received, and
lias kindly permitted us to publish, the follow-
ing letter from Lord Bryce, of whose expert
knowledge of the Turkish Empire and deep
concern for the future of Armenia no Ameri-
can needs to be informed.]
Dear Mr. Cutting:
IN reply to your questions I send
you an outline — brief, because I
am pressed by urgent work — of the
causes which have brought about the
present situation in the Near East,
and of the steps which the friends of
the Eastern Christians deem neces-
sary for their safety.
The Turkish Empire has been the
storm centre of European politics for
a century, because the treatment by
the Turkish Government of the sub-
ject Christian races has been an
evergrowing scandal and horror.
The oppression and cruelty of Turk-
ish rule caused the Crimean War in
1853; the Russo-Turkish War in
1877-78 ; the War between the Greeks
and the Turks in 1897; and the
Balkan Wars of 1912-13, these last
having had a good deal to do with
the outbreak of the Great War of
1914. The leading European Powers
repeatedly summoned the Turks to
reform their Administration, and the
Turks repeatedly promised to do so,
but never attempted to fulfill their
promises. Whenever resentment at
oppression flamed out into an insur-
rection of the subject races, the
Turkish Government had only one
expedient. It was massacre — indis-
criminate massacre, accompanied by
horrible cruelties. They massacred
the Greeks in 1822, and the Bul-
garians in 1876, and the Armenians
in 1894-95-96, and again, on a far
vaster scale (for nearly a million
perished), in 1915. Emboldened by
the impunity which they have en-
joyed, they have now begun afresh
the work of massacre in Cilicia,
where many thousands of Armenian
Christians have been slaughtered in
the last few weeks.
Their motive and their policy are
simple and scarcely concealed. They
want to have an Empire inhabited
only by Moslems, and their way of
accomplishing that is to exterminate
the Christians — men, women, and
children. The British Blue Book of
1916, containing the evidence, largely
drawn from American sources and
from German missionaries, consti-
tutes the most hideous record of
slaughter and enslavement, of out-
rages perpetrated upon women and
children, that history recounts. No
provocation had been given, and all
Christian subjects who could be
reached were destroyed — Nestorians,
Assyrians, Chaldeans, and in some
districts Greeks also, as well as
Armenians. The regions where these
things were done have been left since
the war ended in the hands of the
Turks, because the Allies had not
troops enough to occupy them. The
two chiefs among the bloodthirsty ruf-
fians who directed the massacres from
Constantinople, Enver and Talaat,
have escaped, but their followers and
partisans have regained control in
Constantinople and are terrorizing
the remnants of the Christian popu-
lation throughout Asiatic Turkey.
Nearly eighteen months have elapsed
since the armistice and the terms of
the treaty are not yet settled. The
delay is excused on the ground that
the Allies hoped the United States
would take a mandate from the
League of Nations for Armenia, or
for Constantinople, or for both. But
the non-ratification by America of
the treaty with Germany has pre-
vented any decision as to the part (if
any) that America will take in the
settlement.
Two questions have arisen. What
is to be done with Constantinople
and what is to become of Armenia?
Eighteen months ago everyone sup-
posed that the Turkish Power would
be extinguished in both. It was a
danger to the peace of Europe, it was
a curse to its subjects. Its faults
were incurable, because the Turk, as
a ruler, is an irreclaimable savage.
Yet to-day there are those who plead
that the Turkish savage should be
allowed to remain in Constantinople
because there are — it is said — Indian
Moslems who would be offended if the
Sultan were turned out of the city
which his ancestors conquered from
the Christians some centuries ago. It
is amazing that any weight should be
allowed to this arrogant pretension
of persons, alleging themselves to
speak on behalf of Indian Moslems, to
dictate the policy of the Allies, and
let the massacres of innocent Chris-
tians go unpunished. And it is all
the more amazing because Constan-
tinople is not a sacred city to the
Moslems like Mecca or Medina or
Jerusalem. It is not even a Moslem
city — the bulk of the population hav-
ing always been Christian. The In-
dian agitation has been a factitious
one, got up mainly from political mo-
tives, and never ought to have been
yielded to. We are not surprised to
hear that the decision to let the
Sultan stay has been received with
amazement and indignation in Amer-
ica. It has been generally hoped
here that the influence of the United
States in the councils of the Allies
would have averted such a disaster.
There remains the question of
Armenia. To leave the Turk in
power there would be not only a dis-
aster but a crime. It would also be
a grave breach of faith with the
Armenians, who were, after the mas-
sacres of 1915, asked by the Allies to
fight on their side, and thousands of
whom did volunteer, and fought val-
iantly, and died in the Allied cause.
The Turk has soaked the Near East
in blood and reduced much of it to
desolation. More than half the Chris-
tian inhabitants have perished, and a
large part of the Moslem inhabitants
— Kurds and others — have also been
driven by the Turkish Government
from their homes. The Armenians
are an energetic and industrious
people; and if, as is expected, the
refugees whom American liberality
has been keeping alive out of reach
of the Turk during the last four
years are enabled to return to their
ruined villages, they may in time re-
pair the losses suffered. But they
must have a helping hand. Some
civilized Power must undertake to
furnish officers who can organize a
gendarmerie to supply officials who
can set up some sort of administra-
tion, to furnish funds to set the
people on their feet again. We, in
426]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 50
Britain, having already undertaken
to look after Mesopotamia and Pales-
tine, the responsibility for which no
one else was willing to assume, can
not undertake Armenia also. Let me
say in passing that it seems to be
supposed in America that we have
made a profit out of the war by tak-
ing Mesopotamia. It is all the other
way. So far from making any gain
we have incurred a heavy liability,
with no prospect in sight of any
return. There was not and there is
not, so far as I can see, any desire in
England to occupy these countries;
they were taken merely because they
could not be allowed to go to rack and
ruin. They are in no sense Turkish
but Arab, and there is no Arab Gov-
ernment capable of administering
them.
We who are friends of the East-
ern Christians rejoice to know from
the recent meeting in New York, and
from many other American sources,
how strong and general is the feeling
in the United States for the libera-
tion of Armenia. I have just re-
ceived assurances from Canada that
the feeling there is no less active and
general. Though, owing to an un-
fortunate chain of circumstances,
America has not so far found her-
self in a position officially to express
her sympathy and actively exert her
influence, we can not but hope that
this influence will, somehow or other,
make itself felt. How that is to be
done you can judge better than we.
As to the difficulties which have pre-
vented the British people (who, as I
believe, feel as strong a sympathy as
you do with the Eastern Christians
and as strong a detestation of Turk-
ish rule) from securing all they de-
sire, I could say much, but perhaps it
is better to refrain. Meantime it is
believed that the Allied Powers pro-
pose to liberate what was Turkish
Armenia, and we trust this decision
will include the Armenian part of
Cilicia, which has been the scene of
the most recent massacres. It is,
moreover, essential to the peace of
the East that the militant Pan-
Islamic propaganda, so dangerous to
that peace, should not be allowed the
vantage ground which a Turkish
dominion contiguous to Persia and
Central Asia would furnish. The
urgent and still unsolved question is
— who shall undertake a mandate
under the League of Nations to find
a staff of officers fit to reorganize ad-
ministration and look after the main-
tenance of internal order? Whether
the League undertakes this, or
whether some minor Power can be
persuaded to do so, money will be
needed until the country can, after a
few years, begin to pay its way. Four
or five million dollars a year might
suffice, but the European Allies are
now staggering under a load of debt,
and the League is not yet in posses-
sion of funds. Whatever the difficul-
ties may be, some solution must be
found. It is surely impossible for
civilized Christian nations to let these
unhappy countries fall back under the
heel of their oppressors, impossible
not to extend a helping hand to those
ancient Christian races who have
now, after protracted suffering
borne with unfailing constancy, an
opportunity of regaining freedom
and peace. I am,
Very faithfully yours,
James Bryce
London, March 25
The Naval Inquiry
'T'HE naval inquiry precipitated by
•'■ Admiral Sims's criticisms is pro-
ducing the usual exchange of person-
alities and equivocations. And it has
been ill reported in the press. As it
nears its conclusion, however, it ap-
pears clearly that Admiral Sims has
substantiated all his main positions.
His criticisms are directed to the first
seven or eight months after the dec-
laration of war, and are solely con-
cerned with the conduct ot naval
affairs at Washington. There are
three main allegations :
First — the war caught the Navy
unprepared.
Second — ^there was for months
after war was declared no general
plan of operations.
Third — as Force Commander for
European waters he was unduly in-
terfered with, insufficiently informed,
and often not properly supported.
As to the general unpreparedness
of the fleet at the outbreak of the war,
it was merely a part of the deliber-
ate neglect of the nation's military
security by the Administration. Sec-
retary Daniels had the temerity to
declare that the ships were "ready
from stem to stern." As a matter of
fact, it took three months to get the
fleet fairly ready and to start thirty-
two destroyers for Ireland. They got
there about the middle of July. For
three months previous the Allies had
been losing towards a million of ton-
nage a month, much of which might
have been saved had our destroyers
been ready to jump quickly into the
critical area off Ireland. Admiral
Sims's estimate that prompt aid in
the anti-submarine campaign would
have shortened the war by three
months is conservative.
Details of the neglected condition
of the fighting fleet were supplied
by Admirals Fulham and Plunkett.
Eager as a boy to build new ships,
Secretary Daniels was never inter-
ested in manning them. Admiral Ful-
ham's battleships on the Pacific sta-
tion were all in reserve; his battle-
cruisers, though supposed to have
their peace complement, were so un-
dermanned as not to be able to move
from dock. In June of 1916 Admiral
Fulham wrote the Chief of Opera-
tions that a declaration of war then
"would find the navy in a state of
pandemonium and absolute ineffi-
ciency." Repeatedly Secretary Dan-
iels had cut out of Navy bills
proposals for necessary increase of
personnel. In May, 1917, with war on
for a month, Secretary Daniels pro-
posed suspension of enrollment in the
Reserve Force. At that moment the
Navy had about half the men neces-
sary to run the ships, and there was
in sight no other way of procuring
them.
That the Navy itself was as ready
as its reduced forces permitted goes
without saying. That is the Navy's
constant job, and it is used to it.
That, with war a possibility from the
autumn of 1914, Secretary Daniels
April 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[427
not only made no effort to man his
ships, but opposed his naval advisers
at every point when they pleaded for
men, is the index of his incapacity for
his high place. Even the apologists
for the Administration only argue
that the neglect of our military busi-
ness from 1914 to 1917 was philan-
thropically intended, or fall back on
the still lamer contention that Con-
gress and the nation would not have
permitted our existing regiments to
have been recruited and our existing
ships to have been manned to war
strength. With either apology his-
tory will make short work. Admiral
Sims's most serious allegation is that
the Navy Department entered the
war without a working plan of opera-
tions, and had nothing approaching
such until July, 1917. This is proved
to the hilt.
We appear to have the testimony of
Admirals Wilson, Fletcher, and Rod-
man to the contrary, but only appar-
ently. Admiral Fletcher inadver-
tently let the cat out of the bag. There
was a plan — was it not in three hun-
dred typewritten pages? Had it not
gained mellowness through three
years of waiting? Speaking strictly
by the book, there was a plan. It took
no account of exclusive submarine
warfare, was based on the presupposi-
tion of free use of all types of ships.
It had no reference to the actual sit-
uation at our entrance into the war.
Nobody ever thought of acting on it.
But it was a perfectly good plan, con-
sidered apart from events and the ac-
tual emergency. Admiral Rodman,
with a sea dog's waggishness, speaks
of the plan as being "later modified
to meet existing conditions." He fails
to state that any modification of the
plan resulted from natural and pro-
gressive decay of the three hundred
pages in the musty files of the Bu-
reau of Operations.
Captain Harris Laning's testimony
whisks this smoke screen down the
wind. He was in Operations, pre-
cisely the strategic bureau, until
July, 1917, and thereafter in the exec-
utive and personnel branch, the Bu-
reau of Navigation. In that brief
and forceful utterance of which few
flag officers seem capable, he tells
the exact facts. On February 18,
1917, war being certain, he wrote to
Admiral Benson:
We have little or no preparation for han-
dling a situation like the present, where the
immediate menace is confined to submarine
effort. Without any other plan in mind than
that developed to meet a situation in no way
similar to the present situation, the Navy
Department as a whole is proceeding with its
task as if there were nothing new in the situa-
tion. . . . Aren't we failing in our duty if we
don't do all we can to meet the emergency?
The first step to meet it is to have a plan and
an organization ready to carry it out. Can't
we have it?
After a fortnight Admiral Benson
requested Captain Laning and other
subordinates to present plans. On
March 13, as he admits on the very
defective information then possessed
by the Department, Captain Laning
presented his plan. It was a reason-
able defensive plan based on the facts
of submarine warfare. It would
have afforded a basis immediately for
economical action and could readily
have been modified to meet the unan-
ticipated need of an offensive in
foreign waters. Such was Admiral
Benson's judgment when with slight
modifications he approved the Laning
plan and laid it before Secretary Dan-
iels, who disapproved it. Thus the
Navy worried along without a plan.
About the middle of April Admiral
Sims sent the Department from Lon-
don the fullest information about the
appalling submarine sinkings. It was
a reasonable estimate, as things were
going, that England would be starved
out in a matter of five months. Ac-
cordingly Admiral Sims proposed the
first plan based on knowledge of the
actual military situation. All ship-
ping for England and the theatre of
war had to pass near southern Ire-
land. There the sinkings were most
serious. Accordingly he recommended
that all suitable light craft should
be sent over for aggressive operations
in this critical area. Within a week
Washington offered him six destroy-
ers. In despair he appealed, on April
27, to Ambassador Page, through
whose representations he received,
after the middle of July, thirty-two
destroyers that rendered the first
naval aid to the Allies.
Here Captain Laning's testimony
affords an edifying bit of chronology.
In the face of the fact that most of
our destroyers might have to go to
Ireland, the Navy estimates went to
Congress without any considerable
appropriation for anti-submarine
craft. Captain Laning called Secre-
tary Daniels's attention to this grave
defect, and requested an emergency
appropriation of $250,000,000 to
cover the case. It was a moment
when Congress would have given the
Navy whatever it asked. Secretary
Daniels declined to transmit the re-
quest to Congress. The result was
that the contracts for the new de-
stroyers were not placed until we had
been six months at war.
The layman should not need to be
told of the necessity of an operating
plan. Until the Navy knew what
ships were to be made ready, where
they were going, what service was
expected of them, it could not make
the necessary calculations for per-
sonnel, ordnance, and supply. The re-
sult was a scramble of all the navy
bureaus to achieve a maximum pro-
gramme and not be caught short.
In time and money it was a terribly
wasteful process, but it was the only
one Mr. Daniels left open. Thus the
Navy staff overrode law and regula-
tions, competed with each other and
with the army, disregarded the Secre-
tary, and heroically bungled through
to a belated success.
The testimony abounds in delicious
bits about the methods of ignoring
Mr. Daniels. He frequently ordered
recruiting stopped. Of course we
went ahead. We needed the men.
Admiral Palmer testified. The Sec-
retary refused authority for train-
ing stations, and such magnificent
organizations as Pelham and Great
Lakes arose almost surreptitiously.
His incompetence had the saving
grace of amiability. He didn't mind
being ignored. Often he was un-
aware of what was going on with-
out his authority, and whenever he
saw any unauthorized effort going
well he gracefully took the credit for
it. His head never grasped his job,
his restlessness hindered others from
doing it for him effectively, but his
heart was in the right place.
On July 19, 1917, three months
after the war began, the Navy at
length transmitted a general plan to
Admiral Sims.
428]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 50
Into the failure of the Navy De-
partment to give loyal support to
Admiral Sims we need not go elabo-
rately. The facts as brought out by
the correspondence amply bear out
the charges. They refused him a
staff for months and then sent him an
inadequate one; they declined to let
him give provisional ensignships to
willing and competent Americans
abroad. They diminished his pres-
tige with his own force by withhold-
ing the usual right of promotion.
They negotiated over his head with
the French and British Admiralties.
They failed to inform him of addi-
tions to his fleet. They interfered
with his local tactical dispositions.
It is a discreditable chapter, due
mostly to blundering. From day to
day Washington hardly knew its own
mind. Yet Admiral Sims is right in
insisting that their attitude of dis-
trust was such that their only correct
course was to have removed him. He
had at once the chagrin and the relief
of seeing Admiral Rodman come
over in the autumn of 1917 to check
him up. Admiral Rodman reported
just what Admiral Sims had been re-
porting for six months. Washington
believed Admiral Rodman, and de-
cided to act as if the Navy were at
war, and things began to go well.
Admiral Sims's strategy was adopted
in its essentials. He had at least the
inner rewards of him who endureth.
S. P.
The Bolsheviks' Horn of Plenty
ALTHOUGH Bolshevist propaganda in
this country is persistent and care-
fully coordinated, and its volume is very
great, there is little of it that may be
regarded as deserving rebuttal. In fact,
to undertake to answer it would only be
to dignify it unduly and give it un-
merited attention. But occasionally
there appears an article which is so cun-
ningly contrived and so prominently
placed as to carry weight in the business
community and which, therefore, can not
be allowed to pass unnoticed. Such an
article is that which appeared in the
Nation of April 10 under the title of
"Our Future Trade with Russia," writ-
ten by Mr. Albert Coyle, who is described
as a prisoner taken by the Soviet army
last summer from the American forces
on the Archangel front, and to whom is
ascribed a knowledge of the Russian lan-
guage which "opened many interesting
doors."
The general thesis of Mr. Coyle's ar-
ticle does not differ greatly from the
view held by economists everywhere.
Russia has a vast reserve of undeveloped
natural resources both in foodstuffs and
in raw materials. Reconstruction in
Europe is dependent upon the develop-
ment and exportation of these resources.
For this development and exportation,
the rehabilitation of Russian railways is
prerequisite. So far there is no dis-
pute. But when Mr. Coyle develops his
thesis and draws the conclusion that
these desirable results can be obtained
by recognizing the Soviet Government
and opening up immediate trade rela-
tions, he furnishes data and follows a
line of reasoning that display either
ignorance or dishonesty.
In introducing his subject, he calls
attention to the strain under which the
Soviet Government has been laboring
during the past two years and then mar-
vels that it has emerged victorious, "ac-
tually stronger economically than at the
outset, and immediately prepared to con-
duct commerce with the rest of the
world." If Mr. Coyle would take the
trouble to consult the files of the official
journals published by the Soviet Govern-
ment during the past few months, he
would learn that they frankly admit,
first, that, economically, owing to non-
production, Russia is on the verge of a
complete collapse and in infinitely worse
condition than in November, 1917; and
secondly, that the Soviet Government is
not "immediately prepared to conduct
commerce with the rest of the world."
Reference to later paragraphs in Mr.
Coyle's own article corroborates this.
Calling attention to the "iron regimen"
of the Soviet Government — and "iron"
is a very mild appellation for it — he
points to its two results: "(1) The
amassing of large stocks of foods and
raw materials which could not be trans-
ported for consumption or utilized for
manufacture; and (2) the creation of
the greatest vacuum of consumers' wants
that the civilized world has ever known."
The first of these two statements is sim-
ply not true. Large stocks of foodstuffs
have not been amassed, because the peas-
ants in the regions occupied by the Bol-
sheviks have ceased to cultivate more
land than was necessary to provide for
their own needs and have carefully con-
cealed their small stocks against Soviet
requisition. The regions in question are
for the most part those which normally
import a portion of their foodstuffs from
the more fertile black land region. It is
ludicrous for the Soviet authorities, on
the one hand, to claim that large stocks
of foodstuffs have been amassed and, at
the same time, complain bitterly of the
starvation of the cities. The harvest of
last summer was indeed a fine one, and
the southern regions, then in control of
Denikin, produced a surplus which com-
petent observers estimated at 3,000,000
tons.* These regions have now fallen
into the hands of the Bolsheviks and in
all probability the peasants have suc-
ceeded in concealing their grain so well
that little will inure to the benefit of the
Soviet authorities.
Mr. Coyle's second conclusion as to
Russia now being the "greatest vacuum
of consumers' wants that the civilized
world has ever known" is one of the
very few true statements in the article.
Following his introduction, Mr. Coyle
sets forth an array of statistical mate-
rial calculated to deceive the public into
believing that he is giving a scientific
basis for his argument. His data, how-
ever, strongly suggest the familiar style
of the stock-selling prospectuses of "get-
rich-quick" concerns, and his figures will
not bear analysis. So, for example, he
states that the largest coal field in the
world is the Kuznetsk in Siberia, where-
as the explorations made there are not
sufficient to determine anything of the
kind ; but even if it were, it is so distant
as to have no influence upon European
Russia. Certainly it will furnish no coal
for export. The" Donetz basin in South
Russia is, to be sure, the largest coal
field in Europe, and in it is found a very
considerable proportion of anthracite. In
the future this field may be developed to
export coal to Europe, but it is interest-
ing to read what Mr. Coyle writes with
reference to present conditions. He
states that during the first few months
of 1919, 4,000,000 poods of anthracite
had already been mined from the Donetz
basin. 4,000,000 poods means only about
73,000 tons, not an important production
for several months in the largest coal
field in Europe. The fact is that under
the first Revolution, owing to labor
troubles and sporadic attempts at work-
ingmen's control, the production fell
greatly below the normal of about 2,250,-
000 tons per month.f But the real ruin
of the Donetz production followed the
assumption of power by the Bolshevik
regime ; it is this that explains the pro-
duction for the first few months of 191S
to which Mr. Coyle refers. When tht
Volunteer Army under Denikin recov-,
ered the Donetz coal basin, production
was immediately increased to more thar
ten times the Soviet production, so as tc
*See Report on Economic Situation in South Rui
sia, by B. Ivanov, to the Russian Council of Trad<
and Industry, London, December 2, 1919.
tThe 1 9 14 coal production in the Donetz Basir
was 1,683,800,000 poods, or about 30,000,000 tons
Annual of Ministry of Finances, 1915, page 503.
April 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[429
take care of railway and local needs, and
this would have been still further in-
creased had transportation facilities been
available for its export. The statements
of Mr. Coyle concerning the Moscow coal
basin, peat, and schist beds are still more
ludicrous. He mentions that the Mos-
cow coal basin last year produced 38,000,-
000 poods of bituminous coal. Trans-
lated into English, this means 700,000
tons, but there is practically no bitumi-
nous coal in the Moscow region. The coal
there is lignite, or brown coal, which is
of very inferior value as a fuel and can
only be used in connection with higher
grades.^ The million tons of peat pro-
duced, together with this lignite, was so
unsatisfactory that the factories stopped
for want of fuel and the people of Mos-
cow suffered terribly from the cold last
winter. His report that the discovery
of immense schist beds in Samara and
Simbirsk regions has opened up an im-
portant supply of fuel and tar products
suggests particularly the prospectus of
the "get-rich-quick" promoter. There
are, to be sure, some oil-bearing schists
in the neighborhood of the Volga. They
have been known for years, and it may
be possible that some day in the future
a means will be found for extracting the
oil from them at a cost that will make it
a commercial enterprise. Just now, how-
ever, the geological report concerning
them was resurrected from the archives
for propaganda purposes.
Space is lacking to take up in detail
Mr. Coyle's other statistical misinforma-
tion, and this analysis of the fuel situa-
tion must suffice to show his general
method. But attention must be called
briefly to his report on textiles, because
upon this he bases the conclusion that
the Soviet Government has in its posses-
sion materials to exchange for foreign
goods. He states that the report of the
Supreme Economic Council shows that
the Turkestan cotton crop this year is
5,000,000 poods (365,000 bales). It may
be. The normal production was more
than four times this amount and, at that,
provided but two-thirds of Russia's own
consumption, the remainder being im-
ported from abroad. § He then says:
"Flax increased to 4,000,000 poods,
which, including reserves, makes a total
of 5,500,000 poods, about half of which
will be utilized by Russian industry and
the balance held for export." The flax
production of Russia in 1913 was 32,-
455,500 poods, II so that the "increase" to
4,000,000 poods is remarkable. In 1913
the domestic consumption was about one-
tCf. Russian Year Book, 1915; p. 194. Also B.
Ivanov, Report, previously cited.
§Russian cotton crop of season 1915-16 was 20,-
600,000 poods, or 1,487,000 bales. In season 1914-15
Russia produced 1.242.000 bales and imported 528,000
bales. Van der Muhlen, Cotton Industry of Russia.
half of this, or 16,000,000 poods.** It
will be interesting to find out how Mr.
Coyle arrives at the deduction that one-
half of 5,500,000 poods will suflBce for
Russia's needs and permit the balance to
be exported. The 2,750,000 poods in-
dicated (50,000 tons) would make but
a small impression in the foreign market,
but even in regard to this Mr. Coyle is
overoptimistic— to put it mildly. If he
had read the Petrograd Izvestia, the offi-
cial Soviet journal, for January 13, 1920,
he would have found the following sta-
tistics in regard to amounts of flax and
their location:
Soviet Codpera-
District. Warehouses. lives.
Vologda 31,416 89,081
Kostroma- Yaroslav 148,972 92,727
Bezhetsky 401,408 707432
Rzhev 2l3,5i4 569,868
Vladimir-N. Novgorod.. 67,038 6,936
Smolensk 205,279 595,775
btaroruss 107,670 215,540
Vitebsk 45,827 13,734
Total 1,221,124 2,291,093
By their own showing, then, the Soviet
Government and the Soviet Controlled
Cooperatives have but 3,500,000 poods of
flax, and that is scattered all over Russia.
The subject of textiles should not be
passed without calling attention to an-
other egregious error. He says: "In
order to clothe the army, these [textile]
mills have had to be kept in operation,
several of the largest still being under
the able superintendence of the English
spinners who directed them before the
Revolution." The truth is that these
mills have not been kept in operation and
that the attempt of the Soviet Govern-
ment to nationalize them and operate
them under a central administration re-
sulted in closing down practically all of
them a year ago. As to the "able super-
intendence of the English spinners," I
can quote to him a cablegram received
last week from Mr. B., formerly pro-
prietor of a mill of 100,000 spindles, who
has just escaped into Finland. He wires :
"Plant perfect order. Liquid assets
squandered. Spindles stopped year ago."
So much for Mr. Coyle's statistical
data. Let us turn to some of his gen-
eralizations and conclusions. He calls at-
tention to the fact that the American
businessman has not been blind to the
value of Russian commerce, but that
there have been "good and sufficient rea-
sons why he has permitted Germany and
Britain to corner approximately two-
thirds of Russia's import and export
trade." These good and sufficient rea-
sons he finds to be, first, the "various im-
port duties to provide sufficient crown
revenues"; secondly, that German and
British firms had cornered many of the
most lucrative markets in such a way
WNational Economy, 1914, page 112.
Ministry of Finances.
Published by
**Araount of flax exported in 1913, 16,632,000 poods
(about 275,000 tons). Annual of Ministry of Fi-
nances, 1915, page 553.
"that the American found himself facing
a closed game preserve"; and thirdly,
that American firms were also at a great
disadvantage because of their inability
to secure competent representatives who
knew the Russians and their language.
As to the first point, Mr. Coyle needlessly
goes out of his way to play upon popu-
lar prejudice. The tariff duties imposed
under the ministries of Vishnegradsky
and Witte were not to provide crown
revenues and were never so disposed.
They were imposed as a part of the pro-
tectionist programme designed to stimu-
late Russian domestic production. As to
his second point, it has only to be ex-
plained that the reason why the Germans
succeeded in the Russian market was not
because of special privilege or by pos-
sessing "a closed game preserve." It was
simply because the Germans studied the
markets, acquainted themselves with the
Russian needs, and met these needs in
an intelligent and energetic manner.
British trade was largely confined to ex-
porting coal to Russia and importing cer-
tain raw materials. It had little to do
with manufactured articles. His third
point is unfortunately true.
He then goes on to state that the Rev-
olution has suddenly swept away all of
these barriers, and that, since foreign
trade is now a monopoly of the state, all
tariffs are illogical and unnecessary.
Furthermore, "since the state now owns
all sources of natural wealth, foreign
concerns have lost their corner on cer-
tain valuable markets and commodities."
Evidently when he wrote this sentence he
overlooked the fact that, a few para-
graphs before, he had quoted the words
of Chicherin to the effect that the
Soviet Government was ready to grant
concessions and permit foreign capital to
exploit the mines and forests of Russia.
Mr. Coyle is firmly of the opinion — at
least he says so — that if the Soviet Gov-
ernment is recognized, trade can begin
at once. In his words "there is only one
country which can immediately exchange
with us value for value. And that coun-
try is Russia." But a little further on
in his article, he slips into the contradict-
ory statement, "we must not forget that
Russia's export commodities are not now
in storage at ports of clearance. In
many cases their sources are several
thousand miles inland and they could
not be immediately transported in large
quantities." To meet this contingency
he recommends the extension of a short-
term credit to the Soviet Government "to
enable it to utilize our first shipments of
rolling stock for the collection and trans-
portation of goods it wishes to exchange
with us." Considering that the Soviet
authorities have repudiated the foreign
debt of Russia, and that includes $187,-
000,000 lent by our Government, to say
nothing of the millions of Russian Gov-
ernment obligations held by private citi-
430]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 50
zens in America, this proposal to extend
a short-term credit to a defaulting cred-
itor shows charming naivete. One won-
ders what the frugal French peasants,
who lent their hard-earned savings to
the Russian Government to build the
Trans-Siberian and other railroads,
would think about it.
A further conclusion of Mr. Coyle is
that "if we immediately send Russia
sufiBcient farm machinery, we shall not
only facilitate the collection of the July
harvest in the Southern black soil belt,
but also enhance the Northern yield in
September and October." Considering
the length of time required to manufac-
ture and transport this agricultural ma-
chinery to Russian ports, Mr. Coyle's
estimate shows a childlike optimism ; but
when one also realizes that even if the
machinery reached Russian ports this
summer, it could not be transported to
the interior and distributed until the
railway system had been rehabilitated,
the absurdity is still more manifest.
Even here we have another statement of
Mr. Coyle's in corroboration, for, speak-
ing of the textile industry, he says, "yet,
due to lack of transportation, new gar-
ments in the provinces are practically un-
known outside of the army." The trans-
portation of Russia will not suffice to
carry garments, and yet he proposes
to distribute agricultural machinery
throughout the country!
Is any further comment on the
Nation's much advertised "authoritative"
article necessary? Making every allow-
ance for the Bolshevist sympathies of
that journal, I can not believe that its
staff is so devoid of intelligence that the
patent contradictions and misstatements
in the article could have escaped their at-
tention. Since the public is likely to be
gravely misled, will not Walter Lippman
and Upton Sinclair, guardians of news-
paper truth, please take notice?
Jerome Landfield
Correspondence
Reactions to Mr. Beck's Letter
Major Putnam Objects
To the Editors of The Review :
In the Review for April 10 you have
brought into print a letter from Mr.
James M. Beck, in which he makes pro-
test in regard to certain criticisms,
in your editorial "The Wreck of the
Treaty," of the action of Senator Lodge.
It is Mr. Beck's opinion that this criti-
cism is without justification.
During the years after the sinking
of the Lusitania, Mr. Beck rendered loyal
and patriotic service, in cooperation with
the citizens who constituted the Ameri-
can Rights League and others, in arous-
ing the righteous purpose of the country
in order that America might do its duty
in the world's war. Mr. Beck held with
us that America was shamefully late in
coming into the war, and that this de-
lay of two years or more in our war
action, and a further delay of more than
twelve months, due to our lack of intelli-
gent preparedness, after the decision for
war had been arrived at, in beginning
the cooperation of America, brought
upon Europe and upon America itself a
serious risk of domination by Prussian
imperialism.
At the time of the discussion in regard
to America's cooperation in the war,
Mr. Beck was prepared to recognize that
America had a duty to perform as a
member of the family of nations, in
helping in the fight to maintain civiliza-
tion and to protect national liberties and
representative government on both sides
of the Atlantic. He was doubtless
ready also to recognize that such action
was not only a duty but constituted a
vital interest for the Republic. It is
difficult to understand why he and his
group should not realize that a similar
duty rests upon the Republic in regard
to cooperation with our late AUiet? for
assuring the peace of Europe and of
the world.
The responsibility for the shameful
delay in taking our part in the organiza-
tion of the world for peace rests with
Senator Lodge and his associates.
Mr. Beck himself appears to be of
opinion that the present situation of
America is unsatisfactory, not to say
humiliating. Having made great sac-
rifices in the war and rendered enor-
mous service to Europe and the world,
America is now without a friend among
the non-aggressive states of the world.
The President's management of the
treaty has been ill-advised in the ex-
treme. He ought, of course, to have
taken with him to Paris representatives
of the Republican Party to be selected
by the leaders of the party. If men
like Senator Root, Mr. Taft, and Sena-
tor Lodge himself had been asked to co-
operate in the framing of the treaty in
Paris, the compact would have come to
this country not as a Democratic meas-
ure, but as a national decision. The
blame for the rejection of the treaty,
an action which leaves the United States
outside of the civilized world, rests, how-
ever, with Lodge and his Republican as-
sociates. The Committee on Foreign
Affairs, as made up under Republi-
can direction, included a group of bitter
opponents of the League, men who had
opposed America's action in the war. It
is difficult to see the justice of praising
the leadership of Senator Lodge when
the result of this leadership has been
to allow the action of the Senate and the
policy of the country to be determined
by a group of fourteen or fifteen ob-
structionists led by such a "statesman"
as Senator Reed, of Missouri.
The treaty as presented to the Sen-
ate is not Mr. Wilson's treaty, although
Lodge and his associates have so de-
scribed it. The difficulty with Lodge's
leadership is that he has made the issue
a personal matter between himself and
Mr. Wilson. He said frankly: "I am
fighting Mr. Wilson." The wise and
proper action of the United States has
been interfered with, and civilization
itself has been blocked because of the
self-sufficiency of two men. President
Wilson and Senator Lodge.
The treaty, however, as presented to
the Senate, is a message from Europe.
Mr. Wilson has simply acted as a mes-
senger in bringing the document with
him from Paris. No single state con-
cerned has found itself satisfied with the
provisions of this treaty, but all the
states, excepting only the United States,
have been ready to sacrifice their own
personal preferences rather than not to
see some compact or agreement put into
shape. Several of these states are ac-
cepting, in coming into the League, risks
and burdens much greater than any that
could come upon the United States, tht
strongest and richest nation in the
world. If each of the other Allies had
undertaken to nationalize the agreement
as the United States Senate considered
it essential to Americanize, and even to
Hibernianize, the agreement, there would,
of course, have been no possibility of
arriving at any conclusion at all : the de-
bates would have gone on indefinitely.
The opponents of the treaty include not
a few patriotic citizens like Mr. Beck
whose apprehensions and criticisms
bring very keenly to memory the pro-
tests and arguments of the opponents of
the Constitution in the great debates of
1787-89. The opponents of the League
include also, however, practically all of
the groups which opposed America's ac-
tion in the war. Mr. Hearst, with the
influence of his chain of newspapers, the
pro-Germans, the pacifists under the
direction of papers like the Nation and
the New Republic, the men who cm-
tended that "America had no duties in
Europe" and who look upon the world
from what may be called a "district"
point of view, men of whom Senator Reed
is a type, the Socialists and the I. W. W.
— all these are opponents of the League,
and it can hardly be satisfactory to a
patriotic citizen like Mr. Beck to find
these men in accord with his position
and with the purpose of Senator Lodge.
The letter that a month or two back
April 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
came to us from Lord Grey was pathetic
in its appeal. The demand for help
was as urgent as that brought by Mr.
Balfour in the spring of 1917. England
can not carry alone the burden of ad-
justing the problems of Europe. She
needs, and has a right to depend upon,
the cooperation of the United States.
Lord Grey said in substance: We do
not think it worth while to question the
changes proposed in the treaty. We will
put to one side the discourtesy and lack
of confidence shown in these reservations.
The essential thing is to get now the
help that is needed and to have America
do its part in helping to adjust the prob-
lems of the world.
We Americans should recognize that
this is not only a duty, but an essential
interest for the Republic. The action
that will enable this duty to be performed
and these interests to be protected has
been blocked, as said, because of the
President's bad management and self-
sufficiency and because Senator Lodge
and his associates have persisted in mak-
ing the issue personal and partisan. We
can not accept the view that leadership
of this kind is wise or patriotic, or that
it gives any evidence whatsoever of in-
telligent, or even decent statesmanship.
George Haven Putnam
New York, April 15
[481
A Rap for "The Review"
To the Editors of The Review:
If you will permit me to speak plainly,
I would say that Mr. Beck has afforded
the Review opportunity to see itself as
others see it. All the way through the
matter of the "League of Nations" the
Review has been less good than it should
have been. It should have seen that
there were three different grounds it
might have taken: that the League
should be adopted — and shown the rea-
sons; that the League should not be
adopted — and shown the reasons; or that
the welfare of our Government as a
political structure demanded some of the
things proposed and could not admit of
others — and made them clear. But the
Review was not definite and clear in the
1 matter in any large conception of it, and
consequently failed to rise to its oppor-
tunity.
C. D. HiGBY
Erie, Pa., April 14
Thanks to Senator Lodge
To the Editors of The Review:
On subscribing for the Review, I took
occasion to congratulate myself and your
other readers upon the existence, char-
acter, and purpose of such a paper. You
kindly assured me in reply that you
would be glad to hear from me at any
time.
I can at least express the great satis-
faction which I take in the Review when
I wish to add one to those "whom no
man can number" in dissent from your
estimate of Senator Lodge and his serv-
ice for our nation. I am confident that
Mr. James M. Beck expresses the grate-
ful convictions of the great majority of
your readers and of the whole people.
I write this because it is a gratifica-
tion to express a personal appreciation
of this eminent statesman and his suc-
cess in keeping us out of a disastrous
national entanglement— while it gives
me opportunity to say how much I like
the Review.
A. F. Beakd
New York, April 11
As to American Independence
To the Editors of The Review:
Mr. Beck's letter in defense of Senator
Lodge was much appreciated in large
part by many. But what some of us
would like to know is wherein the lute
victory of the Senate over the Presi-
dent resulted in "saving the independence
of America." We can not see that either
England, France, or Italy has sacrificed
its independence or its national sov-
ereignty by entering the League, and
certainly what is freedom enough for
those nations which stood so much more
of the brunt of the war than we did
should be freedom enough for us. And
what some of us are far more concerned
about than the question of our inde-
pendence or our rights, important as
this may be, is the question of our inter-
dependence and our obligations to civ-
ilization. We dislike to think of .our-
selves as too good or "too proud" to
soil our hands with "purely European
questions," for in these days there are
no purely European questions. What-
ever is vital to civilization or to the
peace of the world is our concern, and
many of us are considerably ashamed
of the stand which our once honored
country seems to be taking in the face
of to-day's world-unrest.
Jared S. Moore
Western Reserve University,
Cleveland, Ohio, April 14
—proof of attempted bribery so rank as
to excite feelings of disgust in the mind
of the unpartisan citizen.
That Ford employed the same tactics
during the campaign is no excuse; on
the contrary, it doubles the offense
against the law and public decency.
To make the affair even more sin-
ister, Newberry's manager (jointly con-
victed) issued and published a statement
as soon as the verdict was rendered, iii
which he defied the judge and public
prosecutor, and flouted the law under
which the conviction was had.
"J^r^ Goldman, Berkman, or other
Reds," deported or undeported, ever
uttered more seditious words or done
anything more calculated to bring the
administration of justice into contempt?
W. E. V.
Princeton, N. J., March 25.
The Newberry Trial
To the Editors of The Review:
The scant comment of the New York
press, with one or two trenchant excep-
tions, on the Newberry conviction is
ominous when it is recalled that a jury
in the Federal Court found him guilty,
together with a score or more of his
party adherents, of conspiracy against
the Corrupt Practices Act.
The testimony at the trial, which
lasted many weeks, showed a vast outlay
of money in every conceivable way, from
subsidizing the press to giving gasoline,
unasked, to ministers of rural churches
Wild Life Preservation
To the Editors of The Review:
I strongly endorse every word of your
editorial of April 17, on "The Preserva-
tion of Wild Life." Your proposal for a
national commission on ways and means
IS a great idea, and I hope that I shall live
to see it carried into effect, on an ideal
basis. Whenever the 5,000,000 sports-
men and hunters of America can be made
to realize the fact that their own sport
is on the toboggan slide and going
straight to Oblivion, they will want just
such a saving factor as you propose.
The present destruction of game,
through absurd hunting licenses, wicked'
bag limits, and (some) criminal open
seasons, I regard with great alarm and
anxiety. In a short time my views will
be in type, and ready for distribution.
I believe that the game shooters of
America now must cut down their kill-
ings by 50 per cent, or they will extermi-
nate their own game and sport. Will
they do this before it is too late?
A national commission, as broad and
as well grounded as you propose, could
serve a host of admirable purposes — pro-
vided the States would pay heed to its
warnings and advice. Perhaps some day
it will represent the last call to the ex-
terminators to "Beware!" and "Put on
the brakes!" Naturally, the Commission
should consist of fearless experts, and
be, like Caesar's wife, above suspicion.
Its members should be as Theodore
Roosevelt was— never afraid, and seldom
cautious. If it could not make up its
mind to act with all the boldness that
emergencies demand, then it should not
be born. If it would hew to the line,
"cry aloud, and spare not," then the
friends of wild life should prepare for it
a rousing welcome; for on that basis it is
sorely needed at this critical hour.
William T. Hornaday
New York, April 18
432]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 50
The Anglo-Persian Treaty
To the Editors of The Review:
The probability of Great Britain's
making a protectorate of Persia through
the instrumentality of this treaty has
been frequently mentioned in the press
and diplomatic circles. The fact that it
was negotiated while the Peace Confer-
ence was discussing "the real blessings
and permanent advantages of concord
between the nations," which was to guar-
antee forever the "political independence
and territorial integrity of great and
small nations alike," has aroused dis-
pleasure not only in Persia, but in Amer-
ica and France and in England as well.
Positive denial is made by Lord Cur-
zon with regard to having a protectorate
over Persia, but the fact is that this
treaty, although recognizing the inde-
pendence of Persia, takes away by its
terms all of her independent rights and
robs her of her sovereignty. This opin-
ion is frankly admitted by the Paris
Temps which, in commenting upon this
question, says "Since Persia promises to
confide its army only to British officers
and its finances only to British special-
ists, it has no longer force or resources
to exercise its sovereignty."
In view of these realities, this treaty
appears, therefore, of sufficient import-
ance to quote here its full contents.
On August 9, 1919, the following
treaty was signed by the Persian Gov-
ernment and His Britannic Majesty's
Minister at Teheran:
It is hereby agreed between the Persian
Goyemment on the one hand and His Britannic
Majesty's Minister acting on behalf of his
Government, on the other hand, as follows :
1. The British Government reiterates in the
most categorical manner the undertakings
which they have repeatedly given in the past
to respect absolutely the independence and
integrity of Persia.
2. The British Government will supply, at
the cost of the Persian Government, the serv-
ices of whatever expert advisers may, after a
consultation between the two Governments, be
considered necessary for the several depart-
ments of the Persian administration. These
advisers shall be engaged on contracts and en-
dowed with adequate powers, the nature of
which shall be a matter of agreement between
the Persian Government and the advisers.
3. The British Government will supply, at
the cost of the Persian Government, such
officers and such munitions and equipment of
modern type as may be adjudged necessary
by a joint commission of military experts,
British and Persian, which shall be assembled
forthwith for the purpose of estimating the
needs of Persia in respect to the formation
of the uniform force which the Persian Gov-
ernment purposes to create for the establish-
ment and preservation of order in the coun-
try and its frontiers.
4. For the purpose of financing the reforms
indicated in clauses two and three of this
agreement, the British Government offers to
provide or arrange a substantial loan for the
Government of Persia for which adequate
security shall be sought by the two Govern-
ments in consultation, in the revenues of the
customs, or other sources of income at the dis-
posal of the Persian Government. Pending
completion of negotiations for such a loan,
the British Government will supply on account
of it such funds as may be needed for initiat-
ing the salient features of reforms.
5. The British Government, fully recogniz-
ing the urgent need which exists for the im-
provement of communications in Persia, both
with a view to the extension of trade and the
prevention of famine, is required to cooperate
with the Persian Government for the encour-
agement of Anglo-Persian forms of transport ;
subject always to the examination of the prob-
lem by experts and to agreement between the
two Governments as to the particular projects
which may be most necessary, practicable and
profitable.
6. The two Governments agree to the ap-
pointment forthwith of a joint committee of
experts for the examination and revision of
the existing customs tariff with a view to its
reconstruction on a basis calculated to accord
with the legitimate interests of the country and
to promote its prosperity.
Primarily, this treaty is claimed to be
unconstitutional and legally of no effect
from the Persian point of view, as it was
concluded at a moment when there was
no parliament* (Mejliss) to ratify it.
Secondly, it was negotiated at the time
when the British troops were in posses-
sion of the Persian territory. Thirdly
and finally, the present Persian Cabinet
is not, constitutionally speaking, recog-
nized by the Persian people. Their ap-
pointment, in order to be effective, must
be confirmed by the Persian Parliament.
This Cabinet has not as yet been pre-
sented by the Shah to the Mejliss, and
the fact that the majority of the Cabinet
members are devout adherents of the
old pre-constitutional regime of Persia
and subject to backshish makes them not
only unpopular but extremely suspicious.
According to the information, which is
believed to be quite accurate, the pres-
ent Persian Cabinet not only disregards
constitutional powers and limitations,
but, since its term of office, has exiled,
merely on account of disagreeing with
their views, over sixty former ministers
and members of the Mejliss. Among this
list there are the names of Mohtashemas
Saltaneh, several times member of the
Foreign and the Finance Department;
Mamtazol Molk (Gen. Mortza Khan),
ex-minister of Persia to the United
States, and ex-Minister of Education at
the time of his exile; Mamtazol Dovel,
ex-president of Mejliss; IJIostashor-ed-
Dovleh, ex-Minister of the Interior. It
is thus seen that the Persian troubles
are not from without but from within.
All the blame rests on the dishonest and
unreliable government officials whose
business is in giving or receiving back-
shish, and deceiving the Persian people.
As for the material help that Persia
can obtain from England at the present
time, there seems to be a great deal of
pessimism. Some people believe that it
will take Great Britain many decades
before she can recoup herself financially
from the effects of the Great War, and
in advancing money to Persia just now
she must have a motive in view. It is
said that England will advance annually,
at seven per cent, interest, 2,000,000
pounds for a period of twenty years, and,
as a guarantee for the payment of this
loan, Persia will pledge all her revenue
and customs receipts. That Persia does
not get sufficient consideration to war-
rant her in making this treaty is to say
the least. In fact, England with only
2,000,000 pounds obtains control of a
country with an area of 638,000 square
miles, an empire more than twice the
size of the State of Texas.
In view of what has happened in Per-
sia in the past with regard to that
famous tobacco concession of 1890, which
caused the assassination of Nasred-Din
Shah in 1896 for selling this important
product of Persia to the British capi-
talists for money to be used for his own
pleasures, and in view of that Anglo-
Russian Agreement of 1907, which
divided Persia between Russia and Eng-
land under the terms of "Spheres of
influence" and "Specific penetrations,"
which was the cause of the Persian up-
rising, what assurance, it may be asked,
can there be that the same course of
procedure will not take place with ref-
erence to this new treaty if it is put in
operation? There is only one thing to
prevent it, and that is the revolution.
The seriousness of such a cataclysm
can hardly be overestimated. An up-
rising in Persia against the British rule
would spread like fire in India and Egypt.
It would have a sweeping effect upon
millions of inhabitants in these coun-
tries. As the English hold in these
lands is no firmer than the walls of
Jericho, a strong revolutionary wind can
shake it flat to the earth. Persia has
always found much sympathy in India,
not only on the ground of close ethnic
relations, but on account of cogent re-
ligious ties (both being the Shies and
followers of Mohammed). A revolution-
ary movement would, therefore, be effec-
tively supported by the Shies and wel-
comed by the Sunnies.J
On the other hand, it must be remem-
bered that the safety of the world de-
pends on the English-speaking people,
therefore a strong English rule with the
cooperation of the United States will un-
doubtedly secure the natural rights of
the Persians, and it will much improve
the condition of the peasant and the
fellah who are now in a miserable plight.
YOUEL B. MiRZA
Washington, D. C, April 15
•Art. 24 of the Persian Constitution states that
"Treaties, Conventions, the Granting of Concessions
or Monopolies, either commercial, industrial or agri-
cultural, whether the other party be a native or a
foreigner, can only be done with the approval of the
National Assembly or Parliament.
tCf. Gibbon's *'The New Map of Asia," p. 277.
JThe number of Mohammedans is variously esti-
mated at from three hundred fifty to four hundred
million. They arc divided into several branches and
sub-branches, but the Sunnies and Shies are the great-
est of all Islamic political parties. Persians and
Mohammedans of India are Shies.
April 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[433
Book Reviews
'The Real Nature of Man"
Education During Adolescence. By Ransom
A. Mackie. New York: E. P. Dutton and
Company.
THE bibliography of some two hun-
dred and sixty numbers appended to
this book confirms the reviewer's con-
viction that the recent German and
American literature of education is a
new scholasticism, no less tautologous in
its supererogatory verbosity than the
old — and much less logical and more
futile, its divagations being controlled
by nothing so definite and coherent as
the basic study of Aristotle.
Mr. Mackie is a fervent disciple of
President Stanley Hall and composes his
book for the greater glory of that "focus
of international interest and admiration,"
who sets the seal of official approval upon
his own apotheosis in a commendatory
introduction. A medley of extracts and
resumes taken from the writings of
President Hall himself and of lesser con-
tributors to the pedagogical seminary
floats on a turbid stream of denuncia-
tion of "the stone wall of conservatism"
and the older culture with its supposed
shibboleths of exclusive classics and
mathematics and discipline for disci-
pline's sake. The new era for which this
older education will no longer suffice is
to introduce a psychogenetic pedagogy
based on the psychology of adolescence
which will ask as the genetic psycho-
logists have long been doing, "what is
the real nature of man," and proceed to
"reevaluate everything in terms of man's
innate capacities and spontaneities."
From this revolution will come, among
other things, the practical suppression
of Latin, which "cripples the vernacular,"
the reading of magazines and such books
as Ellwood's "Sociology and Modern So-
cial Problems" instead of the English
classics, and the substitution of the
"crispy, staccato, lingua franca of
youth" for "the language and style of
Burke, Macaulay and Addison which
would not be tolerated in Congress."
Iteration is the method employed to
drive home these saving truths. On
few pages are we allowed to forget that
education must study the needs and na-
ture of the child, not the logic of the
subject, that it is preparation for life,
not preparation for college, that adoles-
cence is effervescence and abhors pre-
cision, that it is indispensable to "vital-
ize" the school and "socialize" the recita-
tion. The polemic against Latin is as
incessant as it is in the class rooms of
the schools of education. Herbert Spen-
cer's elementary arguments are repro-
duced with the elegant variations and the
dainty metaphors of Professor Alexan-
der Chamberlain, and with no hint of the
considerations by which they must be
qualified or of the literature in which
they have been answered. The invidious
appeal to the high school to revolt against
the tyrannous domination of collegiate
prescription is reiterated with utter dis-
regard of the actual facts of the pres-
ent situation. And neither President
Hall nor his disciple feels any scruple in
presenting the problem of "disciplinary
values" in its crudest and most ques-
tion-begging form with no warning to
the reader of the extent to which all
psychologists who respect their reputa-
tions have "hedged" in the matter by
liberal concessions to the teachings of
plain common sense and experience.
Education, as in other books of this
class, is taken in the lump. TJie occa-
sional perfunctory recognition of differ-
ent kinds of education is sustained by no
effective, continuous discrimination of
the various types, grades, and economic
social or cultural subdivisions of educa-
tion in the concrete. It is just educa-
tion. The new education is to be pri-
marily and predominantly vocational.
Some leisure may remain for more gen-
eral and cultural studies, provided that
they are modern, social, and, above all,
inexact. The studies that may be pre-
scribed or approved for all students are
contemporary English, carefully guarded
from all contamination by English clas-
sics or confusing Latin etymologies,
sociology or civics, and history, studied
by the problem method and in the social-
ized class room. By the problem method
in economics pupils "can analyze expendi-
tures of their own families" and "formu-
late the expenditure of fifteen hundred
dollars a year for a family containing
four children." Applied to history the
problem method (in defiance of Quintil-
ian and Mr. Trevelyan's "Clio, a Muse")
casts everything in the form of a propo-
sition to be proved. "Prove that the time
from 1783 to 1789 was 'the critical
period' in American history." "Prove
that the Renaissance was a period of tre-
mendous change in Europe." "We de-
voted eight days to this problem." "In
the third lesson we proved that there
was a revival of architecture in the
Renaissance." Though the new psy-
chology has exploded the superstition
that there is any disciplinary value or
mental training in classics and mathe-
matics, it appears that it is otherwise
with history taught in this fashion. "It
supplies a kind of intellectual training
that can be secured in but few other
ways." It even apparently reinstates the
discredited "faculty psychology," since it
"enlarges the student's mind, cultivates
his perception, stimulates his memory,
and trains his judgment."
Such unvocational study of literature,
sociology, and history can do no harm
if redeemed in the socialized class room
from the tyranny of pedantic dictation
from above and the superstitious ac-
curacy which is the vice of the classicist.
President Hall's experience as a writer
has convinced him in his own immortal
apophthegm that "accuracy atrophies."
If he had delayed to verify his references
and correct his own or his typewriter's
spelling of the queer words which his
desultory reading and his Germanized
culture deposited in his notebooks, the
stream of inspiration might have dried
up before those mighty reservoirs
"Adolescence," "Jesus the Christ," and
"Educational Problems," were filled. In
his own words, again, "the school-bred
habit of accurate and painstaking fa-
miliarity with a few things such as pro-
fessors of literature inculcate . . .
would greatly slow down my pace and
cool my ardor." His study of the
adolescent mind has convinced him that
adolescence is naturally expansive and
recalcitrant to the restraints of accuracy.
And the fosterings of this salutary de-
fense-reaction in the youth of American
high schools is the first task of a re-
formed and psycho-genetic education that
spurns the yoke of Latin and mathe-
matics. It is perhaps in unconscious
subservience to this aim that these pages
still retain a few of the gems that so
profusely adorn President Hall's own
more ambitious work. The "consensus
of opinion" may serve once more to illus-
trate the uselessness of Latin. A "floating
plankton" may remind the reader that,
as Xenophon said of Socrates, though the
master regarded such knowledge as use-
less, he was not himself unacquainted
with it. And the defiant repetition of
the statement that Plato "reproached"
Aristotle as a reader shows how li*tle
the true philosopher is to be awed from
the career of his humor by the carping
cavils of a classicist.
There are, of course, some good ideas
in the book and much praise of things
that in due place and proportion are
praiseworthy. The "socialized recita-
tion," for example, may be a helpful de-
vice if regarded only as a corrective of
the kind of teaching, if it still survives,
that calls for a verbatim recitation of
paragraph 3 on page 50 of the history or
the grammar. But every teacher who,
in Rooseveltian phrase, is worth his salt,
knows that without intelligent direction
and the check of peremptory closure,
class-room discussion rapidly degenerates
into the time-wasting triviality of the
experience meeting. Even Plotinus
found this out when he socialized the
discussion of Platonic love in his class
room.
Good or plausible ideas are as plentiful
as blackberries. No one who takes notes
in a library can miss them. And noth-
ing is easier than to praise idealism,
modernism, reform, "life," and "vitaliza-
tion" in the abstract, and denounce in
general terms pedantry, prescription, and
434]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 50
conservatism. It is the work of intelli-
gence to coordinate, harmonize, relate,
and adjust conflicting ideas and ideals,
and to praise and censure educational
methods and practices with nice dis-
crimination of time, place, measure, and
purpose. I find nothing of that kind of
reasoning in this book, and little in the
literature of which it is a sample.
If this be thought a harsh and illiberal
judgment, I will apologize when anyone
points out in the book any ideas that
are at once new, true, and significant ;
any truths that are not either truisms
or irresponsible exaggerations of partial
aspects of truth; any considerable se-
quence of coherent argument or discus-
sion that takes due account of excep-
tions and qualifications, or does even-
balanced justice to the consideration of
every side of the question. Meanwhile,
the author and' President Stanley Hall
may cheer themselves by the reflection
that one dissentient ceview will do little
harm. The book will doubtless be wel-
comed as a "contribution to educational
science" by the spokesmen of the large
and, I sometimes fear, growing public
that flocks to the lectures of Sir Oliver
Lodge, that subscribes to the memory-
training course of the gentleman who
remembers the names and the telephone
numbers of the Rotary Club of Seattle,
and is not offended by full-page adver-
tisements of Pelmanism from the pen oT
one who but a few years ago was the
oflScial guide of American patriotic
opinion.
Paul Shorey
America Unveiled
OuK America. By Waldo Frank. New York :
Boni and Liveright.
ONE strives with patient endeavor to
learn what all this foaming cascade
of syllables is about. It appears that
things are in a dreadful mess and have
been so for the last two hundred years.
Puritanism, pioneering, and materialism
would seem to be the chief causes. A
great Darkness lies upon the land. But
let no real lover of America despair.
The night is pierced here and there by
the gleam of signal fires, lit by revolu-
tionary minute men, and within the mass
of the dark people the impulse of new
aspirations begins to stir. "The Old
Guard — martyrs like Eugene Debs, Wil-
liam Haywood, Emma Goldman — re-
ligious, nostalgic for prisons — find at
last the brains and culture of a younger
generation to fertilize their martyrdom."
"Nostalgic for prisons" is a fetching
phrase, which brings up visions of the
Prisoner of Chillon, Torquato Tasso, the
Man with the Iron Mask, Silvio Pellico,
and other victims of long immurement
in earless dungeons. But fetching as it is,
the observant reader can not but wonder
what it is doing here. For homesickness
for prisons is not a common complaint,
and it is developed, if at all, in only
one way. Now it happens that of the
trio named, Mr. Debs, prior to his recent
conviction, had undergone only one im-
prisonment— a six months' term in Wood-
stock jail nearly twenty-five years ago,
in the summer and autumn of 1895 ; Mr.
Haywood, kidnapped from Colorado, had
been held in the Boise penitentiary until
he was freed by a jury verdict; while
Miss Goldman, more lucky or more tact-
ful than the others, had been conspicu-
ously scant of the experience necessary
for acquiring this dower of martyrdom.
How, then, might they have acquired
this imputed nostalgia? The author
scorns to explain. And by what charac-
teristic symptoms has it been shown?
There is no answer. Is there, the observ-
ant reader may ask, in any speech or
writing of either of the two who had
suffered brief terms of imprisonment
— and. neither is what might be called a
reticent man — any expression of regret
for the loss of a loved home, any reminis-
cence of regaining freedom with a sigh?
Again there is no answer. One may
wonder, also, if the true and unmistak-
able symptoms of this "nostalgia for
prisons" are to be found in the resort
to all legal means of defense; in consent
to the solicitation of defense funds; in
application for writs of habeas corpus;
in appeals from verdicts and decisions.
May not such activities rather seem, to
the ordinary person, the symptoms of a
form of claustrophobia — of a stubborn
and unreasoning prejudice against any
confinement whatever? But it is too
much to require of a revolutionary writer
— a harbinger of the Great Dawn — that
he cancel a phrase so fondly conceived
out of regard for an objection so trivial.
That the words have only a dubious in-
trinsic sense and no fitness to the in-
stances given is a small matter; what
counts is the fetchingness of the phrase.
There is much more of this kind of thing.
This America is a land whose people
bear the singular distinction of being in
both their first childhood and their sec-
ond. They "are still in the baby stage
of playing with their toes" (p. 196), and
yet "Everywhere is the impotence of
senility" (p. 230). The penury of Amer-
ica is manifold. The people have no
soul, no spiritual or aesthetic energy. "All
of the peasant and proletarian peoples of
Europe have this deep potential energy,
religious, esthetic. . . . Here Amer-
ica, of all lands, is poorest" (p. 231).
America has, indeed, nothing except mo-
tion pictures. "The whole world now
has its cinemas. America alone has
nothing else" .(P- 214). Its universities
are "for the most part the incubators
of reaction" (p. 209) — a curious com-
ment in view of the fact that virtually
all the parlor Bolsheviki are college bred.
Its press is venal, and the multitude who
might naturally catch the meaning of the
gifted revolutionary seers and prophets
is unable because it "is too enslaved and
enfeebled by the poisonous pabulum with
which Busine.ss persistently has fed it"
(p. 209). But there is no need to go on.
It is all bad (except for Walt Whitman,
"Bill" Haywood (p. 228, 230), Oswald
Garrison Villard (p. 228), Van Wyck
Brooks, the late Randolph Bourne, and a
few others), has always been, and will al-
ways be unless something is done about it.
There is some discrepancy between the
unrelieved pessimism shown on some
pages and the qualified hopefulness
shown on others ; but no attempt at har-
monizing this difficulty can be made here.
On the whole, the book is a terrific in-
dictment. Not in many a day has so re-
sounding a slap been delivered on the
wrist of your Uncle Samuel.
Almost anybody, it may be thought,
gifted with a lack both of inhibitions and
of misgivings, could write such a book.
But to think so is to fall into grievous
error. This offering is, for the time, a
unique accomplishment. It reaches to
heights, depths, and lateral expanses of
the fantastic not heretofore attained, and
at times it seems to be pushing out for a
fourth dimension. Its fellow is not likely
to appear for. some time.
W. J. Ghent
Italy Warm and Cold
Souls Divided (Ella non rispose). By Ma-
tilde Serao. Translated from the Italian
by William Collinge, M.A. New York :
Brentano's.
Tales of My Native Town. By Gabriele
D'Annunzio. Translated by Prof. Rafael
Mantellini. Ph.D. Introduction by Joseph
Hergesheimer. New York : Doubleday,
Page & Company.
IT may be held that what divides the
Latin from the Anglo-American is
less a diversity of feeling than a diversity
of taste or, to speak more modestly, of
habit. We northerners do not give our-
selves away with gestures and superla-
tives. Our eyes are not permitted to
flash or our tongues to hasten. We are
at some pains to master an air of good-
humored but skeptical tolerance. We are
terribly afraid lest somebody suspect
that we do not see the joke and we are
incessantly though furtively on the watch
for that joke, which we know must be
about somewhere, in any place, at any
time. A Martian might discover in us a
sort of frozen adolescent self-conscious-
ness such as older races have outgrown
and cast off. He might find something
of pathos in the waste energy we put
to the concealment of passion, whether
for love, for beauty, or for virtue. Or he
might find that, on the whole, the famous
joke was "on us" — Romeo the cub and
Juliet the flapper being visible to him,
and very much at home, somewhere on
our premises.
April 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[485
"Souls Divided," the English version
of "Ella non rispose," is described by its
sponsors as "an impassioned love story
of an unusual kind." I do not see in
what sense it is unusual unless in quality.
Stories of this general kind have been
written often enough in English, and
have had their great audiences; but for
a long time these have been audiences of
the vulgar. It is for shop-girls and
stenographers of the tenderer sort that
our movies and newspaper syndicates
turn open without stint the flood gates
of sentiment. Only among such a class
does Shakespeare's race now frankly pre-
pare to shed its tears when the prompter
calls. Not a single gleam of humor
"saves" this Italian study of ill-fated
passion. No code of restraint subdues
the record to the cautious murmur ex-
acted of ourselves by literary breeding.
It is all upon the high horse of romantic
feeling, a prolonged outburst of the emo-
tion we "Anglo-Saxons" still endure from
the poets, whose business it is, in lyrical
moments, to give themselves away,
though we hardly brook even the shortest
flights of prose. Paolo, the lover, who is
forever done for by a voice, and Diana,
the beloved, who sacrifices all for duty to
her family and never tells her love till
it is too late for the lover to hear the
sad secret — these are the very staff of
tragic romance. Standards of literary
breeding are variable, but the "human
heart" is a constant. The author must
have been justified in her prophecy that
her book would win response from sim-
ple souls the world over — "souls who
shall have shed silent and solitary tears
of human pity with me, and for me, over
the luckless love of Diana and Paolo."
Mr. Hergesheimer's introduction to
"Tales of My Native Town" has, excel-
lent as it is, something of the tone of
apology, or apologia which so often is
heard in oflScial introductions and pref-
aces. This wonderful article (the theme
runs commonly) by so famous a hand,
shows certain traits of the author which
have been taken exception to by prudes
or provincials : they are not blemishes to
the generous eye. Moreover, in addition
to the qualities for which the Master has
been given general credit, here are others
which the dull world has ignored.
Gabriele d'Annunzio, for example, is
"perfectly within his privilege" in ex-
pressing the minutise of lust, disease, and
physical abnormality — good medicine, we
take it, for a race like ours which, with
a "natural but saccharine preference for
happiness," systematically veils the un-
pleasant. And further, whatever his cold-
ness and brutality of method, his work
is animated by "a saving spirit of pity,
the valid humanity born of understand-
ing." I wish I could feel this, as Mr.
Hergesheimer does. For me D'Annun-
zio's coldness is inherent. His intellec-
tual understanding of his fellow-beings
seems fatally limited by the fact that his
real ardor is for himself or for such
causes — beauty, freedom, amorism, as
may have the good fortune to be identi-
fied with himself. D'Annunzio "the
man" worships the Italy which has pro-
duced D'Annunzio and set a stage for
him. D'Annunzio the artist worships
what Mr. Hergesheimer calls "the beauty
of sheer living as a spectacle" because it
offers itself to be conveyed, as a specta-
cle, by his supremely skillful hand. Con-
veyance, on the whole, is the word. Mr.
Hergesheimer rightly contrasts these
tales with the short stories of American
convention. They are not trimly com-
pleted bits of action, but "coherent frag-
ments" : "He has not lifted his tales into
the crystallized isolation of a short story ;
they merge from the beginning and be-
yond the end into the general confusion
of existence, they are moments, signifi-
cantly tragic or humorous, selected from
the whole incomprehensible sweep of a
vastly larger work, and presented as
naturally as possible. However, they are
not without form, in reality these tales
are woven with an infinite delicacy, an
art, like all art, essentially artificial. But
a definite interest in them, the sense of
their beauty, must rise from an intrinsic
interest in the greater affair of being.
It is useless for anyone not impressed
with the beauty of sheer living as a spec-
tacle to read 'Tales of My Native Town.' "
Granted; but it hardly follows as the
night the day that all persons who are
duly impressed with the beauty of sheer
living are bound to find it in these par-
ticular tales, or sketches by a mighty
sensualist dreamer of our day. In their
English dress, certainly, they are not
overwhelming. One can with a fairly
good conscience own to the impression
that, with all their marvel of detail, sev-
eral of them are oppressively squalid and
even tedious: squalor and tedium hav-
ing, of course, their part, a relative part,
in the spectacle of living.
H. W. BOYNTON
The Autumn of the Middle
Ages
Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen. Door J. Hui-
zinga. Haarlem : H. D. Tjeenk Willink &
Zoon.
THE study of the past has its chief
fascination in what it reveals about
the origins of the present. It is the
germ of the new that we look for in the
old. The discovery of early manifesta-
tions of the romantic spirit in the age of
Swift, of the Renaissance in the poetry
of the Thirteenth Century, give zest to
our study of "Gulliver's Travels" and
the "Roman de la Rose." The systematic
search in mediaeval history for early
symptoms of modern culture made it
seem as if the culture of the Middle
Ages was only the advent of the Renais-
sance. But in history, no less than in
nature, death is coincident with the birth
of a new life. Old forms of culture die
off at the same time and in the same
soil in which the new find the food for
their efflorescence. The historian, there-
fore, is not restricted to one way only
of envisaging the past. The writer of
"Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen" has chosen
to study the fifteenth century in France
and the Netherlands as the decline of an
era towards death and dissolution, seeing
the gorgeous pageant of its life overcast
by the shadow of the approaching night.
In Mr. Huizinga the artist and the
scholar work together. While looking at
the past, the one is no less susceptible to
its picturesque beauty than the other is
fascinated by its lore. The scholar
guards the artist against romantic
vagaries, and the artist colors the
scholar's record with the realism of his
vision. It is the artist, again, who has
taught the other to reject the economic
interpretation of history as the only true
and complete presentment of the past.
The book, though the author refrains
from stressing that claim, is a brave and
brilliant attempt to discover the essence
of life no less in the flattering dream
which the livers loved to make of it than
in the crass realities which their dream
had to color. A careful and unimpas-
sioned study of mediaeval legal documents
has taught us that the romantic picture
of the chivalrous late Middle Ages was a
distorted vision of that period. Feudal-
ism and chivalry had had their day be-
fore the close of the thirteenth century.
It was the commercial power of the com-
munes and the power of the kings sup-
ported by it which were the ruling fac-
tors in the political life of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries. But the people
whose lives made up the history of that
age were themselves not conscious of
this social decline of the nobleman's
status. They still recognized in a mar-
tial nobility the chief element of the
social structure. The glamor of prowess
colored their vision of the time they
lived in, and for our knowledge of its
cultural life that illusion has the value
of historic truth.
This book, then, is a picture of the
fifteenth century, not as the economic
interpreters of history have taught us
to see it, but as the people of the age
saw it themselves. The record of their
illusions and delusions is the author's
theme, and his sources not the dusty
documents of the archives, but the litera-
ture of the poets and the records of the
chroniclers, the journalists of those early
days. Georges Chastellain was one of
them, the greatest of all Burgundian his-
torians. He was a Fleming by birth, a
native of the district of Aalst. But he
wrote in French, being the recorder of
princely deeds and knightly adventure.
His work is the truest mirror of the life
436]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 50
and the thought of his time as they ap-
peared to a shrewd, clear-sighted on-
looker. This man, bred in the fields of
Flanders, the home of a proud democracy,
still lived by the belief that God had made
the people to labor, to till the soil, or to
live by trade, the clergy to teach the
true faith, and the nobility to exalt vir-
tue, to maintain justice, and, by their
deeds and moral life, to be a mirror to
others. The traditional vision of society
lingered on, uncorrected by its glaring
contrast with reality. This clever repre-
sentative of his age and people did not
even see, in his naivete, that his own
chronicle belied that fanciful picture of
divine ordination, so little was the criti-
cal faculty developed in its intellectual
elite. Among the nobility whose deeds
of prowess he lauded were men who had
risen from the ranks of the "tiers etat,"
or, as he called it, "le tiers membre qui
de soy n'est gaires capable de hautes
attributions, parce qu'il est au degre
servile." And among the bourgeoisie he
knew people with a truer conception of
honor than his own chronicle shows the
nobility to have known and practised. To
the mediaeval mind life, from its highest
to its lowest manifestations, is fixed in
immovable, eternal forms, and these
forms, not their contents, are the essen-
tial thing.
Experience can not destroy this con-
ception of society as a tripartite struc-
ture, of which each part has its perma-
nent attributes. That prevalence of
form over substance pervades all medi-
aeval thought. Every notion becomes
isolated, and is given a form and a fixed
place in the immutable hierarchy of
things, every function receives its visi-
ble organ. The King of England had
among his "magna sergenteria" an office
for holding the king's head when he
crossed the Channel and got seasick.
The art of the period reflects that
same tendency to visualize everything
conceivable. In the paintings of the Van
Eycks the presentation of the elements
of sacred lore has been carried to the
highest point of realism, each detail
being the setting for a wealth of more
diminutive miniatures. The mystical
content evanesces and leaves its brilliant
outward show behind. It is an art of
consummate skill in execution, but void
of ideas. In the opinion of the author
the naturalism of the Van Eycks, which
is usually explained as an early symp-
tom of the approaching Renaissance, is
the maturest growth of the late mediaeval
spirit, not a beginning but an end. Its
material perfection could not be im-
proved upon, and as it was inexpressive
of the deeper emotions of life, it lacked
the living element from which a new art
could take its birth.
This character of finality, of comple-
tion beyond renewal, attaches also to
the moral and religious life of those
days. Of a whole-hearted enjoyment of
life's gifts, such as Rabelais, the robust
herald of a new age, was to preach in the
next centuiy, the era of Gerson and
Thomas k Kempis was no longer capa-
ble. What it had left of passion and
vitality burst out in mystic exaltation or
in bestial debauch. Gerson, himself too
balanced a pessimist to be subject to
these outbursts, was well aware of the
fact that both extremes sprang from the
same root: "Amor spiritualis labitur in
nudum camalem Amorem." The soul,
having been absorbed in the contempla-
tion of God, lost its will, the Divine will
only remaining, and in that state of ex-
altation the mystic could not commit
sin, though he should follow carnal
cravings. Such was the belief of the
Fratres liberi spiriti, of the Turlupins,
and similar sects of hysterical madmen
who, while professing to serve God, lived
a life of diabolical debauch. Gerson, the
famous Chancellor of the University of
Paris, wrote a "Discours de I'excellence
de virginite," taking his argument from
a deeply pessimistic picture of man's
misery. Contempt of the world is praised
as the wisest attitude towards life, and
life's propagation condemned as a folly.
In the austere features of the kneeling
donors on the triptychs of the Van Eycks
one can read their denial of the beauty
and the glory of life, which the Renais-
sance was joyfully to assert.
The Run of the Shelves
THERE are two million men in the
^ United States whose feeling toward
books on the war is that of the raconteur
waiting for the other fellow to finish a
story in order to begin on his own. Every
one saw and felt things well worth telling
to the fellow who wasn't there ; nine out
of ten hope to write books of personal
reminiscence. Two men who have done
it with no unusual qualifications so far
as their experiences go are Captain Ewen
C. MacVeagh and Lieutenant Lee D.
Brown of G-3 and G-1, respectively.
Headquarters Staff, Second Corps, who
write jointly of "The Yankee in the Brit-
ish Zone" (Putnam). They are an-
nounced as "trained observers," and the
reader concedes the title, adding that of
trained or naturally facile writers, for
they have dressed their material with
real skill. They find for it an ostensible
core in the discussion of Anglo-American
relations in the Amiens sector, where the
Second Corps was brigaded with the Brit-
ish, a subject that would not make more
than a magazine article were it not at-
tractively clothed in personal reminis-
cence and anecdotal history, a rippling
obligate to war of information and anec-
dote cleverly played up each to the other.
It deals with nothing essential ; the world
can move on without it except as it may
add a drop of lubrication to the gears
where American affairs mesh with Brit-
ish. Read it and you have seen nothing
happen, but you have haunted the point
de liaison between British and American
troops, loafed in company street and of-
ficers' mess, wherever Yank and Tommy
mixed and mixed 'em up. You have idled
amiably for a time on the sunny side of
war, but it is a very real side of war, a
pleasant, comfortable rest camp for the
reader who has been personally conducted
through much of the other side. In one
way the book stands as a model to aspir-
ing compilers of reminiscences. The per-
sonality of the authors is nowhere
directly presented. It is always elusively
just below the surface, seen only in
glimpses between surface reflections,
until the curiosity of the reader is gen-
uinely aroused and finds only meagre
satisfaction.
For the great tribe of collectors of
Stevensoniana, Mr. George E. Brown's
"Book of R. L. S." (Scribners) will be a
precious vade mecum. Here, under al-
phabetical heads, information is given
regarding the publication of essays and
books, the places connected in one way
or another with Stevenson's life, and the
friends he met on the way. A good deal
of human interest is packed into this
little encyclopaedia, as indeed human in-
terest is almost synonymous with the
mystic initials, R. L. S., whatever may
be the critical judgment, outside of Scot-
land, finally pronounced on the owner
of those initials as a writer.
"Villa Elsa" (Button), by Stuart
Henry, who most decidedly does not han-
dle his subject with gloves, is described
in its sub-title as "a study of German
family life." The publisher explains it
as "a genuine study at first hand of the
real Germany of the twentieth century
by an American writer who lived there
for many years," and the author gives,
in a private letter, this account of him-
self and his book:
Despite its form as a novel, with love, spies
and action, it is meant to be a profoundly seri-
ous book. I not only lived and studied in
Deutschland but, for a quarter of a century,
have had much to do with German business-
men. This has forced me to learn to know
German character more thoroughly than the
usual "literary feller" or critic who has had
small chance to get acquainted with Germans,
either intimately or in their large cross-sec-
tions. Needless to say I regard the problem
of the German race as a mighty serious and
dangerous one, not to be lightly tossed off
through smug indifference or clever epigrams.
In "Beaumarchais and the War of
American Independence" (Boston: Bad-
ger) Miss Elizabeth S. Kite clearly sets
forth the facts concerning Beaumar-
chais's invaluable contribution to the
success of the American Revolution. One
of his biographers, the French Senator,
M. Lintilhac, wrote in 1887: "We are
April 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[437
surprised that no descendant of Beau-
marchais was invited to represent France
at the unveiling of the Statue of Lib-
erty, upon whose pedestal his name
would not be out of place alongside that
of Lafayette. With John Bigelow, I may
well ask if Americans have done their
whole duty towards the memory of Beau-
marchais." It is plain from Miss Kite's
two volumes that we have not.
Even so early as 1775, Beaumarchais
foresaw the gravity of the conflict be-
tween the colonists and the mother coun-
try and pointed out to the French Gov-
ernment where its interests lay. Little
by little it shared his view and told him
to go ahead and aid the insurgents, but
without compromising the French Gov-
ernment, which gave him a subvention
of a million francs. Before the end of
1776 he had brought together with all
possible secrecy his first cargo, consist-
ing of 200 cannon, some mortars, 25,000
rifles, and 200,000 pounds of powder.
After running many risks, his three
ships reached America. Beaumarchais
received no payment, however, nor did
Congress even thank him. He had put
5,000,000 francs into the undertaking,
and sent an agent to America, who, after
remaining there three years, returned
empty-handed. To prevent a fiasco and
an international scandal the French Gov-
ernment again came to his aid with a
subvention. Beaumarchais's chief occu-
pation throughout 1783 was the removal
of the obstacles in the way of the play-
ing of the "Marriage of Figaro," but he
did not neglect his claims against Amer-
ica. The bills of exchange which he
had received from Congress in 1779 were
far from satisfying him. Four times —
in 1781, 1787, and 1793— Congress sent
agents to verify his accounts; but noth-
ing came of it, and forty years passed
before his family finally succeeded in
obtaining 800,000 francs of the 2,280,000
which were claimed.
Miss Kite modestly says in her preface
that her volumes are based wholly on the
printed works of Frenchmen bearing on
the subject, one of which, however, she
failed to see, for the simple reason that
it was passing through the press in Paris
while her own books were being printed
in Boston. M. Jules Marsan's "Beau-
marchais et les Affaires d'Amerique"
(Edouard Champion) prints for the first
time some thirty letters of Beau-
marchais, all of which are connected with
the American episode in his life and all
of which strengthen in various particu-
lars Miss Kite's contention.
"Le Livre Pratique des Spirites"
(Paris: Revue Contemporaine) , by M.
Achille Borgnis, who Informs the French
public that he is a "laureate of tho New
York Institute of Sciences," marks him
as being either very naive or very tricky,
perhaps both. He holds spiritualistic
sittings in his own apartments, sup-
ported by "a young lady who plays rhe
piano," by "my secretary, M. Maurice,
who has charge of the lights," and by
"a medium who has been tried and found
to have the power." To these sittings
he admits only "those who are believers
or who are neutral and open to convic-
tion"; all "scoffers must be vigorously
refused admittance." No wonder that
under such conditions this "guide," as
he calls himself, and "laureate of the
New York Institute of Sciences," aided
by the young lady of the piano, the sec-
retary of the lights, and the medium of
the cabinet, obtains "manifestations that
astonish all those who participate at my
sittings." Cicero materialized on one oc-
casion, and we are given a picture of his
apparition. In fact, there are nearly a
score of these pictures scattered through
the book; but their value disappears to
"a scoffer" when he learns that "these
are not the results of direct photography,
but are produced from drawings made
during the sittings. The spirits informed
me that they were opposed to being pho-
tographed. However, when I begin a
new series of sittings, it is my intention
to employ photography." On one occa-
sion Mary Queen of Scots appeared on
the scene, when she spoke in this rather
unidiomatic language: "In spite of sad
circumstances, I wish you and every-
body happy Christmas." Another favor-
ite materialization is that of "a fakir,
a fine Hindoo"; and one is tempted to
ask if the "fakir" may not be M. Borgnis
himself.
That seventeenth-century worthy, Lam-
bertus van den Bosch, headmaster of the
Latin school at Dordrecht, must have
been a popular master in the eyes of the
Dutch youngsters who studied the clas-
sics under the sway of his ferule. He
seems to have preferred contemporary to
ancient literature, as is the way of the
adolescent age of all generations. And
his was not a sneaking love of profane
modern writers, indulged "en neglige"
and disavowed where his dignity as
a scholar had to keep up appearances;
unblushingly he proclaimed it on the title
pages of numerous translations, the best
of which was one of Don Quixote, the
first to appear in Dutch, and never sur-
passed for picturesqueness of language
by any later rendering. The quality of
the rest of his work is in inverse ratio
to the number of his writings, and in
Holland it would be a hazardous under-
taking for a publisher to bring out a
reprint of a work by Van den Bosch, his
Don Quixote alone excepted. An Ameri-
can scholar, however, has found it worth
his while to edit a drama of the old
schoolmaster. But Prof. Oscar James
Campbell's purpose is not the literary re-
habilitation of the author, but, as the
title explains, to ascertain "The Position
of the Roode en Witte Roos in the Saga
of King Richard III" (University of Wis-
consin Studies in Language and Litera-
ture. Number 5). Not the Dutch play
itself, but its possible English source and
the relation of that source to the extant
English plays on the same subject is the
editor's excuse for his interest in Van
den Bosch's rhetorical and lifeless drama.
In an interesting introduction to the
reprint the writer compares the Dutch
play, which was printed at Amsterdam in
1651, with the chronicle tradition and
with the three dramas referred to above:
the Latin "Richardus Tertius" of
Thomas Legge (c. 1573), the "True
Tragedy of Richard the Third" (c. 1590),
and Shakespeare's version of the story.
The upshot of his ingenious investiga-
tion is thus summarized by the author:
The resemblance which the Dutch play
shows in turn to the Chronicles and then to
each of the three English plays in points pecu-
liar to them, shows, first, that the Roode en
Witte Roos belongs to the English dramatic,
as distinct from the historical, tradition of
Richard III.
Professor Campbell accounts for this
many-sided relationship by postulating
the former existence of a fourth English
play which must have held a middle
ground between the Senecan production
of Legge and the Shakespearean concep-
tion.
This lost play Shakespeare must have known
and used, now and then, to point material
which he derived largely from Holinshed. This
fact would help to explain the strong Senecan
flavor of Richard III, which has led numerous
critics to believe that it must be the direct de-
scendant of an earlier play.
In the case of Van den Bosch, how-
ever, our extensive knowledge of his life
and work must be taken into account;
Professor Campbell, in this respect, has
taken his task too easily. "A man," he
writes, "who made a business of miscel-
laneous translation as did Van den Bosch
was obviously not a trained dramatist.
A play bearing his name is perhaps, then,
even more certain to be a translation
than his other admitted adaptations."
But the possibility of the Roode en Witte
Roos being an independent dramatization
by Van den Bosch of a chronicle version
can not thus lightly be dismissed. The
play in question and a translation of the
English morality "Lingua" were not his
only contributions to dramatic literature,
as the writer seems to assume. In 1645
he published "Carel de Negende, anders
Parijsche Bruyloft," for which no other
source has been found than "Thuani His-
torisB Sui Temporis," and in 1649 he
dramatized an episode from Hooft's prose
history of Florence under the rule of the
Medicis in "Rampzalige Liefde ofte
Bianca Capellis." The fact that Van den
Bosch had twice made an independent at-
tempt to remodel historical prose into
drama before he wrote the "Roode en
Witte Roos" affords, at any rate, an ar-
438]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 50
gument in favor of the assumption that
his third historical drama was the prod-
uct of the same method. The resem-
blances which the writer has pointed out
between the Dutch and the English plays
are not so striking as to make a thorough
comparison of the former with all the
chronicle versions superfluous.
Professor Campbell's translation of the
Dutch text is, on the whole, a successful
performance. Where he has misunder-
stood a passage, it is not an insuflicient
knowledge of the Dutch, but rather the
involved rhetoric of Van den Bosch,
which is at fault.
M. Romain Rolland, who is again re-
siding in Paris, writes in a recent letter:
If I exiled myself for a few years to the
land of Jean Jacques, believe me it was not
because I had a penchant for the Swiss mind
and still less for its present literature, which,
except in the case of the genial — I here use
the word as the adjective of genius — Spitteler,
does not appear to me to be very interesting.
I went there in order to let it be seen publicly
that I did not approve of a fratricidal war,
which the future will be all the more inclined
to pronounce monstrous when all its fatal con-
sequences begin to appear.
Heine's Buried
Memoirs
AMONG the lost or suppressed works
of genius none has offered a more
tantalizing bait to literary curiosity than
Heine's Memoirs of his own life, fre-
quently alluded to in his letters and other
writings. As Heinrich Heine wrote very
much and always charmingly about him-
self, the acute reader will not suppose
that I am overlooking the pages of auto-
biography entitled "Confessions," which
were dictated about a year before his
death. My present aim is to direct at-
tention to a work of Heine's prime — not
one of his last and decadent period.
As far back as 1837 the poet refers to
this work in a letter to his publisher,
Julius Campe. "I am busy day and
night," he writes, "with my great book,
the romance of my life, and now for the
first time I feel the full value of the
papers that were lost in the fire at my
mother's house. I had intended to pub-
lish this book later, but . . . it is to
be the next book given to the public. You
know I am no braggart, and I prophesy
the most extraordinary results" (from
this book). A few months later, writing
to his Uncle, Salomon Heine (with whom
he was then in uncertain relations), the
poet thus alludes to the work: "I have
taken care that when we are all in our
graves my whole life shall be known for
what it has been."
The book so portentously referred to
was long a subject of apprehension to
Heine's wealthy relatives in Hamburg, to
whom he was something of an enfant
terrible and by whom his literary genius
was held in small esteem ; and the poet's
occasional hint at publication may have
been intended to keep them in proper dis-
position toward himself. I do not like
to believe that he deliberately used it
in terrorem, at least until the break that
followed Uncle Salomon's death. It
should be added, however, that there
were many other persons, outside the in-
timate Hamburg circle, who heard with
quakings of the spirit any rumor as to
the threatened publication.
In 1839 Heine writes to Campe that he
has decided to postpone the bringing out
of his Memoirs; but in 1840, writing to
him, Heine admits having used a part
of them in his work on Borne, a rather
inferior production, in spite of some bril-
liant pages, and disfigured by personal
malice; it was later in great part sup-
pressed.
In 1840 we get a significant and med-
itated statement as to the Memoirs in a
letter to Campe, as follows :
I am quite happy and calm inwardly. I am
used to abuse, and I know that the future is
mine. Even if I were to die to-day there re-
main four volumes of the story of my life,
my Memoirs, which show forth all my
thoughts and endeavors, and if only for their
historical matter, for their true exposition of
the most mysterious of transitive periods,
will go down to posterity. The new generation
will want to see the swaddling clothes that
were its first covering.
This seems to indicate that Heine had
finally resolved upon a posthumous pub-
lication of the book.
In 1845 the bitter dispute with his
cousin, Karl Heine, relative to a financial
provision for the poet (Uncle Salomon
was now dead), broke out, and besides
causing Heine great anguish of mind,
hastened his end by the reaction upon his
physical state. Writing to J. H. Detwold,
Heine mentions a first offer of compro-
mise by Karl, the condition being that
he submit the MS. of the Memoirs to be
"supervised" at Hamburg.
He writes to Campe (October, 1845) :
I am still in a most unpleasant position as
regards my cousin, Karl Heine, for I do not
agree with the form of payment. I will not
agree to conditions — I will not forgo the
least particle of my dignity as an author or of
the freedom of my pen, even if as a man I
allow myself to be subjected to family con-
siderations.
A few months later he informs Campe
that he had tried the way of kindness
pointed out to him by friends and by
his own heart, in order to arrive at a
settlement with his cousin; while the lat-
ter persisted in his injustice. Heine adds
these memorable words :
I have followed my softer feelings, while the
cold voice of experience hissed in my ears
that rarely is anything won from the hard men
of money by tears and' supplications in this
world, but only by the sword. My szvord is
my pen.
In the same letter, he says:
Yes, I have been working for some days at
a horrible memoir in which the insolence of
Karl Heine is shown up. I shall drop my ac-
tion [he was threatening to go to law with his
cousin], so that it may be seen that it is no
longer a question of money. ... I am calm,
for I have done everything that a man can do
for love of his wife, and more.
Again he writes to Campe (1845) :
As for the undertaking which I am prepared
to sign, it does not matter much how binding
you make it. / shall never, at any price, de-
liver up anything that I zvrite to the censorship
of my relations.
In this final stage of the negotiations
between the poet and his family it is
significant that not a word is said as to
the destruction of any existing manu-
script Memoirs.
The upshot of the inheritance-quarrel
was that Heine obtained a satisfactory
settlement both for himself and, follow-
ing his decease, for his wife Mathilde.
On the other hand, though he is reticent
as to the point, it seems probable that he
complied with certain of Karl's wishes
respecting the Memoirs.
What these wishes were, or what the
conditions of the agreement reached by
the poet and his kinsman, is not pre-
cisely known. But after Heine's death
the manuscript fell into the hands of
Uncle Salomon's family, who made such
disposition of it as they saw fit. It is
believed that for many years past the
papers have been sealed up in the
archives of the Imperial Library at
Vienna. Nor has official reserve ever
suffered a hint to escape as to when, if
ever, publication will be permitted.
William Sharp, in his "Life of Heine,"
alludes to certain Memoirs, "which the
poet tells us that he himself destroyed."
Evidently Mr. Sharp is here at fault, and
most likely his reference is meant to
cover "the papers that were lost in the
fire at my mother's house" — as quoted
above from Heine's letter (1837) to his
publisher, Julius Campe.
That Heine expected his Memoirs
would be published after his death and
counted upon it to the very end, is placed
beyond doubt by a piece of strong evi-
dence. I allude to the incident related by
Camille Selden in her little book of
reminiscences of Heine, entitled "The
Last Days." "Camille Selden" was the
pen-name used by a young German lady,
not otherwise clearly Identified, who
acted as reader for the poet in the last
stage of his illness. She is said to have
been a person of culture, charm, and
beauty, as beseemed the "Mouche" of
the latest poems, and the poet seems to
have felt a remarkable tenderness for
her. Lovers of literature must always be
grateful to this Unknown for giving the
poet his last romance and his latest
inspiration.
(3amille Selden, then, relates how she
entered Heine's room one day early in
that fatal February, 1856, after he had
(Continued on page 440)
April 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[439
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THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2. No. .50
{Continued from page 488)
undergone a dreadful attack of his
disease affecting both mind and body,
and found him scribbling furiously on
large sheets of paper with a pencil that
seemed to her sharp as a deadly weapon.
She continues :
I heard a cruel laugh — ^the laugh of satiated
revenge. I looked at Henri : "I have them,"
he cried, "dead or living, they shall not escape.
The tiger's claws shall survive the tiger."
Heine thus referred to his Memoirs on
which he had been even then working;
and the story, though a shade melodra-
matic, may be accepted as true. There is
no lack of testimony that he attached
great importance to this "book of his
life," as he called it. Most significant
witness is offered by Alfred Meissner, to
whom Heine once showed a box of MSS.,
remarking: "Look you! There are my
Memoirs. Therein I have been collecting
for many years a series of portraits and
frightful silhouettes. Many know of this
box, and tremble. In it is shut up one
of the best, but by no means the last, of
my triumphs."
Such is the unsatisfactory tale of
Heine's personal Memoirs, which the con-
noisseurs of literary scandal value at a
higher rate than the lost "Confessions"
of Byron. There can be little doubt that
the matter of these unpublished manu-
scripts is worthy of Heine's fame, for the
writing was begun when his powers were
at the full. And as he scarcely ever
wrote anything without literary value,
even in his character of the modern
Aretino, the harsh and long-continued in-
terdict on his own life-story must be re-
sented by every lover of literature.
• Michael Monahan
"Impressions de Voyage"
A STAY of but twenty-four hours at
Honolulu is scant warrant for a
discussion of the affairs of our Pacific
Ocean outpost ; still, if enjoyed by a visi-
tor returning after an absence of many
years, it may furnish grounds for a com-
parison between his recollection of what
was then and his impressions of what is
now.
There has, happily, been no change in
the natural aspects of the enchanting
island of Oahu, which holds the capital
of the Hawaiian group. The bold
promontory of Diamond Head marks, as
of old, the point where vessels coming
from the East swing around to the north-
ward and head for the narrow channel
which leads across the bar to the docks
at the city of Honolulu. The noble sky-
line of the mountains that, running east
and west, divide the island into the
smaller plain between them and the sea
from the wider plain between them and
the northern end of Oahu. At right
angles to this chain runs another and
loftier ridge close to the western edge
of the island. At the intersection of
these two, the land falls away into a
more level expanse whose peculiar yel-
lowish green proclaims its devotion to
the culture of the sugar cane. The sum-
mits of these mountains are arid and
treeless, but running up their valleys
the varied colors of the vegetation be-
speak an intensive cultivation of the
rich, red volcanic soil. Palms wave their
crested plumes at intervals, dividing
banana groves, orange orchards, pine-
apple farms, and market gardens, or
adorning country places. The famous
"punch bowl," once a crater, overlooks
the city, while behind it and a little to
one side is the Nuuanu Valley, which
climbs up, up, up, some 1,200 feet to
"Mt. Pali," a gap in the east and west
mountain range just mentioned. In
the twinkling of an eye there bursts
upon the vision one of the finest views
known to the writer, himself a traveler
with no slight experience. A tier of
high peaks frames the picture on the
left. From the observer's feet the land
drops almost sheer to the northern plain,
a succession of splendid plantations, each
wearing its own distinctive hue, stretch-
ing down to the blue ocean which, after
churning itself into milk-white foam
streaked with unusual opalescent hues
where it meets an outlying coral reef, rolls
on to break into surf on the white sand
beach dotted with bathers. The cease-
less roar of the waves tells the inhabi-
tants that the sea is ever ready either
for works of benevolence or appalling
disaster, as suits its varied mood. The
whole of this enchanting spectacle is
bathed in brilliant light, except where
the scurrying trade-wind clouds throw
their shadows on the land, ofttimes dis-
charging a burden of mist and rain, and
frequently using the sun's rays to add
a rainbow to a panorama already quite
perfect. What the traveler sees from the
Pali is well worth the trouble of the
long journey from home to Honolulu.
The writer recalls but one comparable
landscape — the "Chinese View," lying
between "The Gavin" and "The Sugar
Loaf," near Rio de Janeiro.
During the fifteen years elapsing since
he spent a Christmas in this exquisite
island, the writer, due to the brevity
of his halt, could only note sundry sur-
face indications. Even in this respect
he may err widely; he makes no claim
to accuracy in these random "impressions
de voyage." A distressing symptom — as
he saw it — was the decrease in the na-
tive population, possibly relative and not
absolute, and the astounding growth of
the Oriental elements. The Chinese and
the Japanese are fast absorbing all the
smaller businesses. Japanese women
clad in kimonos and straw sandals are
everywhere, and the supply of Japa-
nese babies, slung in shawls behind their
mothers' backs, seems inexhaustible.
How the city has increased in the past
fifteen years! Apparently, three or four
fold. Where farms and market gardens
formerly marked the slopes behind it,
handsome villas are now built and build-
ing. No wonder, either, for here one
may live in a delicious and practically
unvarying climate of warm, not hot,
days, cool nights, and in a Garden of
Eden offering rides, drives, picnics in
every direction, and boasting a country
club from the veranda of which one over-
looks an alluring golf course melting
away into an incomparable vista of ver-
dant loveliness which ends only in the
distant sea horizon of darkest blue.
It was inevitable, of course, but the
sturdy native pony is almost never seen
now; the motor has displaced him and in
numbers which surpass one's power of
guessing. Think of Honolulu with traf-
fic policemen at each street crossing!
Shades of Captain Cook! Motors in
turn have demanded and secured better
roads everywhere, so that the trip
around Oahu which, on horseback, once
required several days of the writer's
time — a glorious experience it was, by
the way — is now easily made by auto-
mobile between lunch and dinner.
The trolleys have kept pace with the
growth of the town; the lagoon, once
known as Pearl Harbor, is gradually
being developed into a naval station,
with the largest of our drydocks
already completed. The agricultural
resources of Oahu might have been
expected to attract a strenuous com-
mercialism, but those who knew the
Hawaiian Islands in days gone by may
be pardoned when they miss the once
simple, easy life that has given place
to the fierce competition of trade and
the introduction of grave ethnical prob-
lems arising from the need of coolie
labor. What pangs and travail the solu-
tion may bring upon this community re-
main to be seen. Already a strike by
the local Japanese Federation of Sugar
Workers sounds the warning note of
what may occur.
None the less, the tourist, from the
porch of the modern Moana Hotel,
watches the bathers on the safe beach at
Waikiki and the native, standing erect on
a plank far out, at tremendous speed rid-
ing towards the shore, driven on its in-
coming crest by the rushing breakers as
they climb over an outlying reef.
His meditations are interrupted by
the resident at his side who, after ex-
plaining that the Cook and Castle fami-
lies are noted for their wealth, claims
supremacy for Honolulu in that it alone
has a diamond head, a pearly harbor, the
largest punch bowl in the world, a Castle
on every corner, while all its Cooks are
millionaires.
Caspar F. Goodrich
At Sea, between Honolulu and Guam,
Washington's Birthday.
April 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[441
Drama
Andreyev at the Neighbor-
hood Playhouse
THE Neighborhood Playhouse appears
to have a quick eye for that rather
elusive thing — the popular element in the
literary drama. I could not have ex-
pected that Andreyev would succeed in
Manhattan, nor that Americans, whom
the classics impress so little, would be
quick to respond to a travesty on the
classics. But the welcome given to the
"Beautiful Sabine Women" on Grand
Street is more than adequate; it is lav-
ish. The success is not reduced by the
unusual and seemingly untoward cir-
cumstance that the parties to the action
are not persons but groups — husbands,
wives, captors, who employ persons as
their spokesmen and delegates. The
Greek chorus, which was actor as well as
choir, habituates us to the use of one
such group, but, except, dimly, in the
"Suppliants" of .Eschylus and Mr. Gals-
worthy's "Strife," I scarcely recall a sec-
ond instance in which the collision of
two or more groups has released the
dramatic impulse of the play.
The three acts are compressible into
one; indeed Acts II and III might be
fairly described as a very slow curtain to
Act I. The obvious satire turns on the
willingness of women to be snatched
from the milksop by the daredevil, and
their unwillingness to confess this will-
ingness to the insolent captor. Their
surrender at the close of Act I is plain,
and the Sabine husbands, whose reclama-
tions are particularized in the two en-
suing acts, are such evident and arrant
nobodies that their burlesque march to
Rome is seen from the start to be a
march towards ignominy.
The play is called a satire, but satire
has called farce to its aid, or, to speak
more precisely, farce has been called in
to the aid of the playmaker but to the
injury of the satirist. I have no quarrel
with farce ; I am perfectly amicable even
to that grade of farce which permits it-
self allusions to registered letters and to
encyclopaedias in the Rome of the
eighth century B.C. The jumbling of
epochs need not be harmful; what
really harms is the jumbling of purposes.
The original purpose of this play was
not farcical, but comic; it meant, on the
surface, at least, to bring out, through
comedy, the resistance of the mind of
woman to that masculine coercion to
which the frame of woman and also the
heart of woman acknowledge their docil-
ity. The two purposes do not combine,
and the farce halts the comedy.
It is said that behind the farce and
comedy lurks political allegory. The
(Continued on page 442)
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HAS NATURAL QUALITIES AND MAN-MADE REFINEMENT
D. F. WILLIAMS
Vice-President and General Sales Agent
W. F. SHURTLEFF
Assistant General Sales Agent
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442]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 50
THE PRINCETON UNI-
VERSITY PRESS was in-
corporated in 1910, "in the
interests of Princeton Uni-
versity, to establish, main-
tain and operate a printing
and publishing plant for the
promotion of education and
scholarship." Since that time
it has published nearly one
hundred books, all recom-
mended by a committee com-
posed of members of the
Princeton faculty as worthy
contributions to their sub-
jects. On its list of authors
appear the names of Grover
Cleveland, E 1 i h u Root,
Joseph Choate, Theodore
Roosevelt, Arthur Woods,
Paul Elmer More, Edwin
Grant Conklin, George W.
Goethals, Allan Marquand,
Leonard Wood, William
Starr Myers, and many
others. The subjects dealt
with include art, history, poet-
ry, business, finance, politics,
government, essays, philoso-
phy, education, psychology,
and social betterment. Or-
ders are received from the
four corners of the globe;
Princeton University Press
books have been translated
into French, Spanish, and
Japanese; the demand for
them on the part of intelli-
gent readers is broadening
constantly; in England they
are all published by the Ox-
ford University Press.
We should be glad to send
you a booklet we have pre-
pared, describing our work
and progress in greater de-
tail; also our complete cata-
logue of publications, and an-
nouncements of new books
as they appear.
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON, N. J.
(Continued from page 441)
Romans are Russian reactionaries, the
Sabines are Constitutional-Democrats,
and the Sabine women are promises —
promises the substance and force of
which the reactionaries, in the first dec-
ade of this century, snatched away from
the Constitutional-Democrats. Whether
Andreyef is voucher for this key I can
not say; one would like to think that he
was aware of the shallowness of this
form of depth, a form that can not even
claim the characteristic ijierit of shal-
lows— transparency. I was glad that the
joy of the Neighborhood Playhouse audi-
ence, which was a complete and satisfy-
ing joy, was undisturbed by problems of
interpretation. Even in a Roman play
one hardly cares to take the part of
haruspex or soothsayer. Moreover, in
such combinations, the allegory serves as
sinker to the nonsense much oftener than
the nonsense acts as float to the allegory.
The acting was rapid and spirited, and
the evenness of its quality, which was
noticeable, did not prevent the observer
from finding or fancying a slight margin
of superiority in the female parts. I
found beauty in Mr. Frank Stout's
bright, vivid, and as it were, exclamatory
setting; but I should have liked it bet-
ter in "Hernani" or "Siegfried" than in
the "Beautiful Sabine Women." Against
that haunting and romantic background,
the farcicalities in the play seemed as
irrelevant as the chicken-bones and egg-
shells which the shuddering Ruskin
found, in the wake of excursionists, on
the Alpine glaciers.
The "Glittering Gate," a one-act piece
by Lord Dunsany, opened the programme.
A burglar, on some ledge or scarp of no-
where, picks the locks of Heaven's gate
before our eyes. The boldness of the
invention is remarkable, and the dis-
tance that our realistic Anglo-Saxondom
has traveled in the last twenty-five years
is measured by the fact that its boldness
startled nobody. We were all quite ready
to believe. If we did not quite believe
in spite of our readiness, I think it was
because we waited — and waited vainly —
for Lord Dunsany to set us the example.
Faith is somehow not his attribute. He
has a real, though slight, originality ; but
when he throws open the door upon some
sombre vista of eccentric and enticing
picturesqueness, he says, "Look in"
rather than "Come in." In this play the
burglar literally opens the gate, but be-
hind it nothing is to be seen but blue
space and the clearness of the unap-
proached stars. The lesson is wise and
timely. Heaven baffles the aggressions
of men less by resistance than by re-
moval; Utopia vindicates its etymology.
The setting, by Mr. Warren Dahler,
which was half the play, was a good
half; and the acting, if it did not satisfy,
sufficed.
0. W. Firkins
Problems of Labor and Capital
III. Compulsory Filing of Collective Bargaining Agreements
THAT the public is the third party,
not to be ignored in the warfare be-
tween unions and employers, becomes
clearer after each struggle between them.
Even where the public welfare is only
remotely concerned both labor and em-
ployers recognize the advantage of satis-
fying what is known as "public opinion."
Both unions and employers' associations
spend fortunes in advertising with the
hope that the weight of evidence may
incline it to their side. More than this
should be done: all collective-bargaining
agreements, with all their modifications
and amendments, should be made a mat-
ter of public record. Such agreements
should be filed with the governmental
agency having charge of the mediation
and arbitration of disputes, such as, for
example, the Bureau of Mediation and
Arbitration of the Industrial Commis-
sion of the State of New York. If the
agreement is inter-state in scope, then
the proper depositary is the correspond-
ing Federal bureau.
The advantages of such public filing
are many. In the first place, it will fur-
nish a public record of inestimable value
to attorneys and others who are called
upon to prepare contracts between one
or more employers and groups of em-
ployees. Although the legal profession
has ready access to many other types of
contracts, such as leases, deeds, wills, and
trust agreements, which have been tested
in the courts for generations, there is
nowhere in existence a compilation of
collective-bargaining contracts. In spite
of the accumulation of information which
is at the hands of the legal profession
on other subjects, many contested cases
arise annually merely because the in-
tention of the parties has not been clearly
expressed. It is not surprising that in
the comparatively new type of contract
involved in a collective-bargaining agree-
ment, in itself a difficult instrument to
draw, disagreement and confusion should
arise.
In the second place, the public agencies
which have been charged with the settle-
ment of industrial disputes have been
comparatively ineffective because of the
fact that they are called into the con-
flict between the employers and the em-
ployees after it is already well advanced.
f^pril 24, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[448
rhrough the public recording of all such
nstruments, the agency charged with
nediation and arbitration would have a
alendar of prospective "trouble-dates"
ind could in advance use its machinery
0 reform, modify, or continue the agree-
nent then in existence. Many collective
igreements provide for notice of renewal
ir of proposed modifications at dates
)revious to expiration of the contract. A
bureau of Mediation could apply this ef-
ective device on a large scale.
Finally, many industrial disputes are
iggravated, if they are not actually
aused, by a belief on one side or the
ither, or both, that the original agree-
nent has been modified by oral state-
aents or correspondence. In practically
very industrial disturbance, following a
leriod of comparative peace under col-
ective agreements between unions and
mployers, there appears a clear-cut issue
is to the terms of the existing agree-
nent. The public recording of all such
Igreements would estop either party
rom claiming that the agreement, as
ecorded, was not the entire contract be-
ween the parties, since no modifications
ir amendments that had not been filed
ould be regarded as valid.
This proposal is subject to certain
[ueries. If the filing of all such written
greements is mandatory, will there not
le created a desire to avoid reducing to
/riting the terms of the understandings?
['he negative answer to this question lies
n an examination of our everyday busi-
less practices. Transactions on the
tock exchanges, and the sale or con-
ignment of precious stones, for example,
re conducted without writings or even
eceipts, and conversely, where the per-
onal relations of the parties has not per-
nitted a development of confidence,
everything tends to be reduced to writ-
ng. The advantages resulting from
lear, unequivocal understandings, and
he impossibility of operating under an
■ral collective-bargaining agreement con-
aining provisions as to hours, wages,
.pprentices, holidays, overtime pay,
ights of discharge, and innumerable
•ther provisions relating to conditions of
employment is not within the realm of.
lispute.
Again, would each and every collective
.greement become filable? Should a prof-
t-sharing plan in a single plant or office
)e made public? The answers to such
luestions can be found in the adoption
if the following principle : Every agree-
nent between three or more employees
ind one or more employers, if reduced to
vriting, and if it aifects the terms of
employment, should be filed. There is no
pparent desire on the part of the em-
iloyers for secrecy in matters of profit-
haring schemes. In fact, employers
eem to be vieing with each other
0 procure publicity in such matters.
V'here then lies the danger? If the plan
goes so far as to give all employees the
right to an accounting, or if not that, at
least discloses the net profits of the em-
ployer, may it not be presumed that the
employer who has advanced so far in
this direction will also find no objection
to the public recording of agreements?
On the part of organized labor the pub-
lic filing of agreements will doubtless
meet with approval. In addition to the
specific advantages of such a plan, the
organized labor movement will be ben-
efited by the seeming stamp of Govern-
ment approval which will result from
such public filing.
Morris L. Ernst
Books and the News
New American Books
To name, as I have been asked to do,
ten or a dozen American books of the
past three or four months, is sure to
make one keep on the watch for the na-
tional point of view, to think carefully
what is really American, and what is imi-
tative. Sometimes the imitative book rep-
resents a passing American tendency.
How many of the novels and essays that
you read are American, and how many
of them are English? You may be sur-
prised if you make a count. Books reach
across national boundaries — fortunately
(Continued on page 444)
THE LIFE OF
LEONARD
WOOD
By JOHN G.
HOLME
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at all bookstores
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444]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 50
I
Essential
for every university and
public library :
Essential
for every student of
English Drama:
Nason's
** JAMES SHIRLEY,
DRAMATIST"
the only adequate bio-
graphical and critical
study of the principal
dramatic poet of the
reign of Charles I.
Cloth, xvi+472 pages. Choicely iltus-
Irated. Price, $5.00.
THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
{StUiHg Agtntt)
32 Waverly PUce New York City
{Continued from page 443)
— so much that an investigator of recent
biographical works in English said that
the four best biographies of the past year
or two were an American and an English
autobiography, the life of an Englishman
by an American, and the life of an Amer-
ican by an Englishman. These were:
Henry Adams's "Education," W. H. Hud-
son's "Far Away and Long Ago," Pro-
fessor Cross's "History of Henry Field-
ing," and Lord Charnwood's "Abraham
Lincoln."
For the new American books, "The
Letters of Henry James" (2 vols. Scrib-
ner, 1920) is named with misgivings,
and yet not without the feeling that it
belongs in the list. An American who
died a British subject, and had the in-
signia of the Order of Merit brought to
him on his sick-bed, may seem a strange
choice. Certainly no American is will-
ing to give up other Americans, like
Sargent and Whistler, also exiles, who
contributed to the art and culture of
other lands, and of the whole world.
Henry James's exasperating obscurity,
which appears in many of these letters,
did not keep him from thinking clearly
enough on the war. And, an arch-stylist,
he never was deceived by the myth about
the "exquisite English style" in which
our diplomatic correspondence with Ger-
many was conducted, from 1914 to 1918.
John Spargo's "The Psychology of Bol-
shevism" (Harper, 1920) should be
added. In "The Anthology of Magazine
Verse for 1919" (Small, 1920), edited by
W. S. Braithwaite, we have a reflection
of the current poetry, and in Vachell
Lindsay's "The Golden Whales of Cali-
fornia" (Macmillan, 1920), a single,
striking volume, strong in its American
flavor. The crash of its jazz poem about
Daniel and the lions could never be
duplicated by anybody born far from the
sound of negro camp-meetings. Rock-
well Kent's pictures for his "Wilderness ;
a Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska"
(Putnam, 1920) are, sometimes, con-
scious, grandiose, and too near William
Blake for comfort. Often, however, they
are excellent; the end-papers best of all.
To keep up with recent magazine fic-
tion read ""The Best Short Stories of
1919" (Small), edited by Edward J.
O'Brien. For essays, "Modes and
Morals" (Scribner, 1920), by Katharine
Fullerton Gerould, have the rai-e quality
of irony. Mr. Huneker's "Bedouins"
(Scribner) belongs in this list, and
W. E. B. Du Bois's "Darkwater" (Har-
court, 1920), for its interpretation of the
negro. Although not a new book, in the
customary sense, A. Edward Newton's
"The Amenities of Book Collecting"
(Atlantic Monthly Press), deserves in
its new edition a second reading. If you
missed it at first, so much the better for
your enjoyment now.
Edmund Lester Pearson
THE NEW YORK
TRUST COMPANY
Main Office Fifth Avenue Office
26 Broad Street Fifth Ave. and 57th St.
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MORTIMER N. BUCKNER, President
F. J. Home, VicePrea. H. W. Shaw
James Dodd, Vice-Pres.
H. W. Morse. V.-Pres.
Harry Forsyth, Treas.
Boyd G. Curts, Sec'y
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TRUSTEES
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lortimer N. Buckner
James C. Colgate
Alfred A. Cook
Arthur T. Cumnock
Robert W. de Forest
John B. Dennis
Philip T. Dodge
George Doubleday
Samuel H. Fisher
John A. Garver
Benjamin S. Guinness
F. N. Hoffstot
Buchanan Houston
Frederic B. Jennings
Walter Jennings
Darwin P. Kingslcy
John C. McCall
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Clarence M. Woolley
Members of the Nero York Clearing House Asso-
ciation and of the Federal Reserve System
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ON NATIONAL
ISSUES
Complied by
EVAN J. DAVID
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DOUBLEDAY, PAGE 8e CO.
4'
i^t^
/
THE REVIEW
Vol. 2, No. 51
New York, Saturday, May 1, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment 445
Editorial Articles:
Lawmakers Found Wanting 448
If the Overallers Are in Earnest 449
The Newberry Verdict 450
Branting Prime Minister 451
Behind the Financing of China. Part
IV. By Charles Hodges 452
Propaganda and the News. By W. J.
Ghent 453
Asia, Europe, and Bolshevism. By
Dr. Paul Rohrbach 455
M. Millerand, the French Premier.
By Othon Guerlac 456
Correspondence 457
Book Reviews:
Champ Clark's Reminiscences 460
Satire and Soothing-Syrup 461
Ireland's Future 461
Adventures in the Past 463
The Run of the Shelves 463
Drama:
The Unreviving London Stage and
Its Revivals. By William Archer 465
On Profiteer Hunting. By Henry
Hazlitt 466
Jazz a Song at Twilight. By Clement
Wood 468
Educational Section 470
Books and the News: Sport. By Ed-
mund Lester Pearson 472
'T^HE distinctive development of the
■*- past ten days in the Presidential
nomination field has been the in-
creased prominence of President
Wilson. His letter on the treaty to
one of the Kansas delegates-at-Iarge
to San Francisco; Mr. Jim Ham
Lewis's warning, in his address at
the Kansas Convention, that "the
country must be ready to see the con-
vention at San Francisco put Wilson
as its candidate before the nation as
a protest" against the defeat of the
treaty; the announcement made by
the New York World that the Presi-
dent intends to return the treaty to
the Senate "some time this summer,"
accompanied by reservations of his
own — all these things point to some-
thing like a certainty that Mr. Wil-
son, if his health holds out, will play
a very big part in the political de-
velopments of the next few months.
If the last of these statements is well
founded, the one thing to be hoped
for by all patriotic Americans is that
the President's proposal, whatever it
may be, will be considered and acted
upon solely according to its merits,
and not as a continuation of the un-
happy contentions of the past ten
months. As to the Presidential cam-
paign itself, it seems ta us as clear as
it ever was that no profitable method
can be found for turning it into a
referendum on the treaty. If Mr.
Wilson should not be a candidate, the
issue would be merely confusing ; and
if Mr. Wilson should be a candidate,
while the issue of the treaty would
undoubtedly be a genuine and live
one, it would be overshadowed by the
personal issues involved in the ques-
tion of his own re-election.
/COMMENTING on the results of
^ the Michigan primaries, we
pointed out that the proper view of
Senator Johnson's vote was to regard
it as cast for him on the one side as
against four prominent candidates on
the opposite side ; and we stated that
"Johnson beat Wood by a plurality
of perhaps 45,000, but he fell short
of the combined vote of the four by
about 55,000." The complete returns
have been slow to come in. They
show that while Johnson's plurality
over Wood was almost precisely what
the earlier returns indicated, the com-
bined vote of the four surpassed
Johnson's by a much larger figure
than we stated. Johnson polled
156,939 votes; Wood 112,556; and
Wood, Lowden, Hoover, and Pershing
polled an aggregate vote of 245,458.
Thus Johnson fell short of the com-
bined vote of what may well be called
the four normal Republican candi-
dates by nearly 90,000; his vote was
156,939 out of a total of 402,397 for
the five. Johnson is cast for a big
role at Chicago ; but he does not com-
mand majorities, or anything like
majorities, in many States.
TJUNCOMBE is the only wear for
-'-' a Presidential campaign — that
must be the conviction of the House
Democrats and "insurgent" Repub-
licans who have concocted a bill to
raise money for the proposed bonus
by means of a retroactive war-profits
tax. The bill would impose a tax of
80 per cent, upon the whole amount
by which the income of an individual
or corporation for each of the years
1917, 1918, 1919, and 1920 exceeded
pre-war income. This sort of raid on
incomes of past years which have
already yielded to the Government
what it thought fit to exact, and
which have been spent or used upon
the supposition that the recipient had
them at his disposal, is so preposter-
ous that there is not the slightest
danger of its being actually imposed
by any Congress and President that
may be elected next autumn, unless
the country goes crazy in the interval.
The bill is not meant to be passed,
but to serve as a "good enough
Morgan till after the election." But
it won't be even that.
r\EPRAVED as we all know the
'-^ American press to be, some of us
will be surprised at the exposure
of its calculating wickedness which
comes from Italy. But the truth must
be faced, however disagreeable and
unexpected. Occasional items of a
disturbing character in regard to
labor unrest in Italy have been ap-
pearing in the newspapers, but most
people, in their innocence, have
looked upon them as stray items of
news, like so many similar ones re-
lating to other countries, including
our own. But the Giornale d'ltalia
understands the thing better. A
campaign of false news, it tells us, is
being carried on by American news-
papers against Italy, and the motive
for it is obvious. "Naturally," it
says — and there is a world of mean-
446]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 51
ing in the word — "naturally, the prin-
cipal reason of this campaign is to
depreciate still further the value of
the lira, thus imposing on us usurious
prices for products which we are
forced to buy from abroad." That
news is systematically suppressed,
that nobody is allowed to hear a word
from radical leaders, that the labor
men's side of a strike dispute is never
to be found in the news columns of
our capitalist press — with all this we
have long been familiar. But even
our most wide-awake reformers have
not suspected a depth of depravity
which would cause those organs of
Satanic plutocracy to manufacture a
series of false news dispatches for
what is, after all, even to Mr. Morgan
or Mr. Rockefeller, the comparatively
minor object of lowering the value of
the lira.
fyHE League of Nations has re-
-■■ fused to accept a mandate for
Armenia on the ground of inadequate
resources. An advertisement in a
Detroit weekly reveals the cause of
this lack of funds : "The League of
Nations, Wall Street, and other finan-
ciers are paying Wood's campaign
expenses to get your vote. Vote for
Johnson, who smashed the fake
League of Nations, who stands for
free speech, a free press and free
America, Ireland included." This
makes it quite clear why the League
can not become a mandatory for
Armenia. But it does not explain
whence the League, since it was
smashed by Johnson, derives the
financial strength to support Wood's
campaign. Or was this self-con-
tradictory statement inserted with
the express purpose of showing what
free speech is capable of under a
Johnson regime?
A T the San Remo Conference,
•^ peace between London and Paris
was renewed by a give-and-take on
either side, though in this transac-
tion between the stubborn Millerand
and the pliable Lloyd George it was
the Frenchman who made the smaller
sacrifice. By yielding on the subject
of the German payments, which will
nov/ be fixed at a lump sum, and by
promising that France will declare in
unmistakable terms that she has no
intention of annexing the left bank
of the Rhine, he received in return
Lloyd George's support of his insis-
tence on the disarmament of Ger-
many, and the continuance of the
Commission of Control which the
British Premier wanted to be dis-
charged. Millerand has scored yet
another point by eliciting from Lloyd
George a flat denial, which it seems
difficult to reconcile with recent ut-
terances of his, that he wished to
have the treaty with Germany re-
vised.
'T'HE renewal of peace between the
•*• Premiers will have a stabilizing
effect upon affairs in Germany. The
lack of authority of Herr Mtiller's
Government is in part due to the agi-
tation of those who, foreseeing an
estrangement between England and
France, opposed the Government's en-
deavors to execute the peace terms.
The frustration of their hopes, and
Lloyd George's outspoken support of
Millerand's refusal to have the treaty
revised, will deprive that opposition
of its backbone and help to strengthen
the Berlin Government. Whether it
will gather strength enough to carry
out the disarmament in the teeth of
the army's resistance remains to be
seen. The fate of Germany lies now
in the hands of Ludendorff and his
party. If they consider it, in their
blindness, a patriotic duty to refuse
obedience to the Government, civil
war and foreign intervention, to
which Lloyd George is now pledged,
will be the results. The Prussian
militarists have never impressed the
world by their political foresight, but
the situation created at San Remo is
CO clear-cut, and the consequences of
an infraction of the treaty so plain
to be seen, that even these purblind
meddlers of the old regime can not
fail to perceive them and act, or
rather refrain from action, accord-
ingly.
npHE silence of the insurgent press
•*- regarding the new Soviet labor
code is dark and profound. Even
such journals as have heretofore
made a practice of printing certain
documents of an alleged revelatory
character, in order to shame and defy
the hated capitalist press, have balked
at the labor code. Of course, a Soviet
code which transforms all male labor
into slave labor may be thought, even
by the most frantic pro-Bolshevist
editor, to be a trifle extreme and
therefore something to be kept from
its readers. But having swallowed
so many camels in the way of Bolshe-
vist outrage upon human rights,
to strain at the gnat of labor en-
slavement must seem to ordinary per-
sons a bit absurd. Of the two stock
justifications for such measures, with
which the pro-Bolshevist editor has
heretofore always been ready, the
first, "protection against counter-
revolution," is obviously unhandy for
the case in point. But the other, "the
exercise of proletarian self-disci-
pline," fits like a glove. For a long
time it has been evident, from the
columns of the less mealy-mouthed
of our insurgent contemporaries, that
the essence of "proletarian self-dis-
cipline" lay in unhesitating obedience
to any arbitrary order of the oli-
garchy of thirty-four. Why the
present silence? Why the failure to
apply the rule, or theory, or princi-
ple, to a comparatively trifling mat-
ter like the enslavement of labor?
Here is a puzzle which only Time will
solve.
TT was a noble gesture, quite in the
■*- grand style, with which the Free-
man, the latest entrant in the field of
insurgent journalism, qualified its ac-
ceptance of the welcome extended it
by the Nation. "Thank you very
kindly," it said, in effect. "Your lan-
guage attests the generosity of your
heart, but unfortunately it reveals
some grave defects of understanding.
You welcome us to the field of 'liberal
journalism.' Know, then — and may
this statement serve not merely
as a gentle reproof to yourselves but
as a stern warning to others — that
we are not liberals; we are radicals.
There is a fundamental difference be-
tween the two, which a schoolboy
should be whipped for not knowing.
Thank you again most kindly, but in
the future please be a little more
circumspect in your use of terms."
Thereupon the differences are care-
fully expounded. It appears that lib-
May 1, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[447
erals believe in the political state,
whereas radicals scorn it and all its
works; and it further appears that
liberals recognize but two factors in
wealth production, labor and capital,
whereas radicals, with scientific pre-
cision, recognize in addition a third
factor, the land. Far be it from us,
even though we doubt the sufficiency
of the distinction, to challenge it
openly. But if one's attitude toward
the political state is a prime test, then
the Nation, in this verdict of exclu-
sion from the ranks of the radicals,
has suffered a cruel and unusual pun-
ishment. More than once it has em-
phatically proclaimed the uselessness
of the state and the need of merging
ourselves in that large and joyous
nebulosity, the Great Society. We
can not but admire the grand man-
ner of the Freeman in this important,
episode ; but at the same time we feel
bound to protest against a hasty and
an unjust judgment.
CTRANGE, as we have had occa-
^ sion to remark before, are the
mental workings of sentimental radi-
calism. One of the editors of the Sur-
vexj, reviewing, in a recent issue, a
biography of Debs, admits the legal
guilt of the Socialist leader. "But
after that is admitted," he says, "the
contrast between our attitude toward
the German Socialist, Dr. Liebknecht,
and Eugene V. Debs is striking.
When Liebknecht went to jail because
his Socialist principles opposed all
wars America applauded an honor-
able man. Our toleration does not ex-
tend to Debs even though he is a much
milder type of Socialist than Lieb-
knecht turned out to be. History is
full of such irony." But where, either
in the classical or in the derived sense
of the term, is the irony ? That Debs
is a "much milder type of Socialist"
than the Liebknecht of the winter of
1918-19, who sought the armed over-
throw of a representative Govern-
ment, would be difficult to prove in
the face of his passionate indorse-
ment not only of Liebknecht but of
Lenin. Indeed, his most devoted par-
tisans will indignantly resent the
attribute of revolutionary mildness
given him. But this point aside,
there is the plain fact that the Lieb-
knecht of 1915-16 denounced the mili-
tary aggression of the German Gov-
ernment, while Debs in 1918 de-
nounced the measures taken by the
United States Government against
that aggression. To straight-minded
folk the distinction is clear enough.
One course of conduct tended to frus-
trate the German Emperor, while
the other tended to sustain and
strengthen him. The popular attitude
was a logical response to the facts:
Liebknecht was applauded, while
Debs was condemned. If history is
full of such instances, so much the
better for history, with its attesta-
tion to the general common sense of
mankind.
"DETWEEN the two extreme no-
■'-' tions that a man with a diploma
has finished his education and that
before he can begin it he has a good
deal to unlearn, lies the truth that he
has indeed made some progress but
must still keep iri touch with the
progress of the schools or lose much
of the ground he has gained. Prince-
ton's proposal to send to all her grad-
uates full reports of the work that
is being done by her professors is
evidence of the growing realization
of the necessity of "continuation"
schooling. In another field the New
York Post-Graduate Medical School
has for nearly forty years provided
increasingly effective graduate in-
structions for the practising physi-
cians of the country. When it is con-
sidered how much has been accom-
plished by this institution on an en-
dovraient which yields only $20,000 a
year, the hope is well grounded that,
with an endowment of two million, it
can set up in New York a centre to
which medical men throughout the
world who formerly looked to Vienna
and Berlin will gladly and profitably
repair.
SIGNS multiply that the birds are
at last coming into their own.
The decision of the Supreme Court
upholding the Migratory Bird law,
and thus making effective the policy
inaugurated by the British-American
treaty of 1918, has been followed by
the announcement that the Rocke-
feller Foundation has deeded to the
State of Louisiana 85,000 acres of
land, partly swamp and partly dry,
to be used as a refuge for migratory
birds and a game preserve. It is a
magnificent gift, and an evidence of
sound and farsighted judgment on
the part of the trustees of the Foun-
dation. The land available and favor-
ably situated for such preserves, or
"sanctuaries," without sacrifice of
other interests, is ample in quantity,
if suitably protected, to prevent the
actual extinction of any species of
our birds and land animals. It is to
be hoped that the next few years will
see an enormous increase in the total
area and general distribution of these
tracts of absolute safety, where the
"open season" is twelve months long,
and belongs to the birds and animals,
not to the hunter.
npHE reduction of illiteracy among
-^ children of from 10 to 14 years
of age in the eleven Southern States
during 1900-1910 was approximately
33 per cent, and it is believed that
the new census will show another
marked decline. The last decade has
shown a great increase in child-wel-
fare laws. In 1910, except for inade-
quate measures in Kentucky and
North Carolina, there was no compul-
sory school attendance law in any of
these eleven States. Now every one of
them has such a law. Notable changes
have also been made in health laws
and child-labor laws. Very recently,
Alabama, which for so long a time
had stood out determinedly against
child-welfare laws, enacted four
measures of importance. Child labor
under 14 years is now prohibited, and
an eight-hour maximum day for chil-
dren up to 16 years is ordained; a
department of child welfare, with a
child-labor division, has been created ;
extensive improvements have been
made in the compulsory education
law, and the local health administra-
tion bodies have been reorganized
for more effective functioning. The
fight for child welfare has been a long
and stubborn one; but it is now re-
sulting in a succession of victories
which a decade ago only the most
hopeful looked for in so short a time.
448]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 51
Lawmakers Found
Wanting
IF the future of representative gov-
ernment in America were to be
judged by recent experience at the
capitals of the nation and of its fore-
most State, it would present a dismal
outlook. The case of Albany is so
hopelessly bad that it gives no occa-
sion for discussion. Confronted with
extraordinary need for helpful con-
structive measures, the New York
Legislature has failed to do anything
to which even party advocates can
point with any semblance of satisfac-
tion. To those looking upon its
record with dispassionate judgment,
it can almost be summed up in the
statement that the Legislature has
done those things which it ought not
to have done, and left undone those
things which it ought to have done.
Even if it be granted — as may indeed
be true — that the one striking bit of
legislation passed (apart from the
heresy-hunting) , the bills for the re-
lief of tenants in the housing crisis
at New York City, was a good and
useful measure, the credit which can
be assigned to the Legislature for it is
of the slightest. For the bills were
passed in response to a tremendous
wave of popular pressure, and might
just as well have been passed if the
State had been under a government
by mass meeting, and not by represen-
tatives selected to exercise thought
and judgment on public affairs. Hav-
ing done what the people demanded
in their exigency, the Legislature did
not stir a finger to better the sit-
uation out of which the exigency had
arisen.
At Washington the long-drawn-out
nightmare of the treaty discussion
in the Senate has naturally over-
shadowed all other aspects of the Con-
gressional session. There has, of
course, been much valuable, as well
as necessary, work done in relation
to many of our governmental inter-
ests. But there has not been per-
ceptible any large purpose, either in
the direction of a return to normal
conditions of governmental expendi-
ture, or in that of other great meas-
ures called for by the extraordinary
circumstances of the time. Under
the pressure of a fixed time-limit, a
railroad bill has been passed which
is as good as could have been ex-
pected, and for their efficient work
upon which some Senators and Rep-
resentatives, notably Senator Cum-
mins, deserve high praise. But few
will claim that, whatever may have
been done in a number of particular
and even important fields. Congress
has risen to anything remotely ap-
proaching the need of the time. As
for the matter of the treaty itself,
fully as we are convinced that the
heaviest burden of responsibility for
its failure must rest upon President
Wilson, it is impossible to point to
the conduct of the Senate as a whole,
or to the leadership of either party
in it, as presenting a shining contrast
to the attitude of the President.
In the circumstance that both at
Albany and at Washington Legis-
lature and Executive stood in party
opposition to each other, there is
ground for consolatory, but also for
disturbing, reflection. That opposi-
tion undoubtedly suffices to explain a
great part of the impotence that we
have witnessed. One may comfort
oneself with the thought that the
paralyzing effect of such a situation
is the exception, not the rule, in our
system of government. But the ex-
ception is too frequent to be viewed
with complacency. Granting that, the
separation of powers which is funda-
mental in our Constitutional struc-
ture results in a balance of good, it is
impossible to shut one's eyes to the
price which has to be paid for the
attainment of that good. It has been
part of the misfortune of Mr. Wil-
son's career that, recognizing, as he
has always done, the great draw-
backs of this separation of powers,
he has acted upon the assumption
that he could remove those drawbacks
by ignoring, or almost ignoring, the
fact that the separation exists. So
long as the ship of state was sail-
ing in smooth waters, the theory that
he actually was captain and helms-
man and mate all in one worked
fairly well; but in the time of storm
and stress that simple method of ex-
orcising all difficulties very naturally
ceased to be effective. So long as we
have our present system, we have got
to work according to its rules ; if the
system is to be changed, it must be
changed deliberately. And it should
never be forgotten that the other sys-
tem— the British parliamentary sys-
tem— has its own checks and bal-
ances, though of a very different na-
ture from ours. To introduce the pre-
dominance of the Premier without his
responsibility, is a plan whose bold-
ness is not greater than its crudity, j
Unfortunately, whatever consola-
tion may be got from ascribing some
part of the failure either at Wash-
ington or at Albany to party dishar-
mony between the legislative and the
executive power, a vast amount of it
remains unaccountable in that way.
It was to no such cause that Speaker
Sweet's preposterous programme con-
cerning the Socialists was due, nor
the following that he received in the
Assembly. In the Senate at Washing-
ton, the absence of impressive and
coherent leadership in the treaty fight
is not to be explained by the fact that
the majority of the Senate was Re-
publican while the President was
Democratic; nor was the utter non-
entity of Democratic leadership in
the Senate attributable to that cause.
The truth is that we are at this
moment in an extremely poverty-
stricken condition as to the quality
of our representative assemblies. It
is quite possible that the average
calibre of the members of Congress
and of such a body as the New York
Legislature is as good as ever it was ;
and in point of political morality and
personal honesty the standard is
probably much higher than it has
been in the past. But of outstanding
personality, of men who mean some-
thing more than the humdrum every
day member, there is a woeful
scarcity. There is hardly a man in
either house of Congress — not to
speak of the New York Legislature —
whose words are eagerly looked for,
or whose judgment exercises power-
ful influence upon any considerable
section of the public. Whether this
is a passing condition or a permanent
one, there is little means of judging;
but it is a patent fact, and one which
sober Americans can not afford
lightly to dismiss from their thoughts.
May 1, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[449
If the Overallers Are in
Earnest
TT seems fairly clear by this time
■*• that overalls are not in them-
selves destined to spell salvation. It
is chiefly as a symbol of the desire —
and what, we judge, is practically far
more important, the necessity — for
economizing that the overall move-
ment is generally discussed. If that
desire exists in sufficient degree
— still more if that necessity exists in
sufficient degree — something is going
to happen of considerable importance,
overalls or no overalls. But it ought
not to be impossible to utilize the sud-
den burst of general interest in the
subject for the promotion of a clearer
understanding of the problem.
Probably of all the motives as-
signed for the overall movement the
one most frequently and conspicu-
ously put forvs^ard is the determina-
tion to check retail "profiteering."
There is reason to believe that re-
tail profits are in a large range of
cases higher than there is any need
of their being. Hovv^ much higher,
and to what extent the excess is to
be attributed to anything which justly
deserves the opprobrious epithet, are
questions wide open to conjecture.
But certain it is that of the millions
of persons who have welcomed the
overall movement, the majority are
convinced that a large part of what
they are suffering is due to the exor-
bitant profits of retailers.
But to fight these profits, if they
are anything like so unreasonable as
is generally believed, a method is
open far more effective than any spas-
modic display of abnormal frugality
can offer. There is no reason to sup-
pose that people in general will con-
tinue long to exercise that virtue
which, under the pleasing excitement
of a concerted drive, they may for a
time enthusiastically exhibit. A cer-
tain amount will indeed have been
saved, and that is so much to the
good ; provided it is really saved and
applied to the reduction of debt, or
the increase of production. But pres-
ently we shall have retail "business
as usual" again, and percentages of
retail profits will be about the same
as before. On the other hand, if the
protest against these profits has a
sound basis, and if the overallers are
sufficiently in earnest to be willing to
put thought and pains, as well as feel-
ing, into their movement, they can
produce results of a far more perma-
nent character.
It is a most striking circumstance
that, through all this agitation over
retail profiteering, one hears hardly a
word of the possibility of consumers'
cooperation. It is true that coopera-
tive stores never have been able to
make much headway in our cities,
but this has been largely due to the
fact that on the whole the well-being
of our people has been such as to
make the 10 per cent, saving, or there-
abouts, which is all that the Rochdale
stores in England have been able to
effect, too unimportant in the eyes of
our free-and-easy people to stimulate
them to the skilled and continuous
effort required for the successful
management of such an enterprise.
But matters are very different now.
Millions of persons in the middle
walks of life are suffering keenly
from the inadequacy of their unin-
creased, or slightly increased, in-
comes to meet the enormous advance
in prices, so that even a saving of
10 per cent., if it can be effected, will
be a matter of great importance to
them. And if anything like what is
usually alleged about the retail busi-
ness of these war and post-war years
is true, a far greater saving ought to
be possible. Furthermore, the very
conditions which make life so hard
for thousands of persons of the sal-
aried classes would make available
for important parts of the work of
management the services of large
numbers of men and women who are
seeking a change from their present
under-paid occupations.
To start, and to carry on with effi-
ciency and success, a cooperative
store requires, besides a firm and
clear-cut purpose, the devoted labor
of a considerable number of compe-
tent and trustworthy managers of the
undertaking. If, however, the overall
movement is something more substan-
tial than a bit of child-like enthu-
siasm for a novelty, and if the griev-
ance against the retailers is a real
one, surely there ought to be forth-
coming a sufficient number of persons
willing and able to perform those
functions for reasonable pay. Never-
theless, from what we know of the
American temper in such matters, we
should be loth to express any expec-
tation that the thing will be done, or
even seriously attempted. But there
is another thing that might be done
to effect the same object, and which
makes a far less exacting demand
whether on seriousness of purpose,
on thoughtfulness in planning, or
on special personal qualities in those
who carry on the undertaking. A
great stock company might be formed
upon ordinary business principles,
but dedicated to the purpose of
establishing reasonable rates of re-
tail profits. Every person who has
joined, either literally or figura-
tively, in the overall movement ex-
pects to save, by economy in the
course of the next few months, a tidy
little sum of money. In the city of
New York alone there may well be
supposed to be — if the movement
amounts to anything at all — a million
persons who should save not less than
an average of fifty dollars each. It
would take much less than fifty
million dollars to start a great general
store, or chain of stores. Even one
such store, with a capital of two or
three million dollars, would, if suc-
cessful, set an example that would be
of powerful and cumulative effect in
the control of prices. There have
been times when the objection might
have been raised that such a store
would be disastrously handicapped by
discrimination against it on the part
of manufacturers and jobbers. But
such discrimination would to-day be
made impossible either by specific
provisions of the law or by the im-
perious demand of public opinion.
The question before the people is
partly one of fact and partly one of
their own earnestness and competence
to deal with facts. It is easy to keep
howling about profiteers. It is easy
to egg on the officers of the law to
hunt down here and there some in-
dividual who is no more a criminal
than anybody else in the same line of
business, and send him to jail or
drive him to suicide. It is easy to
450]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 51
parade in overalls, and, as the experi-
ence of the other day showed, still
easier to stand on the sidewalk and
watch other people parade in them.
What people do not find easy is to
do a little sober and continuous think-
ing. Apart from that unfamiliar and
distasteful exertion, it is really just
as easy to form a stock company as
it is to do any of those other more
congenial stunts. It remains to be
seen whether the modicum of think-
ing and working necessary for the
purpose is going to be done.
The Newberry Verdict
"WTE print on another page a letter
" from Mr. Hal H. Smith, counsel
for Mr. Blair, who was treasurer of
the Newberry committee and dis-
burser of the fund which led to the
indictment and conviction of Mr.
Newberry, Mr. Blair, and others con-
nected with the campaign. Mr.
Smith objects to the editorial com-
ment in the Review for March 27 on
the outcome of the trial.
His first objection is that it was
stated that Mr. Newberry's letters
showed that "he had full knowledge
of the large sums used and gave con-
stant advice as to their expenditure."
As to this point, we may quote from
the charge of Judge Sessions, as re-
ported in the Detroit News at the
time:
If the jury was satisfied that Mr. Newberry,
at or about the time he became a candidate,
was made aware of the cost of the campaign,
and that it would be in excess of the amount
allowed by law, and if he thereafter advised,
counseled, procured or participated in the un-
lawful expenditure, they would be warranted
in holding him guilty.
On the evidence presented, including
a mass of letters and telegrams from
Mr. Newberry, the jury was satisfied
that Mr. Newberry had taken active
and unlawful part in the expenditures
under investigation. As to the effect
of these letters and telegrams, one of
the jurors was quoted by the Asso-
ciated Press representative, imme-
diately after the rendering of the ver-
dict, as saying: "The defense itself
had supplemented the scanty Govern-
ment proof that Mr. Newberry him-
self had taken an active part in the
campaign, and shown by his own
writing that he directed almost every
important move." The words of the
Review, in their natural interpreta-
tion, were in harmony, we think, with
the evidence given and with the ap-
parent interpretation of that evidence
by the Judge and the jury. We did
not say, of course, that Mr. New-
berry had advised or directed the
commission of a specific criminal act.
The offense lay not at one specific
point but in a totality of items of
which most, if not all, would have
been separately permissible, so far as
the criminal law is concerned. In
point of morals, the Review could not
make the same concession.
And this brings us to Mr. Smith's
second objection, that it was said that
"the wealth of Mr. Newberry himself
was lavishly used in violation of the
law and of political decency." The
exact words of the Review were, "the
wealth of Mr. Newberry himself, his
family and his friends, was lavishly
used in violation of the law and of
political decency." The difference is
quite evident: we were referring to
the campaign fund, and its use, as a
whole.
Of course the criminal law must
be strictly interpreted, and the ac-
cused must have the benefit of every
doubt. Yet the jury promptly arrived
at a verdict of con Miction. But when
the Review spoke of the violation of
political decency, it had in mind far
more than the criminal law can ever
hope adequately to cover. If neither
Federal nor State law had forbidden
the expenditure of the entire sum in-
volved, we should still feel obliged to
characterize such expenditure as a
violation of political decency. The
very lavishness of it was intended to
frighten away possible competing
candidates. Mr. Newberry himself
wrote, during the campaign, "I am
glad Mr. Warner is scared out. As
long as we keep up our publicity
work, it will be harder and harder
for a new man to get a start." We
shall not stop here to enumerate the
various forms of expenditure testi-
fied to in the trial and described by
Mr. Newberry and his supporters as
"publicity work," or advertising.
"Definition" of these terms ceases to
define, if it is stretched sufficiently to
include such activities as, for exam-
ple, the paying for solicitation of
names for the nomination of an extra
candidate to oppose Mr. Ford in the
Democratic primaries. Such uses of
money always have been corrupting
to any electorate, and can never be
anything else.
We can not agree with Mr. Smith,
however, in the opinion that the jury
convicted the defendants merely on
"the theory that the expenditure of a
large sum of money was wrong."
Both Congress and the Michigan Leg-
islature have put that theory into the
form of very definite statute law, and
it was under this that the jury ren-
dered its verdict. Nor can we find
any evidence that the trial itself was
"a hideous concession to popular
clamor and to the prejudice against
wealth." We venture the opinion
that most men of wealth are them-
selves fully convinced that a restraint
on this particular employment of
wealth is altogether wholesome and
necessary.
Into direct bribery — "corruption"
as it would be thought of under the
forms of criminal law as developed in
the past — men like Mr. Newberry
would not enter. That particular
kind of "moral turpitude" can not
rightly be laid to their charge. But
it is their misfortune not to have
grasped the higher conception of duty
and propriety in such matters which
is gradually bringing the law to a
higher level, and with which political
practice must conform just as fast
as it becomes law, if no faster. Can-
didates for office should note, too, that
the day has closed when they could
come off morally clear in the court of
sound public opinion through the plea
that they were ignorant of what their
own agents were doing. It is their
positive duty to know, and the public
good demands that they be held to
that duty. A political campaign con-
ducted in brutal disregard of these
nicer moral distinctions, which can
not always be easily covered by posi-
tive law, may be far more corrupting
in ultimate effect than the coarser
crimes of direct bribery and intimida-
tion.
May 1, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[451
"W
Branting Prime
Minister
HEN the Communists main-
tain," writes Karl Kautsky in
his "Terrorismus und Kommunis-
mus," "that democracy is in practice
the domination of the bourgeoisie,
one might answer them that the
dictatorship of the proletariat is in
practice a return to pre-bourgeois,
barbaric club-law. Democracy, with
its universal suffrage, is not the
domination of the bourgeoisie. The
latter, in its revolutionary period,
did, indeed, introduce a class fran-
chise, but after a long and heavy
struggle the proletariat obtained uni-
versal suffrage. This is a fact of
common knowledge, which the Com-
munists, however, seem to have for-
gotten. Democracy, with its universal
suffrage, points the way by which the
class war may be changed from a war
with the fist into a war with the
brain, where only that class can con-
quer which is its opponent's intel-
lectual and moral superior. Democ-
racy is the only way towards that
higher form of society which social-
ism means to civilized man."
Kautsky is the Nestor, and the
most learned, not only of German but
of European Socialists, and his word
still carries authority among the
leaders of the Labor parties of vari-
ous nationalities. His vindication of
democratic government as against
proletarian dictatorship is shared by
a large majority of the intellectual
exponents of Socialism. It is every-
where a minority that, captivated
by this magic catchword of uncer-
tain meaning, clamors for their
party's accession to the Third Inter-
nationale of Moscow. In Switzer-
land a resolution to that effect was
actually carried by the Socialist Con-
gress, but defeated again by a refer-
endum among the members of the
party. A similar resolution, moved
by the delegates from Paris, was re-
jected by the French Socialist Con-
gress at Strassburg. At the Easter
Congress of the Belgian Socialists
only one-fourth of the votes were cast
for the resolutions proposed by
Jacquemotte, the spokesman of the
Leninists. The majority agreed with
Kamiel Huysmans, who declared
that "the advocates of the Third
Internationale can only divide the
proletarians." This is, in fact, their
only achievement: they have caused
a cleavage in Labor by their ad-
vocacy of a Russian Socialism which
can not appeal to the average work-
men of Western Europe who, in
spite of Marxian doctrines and re-
ligiously memorized definitions of
capitalism, class war, etc., has much
more in common with the bourgeois
of his own country than with the
"free" proletarian of Russia.
In Sweden evolutionary Socialism
has reached a stage which it has not
attained in any other country of
Europe. The development has been
extraordinary in its rapidity. It is
only a few years ago that Premier
Staaff, the leader of the Liberal
party, was forced to resign and hand
the reins of Government to a con-
servative successor, and now the So-
cialist Hjalmar Branting is at the
head of affairs, with a Cabinet of So-
cialist Ministers only. The Swedish
nation does not yet stand on the
threshold of the Socialist millen-
nium. "The general ideas of the So-
cial-democratic party have not gained
sufficient adherence among the people
and their representatives to make a
Government like this Socialistic one
of ours a parliamentary necessity."
In these words Branting admitted
the precarious position of his Cab-
inet, which compels him to restrict
his Socialistic programme to those
projects which he may expect to
realize with the help of the Liberal
party, such as the reform of munici-
pal taxation, treatment of the housing
problem, reform of the defense sys-
tem necessitated by Sweden's acces-
sion to the League of Nations, and
socialization of some branches of
production and commerce, which is
tentatively thrown in along with the
rest.
A bourgeois Government under
Socialist disguise, Branting's Cab-
inet is called by the radical wing of
his party. There is some truth in
the taunt. But those who make it
should at least admit that Branting
and his colleagues have not donned
the disguise to conceal their identity
from a hostile bourgeois mob, but only
to win the goodwill and support of a
peace-loving nation whose democratic
constitution, of bourgeois make, has
enabled them to rise to their present
position. It is up to them to con-
vince the people, by the practical re-
sults of their legislative and admin-
istrative activity, of the excellence of
the Socialist doctrine. The proof of
the pudding is in the eating; by
merely hearing the recipe read the
people can not be persuaded of its
excellence.
That the left wing of the party dis-
approves of Branting's acceptance of
the Government need not be wondered
at. It is a matter of general experi-
ence that the Socialist who shoulders
responsibility for the management of
the country's affairs loses his dog-
matic rigidity and is apt to slide back
to bourgeois moderation. To-day's
conservative rulers are the radicals of
yesterday, when they were not yet in
power. Hence the fear of the ex-
tremists lest the party by coming
into power should stray from its dog-
matic seclusion and become fused
with the bourgeois liberals and rad-
icals. In order to prevent such fall-
ing off the extremists have stated
their minimum demands, and if Mr.
Branting does not comply with these
at their own speed they will probably
call a political strike to force his
hands. These reformers of Lenin's
school will not believe that Rome was
not built in a day, nor will they be-
lieve, which is worse, that in a day
Alba Longa could be destroyed.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Corporatioh
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars a ^ear in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England-
Copyright^
1920, in the United States
America
of
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Ayres O. W. Firkins
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson
Jerome Landfield
452]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 51
Behind the Financing of China
(IN FOUR PARTS — PART IV)
THE reopening of the closing door
in the Far East is the purpose of
the revived American financial activ-
ity which resulted in the Consortium.
Its success or failure determines the
fate of Japan's persistent efforts to
revive the spheres of influence which,
since 1900, have been demonstrated
to be inimical to the peaceful develop-
ment of the Chinese Republic. Its
significance is fully grasped by the
Elder Statesmen and their star-
chamber associates dominating the
Cabinet from behind the throne. And
it is for that reason that they speak
of Japan's "special position" in the
Far East. Japan's "special position"
is incompatible with the Consortium.
Had it not been for the war, Japan
would appear to-day as a minor
economic factor with no other than
political claims for participating in
the inevitable cooperative financing
of China so nearly consummated in
1914. Japan is aware that the war
broke down the balance of power in
the Far East. Its prolongation gave
the Japanese military party the op-
portunity to resuscitate the discred-
ited diplomacy which based itself
on regional monopolies under rival
Powers. If this involves the impair-
ment of China's integrity, it involves
also the virtual leadership of Japan.
The problem, then, is whether
Japan's affirmation of her "special
position" can be reconciled with a
necessarily cooperative financing of
China. Its solution must take into
account the generally successful
tactics of the Japanese statesmen.
(1) They attempt to block the pro-
posal prejudicial to their interests by
direct opposition. (2) If this fails,
they skilfully turn to indirect methods
of obstruction. (3) As a last resort,
they unqualifiedly accepted the pro-
I>osal "in principle," and then drive
the best bargain they can with re-
gard to its application in practice.
(4) This compromise becomes the
starting point for a new set of
manoeuvres with hope that the thou-
sandth chance may prove the reward
of a venturesome statecraft.
The repudiation by Japan of the
terms of the Inter-Group Agreement
of May, 1919 — her nullification, in
fact, of the Consortium — carried Jap-
anese statesmen to the point where
American pressure forced them to a
compromise. Her original opposition
had been based on the determination
of the military party in Tokyo to keep
intact the Japanese hegemony over
Manchuria, Mongolia adjacent to the
Three Eastern Provinces, and pre-
sumably the ex-German rights in
Shantung. Bowing to the inevitable,
Japan's Foreign Office was instructed
to seek the best way out.
It is no secret that the British Gov-
ernment, late in November, 1919 —
doubtless prompted by her Japanese
ally — cited the Ishii-Lansing Agree-
ment as justifying the exclusion of
Mongolia and Manchuria from the
scope of the Consortium under
our implied recognition of Japan's
"special position." Our Government
at once informed Britain that such
recognition was not intended to imply
a monopoly or a priority of economic
or industrial rights. Attention was
expressly directed to the concluding
clauses of this much-discussed agree-
ment, which specifically and without
qualification — the State Department
so declared — preserved the principle
of equality of commercial and indus-
trial opportunity through the whole
of China. This, of course, was but
the State Department's formal re-
iteration of ex-Secretary Lansing's
public testimony giving the lie to the
sedulously circulated official state-
ments of the Japanese Government
that the United States had accept-
ed the "special position" doctrine in
1917.
The reasonable interpretation of
Japan's reaffirmation of the Con-
sortium is that she recognizes the
case has gone against her. Granted
Japan has been given considerable
latitude in the definition of her
vested interests in North China, the
fact remains that the United States
has retained ample means to bring
the Japanese War Office cabal to
time. And without much more than
she obtains under the present state of
the Consortium, her dream of empire
in Eastern Asia must remain in great
part a dream. The future of her rail-
and-iron policy lay in the acquisition
of the dormant Russian rights for
future construction in North Man-
churia and Mongolia, as well as in her
unfettered ability to weave a web
stretching from Shantung into Cen-
tral Asia on China's other flank. But
these are schemes upon which no
"substantial progress" has been
made ; accordingly, Japan really loses
the key to her expansion westward
on the continent planned for the next
hundred years.
Japan's attitude as defined in her
semi-official pronouncements springs
from her need to protect "vital Jap-
anese interests." Under the old con-
ditions, it is true, ruthless competi-
tion among the Powers did threaten
Japan's position in the East. But
under the Consortium all legitimate
interests of Japan are conserved.
The Consortium does, however,
threaten the strategic points of Jap-
anese expansion within her neigh-
bor's domains. Japanese imperial-
ism, pushed into a corner, justifies
itself by declaring that other nations
in the past have employed aggressive
tactics against China. Obviously, for
the peace of the future a broader
point of view than this is needed in
the Far East. Japan, or any other
Power, can not set herself against the
cooperative handling of the Chinese
problem, which is striving to redress
old wrongs and insists upon re-
nouncing new aggressions.
The Consortium will once more
make the Open-Door policy, formu-
lated by Secretary Hay two decades
ago, a vital factor in support of
China's integrity. It is essential to
peace in the Pacific. Under American
leadership the Consortium means the
democratizing of money-power in the
East. The State Department — bar-
ring the possibility of the President's
reversing our position as a token oi
friendship which is to lead Japar
into better ways — has achieved itf
ends ; for Japan has been aligned with
us on the fundamental propositior
that China's future development musi
be handled by joint action. In so fai
May 1, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[458
as the Consortium, with American
leadership, can demonstrate to Jap-
anese business that its future is
brightest under conditions which as-
sure to Japan China's friendship, the
support of the Powers, and a vast
share in the work itself, it offers a
way to break the grip of the War Of-
fice junto. That means everything to
China, to ourselves, and to a stable
world.
Charles Hodges
Propaganda and the News
fT^HE chorus of protest against the
■'- alleged suppression or falsifica-
tion of news by the capitalist press
has its ridiculous as well as its seri-
ous phase. No person who has de-
voted himself to unpopular causes,
no person who has employed himself
in the gathering and handling of
exact information, will deny that
there is ample cause for complaint.
Unfortunately, however, the com-
plainants do not, as a rule, come into
court with unsoiled hands. They
are mainly the revolutionary, rad-
ical, and pseudo-liberal journals
that are playing the same game
they attribute to others. What they
really object to is the suppression
or falsification 7iot of facts per se,
but of facts or fabrications con-
ceived by them to be favorable to
their own programmes, causes, or
theories. By their own habitual
practice they confirm this statement.
From the frothiest revolutionary
sheet to the most pretentious of the
critical journals they pick and choose
the material useful to their purposes
and trim unuseful material to the
same end. To the inconvenient fact
they are, as a rule, coldly inhospi-
table or actively belligerent. They
ignore it, or they assault it, and
mutilate it beyond recognition. They
are the advocates of a double stand-
ard. For themselves to sort and re-
ject and trim is highly ethical. They
do it in the name of truth, justice,
democracy, loyalty to the people (or
to the working class), and devotion
to the cause of one or another of a
score of "isms." But for the cap-
italist press to do a similar thing,
with no pretense to a higher moral-
ity, is anti-social.
One must distinguish between the
two general classes of journals which
are parties to this controversy — the
one, usually a daily, which is chiefly
a purveyor of news, and the other,
usually a weekly, which is chiefly a
purveyor of opinion and propaganda.
Of course, neither keeps to an ex-
clusive field; the daily has its edi-
torials, and even the most opinion-
ated of the weeklies gives space to
what it calls news. The propaganda
journal, while reserving the right to
give its readers only what it thinks
is meet and fit for them, denies this
right to the news journal and insists
that the latter furnish an adequate
and impartially written record of
happenings.
The contention is, on the whole,
sound, even though the circum-
stances under which it is made are
so absurd. We have a right to de-
mand of the purveyors of news that
they give us the facts. It is the gen-
eral conviction that they do not do
this. Their delinquency is not so
great as Mr. Upton Sinclair pictures
it in "The Brass Check," or as
Mr. Walter Lippmann, by repeated
innuendo, implies it to be in "Liberty
and the News." It is, however, a
real one. Men disagree, of course,
as to what matters are inadequately
or unfairly treated in the news; but
they agree that the news is qualita-
tively or quantitatively affected by
the editorial attitude. The average
reader who is in accord with the edi-
torial attitude on a particular sub-
ject usually finds the news treat-
ment of that subject satisfactory;
the reader who is not in accord finds
the treatment inadequate or unfair.
The ignorance and inexperience of
reporters, the complexity of subjects
or situations dealt with, the conflict
of testimony from which news ac-
counts must be written, the some-
times amazing obtuseness of copy-
readers (who prepare the "stuff" for
the printers) — these and other fac-
tors contribute to the result. But to
most men, and especially to those
who are or have been on the inside,
the factor of the editorial attitude is
chief.
I can not undertake, for the pres-
ent, to sustain this view, which is dis-
puted by the defendants, further than
to say that the editors and writers
on the propaganda journals furnish
in themselves a sufficient confirma-
tion. It would be singular if the
proneness to manipulate the news to
accord with their policies, which
they so clearly show, should not in
some degree at least be shared by the
editors and writers of the news jour-
nals. Nor can I now enter upon a
consideration of remedies. The mat-
ter about which I am here mainly
concerned is a comparison of the re-
liability of information given on the
one hand by the nev^s journals and
on the other hand by the journals of
open or disguised propaganda.
One who seeks the truth about any
happening in which a political or a
social issue is involved must give his
days and nights to the scrutiny of
many sources of information. What
one newspaper or periodical fur-
nishes him is contradicted or omitted
by another; and for every point of
view there is offered a special set of
alleged facts. One must test and
compare; one must strive to know
the interest — material, doctrinal, or
sentimental — which the journal or
its special writer holds in the mat-
ter ; and if one can not get this from
outside sources, one must learn to
detect it between the lines of the ac-
count. It is an endless and an awful
task; but if an approximation to the
truth is really wanted, the task will
be undertaken.
The testimony here offered is that
of one who has spent a great number
of his days in the gathering and com-
piling of what is known as exact in-
formation. It is also the testimony
of one who, by conviction and long
habit, is a partisan of a particular
school of social radicalism; and, still
further, of one whose interest in the
manifold phases of radicalism has
made him an avid reader of prop-
aganda. The mournful judgment
must be recorded that most of the
stuff labelled "information" appear-
454]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 5
ing in the radical and pseudo-liberal
press is utterly unreliable. Much of
it is flagrantly false; much of it is
fragmentary, true enough in itself
but false in its implication; much of
it is trimmed, colored, "doctored" to
accord with a particular view. Some-
times, indeed, the insurgent period-
ical prints facts or figures of great
value which have been suppressed or
distorted by the regular news jour-
nals; but for every service of this
kind that it renders it perpetrates a
score of offenses against the truth.
There is every reason — except an
ethical one — why this should be so.
The bias of the insurgent reader and
the bias of the insurgent editor are
usually in accord, and the result fol-
lows. The reader wants facts, near-
facts, or fabrications that sustain his
social theory, 'that confirm his sus-
picions, that feed his prejudices, and
that warm up his antipathies. The
editor or writer on an insurgent
periodical who does not understand
this truth and conform to it finds
himself without a job.
The capitalist news journal ap-
peals to a more general audience. It
must, in the nature of things, give
a fairer presentation of the news.
There are, it is true, in most
newspaper offices certain recognized
tyrannies that must be obeyed — the
department-store tyranny, the index
expurgatorius of "enemies of the
paper," and that other index — ^the
list of good men and true, "friends
of the paper," who must always be
spoken of with respect. There is,
also, the obvious fact that most daily
newspapers — especially those which
are members of the Associated Press
— are upholders of the capitalist sys-
tem, and that that system is not de-
liberately made to appear at a dis-
advantage in the news. But though
the editors and owners are com-
mitted to the prevailing system, all
the reporters and news writers are
not. Indeed, many of them are rad-
icals of one sort or another. The
popular notion (as it appears in the
insurgent journals) that all of these
persons are more or less conscious
prostitutes, selling their souls in
order that they may hold their posi-
tions, is insulting fiction. There are
men enough, and too many, indiffer-
ent as to what they write so long
as it brings rewards; but, as a rule,
it may be said that the reporter on
a capitalist news journal, at once
sympathizing with insurgency and
indulging in the luxury of a con-
science, who does not know how to
write his reports fairly without
jeoparding his job, is deficient in
common sense. In his attempt to
wTite honestly he fares immeasur-
ably better than he would if he were
employed on a Socialist, radical, or
pseudo-liberal journal.
Insurgent editors and writers
acknowledge the fairness of the cap-
italist news service when it suits
them to do so — when the material
given is useful to their purposes.
They depreciate or denounce it when
the material is inconvenient. With
all allowances made for the obvious
derelictions of the regular news jour-
nals, it is still to be said that they
print the news. Along with much
that is trivial, much that is mere
baseless gossip, and much that is de-
liberately colored, they print most of
the worth-while information (other
than statistical — and some of that)
upon which we rely. The news ac-
counts in the insurgent journals are,
in the main, notoriously undepend-
able; they are discounted, even by
the insurgent following, when sin-
cerely seeking the truth.
Instances, covering no more than
the last two years, of the stupidly
dishonest ways in which the news
is manipulated or suppressed by the
insurgent journals could easily be
piled up in sufficient volume to fill
an entire issue of the Review.
Strikes, the I. W. W., Russia, Mex-
ico, Germany, the Allies, the Peace
Conference, Belgium, Czechoslovakia
are subjects upon which a partic-
ular activity of commission or omis-
sion is habitually shown. The en-
thusiastic credence given to the tes-
timony of hand-picked and pap-fed
correspondents regarding Russia, and
the entire ignoring of the testimony
of the most intelligent and trust-
worthy Socialist regarding that land,
has been characteristic of the insur-
gent, and particularly the Socialist,
press, since November, 1917. A sim-
ilar policy has been followed regard
ing Mexico, though, very recently
through the breaking out of an amus
ing controversy in the columns of on
of the most radical of the revolutior
ary journals, some essential fact:
well known to others, have been con
municated to the insurgent work
They were, of course, unwelcom
facts, and the informant was sharpl
rebuked by his opponent.
Then there are Belgium an
Czechoslovakia. All Socialist, sem:
Socialist, "radical democratic," an
"intellectual radical" journals migh
be supposed to be interested in th
fact that these countries, under go\
ernments in which democratic Socia'
ists have a large measure of powei
are making rapid progress. The tes
timony regarding Belgium is vc
luminous; regarding Czechoslovak
hardly less so. Of the latter countr
Charles R. Crane has been recentl
reported as saying that "it is politi
cally the sanest and healthiest spot i
Europe." In the days before 191
the insurgent papers, and partieu
larly the Socialist party papers, woul
have given columns and pages to th
exploitation of such news. But, as
matter of fact, nearly every Socialis
paper and almost all the papers in th
other branches of insurgency hav
wholly ignored the subject. Why
Because all these papers are ii
greater or less degree the partisan
of Bolshevism. To praise, even t
mention, the orderly, legalistic Socia
Democratic progress in Belgium am
Czechoslovakia would be impliedl;
to condemn the sort of thing that ha
happened in Russia. To omit all men
tion is the safer course ; and besides
it gives more space in which to de
nounce the capitalist press for it
suppression of the truth.
As a constructive radical, I shoul
prefer to believe that the greater vii
tue of practice, no less than of prt
cept, is to be found in at least som
of the organs of radicalism. Bu
long experience and a reasonabl
close application to the subject con
pel me to say that in this matter c
the manipulation of the news th
radical journals are much worse tha
the capitalist journals.
W. J. Ghent
May 1, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[455
Asia, Europe, and Bolshevism
Is Russian Bolshevism a danger for the
non-Russian world? Yes, and no.
For some Powers it is a great one, for
others it is hardly a danger at all. As a
military power it no longer signifies
much, and its armies can be dangerous
only to internally feeble states. Except
in a limited way, its propaganda west-
ward has little force remaining. Towards
the East, on the other hand, its propa-
ganda has gained in strength, and Great
Britain, now the real ruler of West,
South, and, part at least, of Middle Asia,
will be the first to notice its effects.
The situation in Soviet Russia is very
peculiar. To the foreign onlooker the
Bolshevist state gives an impression of
tremendous power. It has defeated, one
after another, the Russian generals who,
from the south, the east, and the west,
made an attempt to restore the old Rus-
sia. Yudenich, who advanced within
sight of Petrograd, possessed no real
strength, at most 20,000 unreliable
troops, and the victory over him was
gained by the Bolsheviki with the tanks
which, in the spring of 1919, the French,
when evacuating Odessa, had left behind
on the quay of the harbor. Kolchak and
Denikin were much stronger, but they
failed owing to peasants' risings in their
rear. The best work for the Soviet Gov-
ernment against Denikin was done by
the Ukrainian peasants who were stirred
to resistance by the uncompromising
Great-Russian nationalism of Denikin
and his opposition to the national
spirit of the Ukraine. Hence the land
he had reclaimed from the Red forces
was left, in the rear of his advancing
army, to a hostile population, which
lamed his action against the Reds.
Military campaigns on a large scale
against a well-equipped enemy are im-
practicable for the Bolsheviki because of
the dilapidation of the Russian railroads.
Local lines are not worked any more,
and on the main lines run, a few times a
week, exclusively Government trains, in
which private travelers can obtain pass-
age by means of excessive bribes or by
forged passports. Nor could the am-
munition factories produce the supplies
that would be required for a real fighting
campaign. They are kept going by the
lure of what under present Russian con-
ditions may be called fantastically luxu-
i rious board and lodging for the work-
: men. In spite of all its violent measures
I to stimulate production the Soviet Gov-
ernment has not succeeded in keeping
the remnants of Russian industries fit
for the upkeep and supply of numerous
armies. All figures which they publish
about their fighting forces are greatly
exaggerated. Besides, the Soviet troops
would be a poor match for an efficient
and well-equipped enemy. Their dis-
cipline has been restored by barbaric
severity, but no troops can fight well
which know themselves greatly inferior
to the enemy in material equipment.
The weakest spot of Bolshevism in
Russia (apart from the fact that the re-
suscitation of its industry is a task be-
yond its strength) is the passivity of the
peasants, who form more than 80 per
cent, of the population in Soviet Russia.
The peasant cares not for Bolshevism
and Communism; he has left the old
Russian community of the village, the
"mir," a few strong and well-to-do in-
dividuals having usurped control of the
villages and kept the poor and the dis-
possessed in subjection. The peasants
lack, indeed, all urban manufactures, but
they can provide for their clothing and
their food from what they produce them-
selves; only a few iron utensils, such as
needles and axes, they have to buy at
exorbitant prices. Economic conditions
in rural districts of Soviet Russia are
most primitive, but the peasant subsists
independently of the Bolsheviki, who
control only the principal towns and the
railroads. In making a forecast of
Russia's future one must not lose sight
of the fact that the bourgeoisie, the great
landowners, the capitalists of the cities,
and the industries are altogether ruined,
that the landowners can never return,
and that a peasant democracy of a crude,
semi-Asiatic type is the most likely form
of constitution for Russia after the fall
of Bolshevism. The duration of the
Soviet Government will largely depend
on its skill to eke out the dwindling rem-
nants of railroad stock and industrial
plants. It need not fear any military
aggression from outside, as the new
border States evolved from the old Russia
lack the necessary power, and the work-
ers of both England and France are set
against armed intervention in Russia. It
is easy to see why the Soviet Government
is so anxious to resume commercial rela-
tions with the Western World. A re-
cuperation of means of transportation
and a revival of Russian industry by the
establishment of new plants would seat
the Bolsheviki more firmly in the saddle.
But it is a mistake to expect that Soviet
Russia, in its turn, will be able to meet
large orders for the European market.
There is no surplus of grain, as the
peasants produce no more than they need
themselves. There is plenty of wood in
the forests of the north, but the lack
of means for its transport puts it out of
the reach of the foreign trader.
In spite of its internally weak position,
the Soviet Government is energetically
active on all sides. In the west its chief
object of aggression is Poland. If mili-
tary superiority were to turn the scale,
Russia would not be able to cope with
Poland, but the rulers in Moscow know
that the Polish army, the Polish work-
men, and, in part, the Polish peasants
are not impervious to the political prop-
aganda of the Bolsheviki. The Polish
army is numerically stronger than the
forces which the Soviet Government, by
an extreme effort, could muster against
it. It is also better equipped and has
some eminent French staff officers. But
as a fighting instrument against a Bol-
shevist army it is unreliable, and an of-
fensive of Soviet troops on the Polish
front would probably be accompanied by
labor revolts and peasants' riots in Po-
land itself. Another factor making for
internal weakness is the inclusion of so
many non-Polish races within the new
Polish frontiers. A Bolshevist advance
would probably not be brought to a
standstill until it had reached the
German provinces of Poland, where the
people are more advanced and more ac-
customed to an established political order.
Germany herself may be expected to have
no difficulty in resisting a Bolshevist in-
vasion, as the new German army, the
Reichswehr, can be relied upon and is
superior in military efl5ciency to the
forces of the Soviet Republic.
But the Bolshevists' schemes are far
more ambitious in the east than in the
west. Asia is to be won for Bolshevism.
This idea is less fantastic than it might
seem at first glance. In Asia the Bolshe-
viki want to strike a blow at England.
Lenin recently delivered an address at
Moscow, in which, among other things,
he said that the Communist propaganda
among Oriental peoples must be changed
and adapted to their peculiar psychology.
In order to vanquish Europe, Bolshevism
ought to force for itself a way towards
the Far East, and there crush, first of all,
the power of Great Britain. England now
rules from the Caucasus to India; but
she does not only rule, she exploits the
Asiatic peoples. Under her direct or in-
direct government she unites nearly the
entire Mohammedan population of Asia.
The Islamic world knows only one antag-
onist: England. Early last winter Mo-
hammedan representatives, who had come
to Moscow in the deepest secrecy, entered
there into a compact with the Soviet
Commissaries for the purpose of a joint
propaganda in behalf of the "liberation
of Asia" from the Bosphorus to Malacca,
and to the northernmost frontiers of
China. In the autumn of 1919 the
Soviet Government had already estab-
lished a special committee for Turkestan
and Afghanistan. The Commissary for
Asia in the Foreign Ofliice at Moscow is
a Mohammedan, Karachan. The rail-
roads running from Russia to the
Afghan frontiers are almost entirely in
the hands of the Bolsheviki. In Mos-
cow they have established a university
4o6]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 51
for Bolshevist propaganda in Asia, for
which the Soviet Government has appro-
priated fifty million rubles in gold and
one billion paper rubles. Young-Turkish
delegates, emissaries of Mustapha Kemal
Pasha, Afghans, Persians, Caucasians,
Indians, Chinese, come and go at Mos-
cow and in the Asiatic sub-committees of
the Soviet Government, and the Islamic
agitation joins with that of the Bolshe-
viki in the cry: "Away with the sup-
pressors !" who to the Bolsheviki are the
capitalists, to the Moslems the foreigners
and faithless.
The strength of the Bolshevist ad-
vance in Asia is in the absence among
the Orientals of any feelings of nation-
ality, which form the principal check to
their progress in Europe. According to
the Bolshevist press of Moscow, a propa-
ganda train, with the well-knovra female
agitator Balabanowa (to judge from her
name, a woman of Tatar descent) at the
head of the mission, left Moscow recently
for the Orient. The train was given the
name "The Red East." The mission is
equipped with an abundance of material
for agitation, among other things with
movie films, and numbers a great many
popular orators of various nationalities
and creeds, Tatars, Kirghizes, Bash-
kirs, Afghans, Persians, Indians, able to
speak the numerous tongues of Asia, and
driven by ardent fanaticism. Their aim
is the overthrow of British power in
Asia. That achieved, they hope for a
crushing reaction in Europe. Eccentric
though these plans may seem, and verg-
ing on the fantastic, they must not be
underestimated oi; ridiculed. The Eng-
lish are far from regarding them as
harmless. The growing anxiety about
the Bolshevist danger in Asia finds a
vent in the British press. The surest
test as to whether the Bolsheviki make
successful progress in the East will prob-
ably be the Entente's change of attitude
with regard to the revision of the peace
treaties with Central Europe.
Dr. Paul Rohrbach
Berlin
M. Millerand, the French Premier
ALTHOUGH the average reader over
here is more interested in Presi-
dents than in Premiers, on the other side
of the Atlantic it is the Premiers that
count and not the Presidents. That is
why M. Millerand received very little
attention as long as he was only a
Prime Minister. A prize fighter and a
midnight folly dancer easily beat him in
the space granted by our dailies and in
the curiosity of the public. Now, how-
ever, that he has tackled and settled a
big railroad strike and appeared before
Europe as the most outspoken and reso-
lute advocate of the full enforcement of
the treaty of Versailles, his name is be-
ginning to emerge in the world's lime-
light.
M. Millerand is a Parisian born in
Paris, a most uncommon thing nowadays
among those who call themselves Pari-
sians. That was in 1859 and makes him
just two years younger than M. Paul
Deschanel. Little is known about his
early life except that he studied in two
good lycees of the capital, took his law
degree at the University, and entered the
bar, where he obtained an honor which
seems in France to be the first sign of a
great political career: he was elected
"secretary of the conference," the con-
ference being a sort of debating society
organized and administered by the Paris
lawyers. Before him Grevy and Ribot,
and after him Poincare and Barthou
bore the same title.
When he entered politics, in the early
eighties, and began to write for the
newspapers, the French Government was
being run by the men who to-day are
looked upon as the patriarchs of the
Third Republic — men who have boule-
vards named after them and statues
erected in their honor both in Paris and
in the provinces. But Gambetta and
Jules Ferry, who, after their death, were
universally acknowledged as \/ise states-
men, were then the object of the most
bitter attacks of an impatient youth.
Paris was as it always has been from
the dawn of history, a city of opposition.
Hardly any one who was not an extrem-
ist, in one direction or another, had any
chance, of election. The most popular
papers were those which carried on a
continuous and often scurrilous cam-
paign against the Government. The
municipal council was controlled partly
by wild demagogues and ex-communists,
and the deputies of the capital came
mostly from the extreme parties.
Millerand was brought up in that at-
mosphere; being a Parisian, he naturally
was of the opposition and, more than
likely, enjoyed with all his contempora-
ries the witty and scathing articles in
which Rochefort was then showing up
now Gambetta, now Jules Ferry. Clem-
enceau especially was in those days the
hero of the young radicals. Millerand
enlisted under his banner and, for the
first few years after his entrance in Par-
liament, sat under him at the extreme
left and learned from him the deadly
warfare in which Clemenceau was past
master.
Perhaps it is his temperament, per-
haps also his experiences of early life,
that threw him in the opposition, first
with the radicals and afterwards with
the Socialists. At any rate, as a young
lawyer, he became immediately the ad-
vocate of the revolutionary groups who
were then being prosecuted by a con-
servative Government which believed in
the "big stick." His first criminal case
was in 1882 when he defended some
striking miners of Montceau les Mines
guilty of violence. His name became
widely known. Like Viviani and Briand
later, he was to be, from that time on,
the favorite criminal lawyer of all the
militant workingmen.
When he joined Socialism, around 1890,
Socialism was getting to be all the
rage. Students, literary men, profes-
sors, artists were flocking to the ranks of
the new faith. Jaures abandoned for it
the moderate and opportunist party,
where he could have had anything he
wanted, and Millerand left what he
thought was a sterile parliamentary
guerrilla for what he considered a widei^
and more worthy field of activity.
To show that he meant business, he
lent the already great authority of his
name and his talent to the Socialist
ticket. In 1892 he went to Lille to sup-
port the candidacy of one of the most
pronounced Marxists, Paul Lafargue,
and, the following year, he was elected
as a Socialist by the same district that
had voted for him as radical and later
was to elect him again as a half-con-
servative. When, a few years later, the
Socialists needed a man to expound their
doctrine, it was to Millerand that they
appealed.
He explained one day his adherence to
Socialism by his ambition to give to the
Socialist party "more cohesion and more
discipline, a better sense of realities and
also to render France and the Republic
the service of disciplining these masses
too easily accessible to the appeal of vio-
lence." He said that, however, ten years
later, when he was already leaving the
party, having failed in his endeavor to
discipline it. He stayed with it until
1900 and, although he did not commit
himself too much, he shared in the glory
of his party when, under Jaures and
Pressense, it waged the admirable fight
for justice in favor of a poor Jewish of-
ficer, victim of clerical and military fa-
naticism. That was the "heroic period"
of French Socialism, period of militancy,
of enthusiasm, and of illusions, a period
during which the Socialists won, at times
the admiration of all liberal republicans
For its noble attitude the Socialisi
party was rewarded in the person of Mil
lerand. When in 1899 Waldeck-Rousseai
formed his Ministry of "republican de
fense" to liquidate the Dreyfus affair, h<
took this Socialist into his Cabinet. I
was a bold stroke; hence the scandal am
the uproar were great. If Millerand hai
remained an extreme radical, that wouli
have seemed very plausible; but he wa
a Socialist, a sensible, practical, business
like Socialist, to be sure, but an orthodo:
Socialist nevertheless. Was it not Mil
May 1, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[457
lerand who, a few years before, in 1896,
at St. Mande, had, in an epoch-making
address, laid down the law of the party,
the immovable dogmas the acceptance of
which was compulsory if one was to be
counted a Socialist? And among those
doctrines was the gradual suppression of
private ownership, the abolition of the
wage-earning system, etc., etc. M. Wal-
deck-Rousseau overlooked the St. Mande
speech. He knew Millerand to be a
sound, hard-working, pragmatic type of
man; he had heard him many times in
the courts. He knew he must give the
Socialists a place in his Cabinet and he
chose the Socialist who seemed the least
afflicted with "ideology."
It did not take long for Millerand to
find out that his party was not quite as
accommodating as himself about this col-
laboration with the "bourgeois" Govern-
ment. In convention after convention,
from 1901 to 1903, his case was brought
up, discussed, his actions condemned, his
personality upbraided. He appeared once
as an accused man to hear Herve (who
now admires him unreservedly) indict
him for desertion and treason to the
"cause." Millerand attended for a while
these tribunals of the Holy Socialist In-
quisition, defended himself as best he
could until, in January, 1903, he was of-
ficially expelled. He called himself, from
that time on, an independent Socialist,
whatever that may mean, and it means
very little if we are to judge by the case
of the two other "independent" ones,
Briand and Viviani, who have also lost
the faith and who seemed since to have
found the bourgeois Government a pretty
good makeshift, while waiting for the
millennium that they once preached.
It is only fair to state that, during
his passage in the Ministry of Commerce,
this Socialist carried out some of his
ideas of social reform; law on protection
to women and children, law on the lia-
bility of employers, law that gave the
ten-hour day to more than a million
workmen, bills on compulsory arbitration,
bills for workingmen's pensions ; all this
shows that he had not betrayed his
friends during his two years of coopera-
tion with the "bourgeois." It is neces-
sary to state, likewise, that he has always
condemned recourse to violence. To the
miners of the Loire he dared to say, in
1902, that Socialism should expect "the
liberation of humanity from its own ef-
forts and from its own free and tenacious
endeavor" and not from a revolutionary
outburst.
That is enough to prove that Millerand
was getting ready for an active and con-
sistent cooperation with the parties of
"orderly progress." In 1910 he was the
Minister of Public Works of M. Briand,
and in 1912 the Minister of War of M.
Poincare. From that time on, his last
Socialist friends abandoned him. His
effort, two years before the war, to
awaken and maintain the military spirit
in France by the musical parades every
Saturday night, and by a special atten-
tion given to the morale of the soldiers,
made him the butt of the sarcasms and
quips of his former associates. Millerand
was accused of being a "nationalist,"
and the accusation, if it be one, is not
absolutely wrong. The Parisian has al-
ways combined an ardent chauvinism
with very advanced political views.
Millerand's name is undoubtedly linked
with the patriotic revival that charac-
terized the years preceding the war.
However that may be, Millerand's pas-
sage in the War Office had won for him
the confidence of the army and of its
chiefs. When Caillaux and later Viviani
came into power, he was replaced by
some one else. But, at the end of the
first month of the war, his methodical
mind, his intelligence, and tenacious labor
brought him back to the same depart-
ment, where it then took a man capable
of coping with the colossal problems with
which France was then confronted. M.
Millerand made good in the organization
of the task of giving the army quanti-
ties of ammunition that had to be pre-
pared on a scale never dreamed of before.
His services were not forgotten, even if
they were, in the course of events, dis-
pensed with. He gave way to Gallieni
when the disappointments of the cam-
paign brought a change in the Govern-
ment.
He did not stay long out of govern-
mental activity. When, in 1919, a few
clumsy officials were threatening to make
a mess of the delicate and momentous
work of the administration of Alsace-
Lorraine, when again it took a man out
of the ordinary to start things right in
the new province, to facilitate the transi-
tion and to decide on the compromises
necessary between the old regime and
the new, Clemenceau turned to his former
lieutenant, who had, since those early
days, like his chief himself, learned much
about the art of government. There, too,
he made good and his prestige was at
its highest. Therefore, when Clemen-
ceau retired and the new President of
the Republic had to choose his first
Prime Minister, Millerand was on all
sides mentioned as the logical candidate.
At the elections of November, 1919, he
had been elected in Paris on the ticket
which was known as the "national block"
and which contained members of almost
every party except the Socialists. It was
a paradox to have Millerand, the former
radical and the ex-Socialist leader, elected
on such a conservative ticket. The other
paradox was to have Deschanel, the fore-
most opponent of radicalism, appeal to
Millerand to form the first Cabinet of
his presidency.
The Ministry that he brought together
seemed at first disappointing. He had
been concerned more in gathering
around him competent workers than par-
liamentary stars. He even had the au-
dacity to seek his associates outside of
the members of Parliament. For Minis-
ter of Finances he took a banker, for
agriculture an agronomist, for the minis-
try of liberated regions an administra-
tor who already knew the difficulties and
needs of that department. The reception
given him was not enthusiastic. But the
very slim majority that he received on
his first appearance soon grew to large
proportions. His shortcomings in the
formation of his Cabinet were soon for-
gotten when the Parliament saw him gov-
ern and heard him express his views on
his policy towards labor, on the carrying
out of the treaty, on the French policy
in the Near East.
At San Remo he is representing the
unanimous sentiment of the French peo-
ple with the exception of the very group
of which, twenty-five years ago, he was
the most prominent spokesman.
And that is the third paradox of hia
career: to see this erstwhile foe of capi-
talism ruling France with the support
of all the conservatives inside and out-
side of Parliament.
That is an object lesson on the vagaries
of Socialism that ought not to be over-
looked, and which has its value even out-
side of France.
Othon Guerlac
Correspondence
Zachary Taylor and Herbert
Hoover
To the Editors of The Review:
In 1848 the Whig party nominated
General Taylor for the Presidency. His
availability was simply due to the fact
that he had been a hero in the Mexican
War. He was not a member of any
political party and was wholly without
any partisan preferences. He had never
even voted for a Presidential candidate.
The only claim that the Whigs had upon
him was the fact that he once stated
that if he had ever voted at all, he would
have cast his ballot for Henry Clay in
1844. The General, with a certain naive
superiority to partisanship, accepted the
nomination from any and every organi-
zation that put him forward as a candi-
date. He even went so far as to accept
nomination from a company of Southern
Democrats who were dissatisfied with
the nomination, by their own party, of
Lewis Cass for the Presidency. This got
General Taylor into considerable trouble
with the anti-slavery Whigs of the North,
but the difficulty was smoothed over, as
he was too available a candidate to
discipline.
As you remember, General Taylor was
elected, and for the fifteen months dur-
458]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 51
ing which he occupied the Wliite House
he made a very good Chief Executive.
Herbert Hoover has, of course, a much
greater claim to be regarded as a Repub-
lican than General Taylor ever had to be
regarded as a Whig, but among the ques-
tions that have been asked by Hoover's
opponents is one, "Has he ever voted at an
American Presidential election?" He has
done so, whereas General Taylor had not.
X
New York, April 28
The Bonus
To the Editors of The Review :
This morning I went down "automo-
bile row" and noticed the almost inter-
minable string of autos of the most ex-
pensive makes. I talked with a college
professor of physics and he told me that
the average American was so flush with
money that he bought a car for its up-
holstery and varnish, with slight atten-
tion to the scientific construction of its
engine. I lunched at the club and heard
men talk of transactions involving thou-
sands of dollars as if talking of chalk
and marbles. I happened to be caught in
the outrush from a matinee performance
and noted the smug, complacent, over-
dressed air of the men and women.
And then I came home and read in the
Review: "... the public is not
going to be pleased with the spectacle
of men of whom it longs to be proud
scrambling in the gutter for coppers."
And then I wondered if I had not got
hold of the Nation by mistake. I read
that paper for twenty-five years and gave
it up because of just about such rot as
the above quotation.
I sat at table with a young man to-day
who had been to the war, but those lines
and creases were never on that face
when I knew him best, before the war.
I have seen others maimed and limping
through life; others, kith and kin of
mine, abide in the soil in France, blessed
martyrs to a noble cause, and I envy
them. I have seen acquaintances of
mine, men who spoke little English, some
voluntarily and others through compul-
sion, going off to fight for us who re-
mained at home. And I have seen the
new look of intelligence, a newer and
broader conception of America, beaming
in their faces on their return.
I am a teacher by trade, and I need
not tell your readers what that means in
a financial way, but I am loath to be-
lieve that one of my class of laborers
would begrudge a penny used to make
life easier or happier for the men who
went to the front that the principles
which we teachers have taught these
many years might live and flourish in
this country. Nor can I believe that rich,
prosperous America — America with a
memory and with a conscience — feels
otherwise. The spokesman of the ex-
service men may have been indiscreet in
his utterances. We owe compensation
to our soldiers and sailors, and it is a
wicked shame to compare them to beg-
gars "scrambling in the gutter for pen-
nies."
Chicago, April 10
E. L. C. Morse
[Mr. Morse's appreciation of what the
American soldier has done for us is
shared, even though he might not be able
to express it so well, by every American
worthy of the name. It is probable that
if the Government had mustered out the
soldiers with considerably more than the
belated and paltry $60 they received,
some of the present demand for addi-
tional compensation would not now be
heard. If the Government had not fallen
down on the work of rehabilitation, the
present demand would be still more
reduced. If a way could have been
found to prevent the undue enrichment,
whether in profits or in wages, of those
who are now squandering their money
on automobiles and other luxuries, that
demand would be less widely heard. But
if all these things had been done and not
done, there would still be a demand for
money made on behalf of the soldier,
this year, next year, and for the next
fifty years. It is safe to say that de-
mands of that sort are in great part
manufactured by a comparatively few in-
dividuals and are seconded in large meas-
ure by boys with no other idea in their
head than the naive one that if something
good is going round they want theirs,
while they are opposed by a majority
of the thoughtful men who wore the
uniform. If we oppose such a movement
it is not because our feeling toward those
who represented America in the field and
on the seas is a whit less cordial than
Mr. Morse's. Our opposition rests on
large grounds of sound public policy,
some of which are set forth in the edi-
torial on "Justice and the Bonus" in the
Review for April 10. Eds. THE Review.]
A Woman's View of the
Bonus
To the Editors of The Review:
The doughboy had no monopoly of
hardships. Not only did millions who
stayed at home during the war suffer
from the increased cost of living, as you
say, but an incalculable number rendered
services and incurred dangers quite equal
to those of drafted soldiers. Let me
give two examples out of a multitude
which might be cited.
I myself throughout the war (not
merely after the tardy entrance of the
United States), and while engaged in
the fairly arduous task of earning a
modest living, spent literally all of my
leisure and strength and a good deal
of money in a monotonous and very
obscure form of war work for which I
never have received and never shall re-
ceive any other reward than that of
knowing that I did my bit to win the
war. Shortly before the armistice my
doctor told me that if I did not end
this drain on my strength, which was
resulting in serious illness, I should die,
and die soon. I have not yet recovered
from those terrible years; perhaps I
never shall. I am not aware that there
is any movement on foot to give me a
bonus or "adjusted pay."
Soon after the United States declared
war a friend of mine, a woman of 25,
gave up the interesting and congenial
occupation by which she was earning
her living and from a senae of patriotic
duty went to do very delicate and dan-
gerous work in a smokeless powder fac-
tory, where, as she well knew, any min-
ute might bring death. Her wages were
$15 a week, enough to feed and lodge
her, but not to cover all her expenses.
The last time I saw her, some months
after the end of the war, she was look-
ing for a job. I know of no plan to give
her a bonus or "adjustment of pay."
The American soldiers were incom-
parably the best paid in Europe (their
pay was just twenty times that of their
French comrades) ; they were excellently
fed, clothed, and eared for ; they had the
very enviable opportunity of foreign
travel and of observing one of the su-
preme crises of human history at close
range, and when one contemplates the
picture of Y. M. G. A., Y. W. C. A., Red
Cross, and Salvation Army vieing with
each other to tempt the doughboy's pal-
ate with home-made dainties and to res-
cue him from ennui with concerts and
the movies, and then turns to look at
other armies, for example, at the Ser-
bians during the appalling retreat to
Albania, an American begins to feel a
little shamefaced. No American soldier
had to suffer, as did French, Belgians,
Serbians, and Rumanians, the moral an-
guish of leaving his family and orop-
erty a prey to enemy invasion ; no Amer-
ican troops fought for as much as
eighteen months, only a minute fraction
of them went through a winter cam-
paign, and large numbers never reached
the fighting line at all. It was the po-
tential, not the actual, exploits of the
American army which turned the scale
of victory.
Those soldiers who have come back to
us crippled or mutilated richly deserve
adequate pensions and the best of "re-
construction" work, but if the country is
going to give a bonus for losses and
suffering caused by war service, let all
who lost and suffered be rewarded —
which brings us to the reductio ad ab-
surdum. B. D. C.
New York, April 11
May 1, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[459
A Case of Relaxed Vigilance
To the Editors of The Review:
The thinking public, to say nothing of
the medical profession, will view with
astonishment and just indignation your
publication of the diatribe of Dr. John
Hutchinson in the Correspondence col-
umns of the Revietv for April 17.
To the uninstructed the words of one
doctor are as valid as any other's, and to
such this wholesale attack on all that is
modem in progressive and preventive
medicine will gain great weight from
its appearing in your journal. Is the
Review to be classed as an antivaccina-
tion journal? If the thing is published
as a jest I submit that this is not made
sufficiently apparent, and is very ill
judged and ill timed. Did you look up
Dr. Hutchinson's qualifications as a
critic of scientific medicine? If the pol-
icy of the Review is exemplified by this
publication, I should like to be informed
of the fact.
Thos. R. Boggs
Baltimore, Md., April 19
The Newberry Verdict
To the Editors of The Review:
The writer is a subscriber to the
Review. I have been very much pleased
with the general tone of its editorials
and its articles. I felt that it had a
very important place in American jour-
nalism and have taken occasion to say
to my friends that it ought to be en-
couraged, but I can not refrain from ex-
pressing my disapproval of the editorial
comment in your issue of March 27th on
the subject of the Newberry trial.
I say this, appreciating the fact that
I may be prejudiced in this matter, for I
was counsel for the treasurer of the
Newberry committee, Mr. Frank W.
Blair, who disbursed for that committee
$178,000. The editorial indicates that
the knowledge of the person who wrote
it, as to what took place at the trial, was
extremely inaccurate.
For instance, it is said that Senator
Newberry's letters showed that "he had
full knowledge of the large sums used
and gave constant advice as to their ex-
penditure." I think the most that the
prosecution claimed in this respect was
that Senator Newberry's letters showed
that he was in close enough touch with
the campaign so that he must have
known that more than |3,750 was ex-
pended, but no one has claimed that he
gave "constant advice as to" the expendi-
ture of such sums. In fact, the letters
were offered by the defense because they
did not refer, in any place, to the ex-
penditure of any money.
Again it is said that the wealth of
Mr. Newberry himself was lavishly used
in violation of the law and of political
decency. There was not a word of evi-
dence in the case that Mr. Newberry's
wealth was used, as there was nothing
to connect his name with the contribu-
tions. His brother and his friends made
contributions and that money was used.
We might disagree as to the defi-
nition of "political decency," but it is
well to remember that the court, on its
own motion, struck from the case the
count of the indictment which dealt with
political corruption.
It was undisputed that more than
$3,750 was used in the campaign. Up-
wards of $50,000 was expended for ad-
vertising, directly to the newspapers.
Perhaps an equal amount was expended
in the distribution of literature. Ap-
proximately $40,000 was paid out in vari-
ous counties for the distribution of peti-
tions, of cards, of literature, hiring halls
and holding of meetings. All of these
expenditures, and in fact every dollar
of the expenditures, were within the
Michigan statute known as the "Corrupt
Practices Act," if they are expended by
the committee and not by the candidate.
The charge was that the defendants and
Senator Newberry conspired together to
cause to be expended more than $3,750.
It was on this technical charge that the
defendants were convicted. Perhaps I
ought not to say this. I do not believe
the jury thought there really existed
such a conspiracy. What they did do
was to convict these men on general prin-
ciples, upon the theory that the expendi-
ture of a large sum of money was wrong.
This is exactly the part of your editorial
to which I take exception.
Has it come to pass that one who is
not known to the public and who resorts
to otherwise perfectly legal methods of
advertising, and whose friends resort to
otherwise perfectly legal methods of ad-
vertising to bring his name to the atten-
tion of the public, is thereby a criminal ?
It is easy to talk of the use of wealth in
politics, and I agree with you that when
that wealth is employed to corrupt the
public, it should be punished; but when
it is used only to bring home to the pub-
lic the merits of the candidate, and when
the recognized avenues of the press and
the post office are so employed, how has
the public been corrupted?
In this particular case, Mr. Ford was
known to everyone, and Mr. Newberry,
who to our minds has always been a much
more deserving citizen, was not known.
By what means does he become a success-
ful candidate for office if not by legiti-
mate advertising, and why should his
friends be condemned if they expend the
funds necessary to advertise him and
procure his election?
Of course, the singular thing of this
case was that Senator Newberry and his
friends were convicted — at least that was
the technical verdict — of conspiring to
cause Senator Newberry to cause to be
expended more than $3,750. The court
holds that he did not have to be the
originating cause; if he participated in
the activities of the campaign that re-
sulted from that expenditure, with a
knowledge of that expenditure, then he
had caused it to be expended just as
much as if he had solicited the subscrip-
tion in the beginning.
You can easily determine where this
theory would leave a candidate for office.
I did not intend to discourse at length
on this trial. It is to me a hideous con-
cession to popular clamor and to the
prejudice against wealth. I regret very
much that the Review, which I thought
was above such things, has fallen in with
this popular view and has given to it the
endorsement of its conservative columns
and deservedly wide influence.
Hal H. Smith
Detroit, Mich., April 19
C. T. Winchester
To the Editors of The Review:
It is with regret that I note that none
of the literary weeklies has so far men-
tioned the recent death of Professor C.
T. Winchester, for nearly fifty years
head of the department of English litera-
ture at Wesleyan University, Middle-
town, Conn. I say with regret because he
was one of the small band of truly liter-
ary teachers of literature. To sit in his
classroom was at once an education and
an inspiration. His voice was like one
of those voices at Oxford of whom
Arnold wrote so eloquently in his essay
on Emerson. In our American universi-
ties, in our departments of English litera-
ture, we now have, if you will, "more
knowledge, more light," but such a voice
as that of Winchester is most rare. In
very few cases is the great author
tried by his peer. Shakespeare becomes
a curiosity of Elizabethan English, and
we learn everything about Chaucer ex-
cept his literary qualities. Professor
Winchester was a peer of literary great-
ness. To read his books, "Principles of
Literary Criticism" and "A Group of
English Essayists of the Early Nine-
teenth Century," is to be acutely con-
scious of this. His exquisite literary
taste and judgment, his rare faculty of
imparting literary enthusiasms — which
never included mediocre authors — drew
to him a band of disciples limited only
by the number of students in attendance
at Wesleyan. Several times he refused
flattering offers from great universities.
His work, he said, was at Wesleyan.
The loss of such a teacher of literature
is a calamity ; but in the shadow of those
mountains which he loved, beyond the
Connecticut River below Middletown, his
memory will need no laurel.
Harry T. Baker
Gaucher College, Baltimore, Md., April 23
460]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 51
Book Reviews
Champ Clark's Reminis-
cences
My Quakter Century of American Politics.
By Champ Clark. Two volumes, illus-
trated. New York: Harper and Brothers.
1920.
WHAT the majority of readers are
most likely to appreciate in these
volumes is their wealth of interesting
anecdotes and incidents, not only of pol-
itics but in many other fields, and by
no means confined to the twenty-five
years named in the title, — all told in a
way that is quite Champ Clark's own, in
spite of his incorrigible overworking of
a great many commonplace expressions,
as for example in the following reference
to a case of murder: "The times were
sadly out of joint, everything was topsy-
turvy, and in some way, through some
sinister influence, he went unwhipped of
justice, though he richly deserved to
stretch hemp." Murders, duels, and fist-
fights claim at least as high a percentage
of his space as they do in the actual life
of the period with which he deals, to say
nothing of exciting, though less bloody,
encounters of opposing counsel in his
own law practice, or suggested by it.
One chapter is devoted by title to "cloak
room stories," but a very large share of
the work might have been put under that
heading without raising any question of
propriety in the mind of the reader.
Literary allusions and quotations
abound. In the very first chapter, the
fact that the author was born on the
fateful 7th of March, 1850, calls for
^Vhittier'8 "Ichabod" in full; his boy-
hood loss of a dog, on a false charge of
sheep-killing, brings in Senator Vest's
"beautiful Oration on the Dog," along
with Byron's " 'Tis sweet to hear," etc. ;
his Kentucky boyhood sports draw four
lines from "Locksley Hall;" his "surgical
operation," as he calls it, on his own
name, Beauchamp cut down to Champ,
brings in the inevitable line from Shake-
speare; his own early circumstances in-
troduce, by way of a quotation from Lin-
coln, Gray^s words, "the short and simple
annals of the poor;" a wise saying from
Patrick Henry enters from the pages of
Wirt's biography, presented to him by
his father; and the Duke of Wellington's
alleged ten-word description of the bat-
tle of Waterloo introduces his own state-
ment about "pounding away" at certain
things, which he desired to accomplish.
And in this same first chapter are in-
cidental allusions to the Proverbs of
Solomon, the Epistles of St. Paul, Rob-
ert Southey, Charles Dickens, William
Pitt, Charles James Fox, George D. Pren-
tice, Horace Greeley, Carl Schurz,
Colonel Roosevelt, Colonel Watterson,
and a host of others who stand on
the border-line between literature and
politics.
Mr. Clark's lively interest in "scholar-
ship" suggests that he might have be-
come, if never a consecutive logical
thinker, at least a man of much erudi-
tion, had he consistently followed an
early bent in that direction. In Ken-
tucky University he studied Greek un-
der Professor Neville, whom he calls "the
third handsomest man I ever saw," and
at the end of the first year he stood by
the side of William Benjamin Smith, the
mathematician and biblical scholar to be,
with a grade of 100. "That was one of
the happiest days of my life — happier
than when I was elected to my first of-
fice, happier than when I was first elected
to Congress or elected Speaker, happier
than any other days of my life, except
the day when I was married, and the
days on which my children were born."
A little shooting affair, fortunately not
fatal, growing out of stronger provoca-
tion than his Kentucky temper could
brook, separated him from Kentucky Uni-
versity before graduation, and his col-
lege education was completed at Bethany
College, in West Virginia. How far he
carried his classical studies he does not
say, but in his occasional use of bits of
Latin he does not always remember that
"circumstances alter cases," grammatical
as well as otherwise. Nevertheless, Pro-
fessor West, of Princeton, was justified
in quoting him as a good friend of clas-
sical studies. To the late Dr. William
Everett, Mr. Clark appropriately assigns
a very high place in Congressional
scholarship. In his mind, the most
"astounding revelations" of Dr. Everett's
learning were instances of "first aid" to
congressmen in trouble with the pro-
nunciation of unusual words. B. Gratz
Brown is attested as one of the most
scholarly of Missouri's gqyernors by the
fact that "he wrote a book on higher
mathematics as a mental recreation."
In characterization, whether of men or
things, Mr. Clark runs freely to superla-
tives. Congressman DeArmond had "the
sarcastic faculty perhaps more largely
developed than in any other man that
ever sat in either branch of Congress."
Of Blaine, "A more brilliant man never
figured in American politics," and his
"Twenty Years in Congress" is "the best
historical work ever written by an Amer-
ican." Charles James Fox was "the
greatest debater that ever spoke the
English tongue," and Burke, "taken up
one side and down the other, was perhaps
the greatest transatlantic orator that
ever spoke the English tongue." Trans-
atlantic, mind you; for in our own land,
within the life of our Republic, "the
divine gift of moving the mind and heart
by the power of spoken words has been
bestowed upon more men than in all the
rest of the world since the confusion
of tongues at the unfinished tower of
Babel." "One of the finest epigrams ever
uttered," Mr. Clark heard from the lips
of George H. Pendleton, as follows:
"The sweetest incense that ever greeted
the nostrils of a public man is the ap-
plause of the people." This suggests a
translation of a certain passage in the
"Antigone" of Sophocles, heard in the
college days of the reviewer, "An un-
seen odor steals upon my ear."
It would be easy to pick some pretty
serious flaws in Speaker Clark's code of
political morals, but they are of the head
rather than the heart. He is honest and
patriotic "up one side and down the
other," but there is gradually developing
a revised definition of honesty and pa-
triotism in politics, which frowns on
many things that seem wholly unobjec-
tionable to him and to the older school
to which he belongs. He denounces some
unnamed congressman said to have sold
■his quota of garden seeds and pocketed
the price, instead of distributing them
to his constituents, as "a miserable
scoundrel for whom the penitentiary is
too good;" but he is blind to the essen-
tial dishonesty of the whole seed distribu-
tion business, nor does he realize that
he is discrediting his own moral insight
when he tells of his efforts to secure Gov-
ernment appointments for one or another
of his constituents, either to reward
them for personal services to him, or to
remove them as possible rivals for his
own position. He thinks of himself, and
is eager to be thought of, as a reformer;
and yet his understanding of the prob-
lems of political and social reformation
is such that he can say of William Ran-
dolph Hearst, "No great reform has been
accomplished, or even advocated, in this
country, in a quarter of a century, with-
out the powerful and aggressive aid of
his newspapers and magazines."
Mr. Clark might well have spared his
two or three pages of lamentation over
the "political suicide" of John G.
Carlisle, who lost his hold on his Ken-
tucky constituents by his support of the
gold standard, during the second Cleve-
land administration. Carlisle was a far
abler man than Mr. Clark, and when
forced by the exigencies of his official
position to go to the bottom of the finan-
cial problem, and its immediate relation
to the country's welfare, his logical mind
brought him at once out of the haze in
which Bryan, Clark, and so many others
continued to wander, and enabled him to
render a service of immeasurable value
to the country at a very critical time.
Carlisle knew in advance what the cost
of that service would be to him person-
ally, and he had the courage and char-
acter to pay that cost without flinching.
His memory calls for no word of pity in
the matter but only of praise. The care-
ful student of history will lament the
blindness of his constituents, and his
splendid self-sacrifice.
May 1, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[461
Satire and Soothing-Syrup
Hand-Made Fables. By George Ade. Illus-
trated by John T. McCutcheon. New
York : Doubleday, Page and Company.
^'/^GOLD and silver fluctuates," said
\y Mr. Dooley, "up wan day, down
another; but whisky stands firm and
strong, unchangeable as the skies, im-
movable as a rock, at fifteen or two i'r a
quarther. If they want something solid
as a standard of value, they'll move the
Mint over to the internal rivinue office
an' lave it stay there."
It was a generation ago that he said it,
in the days of free silver and sixteen to
one. Now the bottom of the whisky bar-
rel has dropped out, and the price has
blown up, but Dooley still issues his ob-
servations which pass current at their
face value. The Katzenjammer Kids are
old enough to have kids of their own, but
still they do their juvenile turn, as did
their forebears. Max and Morris, for a
generation before them. Alphonse and
Gaston now exhibit their manners as
Percy and Ferdy, and Gloomy Gus, to
keep abreast of the times, has become
Gasoline Gus. Fables in Slang have not
shown a fluctuation in twenty years.
Change and decay in all around we see,
but humor stands firm and strong, un-
changeable as the skies, immovable as a
rock. If you need something solid as a
stabilizer amid the pitching and rolling
of all about you, try the new crop of
Hand-Made Fables. It makes a man feel
at home in his generation, and not out
of place in that of his children.
At first glance it invites comparison
with the past. On the jacket are two
vignettes of McCutcheon's in his familiar
wood-block style, by no means so rough-
hewn as they would appear. In one a
lady with hour-glass waist, swathed to
the chin in a basque and to the heels in
a flaring skirt, is ogled by a man in frock
coat and high hat, who carries gloves and
cane. In the background is a horse-car
which an agitated citizen pursues in
frantic haste; presumably there will not
be another for an hour. In the other
street scene the lady wears a few clothes
somewhere between her chest-measure
and her knees. She is accompanied by
grandma similarly arrayed. The ogler
turns to look at them over the loose back
of a belted coat, but the long narrow
bows of his shoes point forward. The
second glance disarms any comparison
with the present. The preface informs
us that "although the period in which
these fables appeared enveloped the Great
War and lapped over the Great Unrest,
the author has proceeded upon the theory
that old Human Nature continues to do
business, even during a cataclysm." Thus
directed, the reader takes from the
shelves the crop of twenty years ago,
"More Fables, 1900," and is not surprised
to find that if the two books were to
masquerade in one another's clothes,
there would be little to betray the trick.
And the fact sets him to wondering
about the titles. Slang, so the purists
tell us, is characteristically ephemeral.
Fables in slang should teach by humor;
they class themselves as satire, and if
satire is successful it should be content
to pass from memory with the abuses it
has destroyed. What we seem to have in
these books is an ostensibly ephemeral
form in frothy language, whose most
striking characteristic is its durability —
like a carved statue of a glass of soda-
water with the bubbles forever winking
at the brim. To all appearances we are
lashed with satire; in effect we are fed
with soothing syrup.
If slang is the ephemerid of language,
then twenty years are in its sight but as
a day. Mr. Ade calls his diction slang,
but if slang is the current phrase, clean-
cut when newly minted, but soon worn
smooth and discarded, then his ware is
not so much slang as the embroidered
phrase, the vernacular writ large. He
rarely mints a phrase that gains cur-
rency, and phrases already current are
blank canvas for his embroidery, or
empty bladders for him to inflate and
gild. Sometimes the phrase is cryptic-
ally concealed under the embroidery, as
"convert the Fliv into a Baby Doll."
More often his work is like structural
ornamentation, and if the original meta-
phor has any real imaginative basis, he
follows the original lines — the term
"scream" as applied to "loud" clothing
returns to something like the original in
"if Colours could be converted into
Sounds her Costume would have been a
Siren Whistle." In "More Fables" only
two genuine bits of current slang im-
press the reader of to-day; "chestnut"
because he is surprised to find it surviv-
ing so late as 1900; and "no one could
tell him where to get off," first surprises
one that it is so old, second that old as
it is it is neither dead nor respectable.
The new volume has such verbs as "to
periscope," to "mop up," and a few other
new expressions. Half a dozen have died,
six have been bom ; where is the noisome
corruption of language of which the
purists complain, and where the winged
and barbed phrase fresh every hour of
which slang loves to boast !
See then the humorist with his tongue
in his cheek dealing with the permanent
elements of human- nature in language
essentially unchanged since the Spanish
War, which we open with popping of
corks and gulp in haste lest the bubbles
should cease hissing. He does it by a
process that might be called playing
both ends against the middle. The first
of the Hand-Made Fables would seem to
teach that somehow good may be the
latter end of total abstinence; the twen-
ty-fifth apparently indicates just the op-
posite. Like Senators and popular pro-
verbs they can be set off in neutralizing
pairs. Sometimes the sting of the satire
and the counter-irritant come in the same
fable, as in the case of the local reformer
who is ostracized by 200 per cent, of his
fellow citizens who afterward wait on
him to ask him to return to his func-
tions; or that of the returned exile who
first judges in sorrow that the world he
knew of old has reformed, then to his
shame that it has not. The inference is
that common sense lies between extremes.
The effect is satire that everyone enjoys
because no one is hit; the shell always
lands on your next-door neighbor's house,
and you whoop when you see the splint-
ers fly, and he is whooping too because
he thinks it is your house.
Ireland's Future
Ireland a Nation. By Robert Lynd. New
York: Dodd, Mead and Company.
The Clanking of Chains. A Story of Sinn
Fein. By Brinsley MacNamara. New
York : Brentano's.
MR. LYND is a brilliant London jour-
nalist, literary editor of the Daily
News, a member of the group of young
Irishmen who have carried not only their
artistic talents but their unquenchable
love of their native country into the voca-
tion of literature across the Channel.
When the present writer used to meet
him twenty years ago, he was a central
figure — almost an oracle — among college
students in Belfast who were breaking
away from the "Ulster tradition." In
depicting Ireland he has the sure touch
of one who grew up among the scenes he
has to describe, and who now looks back
upon them after mixing with the wider
world. In this book Mr. Lynd expounds
the Irish national spirit to English and
American readers, and, if his pages have
at times the intractable vehemence which
belong to his nationality, they are no
less lit up with the wit and sparkle that
seldom desert a man of his race.
He gives us a vivid account of the
sources of discontent in "John Bull's
Other Island," an informing study of
the Sinn Fein movement from its incep-
tion down to the revolt of 1916, a dis-
section of the Ulster problem with some
very mordant criticism of that gospel of
violence whose first aspect was Carson-
ism and which reappeared among the
Irish Volunteers. Passing from political
subjects, Mr. Lynd resumes his favorite
calling of literary critic, and in five chap-
ters, entitled "Voices of the New Ire-
land," he sketches the varying moods of
the Irish literary renaissance. P. H.
Pearse, Mrs. J. R. Green, T. M. Kettle,
Dora Sigerson, George Russell (known to
all magazine readers as "A. E.") are
discussed with a clearness and a discern-
ment which must appeal to everyone,
apart from either sympathy or resent-
ment towards the views with which these
462]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 51
writers are identified. It is a book of
much charm, with many good things that
remind us of Mr. Chesterton at his best,
and one may conjecture that G. K. C.
has had a very strong influence in mould-
ing Mr. Lynd's style. The reader does
not need to be warned that this influence
has its dangers. We may say of Mr.
Chesterton, as someone has said of
Wordsworth, that "he is great when he
is on the heights, but then he is so often
not on the heights."
The chief fault to be found with this
volume is one that appears in its very
title. If "Ireland a Nation" is not a
question-begging phrase, it is at least
one that requires very careful explaining
for those who hate to mask realities be-
hind names. Mr. Lynd likes Lord North-
cliffe's scheme for making Ireland a
Dominion rather than Mr. Asquith's
Home Rule Act. "But," he says, "it
suffers from the defect that it implies
that England has the right to impose on
Ireland a settlement other than Ireland
herself desires." What he would him-
self propose is to put the Act of 1914
into immediate operation, and leave the
members of a freely chosen Dublin par-
liament to "hammer out a constitution
for their country, republican or colonial,
according to the national will." About
the present discordance of this "national
will," about the prevailing orgy of crime,
about the probable consequences to the
world of setting up a Sinn Fein republic,
he has almost nothing to say! These
matters are to him apparently irrelevant,
so long as the rubric of "self-determina-
tion" is followed. Unhesitating Home
Rulers may agree in fixing the chief
blame for the existing chaos just where
Mr. Lynd fixes it. But we had to deal
with facts as they are, and one of the
curses of our age is just this reliance
upon some slogan which we think we are
using, but which is in truth using us.
By all means let us vent our rage against
the narrowness of Unionists. But let us
not forget what Ibsen has so suggestively
taught us about the blind worship of
cast-iron formulae.
Mr. MacNamara in "The Clanking
of Chains" has furnished, no doubt
without intending it, a useful cor-
rective to Mr. Lynd. Whether he meant
this as a novel with a purpose may
perhaps be questioned, and the pur-
pose— if there was one — is not quite easy
to diagnose. The book is in the first
instance a picture of the rival movements
and tendencies of Irish life during the
years from 1913 to 1917. One might
have predicted that before long that
seething period would be presented in a
work of fiction, and Mr. MacNamara has
the gift for this in a high degree. The
scene is laid in the village of Ballycullen,
where the hero — Michael Dempsey — is a
young clerk in a grocery store, who feeds
his mind each evening by candlelight
"upon the more ferocious portions of
Irish history." He acquires an intense
hatred for the English invaders, works
himself into ecstasy about his country's
martyrs, and broods darkly upon an Irish
triumph in the future which will be at
the same time revenge for the past. In
a play about Robert Emmet and Sara
Curran, staged by the Ballycullen Dra-
matic Class, he declaims Emmet's speech
with a fervor that astounds his audience.
Old Parnellites and doughty survivors of
Fenian and Land League times display a
delight mingled with hopelessness. And
of course there is a girl, who sees Emmet
reincarnated in Dempsey, with a coming
Tom Moore who shall celebrate herself
as Sara Curran. Michael is enraptured
with Sinn Fein in its earlier and quite
peaceful form, when the motto "Our-
selves Alone" meant no more than a gos-
pel of self-reliance and self-development
as against depending on England and
English political alliances. Thus his pro-
gramme is at first one of arousing in-
terest in Irish history, Irish folklore,
Irish language, Irish industries, that the
soul of a nation so long half dead may
be made to renew its life. He is no
preacher of armed revolt, but limits him-
self to such modest schemes as getting
the Ballycullen smokers to use only
matches made in Ireland! Some mock,
however. The liquor men dislike the
provision of literary and historical at-
tractions that may compete with the bar.
The local sergeant of police is impressed
with the greatness of the British Em-
pire, and thinks it would be better to
urge all young Irishmen to join "the
Force," so that meetings should be "com-
posed of peelers rather than patriots."
The job-hunters see more jobs if the
country remains under the British
Crown, and are strong supporters of
constitutional Home Rule. The farmers,
who have bought out their land under
the Wyndham Act, have ceased to trouble
themselves about nationality, and think
the Emmet stuff is out of date. Even
the girl begins to wonder whether Sara
Curran was not well advised to marry
a British officer, and tentatively walks
out with another young man who be-
lieves in making the best of things as
they are. At these ominous signs
Michael Dempsey loses heart. The Car-
sonite drilling in Ulster stirs him to
the thought of an Ireland fighting for
herself, and his joy knows no bounds
when he learns of the Curragh Camp
mutiny. "Was it not really in keeping
with the old, heroic, rebel traditions?"
Ireland, he thinks, can be saved only by
those who will die for her. But the
nationalists of Ballycullen are too strong
for him and an attempt to upset the
local organization leads to his being har-
ried out of the village. With a heavy
heart he goes abroad, and his fickle
fiancee goes with him.
The story is very vivid and very in-
teresting. Irish village life is satirized
with considerable skill. But one wonders
what exactly Mr. MacNamara intends us
to infer. He seems very bitter about
the faults of the Redmondite League,
and what apparently makes him hopeless
regarding Ireland's future is her servi-
tude to the party tradition, party
methods, party dreams. Even that pure
and bracing air which belonged to the
original Sinn Fein has, he thinks, been
polluted by reversion to the mental habits
of the stifling parliamentary past, so that
those who would be free are still em-
barrassed in every effort by the clanking
of old chains. Emigration seems to be
his own counsel to the better spirits, as
it was Dickens's counsel in "David Cop-
perfield" to the disappointed English
Chartists. But then, as now, this was a
counsel of despair, and it is not by those
who despair that a constructive solution
can ever be reached. Just as the British
Labor Party has devised a better plan
than universal expatriation for the work-
ingmen, so the resources of civic wisdom
may surely yet find something better for
Ireland than that her best sons should
quit her shore. John Redmond made a
gallant effort, and though amid the
delirium of the war he failed when just
on the point of success, one may hope
that the same high principles of concilia-
tion will be tried again when the at-
mosphere has cleared. If Mr. MacNa-
mara will look into Mr. Lynd's book he
may see that there are chains quite dif-
ferent from those of which he has writ-
ten, but quite as fatal to a genuine set-
tlement.
In these disordered times there is
perhaps no fetter which clanks more
destructively round the neck of those
who would make progress than the fet-
ter of some old maxim that men follow
in the dark. Nationhood, self-determina-
tion, and the like are some men's food
and other men's poison. That each people
should, so far as compatible with the
world's safety and well-being, fix its own
form of government is obviously just,
and we may well cry shame upon those
who would say of it — as of the Conscrip-
tion Law — ""This shall not apply to Ire-
land." But it is also a maxim that can
be pressed to the world's undoing. If
it is to mean that every little group
which chooses to magnify its group-
antagonisms must be constituted into an
independent state, and that every selfish
whim can be turned into a sacred right
by being called "national aspiration,"
then we have evolved the surest recipe
on record for promoting international
quarrels. It is idle to object by saying
"Where will you draw the line?" We
must draw this here, as everywhere else,
by intelligent forecast of consequences,
using the best light we have.
Herbert L. Stewart
May 1, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[463
Adventures in the Past
LucA Sarto: A Novel. A History of His
Perilous Journey into France in the Year
Fourteen Hundred and Seventy-One. By
Cliarles S. Brooks. New York: The Cen-
tury Company.
His Majesty's Well-Beloved : An Episode in
the Life of Mr. Thomas Betterton as Told
by His Friend, John Honeywood. By
Baroness Orczy. New York : George H.
Doran Company.
The Burning Glass. By Marjorie Bowen.
New York : E. P. Button and Company.
The Forging of the Pikes : A Romance of
the Upper Canadian Rebellion of 1837.
By Anison North. New York : George H.
Doran Company.
The Matrix. By Maria Thompson Daviess.
New York: The Century Company.
IF it is the habit of reviewers to speak
condescendingly of the historical novel
or to dismiss it with more or less good-
humored disdain as "costume romance,"
it is also the habit of a considerable num-
ber of story-tellers, year after year, to
go steadily and self-respectingly about
their natural business of reanimating or
regalvanizing the past, as the case may
be. And this of course means that a
considerable number of novel-readers, a
steady if not clamorous constituency,
continue to find the home of their
fancy in the past. Call it cowardice, or
languor if you will, a dodging away from
"reality" into the scented and rose-
lighted land of never-more. But under-
stand what your disdain lets you in for,
how it cuts you off (in theory) from
generous enjoyment of many of the
greatest story-tellers and their stories.
Reflect whether "Ivanhoe" and "Henry
Esmond" and "Westward Ho !" mean .
nothing more than names and moods
outgrown, to us who are adult and of the
twentieth century. Which would we the
more readily part with or could we the
more comfortably spare, in that con-
sciousness of experience from which our
lives draw secret nourishment: "The
Three Musketeers" or "Anna Karenina?"
— "Tono-Bungay" or "The Talisman?"
A test, to be sure, rather than a main
question. In a sense it is precisely not
the question. For if we could have done
with comparing the incomparable, we
should retain contempt for neither. . . .
The historical novel, at all events, by
no means cries out for defense, if one
can judge from the continued support it
receives from publishers become by all
accounts more cautious. People write
books, and publish them, because people
read them. And it is still possible for a
writer like Charles S. Brooks, having
gained recognition as a whimsical essay-
ist, to lay the scene of his first novel
safely in the past and on foreign soil.
When you settle down to spin a yarn of
an Italian artist's sword and garter ad-
ventures in fifteenth-century France,
you leave behind all concern with the dis-
position of your neighbor's wash, thongh
it dangles before your eyes through the
square of your study window. Sordid
fact and humdrum reason are kicked un-
der the table; and for racy incident and
vivid detail you have the alternative of
turning some yellowed page or frankly
scratching your head — nobody's business
which. Mr. Brooks has capably turned
out a costume romance, a spirited and
amusing if not inspired narrative of ad-
venture-cum-politics. He does not shrink
from staging his scene in the France
where Quentin Durward once journeyed
and loved. The Louis of the cruel hands
and craven heart, with his leaden images
and his personal squalor, once more ap-
pears. If what we gather about the pass-
ing of Scott is true, Mr. Brooks is safe
in handling his Louis as if he had never
been painted before: it is the right
method anyhow. For the simple-hearted
and simple-headed Quentin we have here
a picaresque rascal, Roman artist and
ruffler, who appears to have read his
Hewlett. The tale as a whole quite cheer-
fully lacks the richer fabric of motive
and action which distinguishes (if any-
thing really does) a living historical
romance from a 'sdeathly diversion of
the moment. As for style, the fabulist is
somewhat happier than most experiment-
ers in this field. He contrives (as Stev-
enson confesses one must do) a quite
artificial but fairly plausible jargon to
convey an illusion of the past; and onjy
now and then (as who but Hewlett does
not?) drops into modernism: a slight
knock in the engine.
From rapier and dungeon to powder
and patches, in "His Majesty's Well-Be-
loved." Place, London, century the mid-
seventeenth, atmosphere a blend of court
and theatre, plot a web of polite intrigue
involving Tom Betterton, Mary Saunder-
son, and divers nobilities and royalties
who play their parts capably if without
especial conviction. The Baroness Orczy
is an old hand at this kind of story, has
the machinery under control and the
lingo pat. Her experiment in the use of
capitals is not happy; they seem to be
scattered about with a loose hand:
"There was a sooty chimney-sweep,
whom I knew to be an honest Man, and
the broom Men and their Boys, and many
law-abiding Pedestrians who, fearful of
the crowd, were walking in the traffic
way, meekly giving the wall to the more
roisterous throng." Such a trick merely
peppers the page without enriching its
flavor. This also is plainly a costume
romance: a clever enough fabrication in
its highflown to highfalutin style. The
author of "The Burning Glass" is an-
other inveterate explorer of the romantic
past. Notwithstanding her frequent
crudity of manner, she has always some-
thing of value to offer — usually, as here,
a portrait vividly conceived and vigor-
ously if not quite powerfully executed.
Here is the likeness of Mademoiselle de
Lespinasse towards the end of her short
and troubled years; the enchantress, the
fine lady, grande amoureuse. Highflown
also is this tale, without relief of humor
(a commodity the writer lacks) and yet
by no means machine-made: an absorbed
imaginative study of character in its
environment.
Portraiture is what the author of "The
Matrix" has attempted chiefly. Close
upon Mr. Bacheller's story of, or includ-
ing, the youthful Lincoln comes this tale
of Lincoln's parents. It is told in a
reverent, perhaps an over reverent spirit
by one who was "bom and reared in the
same little Bluegrass valley which was
the cradle of the great romance." It is
the story mainly of that Nancy Hanks
about whom legends still linger in that
country. "All that I am or ever hope to
be, I owe to my angel Mother, blessings
on her memory" is a saying of Lincoln's
which gives the keynote to this book. It
is not the author's fault if she has pro-
duced a pious memorial rather than a
living portrait. In "The Forging of the
Pikes" we are upon fresher ground.
Primarily, with its theme in the roots of
Canada's political past, it is a story for
Canadians. But though, as the author
modestly surmises, "it will probably be
the love-story of Alan and Barry that will
attract the greater number of readers,"
there is plenty of vitality in the larger
action. So that though it chances to
take place in the Upper Canada of eighty
years ago, it may be of interest to any
reader on either side of the water who
has followed the struggles between the
"Reformers" and "Tories" of his own
day. The style is flowing and simple and
has an agreeable if not strictly synchron-
ous flavor of Pepys.
H. W. BOYNTON
TheRun of the Shelves
MR. EDWARD O'BRIEN'S "Best
Short Stories of 1919" (Small,
Maynard and Company) is the fifth of
his annual compilations. There are
twenty stories; five from the Century
against two from Harper's, which cul-
tivates the short story, one from
Scribner's and none from the Atlantic
Monthly. The stories run to shortness
or to length ; the sixty-minute story, once
normal for the magazine, is here the ex-
ception. The demand for the supernat-
ural is apparently eager and the supply
punctual.
Mr. O'Brien's standards define them-
selves with precision, and a summary of
his tests will serve as test for Mr.
O'Brien. He has no eye for style. The
emergence of a genuine style among
his tales in Mr. Cabell's somewhat too
debonair and condescending "Wedding-
Jest" is as startling in its isolation as the
blooming of the winter thorn at Glas-
46-t]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 51
tonbur>'- Mr. Hergesheimer in the
"Meeker Ritual" is apparently standing
his style in the corner; even from the
corner it is audible. Mr. O'Brien is
tolerant of veneer and aflfectation; one
would more readily condone an entire
bareness (the total absence of style, like
other totalities, is respectable) . The sec-
ond point in literature to which Mr.
O'Brien is insensitive is tone. The tone
of the whole book is that of the sidewalk,
the sidewalk that avoids the gutter and
misses the lawn.
The third and final want is the sense
of workmanship. This is the surprise.
The story as craft, as trade, has been
made so much of in our day both in
literary and unliterary circles that one
blinks a little at the unconcern with
which a reputable compiler admits to his
book stories that are ridgy, that are
baggy, that are pasty, that are shape-
less. Miss Yezierska's "Fat of the Land,"
Mr. O'Brien's favorite, is half-built.
Lovers of technique may rejoice that Mr.
Horace Fish's "Wrists on the Door," one
of the best tales in the collection, is well
made; but their joy ought to be clouded
by the discovery that Mr. H. M. Jones's
"Mrs. Drainger's Veil," another of the
best tales, is unmistakably clumsy.
Mr. O'Brien, however, has qualities
which are as incontestable as his limita-
tions. He has a keen, if not infallible,
sense, of the powerful in motive, the
original and trenchant in conception.
Stories have many aspects, but their con-
quering aspects are few and simple ; they
win oftenest by their thews. Mr. O'Brien
is a judge of thews. He has a second
merit, of less extent but greater eleva-
tion. He likes the fact — the everyday,
present-day fact. That he relishes a tinc-
ture of miracle in this actuality is un-
deniable, but this does not overset, or
even wholly offset, the counter truth that
he enjoys a savor of realism in his
miracle. In stories like Miss Brownell's
"Dishes," Mr. Hallet's "To the Bitter
End," Mr. Ingersoll's "Centenarian," and
Miss Yezierska's "Fat of the Land," a
taste for the common, at least as the
wrappage or selvedge of the uncommon,
is healthily and laudably apparent. Mr.
O'Brien^s collection will be of service to
those readers who are wise enough to
grasp its limitations.
"A World Remaking or Peace
Finance," by Clarence W. Barron
(Harper), consists of a series of articles
written mainly in the spring of 1919
describing economic and social conditions
in Britain, together with remarks on the
Peace treaty. Socialism, inflation, and
kindred topics.
Mr. Barron is a trained observer and
generalizes soundly from what he has
observed. Thoroughly versed in eco-
nomic problems, to which he has devoted
a lifetime of study, he is able to reach
down through the welter of phenomena
to the fundamental causes of things and
set them forth in a way that the lay
reader can comprehend. His book is
designed for readers of this class. There
is nothing in it which will be news to
those whose business it has been to fol-
low closely the economic vicissitudes of
belligerent Europe, but even for the lat-
ter there is attraction in the group-
ing of facts and the statement of their
relations.
Mr. Barron is a disciple of the old-
fashioned "Placing-his-hand-u p o n-my-
shoulder-as-w e-left-t h e-conference-hall-
the-Emperor-said-to-me" tradition of
journalism and there are many little af-
fectations of speech scattered through
the book which some may find irritating.
But it is, nevertheless, a good book and
well worth reading. ■
Mr. Noel Leslie, an actor known to
Boston in the "Doctor's Dilemma" and to
New York in the "Rise of Silas Lapham,"
is the author of "Three Plays" (Boston:
Four Seas Company). The plays are set
with an actor's solicitude, and each be-
gins with a promise which is overcast by
partial disappointment. In "Waste," a
dying girl is supplanted by her own sister
in the affections of her betrothed. This
is touching, and might be very touching,
if the extreme bleakness of the general
situation did not absorb and deaden this
particular. The "War Fly" begins forci-
bly with a sombre and mysterious din-
ner ; the interest rises to a devil and sinks
to a fly at almost the same moment, and
the little counteracts the large. "For
King and Country" has moments of true
pathos, but the love-story is imperfectly
cemented with other and stronger ap-
peals, and the ending leaves a fissure in
the play.
The latest effort to identify Shake-
speare— this time he is Edward de Vere,
Earl of Oxford — is, perhaps significantly,
from the pen of J. Thomas Looney.
The record of a single regiment in mod-
ern operations is rather like the tracing
of a thread across thepattern of a brocade;
and if it is worth anything it must be
done one stitch at a time. The chronicler
has to deal with minute materials — com-
panies and platoons, and even the fate
of single men; and whatever his final
form, there must underlie his work a me-
ticulous accuracy as to time and place.
Captain W. Kerr Rainsford has made
such a narrative ("From Upton to the
Meuse, With the 307th Infantry" ; Apple-
ton), which is unusual enough, and has
succeeded in making it clear, expressive,
and entertaining — thanks in good part to
a never failing sense of humor. We must
give credit, too, for his having provided
the maps necessary to follow his narra-
tive— a too unusual provision in books
about the war.
The actual task in the Argonne is made
far more clear by his precise and matter-
of-fact statement than by any of the
pretentious verbiage with which we are
only too familiar: Compare, for in-
stance, his account of the "Lost Battal-
ion" incident with the half-bravado, half
whitewashing presentations in the press
or in official propaganda reports. This
sobriety and measure is in fact the pe-
culiar note of the book, and its general
tone — towards all matters, large and
small, towards American and Allied — is
perfect. It is rare to find a history of a
particular unit which avoids disparage-
ment or invidious comparisons — and
there is none of the boasting which has
made certain Divisional histories little
more than swashbuckling on the type-
writers. Captain Rainsford does not
even praise his comrades — but merely
sets forth what they have done. One of
his particular criticisms, however, may
be quoted here:
A fruitful cause of trouble was an almost
criminal inexactness on the part of many in-
fantry officers in map reading. ... It was the
one salient poin* on which the training of in-
fantry officers was found to be deficient. Many
a company commander or liaison officer was
entirely capable of waving a vague finger over
a valley marked on the map, while stating that
the troops in question were "on that hill," and,
if pressed to be more precise, he would give as
their coordinates figures which represented a
point neither in the valley to which he was
pointing nor on the hill on which they were.
This failing was in no way peculiar to
the author's regiment; it was notorious
and universal, and was responsible for
more things than it is pleasant to con-
sider.
Two more of the numerous elementary
books dealing with questions of public
health are "Home Nursing," by Abbie Z.
Marsh (Blackiston Son), and "The
Health of the Teacher," by William Es-
tabrook Chancellor (Forbes). Miss
Marsh's book is brief, well written, and
reliable. It will no doubt be of real ser-
vice to many mothers of families, espe-
cially when hospital facilities may be
difficult or impossible of attainment. Dr,
Chancellor's book is a poor affair. There
is much advice of a very detailed and
particular kind. Those who want specific
dietary instructions will find them here;
there is nothing uncertain or indefinite
in his directions. For a "city teacher,"
woman aged 40 years, sinewy motor,
body-coefficient 2, in April damp weather"
a six o'clock dinner is described in detail.
Among other things it includes a baked
apple "21/2 inches in diameter" and ice
cream "made with cream, and two large
cookies." If, as the preface states, the
author has for years given his lectures
in a known American college and school
of education, one can not but feel sin-
cere regret that so many persons have
been mistaught in matters pertaining to
th« health and care of their bodies.
May 1, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[465
Drama
The Unreviving London
Stage and Its Revivals
THE British drama is making a very
slow recovery. The infrequency of
my communications to the Review is
simply due to the fact that there is little
or nothing worth writing about. None
of our playwrights of the first rank have
produced anything. We were to have had
a play by Sir James Barrie about this
time, but it has been postponed on ac-
count of the illness of Miss Fay Comp-
ton. One or two pleasant trivialities
have been produced, which I shall men-
tion later on. But the memory of man
scarcely runneth to the time when a play
of any serious pretensions made its way
to the London stage. Yet people are
positively gasping for something to
"break their minds upon." We are all
convinced that a great revival must fol-
low the war, but we have not even got
the length of pointing in any definite
direction and saying "Lo, here!" or "Lo,
there!" Instead of a revival we have re-
vivals— of the Euripides-Murray "Tro-
jan Women" and "Medea"; of "Julius
Caesar" (a Gilbert-Miller-Ainley effort,
only moderately successful) ; of "Othello"
and "The Merchant of Venice"; of Mr.
Shaw's "Arms and the Man," "Pygma-
lion," and "Candida," and of Sir James
Barrie's "Admirable Crichton."
One of the things that sometimes fills
the students of the theatre with despair
is the wild talk about things theatrical
that passes current among cultured out-
siders. An instance is afforded by a re-
cent review in the Times Literary Supple-
ment of Mr. Hornblow's "History of the
Theatre in America." The writer (un-
known to me) complains that Mr. Horn-
blow's work is a chronicle, not a philo-
sophic history, and illustrates his point
as follows:
Take the recent war : the chronicler of the
theatre will string a list of productions and
players. To the historian the interesting thing
will be the social causes which filled the
stages of London with rubbish and the audi-
torium of many a once august London theatre
with pleasure-seekers, while the old patrons
kept severely away ; and next the quick revival
of a better drama and the return to some
theatres of the old patrons and the old sense
of style, oddly mingled with new social factors
and habits.
This passage is so amazingly remote
from the facts as to lead one to wonder
in what realm of a priori figments the
writer has been living. It is eminently
desirable that there should have been
"many august London theatres" sup-
ported by faithful bodies of "patrons"
who were not mere "pleasure-seekers"
in the vulgar sense of the term. Had
such theatres existed, it is highly prob-
able that, during the war, they would
have been given over to comparative
"rubbish," by which the austere and
non-pleasure-seeking patrons would have
been flooded out. And, had this been the
case, we might fondly have hoped for a
"quick revival of a better drama" after
the war, and "the return to some theatres
of the old patrons and the old sense of
style." But the whole picture is a
Freudian dream, a vision of the night,
the wish being father to the thought. It
is true, of course, that the public taste
— or at least the managerial taste, which
more or less creates the public taste —
set towards frivolity during the war. But
it is not true that there were any — and
much less "many" — theatres of "august"
traditions, which were invaded by the
tide of frivolity, to the displacement of
their severely intellectual habitues. It is
not true that any particular "sense of
style" prevailed in any theatre or thea-
tres, and was displaced by the war.
Least of all is it true that there has been
"a quick revival of better drama" and a
restoration of the "sense of style." All
these are imaginary phenomena, and the
philosopher who should give an account
of their "social causes" would be a phil-
osopher of Laputa.
It is at least seventy years since any
theatre in London made any pretence of
faithfulness to an "august" tradition.
There was some faint show of the re-
establishment of something of the kind
in the Irving management at the Lyceum
and the Vedrenne-Barker management
at the Court: but both of these were
false starts and came to an end years
before the war. For the rest, the most
obvious phenomenon of the theatrical
world is a state of constant flux, which
prevents the establishment of any local
tradition, "august" or otherwise. Thea-
tres are constantly passing from hand to
hand and totally changing their style of
production. The only exceptions are such
houses as the Gaiety and Daly's, which
have been faithful for a long series of
years to musical farce. The management
of Sir George Alexander and Sir Her-
bert Tree gave to the St. James's and
His Majesty's, respectively, a certain
character: the one for social drama of
the Pinero type, the other for spectacu-
lar plays and revivals. It was not the
war, but the illness and death of Sir
George Alexander, that left the St.
James's for some time in the hands of
wild-cat enterprises; but it was never
invaded by mere war frivolities. As for
His Majesty's, has it not been occupied
for four years by a production which
may be called the apotheosis of the Tree
tradition— "Chu Chin Chow" to wit?
The only other London theatre which
can be said to have any tradition is the
Haymarket — a comedy house — and its
standard has been fairly maintained
throughout the war. At no point, then,
can we find any basis for the vision of
"high-brow" patrons driven out of "au-
gust" theatres by war frivolity; and still
less is there any sign of their "quick"
return to their old haunts, to be rejoiced
by a revival of "the old sense of style."
The article reveals the difliiculty of get-
ting even very intelligent people to take
a realistic view of the theatre.
The writer goes on to say that Mr.
Homblow "sees clearly and describes
with understanding the social conditions
which have led to the decline of the
American theatre since the last decade
of the nineteenth century!" This is
rather surprising to me, in as much as
I regard that period as one of very rapid
advance. But it would be an imperti-
nence in me to do more than state that
view for what it is worth.
One of the very few conspicuously suc-
cessful productions of the spring season
is "Mr. Pim Passes By," a light comedy
by Mr. A. A. Milne of Punch, in which
our leading comedy actress. Miss Irene
Vanbrugh, returns to the London stage
after a long absence. "Light" is too
mild a term for it — such is its insub-
stantiality that many of us doubted on
the first night whether even its agreeable
wit and Miss Vanbrugh's genius would
carry it to success. Olivia Marden is a
bright and clever woman, married to
a brainless but well-meaning country
squire to whom she is much attached.
She has been most unhappily married be-
fore, to a drunkard and scoundrel who
died in Australia. One fine morning, a
doddering old gentleman named Garra-
way Pim wanders into Marden Lodge on
some trivial errand. In the course of
desultory conversation, he says some-
thing which leads Olivia to believe that
her first husband is still alive. The in-
telligence naturally causes some dismay
in the Marden household; but though
the dismay is natural, one can not say
the same of the conduct of the parties
concerned. Fortunately, it is needless to
go into the question, for in the course of
the afternoon Mr. Garraway Pim wan-
ders back again, and it appears that he
has mixed up two names, so that Olivia
is as innocent of bigamy in fact as in
intention. One would have said that
there was barely matter for a one-act
play in this brief misunderstanding. It
is only fair, therefore, to recognize the
art, or knack, with which Mr. Milne
spreads it out over three acts to the com-
plete satisfaction of his audiences.
The Little Theatre, wrecked by a Ger-
man bomb, has been rebuilt and reopened
under the management of Messrs. Ve-
drenne and Vernon. Their first venture,
"Mumsee," by Edward Knoblock, has
been but moderately successful. It in-
troduces us to an Anglo-French family,
resident in a French country town at the
time of the German invasion. The eldest
son is a youth of weak character and a
466]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. .51
confirmed gambler. He drifts into the
clutches of a German spy and is induced
to sell him some military information.
Being discovered, he ought to meet with
an ignominious death; but a sympathetic
British officer gives him a chance to
expiate his crime by carrying a despatch
to a point of danger from which he can
not — and does not — return alive. So far,
we have a very passable war play, not un-
skillf ully handled. But Mr. Knoblock has
not been content to write a military melo-
drama : he has tried to concentrate inter-
est upon the character of the young man's
mother, the "Mumsee" of the title, an
embodiment of the heroic spirit of
France. This was in itself not a bad
idea; but when Mr. Knoblock sought to
make Mumsee the heroine of a romantic
love-story, his daring outran his dis-
cretion. Her very name emphasizes her
maternity; and as she has four grown-
up children, we must credit her with at
least forty-five summers — and winters to
match. What is our amazement, then,
when a grizzled and battered Anglo-In-
dian Colonel pleads guilty to a hopeless
passion for her, and when the author, in
the last act, positively kills off the father
of her four children in order that she
may be virtuously happy with Husband
No. 2! It may be set down as a maxim
of stagecraft that a prudent author will
not undertake to enlist our sympathies
for a pair of lovers whose united ages
run to over a hundred.
A curious bucolic comedy named "Tom
Trouble" has been produced by Mr. Lewis
Casson, a free-lance manager of some dis-
tinction. The author's name, "John Bur-
ley," is probably fictitious. The place
is a Yorkshire village, and the play opens
with an exceedingly vivacious and well-
written scene of rustic courtship. After
a lovers' quarrel, the girl, in a fit of
pique, falls an easy prey to the Don
Juan of the district. The question then
is whether her seducer will marry her;
but he is killed in an accident before the
point is decided. Thereupon her original
lover returns to her, overlooking her
divagation; and, from the Yorkshire
point of view, all ends happily. The play
is marked by the simplicity, the brevity,
the lack of structural development, which
we note in the Irish drama; but it is by
no means without talent. We learn that
in this Yorkshire district, experimental
marriages, not to be ratified in church
unless they prove fruitful, are a recog-
nized social institution — as they are in
Thomas Hardy's "Isle of Slingers." It
is an odd sign of the times that this free-
and-easy custom should not only be
openly discussed on the stage, but that
the heroine's father, a well-to-do farmer,
should be represented as triumphantly
vindicating it in a discussion with the
parish clergyman.
The Haymarket has scored a success
with a light and bright comedy, en-
titled "The Young Person in Pink," by
Miss Gertrude Jennings, a lady whose
very real wit and observation have
hitherto been displayed only in one-act
pieces. In the first act we find a "young
person in pink" wandering, in a rather
suspicious fashion, in St. James's Park.
Her proceedings attract the unfavorable
notice of the park keeper; but her beauty,
distinction, and evident innocence appeal
to the chivalry of the young Lord Stev-
enage, who finds, on inquiry, that she
has totally lost her memory, and has no
idea who she is. Lord Stevenage claims
for her the protection of Lady Ton-
bridge, a woman twice his age, to whom
he has incautiously engaged himself
when recovering from his wounds — on a
day when his temperature was many de-
grees above the normal. Lady Ton-
bridge affects to befriend her, but in
reality behaves to her in an odious
fashion, which leads to the breaking off
of the engagement, and leaves Stevenage
free to transfer his affections to his
protegee, who, of course, proves to be the
daughter of a Duke. Probability, as you
will have perceived, is not the distin-
guishing virtue of the piece; but it is
very brightly written, contains a number
of amusing character sketches, and is
admirably acted. It is entirely a woman's
play. Lord Stevenage being, with the ex-
ception of the park keeper, the only man
in it.
The Stage Society has taken its cour-
age in both hands and has actually pro-
duce^ a German play — "From Mom to
Midnight," by Georg Kaiser, translated
by Major Ashley Dukes. Kaiser is under-
stood to be a noted communist, and is
certainly a disciple of Frank Wedekind,
the author of "Erdgeist," "Die Buchse
der Pandora," and other somewhat an-
archic plays. The disciple, however, is
a little less morbid, and much less heavy-
handed, than his master. The hero of
this play is a bank cashier. Suddenly
inebriated by the heady perfumes of a
lady whom he conceives (erroneously) to
be a "dashing Cyprian," he steals 60,000
marks and proposes to elope with her.
Defeated in this purpose, he goes home
in time to see his aged mother die of
apoplexy ; then turns up at a "velodrome"
where he offers fantastic prizes for
bicycle races; then visits a disreputable
cabaret where he threatens to enter upon
the career of a "Jack-the-Ripper" ; and
finally goes to a Salvation Army meet-
ing, where he takes his place on the
penitent bench, causes the meeting to
end in a scramble for his ill-gotten
wealth, and, being betrayed to the police,
blows out his brains. All this, be it
noted, occurs between morn and mid-
night. There is a streak of something
very like insanity in the conception of
the play, and it is hard to discern any
merit, whether philosophical or artistic,
in its crude cynicism. But it is drawn
with the bold firm strokes of a "light-
ning caricaturist," and seems to repre-
sent a striving after a new technic which
is not without its interest.
William Archer
London, March 30
On Profiteer Hunting
THERE is a "flying squadron" that
flies in the newspapers in heavy
headlines, and it is hunting the profiteer.
It is connected with the Federal Gov-
ernment. It is in earnest. It will pro-
tect the poor. It is investigating cases
of overcharging in many necessities,
such as Chinese beads, French paper-
backed books, and white net gamps. It
recently arrested a man in Brooklyn for
asking $45 at retail for a raincoat which
is supposed to have cost him only $23.
The disgrace of the arrest so worked
upon the man's mind that he committed
suicide on the same day. It was not
alleged that the man misrepresented the
coats. It was not asserted that he com-
pelled anybody to pay this price. It was
not maintained that he was attempting
any monopoly. It was not charged that
he kept anyone from going down the
street and getting a similar coat more
cheaply. Under these conditions, if his
price were so much above the prices of
people around him, one would imagine
that his punishment would be simply
that the goods would remain unsold. But
that is not the way our "flying squad-
rons" reasons. It is flying too fast
to take out time to think.
The outbreak of the hysteria directed
against "profiteers" has reached a highly
mischievous point. Present conditions are
unfortunate and regrettable, especially
as applied to rents and to the housing
shortage, but these conditions can be
remedied only by calm thought and ex-
pert knowledge, not by high emotions.
Denunciation of "profiteers," and threats
against them, are not only useless but
harmful. If they did nothing more than
divert attention from the true remedies
they would be harmful enough, but they
are apt to lead to measures that are posi-
tively dangerous.
If profiteers are now charging "all
they can get," it must never be lost sight
of that they are always charging all they
can get, and that they were just as
greedy before the war as they are now.
The same amount of heartlessness thai
exists to-day has existed since the be-
ginning of economic history, and as 11
is not a new factor, it obviously can nol
be an explanation of present prices.
Most popular agitation about prices is
based purely on the price to which th(
public has become accustomed. Hot;^
many people know offhand the "cost o1
production" of common articles, such as
a newspaper, a car ride, a pair of shoes
(Continued on page 468)
May 1, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[467
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Rousseau and
Romanticism
By IRVING BABBITT
Traces a great international movement and studies it
in its bearing on the problems of the immediate present.
"Extraordinarily able." Manchester Guardian.
"An extremely learned and stimulating
book." Scotsman.
"Whatever may be our final attitude towards
the author's conclusions, we cannot but re-
gard 'Rousseau and Romanticism' as mas-
terly. . . . We are almost impelled to declare
that it is the only book of criticism worthy
the name which has appeared in English in
the twentieth century." Athenaeum.
"As a study in comparative literature, this
work is beyond question the most thought-
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should stir to the depth the sluggish waters
of American criticism." New York Post
At all Bookstores. $f.oo net.
Boston HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO. New York
Please mention The Rivkw in writing to aofertisers.
468]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 51
{Continued from page 466)
a hat, a loaf of bread? Yet when the
price of any one of these goes up, there
is certain to be clamor and wrath and
denunciation. That a price is three or
four times what it was four years ago
is considered prima facie evidence of rob-
bery.
Nor is cost of production itself, even
when known, a proper index on which to
base a "fair" price. In the long run
prices are governed by costs of produc-
tion, but in any given season prices are
unrelated to cost of production, and are
determined solely by supply and demand.
This is well illustrated by the crops.
WTien the fanner plants his crop he is
not only uncertain of what the next
year's world demand will be, but he can
know very little about the world's sup-
ply. He does not know how much com-
peting farmers here and in other coun-
tries are going to plant; he does not
know what weather conditions over the
world are going to be, and how they will
affect output. When his crop is har-
vested his price will be determined by
the world competition of buyers and of
sellers. The price may be, and often is,
below cost of production; but the in-
dividual fanner can not hold his stock
for a price that will bring cost of pro-
duction plus a "fair" return. The result
of trying to do so would be merely that
nobody would buy his stock at all; he
would suffer a total loss. His only re-
course is to sell his stock for what it
will bring. At these times nobody in-
quires as to the farmer's cost of pro-
duction. There is no agitation to pay
him the difference between cost of pro-
duction and the price.
What is true of farm products is true
of all manufacturing lines in which com-
petition exists. Prices are fixed at any
given time purely by supply and demand,
and if cost of production is not used to
fix an arbitrary price in times of busi-
ness adversity, it should not be so used
in times of prosperity. The influence of
cost of production will naturally and in-
evitably make itself felt, without public
agitation or regulation. When farmers
receive too little for a given crop in one
year, they will plant less of that crop
in the succeeding year, sa that a smaller
supply will bring prices above cost of
production. When, as now, certain lines
of business are receiving profits far in
excess of cost of production, the result
must be that manufacturers in that line
will constantly strive to increase their
output in order to increase such high
profits; and that outsiders will be at-
tracted into the same business, thus fur-
ther increasing output. This will bring
down prices more effectively than any
public regulation, and it will increase the
supply of goods at the same time. Al-
ways provided that real competition ex-
ists, people in any line of business who
are demanding "excessive" prices, though
they may be creating temporary dis-
tress, are unconsciously performing a
public service, for they are stimulating
increased production in that line. This
a priori conclusion is supported a poste-
riori. There was no more notorious price
increase last year than that in men's
clothing. Government statistics show
that from January, 1919, to January,
1920, the number of workers engaged in
the men's clothing trade increased 54.2
per cent, the largest increase of any in-
dustry.
Persons who believe that the present
situation couH be cured "if they would
only jail a few of these profiteers" might
do well to consider an historic precedent.
In his monograph on "Fiat Money In-
flation in France," the last edition of
which appeared in 1914, the late Andrew
D. White speaks of some of the accom-
paniments of that inflation of more than
a century ago :
The washerwomen of Paris, finding soap
was so dear that they could hardly purchase
it, insisted that all the merchants that were
endeavoring to save something of their little
property by refusing to sell their goods for
the wretched currency with which France was
flooded, should be punished with death. Marat
declared loudly that the people, by hanging
shopkeepers and plundering stores, could
easily remove the trouble. The result was
that on the 28th of February. 1793, at 8 o'clock
in the evening, a mob of men and women be-
gan plundering the stores and shops of Paris.
At first they demanded only bread • soon they
insisted on coflfee and rice and sugar ; at last
they demanded everything on which they could
lay their hands — cloth, clothing, groceries and
luxuries of every kind. Two hundred such
stores were plundered. Finally order was re-
stored by a grant of 7 million francs to buy
off the mob.
On September 29, 1793, France passed the
law of the Maximum. First — the price of each
article of necessity was to be fixed at one and
one-third times the price in 1790. Secondly,
all transportation was to be added at a fixed
rate per league. Third, five per cent, was to
be added for the profit of the wholesaler.
Fourth, ten per cent, was to be added for the
profit of the retailer. Nothing could look
more reasonable. Great was the jubilation.
The report was presented and supported by
Barrere. He insisted that France had been
suffering from a Monarchial commerce which
only sought wealth, while what she needed and
what she was now to receive was a Republican
commerce — a commerce of moderate profits
and virtuous. . . .
The first result of the Maximum was that
every means was taken of evading the fixed
price imposed, and the farmers brought in as
little produce as they possibly could. This
increased the scarcity, and the people of the
large cities were put on an allowance. Tickets
were issued authorizing the bearer to obtain
at the official prices a certain amount of
bread or sugar or soap or coal to cover im-
mediate necessities.
But it was found that the Maximum, with
its divinely revealed four rules, could not be
made to work well — even by the shrewdest
devices. In the greater part of France it
could not be enforced. As to merchandise of
foreign origin or merchandise into which any
foreign product entered, the war had raised
it far above the price allowed under the first
rule, namely, the price of 1790, with an addi-
tion of one-third. Shopkeepers therefore could
not sell such goods without ruin. The result
was that very many went out of business, and
the remainder forced buyers to pay enormous
charges under the very natural excuse that
the seller risked his life in trading at all. That
this excuse was valid is easily seen by the
daily lists of those condemned to the guillotine,
in which not infrequently figured the names
of men charged with violating the Maximum
laws. Manufactures were very generally
crippled and frequently destroyed, and agri-
culture was fearfully depressed. To detect
goods concealed by farmers and shopkeepers,
a spy system was established with a reward to
the informant of one-third of the value of the
goods discovered. To spread terror, the Crim-
inal Tribunal at Strassburg was ordered to
destroy the dwelling of anyone found guilty
of selling goods above the price set by law.
The farmer often found that he could not
raise his products at anything like the price
required by the new law, and when he tried
to hold back his crops and cattle, alleging that
he could not afford to sell them at the prices
fixed by law, they were frequently taken from
him by force, and he was fortunate if paid
even in the depreciated fiat money — fortunate,
indeed, if he finally escaped with his life. . . .
To reach tlie climax of ferocity, the Con-
vention decreed in May, 1794, that the death
penalty should be inflicted on any person con-
victed of "having asked, before a bargain was
concluded, in what money the payment was to
be made." About a year later came the aboli-
tion of the Maximum itself.
Mr. White's account shows the result
of public clamor and emotion when car-
ried to their logical extreme. During
tions in France was completely over-
looked. There is a danger at the pres-
ent day that high feeling against
profiteers may similarly lead attention
away from the real cause of present
prices, and hence from their true cor-
rective.
Henry Hazlitt
Jazz a Song at Twilight
AMERICA'S chief contribution to the
arts so far, say the learned ones, is
ragtime; or, in vulgar parlance, jazz.
This cosmic syncopation is affecting
man's activities. Rooted axioms waver;
nations adopt intoxicating figures like
the Turkey-Trotsky, the Lenin Leaning,
the Bryan Grape-juice Waddle. Later
Slavic music, Cubist Art, Vorticist Sculp-
ture, Vachel Lindsay's chants and Amy
Lowell's shredded rhythms — what are
these but jazz?
Recently we ran across the advance
sheets of a distinctly modern volume of
music, "Home Jazzes." An energetic
adapter has redone the old songs in the
crepitative metre. We quote a few of
Concerning radical readjustment between the peoples:
"The Brotherhood of Man"
This book by Dr. A. R. L. Dohme is an earnest study
of general economic and political conditions. Dr.
Dohme concludes with an interesting practical outline
for a World State and new human relationships.
By mail, $1.10.
THE NORMAN. REMINGTON COMPANY
Publishers - Baltimore
May 1, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[469
the ragged melodies, beginning with an
old favorite:
Home, home, saccharinic home.
Place to lay your dome,
Lay your dome,
Lay your dome.
There's no place — no show place —
Or "go" place— or slow place —
There's no place like home —
What?
Home!
The nationalistic note appears in this
brief chorus:
Come back to Erin for a Sinn Fein rag;
Use the ballot — or a mallet — for the old green
flag.
We'll print our books in Gaelic,
So we can never failic,
Till we win at last that Home Rule, Sinn Fein
ragl
"Annie Laurie" sticks closer to the ac-
cepted jazz forms:
Down in bonny Scotland where the thistles
grow
There's a little kiddie with a brow like snow,
She hasn't any frosty mitt, I'd have you know,
She's a bear— Theda Bare — Oh, my I
(Slower) And on Maxwelton's brae
Amid the new-mown hay.
She's waiting 'neath a Scottish sky :
(Chorus)
Annie — Annie Laurie,
My heart's in a flurry,
Let's get preacher, license, ring,
And do that thing!
Annie — Annie Laurie,
You will ne'er be sorry.
My classy lassie, un-surpassy.
Let's do the Highland Matrimonial Fling!
We regret we can not quote the intoxi-
cating strain of "Drink to Me — Only
with Thine Eyes," "The Auld Lang High
Syne," "The Battle Hymn of the New
Republic," "Shimmying To-night on the
Old Camp Ground," "The Jazz-Jangled
Banner," or the pathetic stanzas of "I
Cannot Sing the Old Songs — the Law
Will Not Permit It." Instead, we give
the unexpurgated chorus of "Love's Old
Sweet Jazz" :
Just a jazz (it's just a jazz) at twilight.
In the shy light.
Not a high light.
Life's a muddle, kiss and cuddle,
Ba-by dar-ling.
While the shadows flicker all the quicker
As though liquor filled 'em;
Though the way (although the way) be weary.
Rather dreary.
Simply bleary.
Still to us at twilight
Through the shy light
From the skylight
Comes the jazz —
(THE JAZZ!)
For it has
(IT HAS!)
A sneaky, squeaky, shrieky Bolsheviki
Sort of razz ;
It's the jazz —
(THE JAZZ!)
For it has
(IT HAS!)
An easy, squeezy, Japanesy,
Fuimy, bunny, hug me, honey.
Can't embarrass, Peace-at-Paris,
Razzle-dazzle JAZZ!
Clement Wood
THE HUDSON COAL CO.
CELEBRATED
LACKAWANNA
THE ARISTOCRAT OF ANTHRACITE
1823
1920
HAS NATURAL QUALITIES AND MAN-3VIADE REFINEMENT
D. F. WILLIAMS
Vice-President and General Sales Agent
W. F. SHURTLEFF
Assistant General Sales Agent
SCRANTON, PA.
470]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 51
EDUCATIONAL SECTION
The War and the
Rhodes Scholarships
THE war has produced important
changes in the working of the Rhodes
Scholarship scheme. In the first place,
it has brought about a new and very
much keener interest in the scholarships
on the part of students in this country.
In the second place, it has caused sweep-
ing changes in the regulations of the
University of Oxford. And in the third
place, the war, if not the cause, has at
any rate been the occasion of radical
alterations in the machinery by which
Rhodes Scholars are selected in the
United States.
Oxford has been affected profoundly
by the war. An elaborate system of
short courses has been arranged for men
whose education was interrupted for five
years and who have not now the time
(nor in many cases the money) to spend
in taking a degree in the ordinary way.
The requirement in the Greek language
has been abolished for admission and
for all degrees. Oxford has instituted
the Ph. D., has altered the old regula-
tion which defined "residence" as sleep-
ing .within a mile and a half of Carfax,
is preparing to admit women to degrees,
and is asking the Government for sup-
port which, if granted, will probably
carrj' with it such measure of govern-
ment control as will make the uni-
versity in a sense a state institution.
First in importance among these
changes is the establishment of the
Ph. D. degree, which is already attract-
ing to the Rhodes Scholarships in larger
numbers a type of student not, indeed,
unknown among Rhodes Scholars in the
old days, but much more rare then than
he is likely to be in the future. Facili-
ties for research have always existed in
Oxford, but not until now has the uni-
versity offered a degree which would be
generally recognized in other countries
as indicating the successful completion
of an original investigation. The Oxford
doctorates (the D. Litt, the D. S. C.,
and the D. C. L.) have hitherto been un-
obtainable before middle life, when their
value to an American scholar would be
negligible.
While Oxford has always offered op-
portunities for research, there has not
been in the past a systematic organiza-
tion of research work and definitely de-
fined requirements necessary for the ad-
ministration of graduate work on any
except a small scale. It has been this
lack of the organization of graduate
work which, even more than the lack of
a doctor's degree, has deterred the type
of American student, who formerly went
to Germany, from going to Oxford. In-
dividual assistance from the most emi-
ment men in the university has always
been given to students engaged in re-
search with a generosity which would
have been impossible had these students
been more numerous. But such help has
been largely informal; the graduate
student has been left "on his own" to
work out his thesis and to prepare him-
self for what was likely to be a severe
examination for his degree.
It must not be expected that with the
institution of the Ph. D. degree the Uni-
versity of Oxford will be able in a day,
or in a year, to improvise the type of
organization which is to be found in the
larger American graduate schools. In
one very important respect the situation
there differs from that in an Ameri-
can university. The man who has taken
an Oxford B. A. with honors will already
have done much more highly specialized
work in his particular field than the
American A. B. Furthermore, the Ox-
ford honors man will have already
learned to work independently for him-
self in a way which is not usual over
here. On this account it seems likely
that work for the Ph. D. at Oxford will
be less elaborately organized, will remain
freer and more independent than in
many cases it is in the United States.
As a result of this situation it follows
that the American student who has done
only the A. B. course, is not ready to
begin work for the Ph. D. at Oxford. He
should have taken at least his A. M.,
should have acquired some experience in
independent work, and must produce evi-
dence of "fitness to engage in research"
before he is ready to become a candidate
for the Oxford Ph. D.
So far as Rhodes Scholars are con-
cerned, it seems extremely likely that
the Oxford Ph. D. will, for the most
part, be combined with graduate work
in the United States, either by men who
begin their graduate study in Oxford
and take the degree over here, or by men
who begin their advanced work in this
country and go on to Oxford for the
Ph. D. American Rhodes Scholars who
have only just graduated from college
before going to Oxford will be well ad-
vised to take the former course, spending
two years at Oxford on the A. B. in one
of the Final Honor Schools, and begin-
ning a piece of research in their third
year which could then be completed in
this country in one or two years, as the
case may be. On the other hand, Rhodes
.Scholars who have already begun to work
on the Ph. D. in this country will be able
to finish their work and to take their de-
gree at Oxford.
Of less importance among the changes
at Oxford are the abolition of compul-
sory Greek and the provisions for grant-
ing "Senior Standing" under the For-
eign Universities Statute. Until a year
ago every candidate for the B. A. degree
at Oxford was required to show a "suffi-
cient knowledge" of the Greek language.
During the past year a hot battle has
been waged over the proposal to abolish
this requirement, a battle which was only
ended on March 2, when the requirement
was defeated by a majority of seventy-
five in a house of about eight hundred.
The new entrance regulations provide
that the Greek language shall be an op-
tional subject, but that candidates for
the B. A. degree in any subject, except
mathematics, natural science, or juris-
prudence, shall be required to offer, either
on entrance or on their intermediate ex-
amination, a portion of Greek history or
literature with texts studied in translor
tion. That was the live issue in the re-
cent contest, whether students of literary
subjects should be compelled to study
Greek. The answer of Convocation
might be given in the words of Profes-
sor Gilbert Murray: "If by Greek you
mean the Greek language, no; if you
mean Greek civilization, yes."
Interesting as this contest is, it has
comparatively little application to Ameri-
can Rhodes Scholars, because of the pro-
visions for granting Senior Standing
(with excuse from all entrance and inter-
mediate examinations) to graduates of
approved foreign universities. Most
Rhodes Scholars are college graduates
when they go to Oxford, and, while no
list of institutions which are to be con-
sidered "approved" under this statute
has yet been issued, it seems probable
that the majority of American Rhodes
Scholars will be granted Senior Standing
and will proceed directly to the special-
ized study of the subjects in which they
expect to take their degree.
Last in order but perhaps not least in
importance among the changes wrought
by the war in the Rhodes Scholarship
scheme is the new plan under which se-
lections will be made in this country. The
outstanding character of this plan is the
simplication of the procedure. Examina-
tions are no longer required. Selections
are made on the basis of the candidate's
record in school and college, supple-
mented by confidential references and by
a personal interview with the Commit-
tee of Selection. The candidate is no
longer required even to procure testi-
monials. He simply fills out an applica-
tion blank giving certain information
about himself and giving the names of
men to whom he wishes to refer. His
record is then investigated by the com-
mittee, the more promising candidates
are summoned for a personal interview,
and the selection is made.
May 1, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[471
Committees of Selection in the various
States are composed of ex-Rhodes Schol-
ars, of whom there are now four hundred
in this country, and this plan brings
their love of Oxford and their enthusiasm
for the scheme to bear upon the selection
of the Rhodes Scholars of the future.
Until 1919 the ex-Rhodes Scholars had
had practically no part in the working
of the scheme in this country. Not the
least of the benefits of their participa-
tion in the selections comes from the fact
that information about Oxford and about
the Scholarships will be more readily
available in almost every State, inasmuch
as the men who are administering the
Scholarships have themselves been at Ox-
ford. Ex-Rhodes Scholars feel almost to
a man that the Scholarships open what
is perhaps the greatest intellectual oppor-
tunity in grasp of an American boy — an
opportunity all the more valuable in
that it involves not merely the opening
to personal success but also qualifies a
man to do his part towards building up
an understanding between the members
of that group of nations which, by work-
ing together, can do most for the sta-
bility of the world and the preservation
of free institutions.
Frank Aydelotte
(American Secretary to the Rhodes
Trustees)
THE growth of constructive educa-
tional work in industrial centres is
shown clearly by the March Bulletin of
the National Association of Corporation
Schools. Many have realized that some
such work was going on. Few realize,
however, just what sort of work is being
done. Still fewer, perhaps, appreciate
the enormous benefits which may ac-
crue, not only to the corporations inter-
ested, but to the employees and so even-
tually to the country, of which the em-
ployees make up the larger part. Mem-
bership in the company clubs of this
far-reaching association amounts to ap-
proximately twenty-nine per cent, of the
aggregate number of employees. These
figures are made from the reports of
only fifty-three establishments ; but when
the movement spreads to practically the
whole industrial life of the country, as
it bids fair to do, the work, already of
great importance, may prove to be, in
more than a mere quantitative sense, the
chief contribution of America to educa-
tion.
"The object of such clubs," as their
supporters phrase it, "is to promote so-
cial activities and to provide a medium
through which better understanding may
be had among employees and among those
charged with management and oft
times including stockholders." The work
done, though it varies greatly according
to the special needs of each club, usually,
in addition to community houses, country
clubs, and libraries, includes hospital ser-
vice, health supervision, provision for in-
surance and savings funds, with instruc-
tions regarding them, night schools, and
"Americanization" classes which provide
instruction in English and in the princi-
ples and forms of American governfnent.
Much of this work, to be sure, individ-
ual concerns have done for some years.
The virtue lies not in the addition of
particularly new ideas, but in the organi-
zation of rather obvious ideas into con-
structive, well-articulated work, and in
the cooperative state of mind which such
organization implies. Also, something
refreshingly definite and practical is
being done. While the mails have been
flooded with propagandist literature, cry-
ing out for theories good and bad, for-
ward-looking industries have quietly
gone about their important business of
making better workers and so better
citizens of both employer and employee.
If the ills of modem times are economic
rather than political, as our Socialist
brethren tell us, little could be more
promising than this great effort to teach,
in a practical way, the fundamental con-
ditions of economic development,
Harry F. Atwood's "Back to the Re-
public" (Chicago : Laird & Lee) is a mili-
tant little volume, which pleads for the
golden mean in governmental organiza-
tion and policy. But it is not couched
(Continued on page 472)
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472]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 51
(Continued from page 471)
in the velvet whisperings which usually
exude from the friends of compromise.
The author is assertive and epigram-
matic. He wastes no sentences. His aim
is to indicate with a few trenchant
strokes just what ideals and principles
guided the American Republic to great-
ness in the nineteenth century. This
done, he proceeds with his plan for
eradicating some of our contemporary
troubles. Most of his suggestions are
good enough, but without any flavor of
novelty.
Books and the News
Sport
A LIBRARIAN of my acquaintance
says there are no books which he
recommends with more diflddence than
the ones which describe, or pretend to
describe, outdoor games and athletic
exercise.
There are, I agree, few topics on
which one can recommend a book with
less chance of success. But his talk
set me hunting for books about out-
door spwrt — not so much for the man-
uals, the "How to" books, as for the
books which tell something of the joy
of the game. At the very outset, I
found one. Since the time when "A
Was an Archer," that sport has naturally
led the list, and while I fancy that few
readers of the Revieio are thinking of
going in for archery ("taking it up
seriously"), anybody who likes a charm-
ing book on an odd subject should enjoy
MauUce Thompson's "The Witchery of
Archery" (Scribner, 1879). For the
author began, not as a member of a
toxophile society, but as an Indian
hunter in the romantic Floridian wilds.
Next in order is coaching, and for that
read "Coaching Days and Coaching
Ways" (Macmillan, 1914), by W. Out-
ram Tristram; read it for pleasure, for
its information, and for Hugh Thom-
son's pictures. "Cricket" (Newnes),
edited by Horace G. Hutchinson, is a
history of the game, not a manual of in-
struction. For the canoe, there are books
upon its "selection, care and use," but
its chief dwelling place in literature is
Stevenson's "Inland Voyage."
Fishing occupies one of the big sec-
tions in the library of sport, and literary
folk have done well by it. I will not do
the obvious thing and name the book,
which, as my librarian friend says,
everyone recommends and nobody reads.
Instead, there is a charming volume in
Sir Edward Grey's "Fly Fishing" (Dent,
1899), while a book called "Angling"
(Scribner, 1896) has some agreeable
chapters on American fishing by Leroy
M. Yale, Robert Grant, C. F. Holder,
and others. "The Tent Dwellers"
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(Harper, 1908), by Albert Bigelow
Paine, is of the right kind, and tells of
fishing, camping, woods-life, and other
matters with comments upon such inter-
esting topics as the edibility of the
brown owl.
For golf there is an amusing book,
"The Mystery of Golf" (Macmillan,
1912), by Arnold Haultain, on what may
be called the philosophy of golf. Horace
G. Hutchinson's "The Golfing Pilgrim on
Many Links" (Scribner, 1898) contains
pleasant essays about the links of Scot-
land, England, and Europe, while "The
Winning Shot" (Doubleday, 1915), by
Jerome D. Travers and Grantland Rice, is
full of informal paragraphs and verses
about the game.
The school of fox-hunting novelists
have celebrated the horse in dozens of
volumes. T. F. Dale's "The Game of
Polo" (Constable, 1897) is historical and
general, and appeals to me as readable.
So does Charles E. Trevathan's book on
the turf in this country, called "The
American Thoroughbred" (Macmillan,
1905). Swimming is scandalously neg-
lected, except by the writers of the "How
to" books. Mr. A. S. Pier, in the one
adequate essay on the subject I know
(you will find it in his "The Young in
Heart"), says, "The poets have astonish-
ingly neglected it — astonishingly, I say,
for it supplies one of the most sensuous
human experiences." Here is the prince
of sports — but the books about it are so
many texts, describing the difference be-
tween the trudgeon and the Australian
crawl.
It is almost the same with tennis — only i
they who are already devotees will care i
to read such books as J. Parmley Paret's (
"Lawn Tennis ; Its Past, Present and I
Future" (Macmillan, 1904), but it has I
historical chapters which redeem it. So <
it is with W. P. Stephens's "American
Yachting" (Macmillan, 1904), and Herb-
ert Stone's "The America's Cup Races"
(Outing, 1914). They recall great days
in the history of the sport, and leave you
to supply its fascination from your im-
agination, or from your own love of it.
Walking is the one outdoor sport which
requires no skill, and a good constitution
rather than necessarily great muscular
strength. "Walking Essays" (Arnold,
1912), by A. H. Sidgwick, is one of the
genuine discoveries I made during this
search. It is in quite the right spirit,
and you are recommended to the essay
on "Walking in Literature," especially
Note A, "On the Rates of Walking of
Various Persons in 'The Egoist,' " chap-
ters 25, sqq.
But the time is at hand when one need
not read about one's favorite sport, but
play at it, and who would care for books
then? To read about a game is like
singing songs about kissing — only those
do it who can not practise the art itself.
Edmund Lester Pearson
Hi
THE REVIEW
Vol. 2, No. 52
New York, Saturday, May 8, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment
Editorial Articles:
One Year of "The Review"
A Cost-of-Living Exhibit
Poles and Bolsheviki
Squaring Grandfather
473
476
477
477
479
Aggressive Poland. By Leo Pasvolsky 480
Presidential Inability. By Lindsay
Rogers 481
The Radical in Fiction. By Frederick
Tupper 483
Correspondence 485
Book Reviews:
Like a Fine Old English Gentleman 487
Talk of the Best 487
The Man of Science in the Future 488
Cult and Comedy 489
The Run of the Shelves 490
The Trembling Year. By Robert Pal-
frey Utter 491
Books and the News: France. By Ed-
mund Lester Pearson 492
Empire Building by Air — Cairo to the
Cape. By Cuthbert Hicks 494
Drama:
Ibsen on Grand Street — Gilbert on
Broadway. By O. W. Firkins 494
How Can America Help Europe? By
Guy Emerson 498
WHLL the Republican Convention
" be a real convention or merely
a tug of war? That is at this mo-
ment the most interesting question
for those who are trying to forecast
the possibilities at Chicago. Not long
ago it was almost universally assumed
that the only thing which the dele-
gates would have to decide was whom
they would like to have for President ;
nomination was supposed to be equiv-
• alent to election. A great change has
come over the situation in the last
month or two. Whatever the pri-
maries may not have settled, they
have brought out very clearly the fact
that the party will have to reckon
with very serious elements of disaf-
fection, not to speak of the possibility
of an organized bolt. Accordingly, if
ithere shall be at Chicago a group of
' sagacious politicians strong enough
to determine the ultimate result,
their primary task will be to decide
upon a candidate who will command
a sufficient following of Republicans
and independents to assure victory in
November. Is any such group in
sight? If so, does it represent a suf-
ficient amount of practical foresight
and of political virtue — the combina-
tion is necessary at such a time as
this — to give promise of a wise de-
cision? Nobody knows. Mr. Pen-
rose's little flyer, in the shape of a
suggestion of Knox for President, is
certainly not a cheerful indication of
what may happen.
'T'HE platform-makers will have as
-'- serious a problem as the ticket-
makers. The Republican National
Campaign Committee is making a
stout effort to help construct a plat-
form based upon real consideration
of the problems of the day, and is
utilizing to that end the services of
an able staff. It has received a mass
of answers to carefully prepared
questionnaires addressed to persons
who may be supposed to have some-
thing worth while to say on the vari-
ous subjects in question, and will
doubtless make an interesting report
on them. The leading candidates for
the nomination have thus far said lit-
tle that is distinctive, nor does there
seem to be much prospect of their do-
ing so before the eighth of June. The
one issue upon which something like
a clear-cut division exists between
the parties is that of the League of
Nations ; but on this issue the Repub-
lican party is divided within itself
almost as sharply as it is divided from
the opposite party. Looking at the
situation as a whole, it is perhaps cor-
rect to say that there has seldom been
a time when, on the threshold of a
Presidential campaign, the actual
alignment of the two parties was so
ill-defined, and consequently so de-
pendent upon what will be done at
the conventions. In these circum-
stances, it is most earnestly to be
hoped that the outcome at Chicago,
as to both candidate and platform,
will be the product of deliberate
thought and not the chance outcome
of convention turmoil.
■fl/TR. MUNSEY has done a public
■^'-'- service in directing attention
to the seriousness of the newsprint
paper question, and its relation to
the enormous size which American
newspapers have attained in recent
years. The colossal destruction of
forests which has been caused by this
measureless consumption of paper is
a matter which touches national in-
terests in a way that Congress should
no longer ignore. Not only the Sun-
day newspapers, but the principal
weekday papers throughout the coun-
try are swollen to a preposterous size,
and Mr. Munsey makes the shocking,
but not incredible, statement that "we
are only started on this drunken orgy
of paper use." Another witness be-
fore the Senate Committee informed
it that consumption of newsprint
paper has risen from three pounds
per capita in 1880 to thirty-five
pounds in 1919. It requires no pre-
diction of a further development of
this insatiable appetite to stamp it as
one that has got to be restrained.
That it can be restrained by a well-
designed scheme of taxation, there
can be no doubt. The question is
whether Congress will have the cour-
age to apply the remedy. It is to be
hoped that the Senate committee will,
at all events, point the way.
THE small householder who buys
potatoes by the pound is now pay-
ing at the rate of more than twenty
dollars a barrel. Two years ago,
when the price of potatoes was less
than half this dizzy height, every one
in the country who could command a
plot of ground was earnestly urged to
II
474]
THE REVIEW
[Vol 2, No. 52
raise them. Why has not the Govern-
ment issued a similar slogan this
year? Two years ago, it is true,
potatoes were to win the war. But
if an abundance of that staple would
this year win a measure of content-
ment for a thoroughly disgruntled
nation, some one in authority has
blundered. No doubt we all, includ-
ing the powers at Washington, have
been too obsessed by the thought of
profiteers and of ways to smash them
to consider helping ourselves to pota-
toes by the only sort of direct action
that really pays.
fyHERE is a faint echo of Euphues'
•'■ voice in the speech which Sir
Auckland Geddes addressed to the
annual meeting of the Chamber of
Commerce of the United States at
Atlantic City. It turned on the cardi-
nal question how Germany — and all
Europe with her — could "be weaned
from war and won for work." The
voice of Euphues not without his
England. Nothing had surprised him
more. Sir Auckland said, than the
note of self-depreciation, almost of
pessimism, which was struck in so
many of our newspapers and in the
speech of so many men whom he had
met. The note struck by England,
in the person of her official spokes-
man in this country, was one of hope
and self-confidence. The war, he said,
had worked profound changes de-
serving almost the title of a revolu-
tion : "Ultimate political power in
England now rests in the hands of the
working classes. They are deter-
mined to work out new relations be-
tween capital and labor. They seek
to the limit of the nation's power to
secure tranquility in Europe, in Asia
Minor, in Asia, and Africa. They see
clearly that to secure their purpose
they have to end the rancors and ani-
mosities-which have torn Europe and
brought her to the brink of disaster."
Here is outlined a worthier task for
Labor than the fomenting of a world
revolution for the proletariat's seiz-
ure of the dictatorship. The world
will be safer under the guidance of
free Labor whose power is the ripe
fruit of political growth than under
that of Russia's so-called self-ruling
proletariat, whose dictators forced
their power to precocious maturity in
the hothouse heat of revolution.
A NEW organization has been
•^*- formed in Dublin, under the
chairmanship of Stephen Gwynn,
called the Government of Ireland
Bill Amendment Group. Only a few
months ago, on January 5, Mr.
Gwynn contributed an article to the
Manchester Guardian which he en-
titled "A Personal View of the Irish
Proposals," "because nobody that I
know shares it except two other men,
both journalists." It is an achieve-
ment for Mr. Gwynn to have gained,
in so short a time, a sufficient num-
ber of supporters of his trio to form
a group strong enough to conduct a
political action. It may be taken as
inaugurating, on the part of Irish
intellectuals, a return from the ad-
vocacy of extreme demands to a mod-
erate and conciliatory attitude. Mr.
Gwynn is a nationalist, but he does
not approve of Sir Horace Plunkett's
sweeping condemnation of Lloyd
George's Home Rule bill. He is more
tolerant towards it than the English
home-ruler Asquith, who assailed it
in the bitterest terms. He recognizes
that the distinctive character of
Ulster makes some application of
the cantonal system of government
necessary for Ireland. "This, and not
the immediate attainment of more or
less complete powers, is the true end
to which Nationalist Ireland should
direct thought and desire." Lloyd
George's plan of divided self-govern-
ment applies that system to Ireland,
and Stephen Gwynn admits that this
is all that can be done for the pres-
ent towards the unification of his
country. The status and the freedom
of a Dominion can not be attained at
one jump.
"DUT Gwynn's approval of Lloyd
^-^ George's fundamental idea does
not extend to the details of the bill.
His Amendment Group is to start
propaganda for the improvements
which must make it a workable con-
stitution. The six-county area for
Ulster as fixed by the bill must be en-
larged with Monaghan, Cavan, and
Donegal, which are an intrinsic part
of Ulster. Their exclusion is a de-
vice to please the Orangemen, who
would restrict the Ulster area to
those six counties where they possess
predominance, rather than extend it
so as to enclose those three pre-
ponderantly Catholic counties where
a combination of Labor and Mr.
Devlin's Ulster Nationalists might
impair their political monopoly. But
Ulster is a unit, and the Catholics of
the three counties rejected by the
Carsonites are genuine Ulstermen
who can not be severed from their
fellows in the six others without in-
creased friction tending to retard the
achievement of unity. To amend the
measure in this sense so as to make
the unit Ulster officially what it act-
ually is, will be the chief effort of
those members of Parliament who
will be spokesmen of Mr. Gwynn's
Amendment Group.
COME are cocksure that the May-
^ day bomb plot was, as a Hibernian i
orator might put it, nothing but ai
mare's nest hatched in the Attorney i
General's brain. Others are equally]
certain that Mr. Palmer's vigilance l
was the only thing that saved us. AIll
we know is that it didn't come off.
A FEW weeks ago we ventured theJ
-^ opinion that the solution of thej
Danish crisis, from the King's stand-
point, was a compromise rather than^
a surrender. With the results of the!
recent elections for the Folketing be-i
fore us we can now say that the
King's action, far from having beer
so unpopular as to make a surrender
imperative to save his crown, had the
approval of at least 50 per cent, of
the nation. The party of Minister
Zahle, whose dismissal by the King
brought on the crisis, saw the thirty-
three seats which it held in the
last Folketing reduced to seventeen
whereas the Liberals and Conserva-
tives gained three and six seats, re
spectively. It is true that the Slesvi^
question was not the only issue. l<
offered the opposition an opportunitj
to strike a decisive blow at a Govern
ment which had made itself unpopu
lar among all except the Radical anc
Socialist parties by its continuatioi
after the armistice of an economii
policy necessitated by war condi
May 8, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[475
tions. As a protest against the per-
petuation of state interference in the
economic life of the nation the vote
of the electorate is no less remarkable
than for the sanction it gave to King
Christian's alleged unconstitutional
dismissal of the Zahle Cabinet.
OEHIND all the Italian labor tur-
J-* moil lurks the menacing figure
of Enrico Malatesta. The sw^ing of
the Socialist movement toward the
revolutionary left has been pro-
nounced in nearly all lands; but in
no country has it been so extreme as
in Italy. Italian Socialism had its
origin in Anarchism, and not until
the Genoa congress of 1892 vv^as it
able to divest itself of the traces. Its
later troubles grew out of conflicts,
not between Socialists and Anar-
chists, but between Marxians and re-
formers. Since the beginning of the
war, however, it has rapidly swung
back to the Bakuninism of its early
days; and its unofficial dictator to-
day is no other than Malatesta, who
was once a lieutenant of Bakunin's
and who later, at the London con-
gress of the Internationale, 1896, was
expelled for his Anarchism. From
his London refuge, where he had
lived since he was banished from
Italy in 1913, he was called back by
the insistent demands of the radicals,
and Premier Nitti acquiesced in his
return. Since then he has kept things
in a ferment. His authority over the
radical element of the working class
appears to be greater than that of
the Socialist party executives, and
his friends boast that even the Gov-
ernment dare not touch him. He has
now, as he has always had, but one
creed, the violent overthrow of "capi-
talist" government and the substitu-
tion of communal organization of in-
dustry. To the party executives he
is a septuagenarian enfant terrible;
they, too, are for revolutionism, Bol-
shevism, or any other "ism" of vio-
lence and turmoil; but they want to
be sure, and they fear that Malatesta
will spoil the game.
"■WrHAT'S right for me is wrong
w
for you," argues the child.
Primitive man argued that way, and
to the limit of his ability enforced
his argument with a club. Fanatics
of all stripes still continue the argu-
ment, and they translate it, if they
gain power, into law. The absolute
suppression of free speech, free press,
and free assemblage in Russia is
revolutionary virtue ; the punishment
of outright sedition in America is
vicious reactionism. All the pro-Bol-
shevist writers and speakers are
agreed ; and though the more preten-
tiously virtuous exponents of uplift
by usurpation cloak their meaning
with euphemisms, the more straight-
forward advocates disdain the use of
weasel words. On the front page of
the Appeal to Reason for April 17 is
an interview with Eugene V. Debs in
which the argument is stated in plain
terms. "If it was right," Debs was
asked, "for Russia to suspend free
speech and free press, was it not also
right for the United States to suspend
free speech in your case during the
war?" "No," replied Debs. "The
Russian revolution was a forward
step. American participation in the
war was a reactionary step. In sup-
pressing me, because I was a revolu-
tionist, a backward step was taken."
Naive, infantile, amusing, what you
will ; but how honorably this speech
contrasts with the intellectual and
ethical thimble-rigging of the preten-
tiously pious journals of uplift!
TT must be exasperating to the in-
-*- surgent editorial fraternity to
have Mr. Irwin Granich talk as he
does through the columns of our Bol-
shevist contemporary, the Liberator.
As all instructed liberals and radicals
know, there is a powerful plot against
Mexico, engineered by Wall Street.
The plotters systematically poison
the minds of Americans with false
information, and they plan to over-
throw the wonderful Constitution of
Mexico and to reduce the Mexican
people from their present free, com-
fortable, and happy state to the de-
graded condition of capitalistic slaves.
But here comes Mr. Granich, a Com-
munist-Socialist, or something of the
sort, who knows Mexico, and who
says that from the standpoint of the
common man the Carranza regime is
about the worst thing there is on the
planet. There is widespread misery,
strikes are suppressed, workmen are
shot down, the franchise is a joke,
banditry is common, official graft
is rampant, and, to top it all, a
fire-eating Communist journal is sub-
sidized by the Government, presum-
ably for its influence on the revolu-
tionary gudgeons of the United States.
The report accords with reliable
testimony, such as that by George
Agnew Chamberlain, which has re-
cently come out of Mexico. But it
is not the kind of information relished
by insurgent editors, who prefer the
testimony of observers who have been
carefully wet-nursed on their travels
by Carranza agents, or of others who,
somewhere east of Tenth avenue,
deduce their observations from the
glorious Mexican Constitution. That
the Liberator should publish such
statements must be regarded as a
sort of treason to "the cause." Not
often does it so far forget itself.
But occasionally, say once every six
months or so, it does, from a habit of
careless utterance, permit something
to get past which brings upon it from
the revolutionary brotherhood grave
suspicions of "giving information to
the enemy."
lyiULTIPLICITY of good causes
•^'-'- that want much should not be
allowed to obscure some of the equally
deserving causes that are asking com-
paratively little. One of these that
should by no mischance be forgotten
is the American Academy at Rome,
which is in immediate need of $1,000,-
000 for the work in which it has
already achieved distinguished suc-
cess, and for the development of new
departments, for the training of espe-
cially promising students in Land-
scape Architecture and Musical Com-
position. Through the generosity of
Mr. J. P. Morgan, the raising of this
sum will automatically clear away the
debt of the Academy ($375,000) to
the Morgan estate, since one dollar
of the debt will be cancelled for each
dollar subscribed to the new fund.
Mr. Edward P. Mellon, 52 Vanderbilt
Avenue, New York City, is receiving
contributions to this fund, and an-
nounces that Liberty bonds will be
credited for this purpose at their face
value.
476]
THE REVIEW
[Vol 2, No. 52
One Year of "The
Review'
> >
IN a card of invitation addressed to
persons whose interest it was
hoped to enlist in the proposed new
weekly journal, the aim of the Revietv
was briefly defined as that of helping
to maintain "the established prin-
ciples of American liberty." With
the appearance of the present issue,
which completes one year of its pub-
lication, it seems proper to consider
its experience from that standpoint.
The particular form which events
have taken in the course of this mo-
mentous twelvemonth is very differ-
ent from what anyone could have
forecast. But running through its
developments, and projecting itself
unmistakably into the future so far
as one can see it, the central ques-
tion remains what it was a year ago,
and what, indeed, thinking people
must have seen it to be long before
that. Socialistic agitation, and even
the threat of violent revolution, had
been with us for many years; but
what distinguished not only the war
period, and the post-war period, but
several years preceding the war, was
the entrance of a factor which, up
to a comparatively recent time, had
played no considerable role. The par-
ticular danger to "the established
principles of American liberty"
which the projectors of this journal
had in mind arose from the growth
of an undefined, and largely sentimen-
tal, radicalism which, with no clear
object in view, was giving cumulative
aid to every form of revolutionary
agitation. America was not, and is
not, in danger of accepting a So-
cialist or Communist programme now
or in the near future. Against the
heavy artillery of outright Marxians
or Leninites it is safe enough. . The
inroads which, in the present stage of
our history, we really have to fear
are those of the light-armed cavalry.
The dilettante radicals are not going
to batter down the institutions of
the country. Their work is not de-
struction, but demoralization. And
in that work the absence of heavy
artillery is not a drawback but a tre-
mendous advantage. To gird at all
established institutions, to point the
finger at everything that is bad and
say never a word about what is good
— to do all this without burdening
themselves with the responsibility of
any avowed advocacy of revolution-
ary change — is an inviting task for
minds inclined to it, and finds in thou-
sands of still less disciplined minds
an eager response.
If the essentials of American life
and American liberty are in danger,
it is from this quarter that the dan-
ger is most acute. It is true that the
discontent and unrest which have
come from the enormous advance of
prices has reached dimensions which,
like that advance itself, surpass all
expectations. But this, after all, we
have reason to believe is but a pass-
ing phase. What we shall continue
to have with us is that speculative
discontent, that vague longing for a
new world, based not so much on any
clear prospect that it holds out as on
an easy-going forgetfulness of what
the established institutions of civili-
zation do for us, which the dilettante
radicals are constantly promoting.
The peril against which we have to
guard is not so much the strength
of the attack as the weakness of the
defense. Socialism in this country
has made its gains much less in the
shape of outright converts than that
of sympathizing half-thinkers. Its
prospect of ultimate success depends,
above all else, upon the extent to
which this demoralization of thought
and feeling may spread and the ex-
tent to which it will be checked by
the growth of sober and responsible
thinking.
Within the year during which the
Review has been published, a cor-
relative danger to "the established
principles of American liberty" has
manifested itself. The conventional
thing to say about times like these
is that revolutionary agitation breeds
"reaction." In the broad sense in
which this word is usually employed,
we see no sign of such a menace to
this country. In relation to the great
questions of labor, for example, or
of taxation, while we may not ad-
vance so rapidly as some desire, or
perhaps so rapidly as we ought, yet
we shall certainly not fall back into
the attitude which ten or twenty
years ago largely dominated our af-
fairs; indeed, we shall not go
backward at all. The one important
development which can justly be stig-
matized as "reactionary" is that
which has taken place in the matter
of freedom of speech and freedom of
political effort. This, we confess, has
in some quarters assumed a form
more sinister than we had thought
there was reason to fear. Such at-
tempts to suppress opposition to our
existing institutions as have been
made in the sedition bills in Con-
gress, and in the amazing proceedings
at Albany, are just cause for serious
apprehension. No clearer duty rests
upon those who maintain the genuine
tradition of liberalism than to oppose,
with all the ability and earnestness
at their command, every such de-
parture from that tradition. The
right of free speech is not absolute,
and the Reviewhas taken more than
one occasion to define, to the best of
its ability, the limitations to which
it is justly subject. But the attempt
to suppress opinions as such, and to
preclude the representation of them
in American legislative bodies by
arbitrary proscription, is at once a
violation of the spirit of our insti-
tutions and a confession of their fail-
ure. No truer service can be done
to them than to protest against such
violation; nor do we doubt that the
protest which has come from so many
of the best of our conservative lead-
ers and organs of opinion will have
the effect of effectually checking a
tendency which must be ascribed
rather to thoughtlessness and igno-
rance than to any deep and perma-
nent purpose.
It is not the object of this brief
retrospective article to review the
work that this paper has attempted
to do in relation to the various spe-
cific problems of the time. As re-
gards that, we can not but feel sin-
cere gratification in the acknowledg-
ments which have come to us from
competent critics, a few of which are
reproduced on another page. That
our endeavor to be fair in the dis-
cussion of every controversial topic
is so generally recognized, is a source
of peculiar satisfaction. But no other
May 8, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[477
I
service that we may have been able
to render could be accounted a jus-
tification for the founding of the
Review if it had not succeeded in
making a real contribution to the
strengthening of thinking Americans
in their allegiance to the fundamen-
tals of American liberty and order, of
American vitality and prosperity.
That it has done this in a substantial
and effective way it feels that there
is now abundant evidence. The idea
is expressed by one of our corre-
spondents in a way upon which we
could not improve:
No doubt it is too late to expect any con-
sideral)le nuiiil)er of conversions from the
ranks of modern radicalism, but this is a mat-
ter of comparative unimportance. What is
important is that Liberalism should know that
it still has a respectable cause, and to demon-
strate that fact is precisely the work of such
publications as the Review — a work which it
is performing with ever increasing success.
To continue in this work, and to de-
serve just such recognition of it, is
an object which, at the end as at the
beginning of our first year, is ample
inspiration for every effort that we
may be able to put forward.
A Cost-of-Living
Exhibit
rpHE United States Bureau of Labor
-*- Statistics has just given out some
figures relating to the increase of
the cost of living in New York City
which might well furnish occasion
for interesting study. That the cost
of living for families of moderate
income has somewhat more than
doubled since 1914 is no news, nor is
there anything very novel in the fig-
ures showing the varying ratios in
which the different elements that en-
ter into a family's living have risen
in price. But the little table which
presents these facts in a compact
form for each of the five years,
1915-19 inclusive, brings out the
points more clearly than is usually
the case.
The most striking feature of it is
the contrast between the rise of prices
for clothing and that for housing.
Clothing went up steadily from the
beginning of the world war, and
reached an enormous height at the
end of the fifth year; housing, on
the other hand, actually cost less in
1915 and 1916 than in 1914, and even
in 1919 was only 23 per cent, higher
than in 1914. The actual percentages
of increase in successive years — De-
cember of each year being compared
with December, 1914 — were, in the
case of clothing, 4.82, 22.31, 54.21,
131.25, 219.66, a constant rise wind-
ing up with a price three and one-
fifth times as high as the pre-war
price of clothing. In the case of
housing, on the other hand, there was
a slight decline in 1915 and 1916, an
advance of only 2.63 per cent, in 1917
and only 8.47 per cent, in 1918, while
even in December, 1919, the advance
was only 23.39 per cent.; so that
while clothes cost nearly three and a
quarter times as much as before,
rents were not quite one and a quar-
ter times what they had been. Some
part of this enormous advance in
clothing expenditure may, indeed, be
due to a rise of standards in the popu-
lation concerned; but after allowing
for this the character of the contrast
remains unaffected.
To arrive at a complete explana-
tion of this phenomenon would re-
quire extensive and many-sided in-
vestigation ; but there are some ele-
ments of that explanation which nat-
urally suggest themselves, and which
are interesting not only in their im-
mediate bearing, but also as related
to the general question of money and
prices. In both instances, the supply
side as well as the demand side of
the equation is important; but per-
haps the most interesting aspect of
it is that which bears on the way in
which an increasing volume of money
operates to raise prices.
The thing is not automatic, like the
rising of the mercury in a thermom-
eter when the temperature increases.
It comes about through the operation
of human motives, which do not play
equally upon all the possible objects
to which purchase may be directed.
When a great multitude of people —
through a rise in wages, say — find
themselves in possession of a great
many more dollars than they had
formerly at their command, they do
not proceed to enlarge their expendi-
ture in every direction, and certainly
not equally in every direction. It
will be a long time before a person
whose income in dollars has been
unexpectedly increased will think of
living in a different kind of dwelling
from what he has been accustomed
to. He will be slow to make any im-
portant change as to his daily food.
Of all the things which form an im-
portant part of his consumption and
that of his family, the one which re-
sponds most rapidly to what looks like
a bettered income will probably be
clothing — including, of course, haber-
dashery and millinery. Throughout
the five years of the inflation period,
there was undoubtedly a strongly
stimulated demand for clothes, while
at the same time supply was increas-
ingly difficult to obtain ; on the other
hand, there was for housing only a
slightly augmented demand, which,
moreover, from the time of our coun-
try's entry into the war, was offset
by the great exodus into the army.
These circumstances seem sufficiently
to account, in the large, for the fig-
ures that the table presents. The rise
in rents which has taken place since
the armistice is also quite in keeping
with these considerations; the cessa-
tion of building during the war, the
hindrance to its resumption after the
war caused by the risks of a perma-
nent investment in what seemed like
abnormally high-cost building, and
the return of the soldier population,
combining to produce an acute short-
age without the aid of any special
demand for better or more expensive
housing on the part of the masses.
The whole subject, however, would
well repay close and thoroughgoing
examination.
Poles and Bolsheviki
/^NE day, according to a popular
^^ anecdote, the Supreme Council,
being tired of examining the claims
brought forward by exacting nation-
alities, arranged an amusing in-
termezzo by inviting international
scholarship to competition in a prize
essay on the elephant. Among the
competitors, who were given a year
for the work, was a Polish zoologist,
who introduced his subject with these
words: "I'Elephant, c'est une ques-
tion polonaise." The inventor of the
story caricatured not unjustly the
478]
THE REVIEW
[Vol 2, No. 52
centripetal tendencies of the Polish
spirit as it manifests itself to the
outsider in the policy the country has
adopted since its revival. The ag-
grandizement of Poland, regardless
of considerations of justice due to
other nationalities and of the dangers
resulting to Europe from such disre-
gard, seems to be the sole object of
the men now in power at Warsaw.
They demand no less than the entire
area covered by Poland before the
first partition of 1772, which would
make them rulers over a territory
twice as large as France, and over a
population the majority of which is
of non-Polish nationality. If the
right of self-determination can not
serve their purpose, they base their
claim on historical rights, or on the
economic homogeneity of Poland and
her neighbors, or on strategic neces-
sity, or on the plea that Europe can
be protected against the Bolshevist
dangers by no better means than a
strong Poland.
Apart from the question whether
the inclusion within Polish territory
of non-Polish races would not prove a
diminution of strength instead of a
reinforcement, there is good reason
to doubt the wisdom of an annexa-
tionist policy which uses the Russian
menace as an- excuse. Of the ineffi-
ciency of the Soviet forces we now
possess sufficient evidence to con-
sider it an established fact. But
there is much ground for the fear that
the Polish offensive which that ineffi-
ciency invited may tend, in spite of
the successes which the Poles claim to
have won, to restore to Trotsky's
army some of its lost backbone. One
of the causes which made for its un-
trustworthiness and rendered it a
dangerous weapon for the Soviet
rulers to wield was the growing influ-
ence of the cadre over the soldiery.
That cadre consists mainly of Tsar-
ist officers who were not wholly
averse to serving in the Red army be-
cause the expansionist aims of Bol-
shevism coincided with their dreams
of a reintegrated Russia. Without
them the Soviet would have had, for
an army, an undisciplined mob;
without the army the officers could
not hope to realize their dream. The
reliability of the army, therefore, de-
pended mainly on the loyalty of the
cadre, which, in its turn, depended on
the Soviet's perseverance in its ag-
gressive policy against the apostate
border republics. Since the imminent
economic collapse of Soviet Russia,
however, made peace with the non-
Russian world imperative, the Tsarist
officers had little reason to persist in
their fidelity to the Commissaries of
Moscow. The latter saw their own
safety from attempts at revolution
by officers popular among their troops
in a speedy demobilization and en-
listment of the discharged soldiery in
the labor armies organized by
Trotsky, where they will be placed
under the control of reliable comrades
acting as economic instructors.
And at this very moment, when Red
Russia is making herself defense-
less lest she should wound herself
with her own weapons, steps in Gen-
eral Pilsudsky as the protector of Eu-
rope against Bolshevism, and scores
an easy victory at the risk of uniting
again the Tsarist officers and the
Soviet Commissaries — from different
motives, to be sure — in a common
cause. The seventh army, which
Trotsky had begun to convert into a
labor force, was summoned back to
arms and mobilized anew after the
Polish Government, by its exorbitant
conditions, had made peace with
Soviet Russia impossible. The ulti-
mate failure, after repeated suc-
cesses, of the three Russian generals
who tried to oust the Bolsheviki with
the help of the Entente has taught us
that foreign intervention, with the
inadequate means the Allies have been
willing or able to spare, has tended
to seat the Moscow Commissaries
more firmly in the saddle. A reversal
in Russia must come from within,
and the forces which are able to bring
it about must be free from any sus-
picion of being agents of a Western
Power.
Poland is, for those two reasons,
disqualified as a liberator of suffering
Russia. She is only a pawn of France
on the European chess-board, al-
though she is now acting as if she
were the queen in the game. Apart
from the reaction this move will have
on the internal situation in Russia,
it will widen the breach in the bar-
rier of border states which French
Generals and diplomats had con-
ceived as a rampart against Bolshe-
vism, and a wall against German
penetration of Russia. The relations
between Poland and Lithuania are
tense to the breaking point on account
of the Polish claim of Lithuanian ter-
ritory. That is why Lithuania, after
the conference of border states held
at Warsaw in March of this year, re-
fused to negotiate peace with Soviet
Russia in conjunction with Poland,
Finland, and Latvia. These two
other states, not being neighbors of
Poland, have no feelings of hostility
towards her, but those with whom she
lives in close contact have more rea-
son to throw up barriers against her
aggression than to form, together
with her, a barrier against Bolshe-
vism. The Ukrainians under Petlura
are, indeed, reported to have joined
the Poles in their recent offensive, in
the hope of clearing, with Polish help,
the Ukraine of Bolshevist rule. But
the price to be paid for their rescue
is said to be the renunciation, in
favor of Poland, of all Ukrainian
claims on the rich oil district of East-
ern Galicia. The deal can not possi-
bly have the approval of the people
as whose representative Petlura at-
tended the conference of border states
at Warsaw. The Ukrainians are no
less inimical to Polish aggression
than they are to Bolshevist rule. The
greater Poland restored in its pre-
partition extent would comprise thir-
teen million Ukrainians and advance
the Polish frontier to within a short
distance from the Ukrainian capital
Kiev. Whatever undertakings Pet-
lura, from personal motives perhaps,
may have given to Pilsudsky at War-
saw, his own people will make it diffi-
cult for him to abide by his word. A
Polish victory will clear the Ukrain-
ian house of one intruder but bring
another to the gate. Petlura, there-
fore, can never be a reliable ally to
Poland. The force of circumstances
will compel him, sooner or later, to
turn against her, as he turned, un-
willingly perhaps, against Denikin.
And thus Bolshevism bids fair again,
as after the betrayal of Denikin, to
reap the fruits of the mistakes and
dissension of its enemies.
May 8, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[479
Squaring Grandfather
pONSTANTIA, we heard by acci-
^ dent the other day, has "ac-
cepted a comrade." True, in response
to the scandalized protests of elderly
relatives, some sort of ceremony was
hastily improvised, but the young
people made it quite plain that such
mummery meant nothing to them.
They did not say "it meant nothing
in their young lives." In neither Con-
stantia nor Dorastus was there the
slightest trace of frivolity or vul-
garity. Both were in deadly earnest
and quite sure of their ground. They
had talked it all out, analyzed them-
selves and each other with laboratory
thoroughness, scrutinized their world
with the eye of a general for the ene-
my's weaknesses, and with a Napole-
onic confidence in their ability to
marshal their own facts precisely at
those points where they would prove
overwhelmingly effective.
Of course, there was no reason why
Constantia and Dorastus should not
marry. Dorastus, if his antecedents
are somewhat vaguely "European," is
a young man of refinement and unde-
niably clever. Even to one who did
not quite like him it would not occur
that he had chosen, if indeed he could
be said to have chosen, Constantia
for the sake of her money. Of this
Constantia possesses abundance, in-
herited from her dead mother's
father, a millionaire whose honest
right to his millions it occurred to
no one in those days to question. The
country, indeed, had been rather
proud of him, regarded him as a sort
of symbol of what the American boy
can make of himself. But to Con-
stantia he and his money — a good
part of it hers now — have come to
symbolize something quite different.
She would not deny his ability nor his
good nature — he was rather a genial
old cock — but she is quite sure that
for whatever he did in the world he
was enormously overpaid. It is a little
difficult to get Constantia to make
herself perfectly plain on this point,
but her idea seems to be that she will
use grandfather's millions somehow
to square grandfather with a world
which he, poor man, was unaware of
having offended.
Just how this is to be accomplished
will no doubt develop more clearly
as she goes on. Any such mediaeval
notion as that of charity is of course
not in her thoughts. To play the
pious founder or the lady bountiful
she no more intends than she intends
discarding her cigarette for smelling
salts. Possibly Dorastus will have
further suggestions, and the friends
they have in common still more.
He could not, of course, tell Con-
stantia that what she is in search of
in "accepting her comrade" is ro-
mance, that what she is really trying
to do with grandfather's money is
to find some fresh and thrilling way
of exercising power. One can not,
indeed, tell Constantia anything, ex-
cept such things as she wishes to
hear. Tell her more concerning the
social perfection of far-away Russia,
and her face will light. Apologize
for anything as it exists in nearby
America, and note the scorn that sits
on a pretty lip which seems of late,
so they say, to have grown a trifle
hard. There is, therefore, no man-
ner of use in trying to point out to
Constantia that since she has done, or
might have done, everything that a
whole regiment of fairy godmothers,
be their wands tipped ever so
brightly, could possibly do for her
(since, indeed, ever so many people
who are nobody in particular can do
quite as much in this line as she)
for life in its full, fresh savor she
must look elsewhere.
To play Virginia to Dorastus's Paul
would, however, extinguish them both
in a week; the tropical island would
afford no sort of field for their talents.
To sit at home, either in her father's
house or in her own and Dorastus's —
the softer the cushion, the finer the
seam, the more luscious the hothouse
strawberries and Jersey cream, the
more intolerable to one in her temper
would the whole business become.
Her grandmother distributed soup
and flannels and good advice; her
mother, in a later day, went "slum-
ming." Constantia will naturally
have none of this make-believe for
herself; she must go a-gipsying.
Hardship — she craves it; the raw
contacts of life, hand struck in hard
hand — to be looked up to amid such
circumstances is to feel the full joy
of the fight; if she went to jail for
it, it would but add to the zest. Un-
able to conquer the world into which
she was born, for the simple reason
that she found the world already de-
livered captive at her feet as soon as
she could be aware of it, she scorns
to sigh for more worlds; she will in-
vent one, since it is necessary.
Presumably this mood of Constan-
tia's will not last forever. But time
is a concept in which she takes very
little interest; things happen for her
in that moment just ahead which we
hasten to call "now" before it is too
late. No doubt she will come to some
sort of compromise between the
power which her money plus her
brains will buy her in the new world
that she has chosen to build up and
the comforts of the old world, which
she will discover it is not necessary
wholly to abandon. Possibly Dorastus
will assist her to the discovery. But
in that hour, we fear, she will make
a less insistent claim upon our sym-
pathy than she does to-day, so young
and so clever, quaint compound of
hope and disillusion, part martyr and
part tyrant, so eager for life and so
determined to refuse life until it is
made perfect under her hand. Many
of the things that Constantia wants
she will doubtless get; at what ex-
pense to a world which, in certain of
the aspects she herself rather pret-
tily symbolizes, she does not reckon ;
in her view, things could not possibly
be worse in any case. Getting much
of what she wants, whether she will
find herself satisfied is another mat-
ter. It is by no means certain that
she wishes to be satisfied ; she wishes
to want.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Corporation
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars a year in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright, 1920. in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Ayres O. W. Firkins
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson-
Jerome Landpield
478]
THE REVIEW
[Vol 2, No. 52
centripetal tendencies of the Polish
spirit as it manifests itself to the
outsider in the policy the country has
adopted since its revival. The ag-
grandizement of Poland, regardless
of considerations of justice due to
other nationalities and of the dangers
resulting to Europe from such disre-
gard, seems to be the sole object of
the men now in power at Warsaw.
They demand no less than the entire
area covered by Poland before the
first partition of 1772, which would
make them rulers over a territory
twice as large as France, and over a
population the majority of which is
of non-Polish nationality. If the
right of self-determination can not
serve their purpose, they base their
claim on historical rights, or on the
economic homogeneity of Poland and
her neighbors, or on strategic neces-
sity, or on the plea that Europe can
be protected against the Bolshevist
dangers by no better means than a
strong Poland.
Apart from the question whether
the inclusion within Polish territory
of non-Polish races would not prove a
diminution of strength instead of a
reinforcement, there is good reason
to doubt the wisdom of an annexa-
tionist policy which uses the Russian
menace as an- excuse. Of the ineffi-
ciency of the Soviet forces we now
possess sufficient evidence to con-
sider it an established fact. But
there is much ground for the fear that
the Polish offensive which that ineffi-
ciency invited may tend, in spite of
the successes which the Poles claim to
have won, to restore to Trotsky's
army some of its lost backbone. One
of the causes which made for its un-
trust worthiness and rendered it a
dangerous weapon for the Soviet
rulers to wield was the growing influ-
ence of the cadre over the soldiery.
That cadre consists mainly of Tsar-
ist officers who were not wholly
averse to serving in the Red army be-
cause the expansionist aims of Bol-
shevism coincided with their dreams
of a reintegrated Russia. Without
them the Soviet would have had, for
an army, an undisciplined mob;
without the army the officers could
not hope to realize their dream. The
reliability of the army, therefore, de-
pended mainly on the loyalty of the
cadre, which, in its turn, depended on
the Soviet's perseverance in its ag-
gressive policy against the apostate
border republics. Since the imminent
economic collapse of Soviet Russia,
however, made peace with the non-
Russian world imperative, the Tsarist
officers had little reason to persist in
their fidelity to the Commissaries of
Moscow. The latter saw their own
safety from attempts at revolution
by officers popular among their troops
in a speedy demobilization and en-
listment of the discharged soldiery in
the labor armies organized by
Trotsky, where they will be placed
under the control of reliable comrades
acting as economic instructors.
And at this very moment, when Red
Russia is making herself defense-
less lest she should wound herself
with her own weapons, steps in Gen-
eral Pilsudsky as the protector of Eu-
rope against Bolshevism, and scores
an easy victory at the risk of uniting
again the Tsarist officers and the
Soviet Commissaries — from different
motives, to be sure — in a common
cause. The seventh army, which
Trotsky had begun to convert into a
labor force, was summoned back to
arms and mobilized anew after the
Polish Government, by its exorbitant
conditions, had made peace with
Soviet Russia impossible. The ulti-
mate failure, after repeated suc-
cesses, of the three Russian generals
who tried to oust the Bolsheviki with
the help of the Entente has taught us
that foreign intervention, with the
inadequate means the Allies have been
willing or able to spare, has tended
to seat the Moscow Commissaries
more firmly in the saddle. A reversal
in Russia must come from within,
and the forces which are able to bring
it about must be free from any sus-
picion of being agents of a Western
Power.
Poland is, for those two reasons,
disqualified as a liberator of suffering
Russia. She is only a pawn of France
on the European chess-board, al-
though she is now acting as if she
were the queen in the game. Apart
from the reaction this move will have
on the internal situation in Russia,
it will widen the breach in the bar-
rier of border states which French
Generals and diplomats had con-
ceived as a rampart against Bolshe-
vism, and a wall against German
penetration of Russia. The relations
between Poland and Lithuania are
tense to the breaking point on account
of the Polish claim of Lithuanian ter-
ritory. That is why Lithuania, after
the conference of border states held
at Warsaw in March of this year, re-
fused to negotiate peace with Soviet
Russia in conjunction with Poland,
Finland, and Latvia. These two
other states, not being neighbors of
Poland, have no feelings of hostility
towards her, but those with whom she
lives in close contact have more rea-
son to throw up barriers against her
aggression than to form, together
with her, a barrier against Bolshe-
vism. The Ukrainians under Petlura
are, indeed, reported to have joined
the Poles in their recent offensive, in
the hope of clearing, with Polish help,
the Ukraine of Bolshevist rule. But
the price to be paid for their rescue
is said to be the renunciation, in
favor of Poland, of all Ukrainian
claims on the rich oil district of East-
ern Galicia. The deal can not possi-
bly have the approval of the people
as whose representative Petlura at-
tended the conference of border states
at Warsaw. The Ukrainians are no
less inimical to Polish aggression
than they are to Bolshevist rule. The
greater Poland restored in its pre-
partition extent would comprise thir-
teen million Ukrainians and advance
the Polish frontier to within a short
distance from the Ukrainian capital
Kiev. Whatever undertakings Pet-
lura, from personal motives perhaps,
may have given to Pilsudsky at War-
saw, his own people will make it diffi-
cult for him to abide by his word. A
Polish victory will clear the Ukrain-
ian house of one intruder but bring
another to the gate. Petlura, there-
fore, can never be a reliable ally to
Poland. The force of circumstances
will compel him, sooner or later, to
turn against her, as he turned, un-
willingly perhaps, against Denikin.
And thus Bolshevism bids fair again,
as after the betrayal of Denikin, to
reap the fruits of the mistakes and
dissension of its enemies.
May 8, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[479
Squaring Grandfather
CONSTANTIA, we heard by acci-
dent the other day, has "ac-
cepted a comrade." True, in response
to the scandalized protests of elderly
relatives, some sort of ceremony was
hastily improvised, but the young
people made it quite plain that such
mummery meant nothing to them.
They did not say "it meant nothing
in their young lives." In neither Con-
stantia nor Dorastus was there the
slightest trace of frivolity or vul-
garity. Both were in deadly earnest
and quite sure of their ground. They
had talked it all out, analyzed them-
selves and each other with laboratory
thoroughness, scrutinized their world
with the eye of a general for the ene-
my's weaknesses, and with a Napole-
onic confidence in their ability to
marshal their own facts precisely at
those points where they would prove
overwhelmingly effective.
Of course, there was no reason why
Constantia and Dorastus should not
marry. Dorastus, if his antecedents
are somewhat vaguely "European," is
a young man of refinement and unde-
niably clever. Even to one who did
not quite like him it would not occur
that he had chosen, if indeed he could
be said to have chosen, Constantia
for the sake of her money. Of this
Constantia possesses abundance, in-
herited from her dead mother's
father, a millionaire whose honest
right to his millions it occurred to
no one in those days to question. The
country, indeed, had been rather
proud of him, regarded him as a sort
of symbol of what the American boy
can make of himself. But to Con-
stantia he and his money — a good
part of it hers now — have come to
symbolize something quite difi'erent.
She would not deny his ability nor his
good nature — he was rather a genial
old cock — but she is quite sure that
for whatever he did in the world he
was enormously overpaid. It is a little
difficult to get Constantia to make
herself perfectly plain on this point,
but her idea seems to be that she will
use grandfather's millions somehow
to square grandfather with a world
which he, poor man, was unaware of
having offended.
Just how this is to be accomplished
will no 'doubt develop more clearly
as she goes on. Any such mediaeval
notion as that of charity is of course
not in her thoughts. To play the
pious founder or the lady bountiful
she no more intends than she intends
discarding her cigarette for smelling
salts. Possibly Dorastus will have
further suggestions, and the friends
they have in common still more.
He could not, of course, tell Con-
stantia that what she is in search of
in "accepting her comrade" is ro-
mance, that what she is really trying
to do with grandfather's money is
to find some fresh and thrilling way
of exercising power. One can not,
indeed, tell Constantia anything, ex-
cept such things as she wishes to
hear. Tell her more concerning the
social perfection of far-away Russia,
and her face will light. Apologize
for anything as it exists in nearby
America, and note the scorn that sits
on a pretty lip which seems of late,
so they say, to have grown a trifle
hard. There is, therefore, no man-
ner of use in trying to point out to
Constantia that since she has done, or
might have done, everything that a
whole regiment of fairy godmothers,
be their wands tipped ever so
brightly, could possibly do for her
(since, indeed, ever so many people
who are nobody in particular can do
quite as much in this line as she)
for life in its full, fresh savor she
must look elsewhere.
To play Virginia to Dorastus's Paul
would, however, extinguish them both
in a week; the tropical island would
afford no sort of field for their talents.
To sit at home, either in her father's
house or in her own and Dorastus's —
the softer the cushion, the finer the
seam, the more luscious the hothouse
strawberries and Jersey cream, the
more intolerable to one in her temper
would the whole business become.
Her grandmother distributed soup
and flannels and good advice; her
mother, in a later day, went "slum-
ming." Constantia will naturally
have none of this make-believe for
herself; she must go a-gipsying.
Hardship — she craves it; the raw
contacts of life, hand struck in hard
hand — to be looked up to amid such
circumstances is to feel the full joy
of the fight; if she went to jail for
it, it would but add to the zest. Un-
able to conquer the world into which
she was born, for the simple reason
that she found the world already de-
livered captive at her feet as soon as
she could be aware of it, she scorns
to sigh for more worlds; she will in-
vent one, since it is necessary.
Presumably this mood of Constan-
tia's will not last forever. But time
is a concept in which she takes very
little interest; things happen for her
in that moment just ahead which we
hasten to call "now" before it is too
late. No doubt she will come to some
sort of compromise between the
power which her money plus her
brains will buy her in the new world
that she has chosen to build up and
the comforts of the old world, which
she will discover it is not necessary
wholly to abandon. Possibly Dorastus
will assist her to the discovery. But
in that hour, we fear, she will make
a less insistent claim upon our sym-
pathy than she does to-day, so young
and so clever, quaint compound of
hope and disillusion, part martyr and
part tyrant, so eager for life and so
determined to refuse life until it is
made perfect under her hand. Many
of the things that Constantia wants
she will doubtless get; at what ex-
pense to a world which, in certain of
the aspects she herself rather pret-
tily symbolizes, she does not reckon ;
in her view, things could not possibly
be worse in any case. Getting much
of what she wants, whether she will
find herself satisfied is another mat-
ter. It is by no means certain that
she wishes to be satisfied ; she wishes
to want.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Corporation
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars a ^ear in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright, 1920. in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Ayres O. W. Firkins
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson
Jerome Landfield
480]
THE REVIEW
[Vol 2, No. 52
Aggressive Poland
'T'HE Polish military operations in
Ukraina, which began last week
so unexpectedly and developed so
swiftly, represent a political move-
ment of tremendous importance. Fol-
lowing so closely upon the peace
parleys between Warsaw and Mos-
cow, they are much more than the
mere resumption of hostilities over
boundaries. The proclamation issued
by the Pilsudsky Government, stating
the objects sought, makes that quite
clear.
A new element has entered into the
situation. The Polish troops have
set out with the avowed purpose of
expelling the Soviet troops and of
reestablishing the Petlura Govern-
ment as the Government of an inde-
pendent Ukraina. What Poland's
purpose is in engaging upon so huge
an enterprise may be inferred by con-
sidering her aspirations, and the role
assigned to her by the great Powers.
The reestablishment of Poland as
an independent state has always been
connected with the idea of the neces-
sity of a buffer state between Russia
and Germany. Now, a buffer state,
in order to be secure, either must be
strong enough (on its own account
or through outside backing) to with-
stand possible attacks, or must make
friends with one of its neighbors.
Neither of these obvious conditions
was arranged for in the creation
of Poland. Numerically small and
strategically weak, Poland can
scarcely be considered as a powerful
militarj' barrier between much larger
and stronger Germany and Russia.
The great Powers backing her are far
away and cut off from her. As for
her great neighbors, Poland hates
both of them too much to make
friends with either.
Finding herself in such a position,
Poland has begun the policy of gath-
ering new small states of Eastern
Europe into a political alliance ; and,
as any new states in the East could
only be carved out of Russia, it was to
Poland's advantage to work for Rus-
sia's dismemberment.
The course of Russian history dur-
ing the past months has been of great
assistance to Poland in the further-
ance of her plans. It was particularly
so in the northwestern corner of the
former Russian Empire, in the so-
called Baltic Provinces, where four
definite groups aspire to the dignity
of independent statehood. The per-
sistence of the Soviet regime in Cen-
tral Russia and the policy of the great
Powers have given them, at least
temporarily, the dignity that they
sought. Three of these new states,
Finland, Esthonia, and Latvia, Po-
land has hastened to recognize. She
has gone farther: she has made
treaties with them of such a nature
as to make herself more or less dom-
inant on the Eastern Baltic. Lithu-
ania is apparently out of this alliance,
because, no doubt, of the territorial
disputes which Poland and she have
carried on.
Such an arrangement in the north-
west is ideal for Poland. In the first
place, Great Russia is thus cut off
from the ports of the Baltic and is
permanently crippled. And in the
second place, Poland has under her
potential control very important new
states.
Having thus completed her ar-
rangements in the north with a fair
degree of success, Poland now finds
it possible to turn her attention to
the south. Here the decisive factor
is Ukraina. United with Great Rus-
sia, Ukraina would add greatly to the
latter's strength. With Ukraina sep-
arated. Great Russia would be really
weakened, reduced temporarily to the
status of a comparatively small, land-
locked state. To this extent, surely,
Poland is interested in the independ-
ence of Ukraina.
But there is another and a larger
advantage that attaches itself to Po-
land's interest in the Ukrainian in-
dependence. Poland's ambitious lead-
ers conceive the possibility of draw-
ing Ukraina, once independent, into
the Polish sphere of influence. With
the Baltic under Poland's virtual
domination, and with the Ukrainian
resources under her control, what
possibilities are not open to her?
And why not? The palm of Slavic
supremacy is now hanging in the bal-
ance. Russia has held it tightly for
centuries. Now Russia is prostrate
and broken. There is no doubt
that eventually she will regain her
strength. But now is the time to
make Russia's full reconstruction im-
possible for a long time to come. If
Poland can do it, then Poland will be
the leader of the Slavs, that huge
fourth element of Europe.
There is no doubt, however, that
the possibility of the realization of
such a plan is a mere gambler's
chance. The important element of
weakness in it is the character of the
Ukrainian movement which the Poles
are now supporting with the strength
of their arms. There is no indica-
tion that the Petlura movement ever
had any real popular support. Simon
Petlura and his Government came
into power soon after the armistice.
It was at the time when the Germans
were compelled to withdraw their as-
sistance from the Government of Het-
man Skoropadsky, which had been
set up by them. No longer supported
by the German troops, the Skoro-
padsky Government was swiftly
enough turned out by the rising tide
of dissatisfied peasants, who endured
the Hetman's regime only as long as
it was forced upon the country by
the German bayonets. Petlura and
several of his associates made use of
the peasants' protest to establish a
short-lived rule in Kiev. But the
masses of the people never rallied to
their support, and it did not take
much effort on the part of the Bol-
sheviki to dislodge them.
Forced to flee from the capital,
Petlura made numerous efforts to
gather forces about him. For a time
his chief occupation was the struggle
against the Poles for the fate of
Eastern Galicia, which was finally
awarded to Poland by the Supreme
Council. Petlura's relations with
Denikin were also unfriendly, for his
stock in trade was Ukrainian sep-
aratism, while Denikin fought for the
reunification of Russia. How Pet-
lura finally made friends with the
Poles, against whom he had fought so
long and so bitterly, is not known as
yet. Nor is it really very important,
except on one point: what price
May 8, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[481
did he have to pay for the Polish
assistance?
It is obvious that Petlura has little
to give, except very sweeping prom-
ises for the future. Eastern Galicia
is already Poland's. It is scarcely
conceivable that the Poles would ask
for, and that Petlura would make,
territorial concessions. Obviously Pet-
lura has given the one promise that
the Poles need for the completion of
their ambitious plans : he must have
promised to place Ukraina under Po-
land's influence.
But there is no reason to expect
that the Petlura movement will have
a larger support in Ukraina now than
it had previously. The period of the
occupation of Ukraina by the Volun-
teer Army has furnished enough evi-
dence of the fact that the masses of
the people in Ukraina do not desire
separation from Russia. To force
separation upon them through the
instrumentality of Petlura's Govern-
ment, upheld by Polish troops, is an
action that is fraught with danger.
Yet it is conceivable that the Polish
operations in Ukraina, if successful
in a military way, may hasten the
downfall of the Soviet regime in Rus-
sia. To this extent, much good may
come oiit of the affair. For the
rest, it can only lead to the accu-
mulation of resentments and en-
mities, which must seek to discharge
themselves in future wars. And it
will have bad results for Poland her-
self. For after the overthrow of
the Soviet Government, through the
mounting spirit of nationalism, Rus-
sia's existence as a great nation will
depend upon a reunification of almost
all of her former territory. She is
not prepared to give up her su-
premacy in the Slavic world. Though
temporarily shorn of some of her ter-
ritories, Russia will still remain
overwhelmingly larger than Poland,
whose huge dream of leadership and
power is built on the sands of Rus-
sia's temporary weakness.
In a few more years Poland may
find herself clamped in an iron
vise, formed by hostile Germany and
furiously resentful Russia. Such a
situation must result in violent blood-
shed.
Leo Pasvolsky
Presidential Inability
[Mr. Wilson's improved health has removed
from the problem of the disability of a Presi-
dent to perform the duties of his office any
pressure of present urgency. But the experi-
ence of the half-year during which his illness
was serious serves as ample reason for dis-
cussnig this important and delicate question on
Its merits.]
SEVERAL proposals have been made in
Congress to decide how the fact of
Presidential inability to act may be deter-
mined, and if the House Judiciary Com-
mittee can agree, it will doubtless make
some recommendation. But the chances
of early action are not great, since the
questions of constitutional law and politi-
cal policy are difficult and important and,
judging from the attitude of Congress
hitherto, a decision will be long delayed.
Not until 1886 did Congress amend the
Presidential Succession Law of 1792,
which was admittedly inadequate and
perhaps unconstitutional. But the ques-
tion should be answered: if the Presi-
dent is unable to act, who is to determine
how administrative decisions are to be
made and other public business proceeded
with, in order that the Government may
not suffer a collapse similar to that of
recent months which culminated in Secre-
tary Lansing's resignation?
The framers of the Constitution at-
tempted to guard against an interregnum
by providing that
In the case of the removal of tlie President
from office, or his death, resignation, or in-
ability to discharge the powers and duties of
the said office, the same shall devolve on the
Vice-President, and the Congress may by law
provide for the case of removal, death, resig-
nation, or inability, both of the President and
Vice-President, declaring what officer shall
then act as President, and such officer shall
act accordingly until the disability be removed
or a President shall be elected.
This provision, although in ambiguous
terms, at least considers every possibility
except the death of the President or Vice-
President subsequent to election but
prior to inauguration. That contingency,
fortunately, has never confronted the
country, but Congress has not attempted
to take measures to deal with it. In
five cases, owing to death, the Vice-
President has become Chief Magistrate:
Tyler, Fillmore, Johnson, Arthur, and
Roosevelt. Johnson was threatened with
removal, but no President has ever sug-
gested resignation, and the mention of
this method of vacating the office is the
only joke in the Federal Constitution.
The Act of March 1, 1792, provided
that the President of the Senate pro tem-
pore and the Speaker of the House of
Representatives should follow the Vice-
President in succession to the Presidency.
There were, however, a number of ob-
jections to this arrangement. Its con-
stitutionality was open to question, since
it was not certain that the Speaker and
President pro tempore were officers of the
United States within the meaning of the
term as used in the Constitution. In the
second place — and Madison was among
those who pointed this out — if one of
these Congressional officials went to the
White House there was no requirement
that he give up his original duties and
his executive and legislative functions
might conflict. Thirdly, between Con-
gresses there is no Speaker of the House,
and until 1890 the President of the Sen-
ate pro tempore did not hold over; con-
sequently, if the President and Vice-
President should die during this interim
difficulties would ensue.
There were a number of attempts to
change the law. In 1820 the Senate
Judiciary Committee was ordered to re-
port whether any changes were neces-
sary. It replied unanimously that at that
time it was inexpedient to legislate. In
1856 the Committee on the Judiciary
reported that the act was constitutional,
but suggested that if there should be
a vacancy in the offices of Speaker and
President of the Senate pro tempore, the
Chief Justice of the United States (pro-
vided he had not presided at an impeach-
ment) and then the associate justices of
the Supreme Court of the United States
should succeed according to seniority.
No action was taken by the Senate on
this report and the matter was not
pressed until 1881.
Before Congress met in December of
that year and before either the Speaker
of the House or the President pro
tempore of the Senate had been chosen,
Garfield died. The fact that for some
time he was unable to perform the duties
of his office, caused the question of in-
ability to be discussed; and when, in
1885, during Cleveland's administration,
Vice-President Hendricks died, some
legislative action was felt to be neces-
sary. In both cases, if the incumbents
of the Presidential office — Presidents
Arthur and Cleveland— had died during
the Congressional recesses there would
have been no one to take their places.
More than that, it was possible for the
office to go to a member of the political
party which had been defeated in the
election, for, during Cleveland's term,
Senators Sherman and Ingalls were
Presidents pro tempore of the Senate and
were Republicans.
On January 19, 1886, therefore. Con-
gress passed a law providing that, if the
constitutional provision were invoked,
succession to the Presidency should vest
in the Vice-President, the Secretary of
State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the
Secretary of War, the Attorney General,
the Postmaster General, the Secretary of
the Navy, and the Secretary of the In-
482]
THE REVIEW
[Vol 2, No. 52
terior in the order named,
declared
The act also
That whenever the powers and duties of the
oflke of President of the United States shall
devolve upon any of the persons named herein,
if Congress be not then in session, or if it
would not meet in accordance with the law
within twenty days thereafter, it shall be the
duty of the person upon whom such powers
and duties shall devolve to issue a proclama-
tion convening Congress in extraordinary ses-
sion, giving twenty days notice of the time of
meeting.
This statute, however, does not at-
tempt to settle two important points. In
the first place, it seems to be agreed that
Congress has the power to order a special
election to fill a vacancy. The Act of
1792 provided that an election should be
held, but the question was left open in
the act of 1886. Senator Hoar offered
an amendment giving the person who
succeeded to the Presidency the right to
serve until the expiration of the regular
term, but this was defeated and Congress
apparently reserves the right to order an
election if it deems wise. If a President
were chosen under an intermediate elec-
tion his term would be four years and
that would destroy the present syn-
chrony between the executive and legisla-
tive branches. It is possible, moreover,
to imagine cases of conflict between the
executive and legislature when Congress
would use this method for getting rid of
a President to whom it objected, and an
acting President could veto a measure
providing for a special election. On the
other hand, the Constitution unquestion-
ably contemplated that only persons
chosen by the Electoral College should
serve as Presidents. Fortunately, how-
ever, the succession has never gone fur-
ther than the Vice-President and the dif-
ficulties which undeniably exist need not
be solved until they confront us.
The second and more serious question
is the meaning of "inability," and here
the writers are in almost complete dis-
agreement. Professor W. W. Willoughby,
the leading authority on American con-
stitutional law, simply states the prob-
lem and does not attempt to answer it:
In the absence of a definition who is to de-
termine, and what conditions are to be held to
create, an inability on the part of the President
to perform his official duties? What is to be
done in case the President is temporarily dis-
abled by sickness or accident, or insanity?
Who is to decide and by what criteria, when
this disablement is so serious and so prolonged
as to require the appointment of an acting
President ?
The most elaborate discussion of these
questions is to be found in the North
American Review for November, 1881.
Four distinguished constitutional au-
thorities contributed to an interesting
symposium on "Presidential Inability,"
aproix>s of the illness of President Gar-
field. The President's death rendered
unnecessary any decision in his case, but
the various possibilities were fully con-
sidered and widely differing opinions
were expressed.
Senator Trumbull took the position
that as no proof was required when the
president died, "so in the case of inabil-
ity the fact must be so notorious that
there can be no reasonable doubt about
it, nor that an urgency exists requiring
immediate action on important matters,
before the Vice-President would be war-
ranted in assuming the duties of the
President. When such a case arises, the
people will not only acquiesce in the dis-
charge of the Presidential duties by the
Vice-President, but will demand that he
exercise them."
Senator Trumbull questioned whether
any law could be passed improving this
situation. Ours is a people's government,
he argued, and peaceful succession to the
highest office must depend upon the sup-
port of public opinion. This support is
both necessary and sufficient in cases of
inability as well as in cases of election.
Judge Cooley, the eminent writer on
constitutional law, urged that the ques-
tion of inability was one for Congress to
determine. "It is possible," he said, "for
a case to arise so plain, so unmistakably
determined in the public judgment, that
public opinion, with unanimous concur-
rence, would summon the Vice-President
to act. But though this would make
him acting President de facto, he would
become acting President de jure only
after solemn recognition in some form
by Congress." Such recognition, it may
be said, has always been given, even if
only in the form of a communication tell-
ing the new incumbent of the Presidency
that Congress has organized and is wait-
ing for his message. And Judge Cooley
argued that since Congress has the power
to embarrass and to tie the hands of the
Vice-President, Congress is competent to
declare when the inability exists.
The third contributor to this sym-
posium was Benjamin F. Butler, who
thought that the question of inability
was a judicial one on which Congress
could not pass. He took it to be "axio-
matic that when the Constitution imposes
a duty on any officer, to be done by him,
he must be the sole judge when and how
to do that duty, subject only to his re-
sponsibility to the people and to the risk
of impeachment if he act improperly or
corruptly," and if in certain cases the
discharge of the duties of the President
devolves upon the Vice-President, "he
alone must judge, under the grave re-
sponsibility of his position, when his
duties begin, as he must determine how
and in what manner he will exercise
them."
Professor Dwight, on the other hand,
took the view that public opinion would
not be able to restrain an ambitious man
eager to occupy the Presidential seat.
He suggested that "some proper legal
proceeding might be instituted by Con-
gress, in which the evidence required by
law might be presented under the gen-
eral power to carry into execution all
powers vested by the Constitution in any
department or officer of the Government."
It is evident that these views do not
disclose any agreement as to what con-
stitutes and who determines Presidential
inability. Certain opinions expressed by
these writers, however, may be accepted.
The support of public opinion is neces-
sary if any one is to succeed to the
Presidential office; the responsibility of
the Vice-President is heavy; Congress
must approve, or a dangerous instance
of disunion between the executive and
legislative branches might occur. The
Constitution unquestionably contemplated
temporary inability, and it can be pro-
vided for without submitting an amend-
ment to the States. The Vice-President
and the Cabinet, with the support of
Congress, are competent to determine the
matter.
President Wilson ought to be rather
reluctant to criticize any efforts which
were made during his illness to prevent
complete governmental inaction. Cer-
tainly the disposition of every one — Con-
gress, the Vice-President, the Cabinet,
and the public — was against raising the
question of how the inability should be
met. That it existed was sure. To men-
tion only one evidence, twenty-eight bills
became law during the special session of
Congress owing to the failure of the
Executive to act within ten days (exclu-
sive of Sundays) after their receipt at
the White House; and when full dis-
closures are made as to the nature and
times of the President's complete inabil-
ity to act, it will be interesting to check
them up with the dates on which bills
were signed. For example, the President
was able to veto the Prohibition En-
forcement act on October 27, but he did
not approve two statutes which became
law on October 22 and 25, and he failed
to sign Public Laws Numbers 67 to 82
inclusive (October 28 to November 18),
with the exception of Number 73, the
first General Deficiency Law for 1920,
which was signed on November 4. After
November 18 practically all of the bills
became law with the signature of the
President.
The Vice-President, supported by Con-
gress, could, under these circumstances,
I think, have asserted the right to act
for the period of the emergency. But the
Vice-President is an anomalous officer of
the United States, who presides over the
Senate while he waits for the President
to die. Although by the Constitution
he succeeds to the Presidency, he is, in
most cases, totally unfamiliar with the
problems of the Administration. In
spite of the fact that, for long periods,
Mr. Wilson's Cabinet was ignored, this
body was the best qualified to deal with
the problems that needed consideration.
May 8, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[483
A wise President might have asked Sec-
retary Lansing to call his colleagues to-
gether, and I can not see that the in-
formal Cabinet meetings constituted a
dangerous precedent. The President,
perhaps, does not know that they were
the only evidence to the public that there
was any Government in Washington, and
they may have saved Mr. Wilson the em-
barrassment of having the question of
inability brought to a settlement by Con-
gress or by the Vice-President, in re-
sponse to public opinion.
What seems to be required in the
future is a simple statute saying that if
the President is temporarily unable to
act he shall notify the Vice-President
and request him to consult with the Cabi-
net— as was done during Mr. Wilson's
absence abroad; and that if the fact of
the President's inability is notorious, and
yet this action is not taken by him, the
Vice-President shall meet with the Cabi-
net, informing Congress of the situa-
tion, or calling it into special session, if
this is necessary. The Supreme Court
of the United States could not be com-
pelled to pass on the question without a
constitutional amendment enlarging its
jurisdiction, and in any event it would
be a political matter similar to those
which the court has hitherto wisely
avoided taking any part in.
It is true that such a statute as the
one suggested might encourage an ambi-
tious Vice-President to attempt to in-
terpret a temporary indisposition as
constitutional inability, but the fear of
Congress and of public opinion would, I
think, be an effective bar. And, after all,
it would simply be one more of those
political arrangements which for their
success depend on that "natural senti-
ment" which the historian Grote called
"constitutional morality" : "a perfect con-
fidence in the bosom of every citizen,
amidst the bitterness of party contest,
that the forms of the Constitution will
be no less sacred in the eyes of his
opponents than in his own."
Lindsay Rogers
The Radical in Fiction
"rpHE Radical in Fiction," cast by the
A malice of some strife-goddess as a
topic of talk into the midst of the little
circle of camp-followers of literature,
threatened to prove a flaming ball of
strife. Fierce old Mastodon, who had
well earned his title by unswerving
fidelity to the megatherium and its men-
tal states, passionately hailed, as leader
of the deed, Satan, him whom Milton
drew. Had not the Arch-fiend a three-
fold claim to priority among radicals?
He had been deservedly deported from
Heaven not only for seducing by false
and blasphemous argument, still the
stock-in-trade of Communists of his kid-
ney ("Flatly unjust to bind with laws
the free!"), divers erring spirits, fond
a<d foolish, but for actually taking up
arms against the celestial government —
the wonted treason of his present crew.
In Hell the accursed firebrand had fur-
ther bred sedition by utterances — still
current among his agents — full of "re-
venge, immortal hate and courage never
to submit or yield" at a Stygian Coun-
cil, the prototype of many Soviets. And
finally, after a preparatory flight through
Chaos, a vast pulp or welter of radical
sentiment and opinion, this first of dema-
gogues had turned feminist for the
nonce, and, with the guile of the Ser-
pent, had shattered the earthly paradise
by tempting woman to eat of the tree of
Knowledge.
For a moment we held our breath.
Then our sputtering Lucifer, born
Streichholz but rechristened in 1917,
kindled always by the sparks of such
children of light as Shelley and Heine,
vehemently extols Prometheus, the first
champion of mankind. Was it not he
who defied the despotism of Jove the
oppressor and sturdily combated the
evils that reign in established govern-
ment? Was not humanity, in his person,
first liberated from the yoke of a ruler
and regenerated through its union with
love? Did not this protagonist point the
way to that golden age, when man will
walk, free, uncircumscribed, unclassed
and nationless, exempt from awe, wor-
ship, degree, king over himself and no
other? Surely Prometheus and not
Satan was the first radical.
Then our prosaic Verbalist, who wings
no luminous flights through time and
space even in pursuit of panting words,
but clings close to earth, hatching only
those eggs of wisdom laid in the pigeon-
holes of the Oxford Dictionary's scrip-
torium, dryly cackles, in dogmatic pro-
test against these fantastic origins, that
"radical" and "radicalism" are barely
past their centenary. "Just a hundred
years ago last October, Sir Walter Scott
explains to his brother that 'radical'
is a word in very bad odor here, being
used to denote a set of blackguards."
The Verbalist, moreover, remembers
to have read (smilingly we guessed
where) that the radicals in their early
days were called "whites" from the whit-
ish brown hat worn by one of their
leaders in 1820. "A friend of mine, a
'Southern gentleman. Sir,' recalls that, in
his earliest boyhood, when the ancient
commonwealth of his fathers was in the
dissolving throes of so-called Reconstruc-
tion, 'radical' connoted always the car-
pet-bagger or the renegade who climbed
to political heights on African shoulders.
attended invariably by the epithet
'black.' Oddly enough in the Europe of
the same date, ultra-radicals and anar-
chists, from the use of the red flag as a
revolutionary emblem, were bescarleted.
First white, then black, now red — the
name seems to be a chameleon changing
its hue in every generation."
"What does the word matter?" Masto-
don bursts in. "The thing itself is eter-
nal, its cursed function never dies. The
Athenian demagogue, the mob-orator at
Rome, the peasant leader of mediaeval
England, the French Jacobin, the labor
agitator in America are but successive
reincarnations of the same social menace.
The inflammatory Gracchi, traitors to
their birth and breeding, are resurrected
with undoubted loss of stamina in the
persons of those present-day intellectuals
who play naughtily with Marxism and
Bolshevism like children with parlor
matches among the curtains. And what
is Big Bill Haywood but an avatar of
Jack Cade, 'arrogant in heart and stiff
in opinion,' inciting class war, redress-
ing public grievances by popular vio-
lence, and seeking to wreck the state
through the frenzy of an unthinking mul-
titude. Is this multitude a whit less
factious, fickle, irrational, dang 'vo,
than the hydra-headed monster of
Shakespeare? In mob and mob-leader of
every age we meet the same indifference
to established institutions, to decent tra-
ditions, and to moral obligations."
"My turn, Mastodon!" cries Lucifer.
"Of what, pray, are you an avatar but
of some old feudal patrician denouncing
rebellious peasants as asses disdaining
the curb and leaping about the fields,
terrifying all the citizens with their hee-
haw, or as oxen butting with their horns,
or, more fearsome still, as monsters,
bear-footed, dragon-tailed, and breathing
fire. George Meredith drew you to the
life as 'a mediaeval gentleman with the
docile notions of the twelfth century,
complacently driving them to grass and
wattling them in the twentieth.' Of
what use are you and your nothing-
learning, nothing-forgetting Anglo-Nor-
man breed to a person of to-day trying
to think? Indeed, I wrong the feudal
mind by my comparison, because, if
William Morris be right, that mind, un-
aware of the evils of modern capitalism,
heavily penalized profiteering and usury,
and disdained specious sophistry in its
treatment of workingmen. If you have
read 'The Dream of John Ball' you will
remember how - shocked is that single-
minded peasant-leader when he is told
that a time will come when all power
will be in the hands of monopolists and
they shall be rulers of all. A collared
serf was freer than the modem work-
ingman as you would have him be."
Here Middleways took the word —
academic Middleways, ever sweetly rea-
sonable, proving all things and this way
484]
THE REVIEW
[Vol 2, No. 52
and that dividing his mind. "Let us
heed the Verbalist, our definer of terms,
and keep within the limits of a hundred
years. Even then the word's changing
history helps us little. Don't you recall
that Roebuck Ramsden, of Shaw's 'Man
and Superman,' who has always classed
himself as 'an advanced thinker,' hangs
on his walls canonized radicals of the
Victorian past — John Bright, Richard
Cobden, Herbert Spencer, Darwin, Hux-
ley, and George Eliot? A century ago
a radical was one who, like Cobbett, de-
nounced flogging in the army or who,
like Leigh Hunt, derided the embonpoint
of the Regent. Only whitey-brown,
that! Rereading some time since that
amazing medley of the best and the
worst, Warren's 'Ten Thousand a Year,'
I was amused to watch the conservative
author's horror of the dreadful radical-
ism of the thirties, rampant in the ill-
advised little person of Tittlebat Tit-
mouse, when he not only champions the
Reform Bill ('The Act for Giving Every-
body Everything'), but advocates the re-
peal of the corn laws, the lowering of
taxes, the granting of universal suf-
frage, and the conceding of civil and
reliffious liberty to Roman Catholics and
^-s — not, after all, a very apoplec-
tic programme. A few years later, in
Disraeli's 'Coningsby' the university-
bred youths of Conservative families and
traditions raise the banner of 'Young
England' and offer in alliance their white
hands to the grimy paws of the radicals."
"Just as we 'intellectuals' of to-day
unite with the proletariat against the
bourgeoisie," smirks Lucifer.
"With this immense difference, you
fallen angel," growls Mastodon, "that
those splendid young aristocrats were
seeking to annihilate class-feeling — not,
like your ungodly crew, to promote it —
and were striving not to wreck the state,
but to rear a free monarchy established
on fundamental laws and cherished by
political fidelity and patriotic ideals. But
Middleways is too kind to the radical of
a century since, if the Hiram Yorke
of Charlotte Bronte's 'Shirley' is typical
in his lack of veneration for parliaments
and establishments with their enact-
ments, forms, rights and claims and in
his relentless opposition to what he calls
'the unjustifiable and ruinous war' on
which his country's fortunes depend.
This rebellious pacifism is still drearily
familiar."
"Perhaps you will also find drearily
familiar the mid-century novel's pictures
of the industrial conditions that drove
men to Chartism," snaps Lucifer in reply.
"Open anywhere Disraeli's 'Sybil' or
Kingsley's 'Yeast' or Mrs. Gaskell's
'Mary Barton' and 'North and South,'
and you will meet on every page provoca-
tion in plenty for class warfare. Here
are workingmen coming with full hearts
to ask their employers for a bit of fire
and bedding and warm clothing and food
for their children — for much less than
a man's share in a man's life — and get-
ting always a contemptuous 'No' for an
answer. Does the reader wonder when
leaders arise — you call them radicals —
who seek to redress wrongs and to win
rights, by force if needs be? Your Felix
Holt and his namby-pamby tribe of
would-be reformers, shrinking from
sterner methods, seem to me the veriest
moss-backs. We no longer ask, we de-
mand."
"You two extremists miss," declares
Middleways, "the aim and end of all this
Victorian writing. Every chapter is an
implicit plea for a better understanding
between employer and employed, and a
lively protest against your unconciliatory
Toryism and radicalism. Whenever in
these stories capital and labor talk
frankly with one another, war between
them is averted. 'We would never want
no soldiers here,' says one of Disraeli's
workingmen, 'if the masters would speak
with the men.' So Mrs. Gaskell tells us
that, when her manufacturer, Thornton,
was brought face to face, man to man,
with one of the masses around him, em-
ployer and employee began to recognize
that we have all of us one human heart.
Thus these famous volumes were great
liberalizing and humanizing forces be-
cause they sought to reconcile elements
that are even now in conflict. The true
artist refrains from taking sides. Gals-
worthy in his drama, 'Strife,' preserves
the same equilibrium between capital and
labor as Mrs. Gaskell seventy years be-
fore, and aims at the same conciliation.
What is the outcome of the strike? 'A
woman dead and the two best men both
broken. And the terms the very same
that were drawn up and put to both sides
before the fight began. All this — all this
— and — and what for? ' Comment is
needless. These are the facts: make
what you will of them."
"Come back to your muttons," puts in
the Verbalist. "What has this to do
with the word 'radical'?"
"Everything," roars Mastodon. "The
radical of fiction as of fact, be he evo-
lutionist or revolutionist, socialist or in-
dividualist, is always the savage foe of
the 'captain of industry' and redly
anathematizes things in possession.
There is little to choose between the Dr.
Shrapnel of Meredith's 'Beauchamp'
when he wildly berates 'that old fatted
iniquity — that tyrant! that temper!
that legitimated swindler cursed of
Christ! that palpable Satan whose name
is Capital,' and the chief striker, Rob-
erts, in Galsworthy's play, denouncing
'the great menace of the future, the
bloodsucker Capital — a thing that buys
the sweat of men's brows and the tor-
ture of their brains at' its own price.'
Outrageously unfair is this to those most
precious things, profit and privilege. Yet
Shrapnel and Roberts, however mis-
guided and fanatical, are honest English-
men who fight hard in the open for what
they deem the rights of workingmen —
not treasonable aliens, enemies of the
state, who plot in darkness for the com-
ing of an hour of nightmares, when or-
ganized ignorance will dominate a disor-
ganized world! What will fiction be in
that twilight of the gods? Will the
Book News of to-morrow's Anarchia fea-
ture romances of young love in wK^ch
syndicalist Romeos will woo Bolshevistic
Juliets, while the rival factions of mis-
rule whet their stilettos and light their
fuses against the background of a flam-
ing heaven — with this departure from
the old story that there will be no prince
or chief magistrate to compose the
strife?"
"As a prophet, you build better than
you know, Boanerges, for of late we have
traveled far and shall soon travel far-
ther," retorts Lucifer. "In their day
Samuel Butler and Bernard Shaw did
yeomen's service by denouncing the
blighting evil of poverty. How the fat
of soul everywhere squeaked at the in-
sult to vested interests flung by Shaw's
exposure of slum-landlordism in 'Widow-
ers' Houses' ! Now Shavians and Fabians
lag as far in our rear as your Roebuck
Ramsden. Mr. Wells, who writes essays
and calls them novels, has somewhere
painted a picture of the Great State of
the future, essentially socialistic, owning
and running the land and all the great
public services, sustaining everybody in
absolute freedom at a certain minimum
of comfort and convenience; but his sight
is too short to perceive that the prole-
tariat— the Demos which Dickens pitied
and which Gissing distrusted and
despised, while they scrupulously por-
trayed its misery — will in the new hour
be the governing class. 'Psychological
realism in the sphere of culture' — that's
your cant phrase, isn't it? — the silly
amenities and the subtleties of sophisti-
cated leisure, will happily pass from the
novel with the passing of the gentleman.
And the country-house of fiction — the
head and front of all this offending —
will be scrapped like the baronial castle
of old Walter Scott and Mrs. Radcliffe.
Life, as plain men and women live it and
make it, will busy all pens in the good
time that's coming."
"A plague on both your houses!" in-
terposes Middleways. "You myopic
creatures, Bourbon and radical, have both
invoked George Meredith. Do you forget
the allegory that men have read into
his earliest thing, 'The Shaving of Shag-
pat'? Here reigns that worst of despots,
an established evil, a tyranny of lies,
for Shagpatism represents, so say these
interpreters, life in its institutional as-
pect, full of errors, superstitions, and
wrongs. Shagpat's charmed lock flaunts
blazing defiance to reform. Had you
May 8, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[485
been there, Mastodon, you would have
tenderly fostered its growth and have
loudly acclaimed its beauty. And you,
Lucifer, would have smitten off the head
with the hair. But the true reformer,
Shibli, though sensitive to abuses, is no
iconoclast, no red-eyed, root-and-branch
destructionist. He seeks only a cleansing
in the interest of health and decency.
He is equipped with insight — accurate
knowledge of things as they are; ideal-
•ism — clear vision of things as they ought
to be; enthusiasm — strength to change
things as they are into things as they
ought to be; and he is disciplined by the
thwackings of the world and of self-
criticism, as no mere thinker ever is.
Thus trained, Shibli goes forth to his
great hour of struggle and triumph.
With lightning-like stroke the sword of
results descends, and day is on the bald-
ness of Shagpat. About all of us here
and now the story is narrated."
Frederick Tupper
Correspondence
Lodge's "Fight Against
Wilson"
To the Editors of The Review:
In a letter in your issue of April 24,
Major George Haven Putnam quotes Sen-
ator Lodge as defining the nature of his
opposition to the League submitted by
President Wilson in these words: "I am
fighting Mr. Wilson." This statement
has been going about in various forms.
Last December I sent it to Senator Lodge
for authentication, and here is his reply,
dated December 13:
The quotation you have marked in which I
am reported as having said : "My fight is not
against the treaty of peace; it is against Wood-
row Wilson," is of course entirely false. I
never said anything like it and I have never
even thought it. There is no personal quality
whatever in the fight I have made on the
treaty. I have been thinking only of my coun-
try. The remark attributed to me is not only
wholly false but it is so foolish, so obviously
something that no man in his senses would say,
that I can only regard it as a mere political
and party invention to do me harm. I should
be very glad if you would deny it for me
whenever and wherever you hear it repeated.
This reply was published in the In-
dianapolis Netvs at the time.
Major Putnam says that "the Presi-
dent's management of the treaty has
been ill advised in the extreme," and
that the treaty has been blocked "be-
cause of the President's bad manage-
ment and self-sufficiency and because
Senator Lodge and his associates have
persisted in making the issue personal
and partisan." His conclusion is that
the responsibility for the delay "rests
with Senator Lodge and his associates."
This seems rather cloudy; but some
other things are clear. One is that the
great body of the American people de-
sire to see a league of nations tried in
place of that old rogue, Balance of Power,
which has nearly wrecked the world.
Another is that if the Senate had failed
to exercise its judgment upon the League
and to act accordingly, it would have
self-paralyzed functions imposed upon it
by the Constitution. Finally, the millions
who believe, as I do, that the Senate
operated upon the League beneficially,
and who see Mr. Wilson, in the face of
the fact that the Allies are ready to
accept all changes, wilfully forcing a
decision by wager of ballot between the
League submitted by him and that league
with the Senate reservations, do not
hesitate to accept the challenge.
Lucius B. Swin
Indianapolis, April 28
Jew and Arab
To the Editors of The Review :
The decision of the San Remo Con-
ference to award the Palestine mandate
to Great Britain, limited by the pro-
visions of the Balfour Declaration, which
provides for a National Jewish Home in
that land, would appear, at first sight,
to render academic the disputed ques-
tion of the present rights of the Jews
to the home of their ancestors. How-
ever, the conviction of the Zionists that
they possess these historic rights really
brings the matter into the heart of prac-
tical politics. The future of Palestine
depends largely upon the rnanner in
which they emphasize their claims in
dealing with the Arabs, Moslem and
Christian, who, according to the British
Census of 1919, outnumber them in a
proportion a little under five to one.
Against what they regard as the "Zion-
ist peril," Moslems and Christians have
been strongly organized for over a year.
When in Jerusalem last spring, I talked
in their own language with members of
an Anti-Zionist delegation, representing
the towns of Nabliis, Jaffa, Jerusalem,
etc. Their argument was, in substance,
as follows:
"The sixty-five thousand Jews now in
the land are our brothers, and sharers
with us in the rights of actual dwellers
in the land. Owing to the paralyzing
effects of Turkish misrule, our economic
development has been arrested for hun-
dreds of years. We are at present in no
condition to compete with foreign ability
and with foreign gold. We fear that
few of us could resist the temptation
presented by the prices which will be of-
fered for our lands. Thus, gradually, the
country will pass away from our hands.
Give us — say — twenty years in which we
may learn to stand on our economic feet,
but during which all Jewish immigration
is to be prohibited, and then we will open
the doors to the Jews. If by that time
we are not able to compete with them.
our inability to develop the land our-
selves will have been proved."
They added that they represented
scores of thousands to whom they had
pledged their word that the Zionist peril
should be dispelled, but declared that, in
case of failure, they would not be re-
sponsible for the disturbances that would
follow. Recent reports from Jerusalem,
giving the details of clashes between
Arabs and Jews, prove that the Anti-
Zionist sentiment is as strong as ever.
Now that the mandatory Power is
pledged to the Balfour Declaration, some
sort of modus vivendi will, of course,
have to be established. As to this
Declaration, I may be permitted to make
a quotation from a recent letter of mine
to the New York Times :
There are students of this pronouncemenl
who feel that, far from being definite, its
loose wording makes it capable of different in-
terpretations. Some hold . . . that Balfour's
Jewish National Home in Palestine is identical
with an independent Jewish State, quite un-
related politically to the rest of Syria. Others
find in the phrase merely the encouragement
to free Jewish immigration, with especial eco-
nomic concessions. Still others sec in it no
more than a promise that the Jews shall enjoy
the religious and other privileges accorded to
other foreign nations.
Just what interpretation Great Britain
will give to this elusive Declaration the
future alone will disclose.
To repeat myself, a successful modus
operandi depends on the attitude of the
Zionists themselves. From the begin-
ning the practical weakness of the move-
ment has been in the small attention paid
to the actual dwellers in the land. What
is known to-day as Zionism was in-
augurated in 1897 by the book of Dr.
Herzl, entitled "A Zion State." Consult
that little book, and you will find the
word Palestine occurring but once —
towards the close, as I remember — and
then with Argentina given as an alterna-
tive. This Utopia wher« the Jews were
to find opportunity for unimpeded de-
velopment is all through the book re-
ferred to as "over there." i!tle or
nothing is said of any native .> 'i'
"over there" and the impression made ou
the reader is of a country practically un-
inhabited. Later Herzl, first on practical
considerations, given the necessity of a
popular rally-cry, and afterwards appar-
ently from conviction, fixed definitely on
Palestine. However, the records of the
Zionist Congresses, from the first, held
in 1898, down to the time of the Turkish
Constitution of 1908, touch upon the
status of the dwellers in the land in the
vaguest terms. Conversing with promi-
nent local Zionists in Jaffa and Jeru-
salem as late as 1909, I found the same
vagueness prevailing in regard to this
question.
The Constitution of 1908 brought the
Zionists face to face with the local issue,
and the fact that the natives of Palestine
form an element to be regarded seriously
486]
THE REVIEW
[Vol 2, No. 52
has been met with a growing, but as yet
inadequate, consideration.
Yesterday I heard an eloquent and
moving address on Zionism by Rabbi
Wise, one of its most prominent ad-
vocates. He emphatically repudiated the
charge of "the injustice of Zionism." He
declared that never would the United
States be called upon to send a Commis-
sion to enquire into the treatment of the
Arabs by the Jews. In a few words to
me later (to which I am sure he will
not object to my referring) he affirmed
his love for the Arabs. But I hope the
Rabbi will pardon me if I deprecate the
form in which he expressed that love in
his speech. He said, "The Arab may re-
main in Palestine." As he spoke I
thought of the rich, though now de-
cayed, Arab civilization which was en-
trenched in Palestine for centuries. 1
thought of the great families, descend-
ants of the Prophet, descendants of
Khaled the Sword of God, possessors of
names to conjure with ever since the
Arab conquest. I thought of my
friend, Ibrahim Effendi ul-Khalidi, com-
missioner for my excavations, whose
mere presence in my Philistine camp
made that camp immune from any dis-
turbance on the part of Bedawin or
Fellahin. And these are the people who,
by the gracious permission of the Zion-
ists, "may" continue to live in the land
of their ancestors! No, no, my dear
Rabbi, change your tone. Ask for the
privileges of a guest — a guest, if you
will, who once was host and who may
be host again — and you will meet with
royal Arab hospitality. Change your
tone for the very sake of the noble ideals
contained in your programme, for not
till then can your people do the work for
the inhabitants of Palestine— Moslem,
Christian, and Jew alike — which I am
persuaded you wish them to do.
Frederick Jones Buss
New Haven, Conn., April 26
Mr. Dreiser's "Battle for
Truth"
-To che^ditors of The Review:
Like Mr. Paul Elmer More, I, too, am
impatient of Theodore Dreiser's "uneasy
muddle of ideas." I do not ask every
novelist — in order to enjoy reading his
books — to be an Edith Wharton; I can
see much to admire in the .stark brutality
of Sherwood Anderson; I read and re-
read with enthusiasm the brisk, search-
ing, human pages of Edna Ferber; but
there is in Dreiser's work a certain
unwholesome, turgid quality that dis-
gusts me.
As the performing of a surgical opera-
tion demands both skill and strength, so
the effective use of realism in art de-
mands a clear-cut cleanness of soul
and an unfaltering devotion to truth.
Through Dreiser's pages, underlying his
descriptions of sensuality and material
success, I seem to see the author's fur-
tive gusto, the sly licking of lips, the
poorly concealed envy of the very things
which he professes to hold in contempt.
But however one may dislike the writings
of Dreiser, it is commonly supposed that
behind the writing Is a rugged, honest
soul who courageously expresses the faith
that is in him, notwithstanding the "per-
secution" of lovers of good English, con-
servative publishers, censors, and others
who at one time were charged with tak-
ing the bread from his mouth. It is
only a few years since a group of mem-
bers of the Authors' League asked for
contributions for the brave and hounded
author, to enable him to continue his
battle for the truth. I did not subscribe
— not because I did not admire his writ-
ings, which was reason enough — but be-
cause I had worked with Dreiser several
months as associate editor to the maga-
zine of which he was editor-in-chief. If
during that period he held any strong
convictions for which he was willing to
suffer, or possessed any moral stamina
that would cause him to stand by his
guns for anything save self-interest, then
he very successfully kept it from me.
And I am not particularly unobservant.
Shortly after I resigned my position —
because the editor-in-chief had not the
most elementary notions concerning the
integrity and sanctity of an author's
own language — I received a letter from a
young writer on the New York Times
saying that he was bringing suit against
the magazine for non-payment of an
article which had been ordered by me,
and asking if I would testify in his
behalf. This I agreed to do. The case
came to trial. After I had given my
testimony, what was my surprise to
have Dreiser deny that I had ever been
Associate Editor of the magazine, or as-
sociated with it in any editorial capac-
ity whatever! Notwithstanding my
amazement, it took me only a second to
reach into my bag and hand the presid-
ing judge the original letter written and
signed by Dreiser offering me the posi-
tion of Associate Editor, stating terms,
duties, etc. I had no premonition that
the defense would take that line; in my
innocence, I had supposed that the article
might be unjustly belittled, or that my
right to accept or reject an article might
be falsely questioned, but that my entire
connection of months with the editorial
office would be denied in toto, that was a
bit too strong even for my imagination!
However, looking over some papers in
order to verify some dates, I had come
across the letter appointing me, and had
fortunately slipped it into my bag. I
never saw a more disgusted judge. He
asked Dreiser if he were the author of
the letter, and receiving an affirmative
reply, brought the case to a close and
rendered a decision for the plaintiff.
As we were leaving court, Dreiser
put out his hand to me, which I refused
to take. He flushed, but was inclined
to take the whole thing as a joke. "How
could you deliberately try to discredit
me like that?" I asked, indignantly. "It
wasn't my judgment," he answered, as
if that let him out entirely, "it was the
lawyer's idea. Besides," he added with
a grin, "I didn't think you'd have that
letter with you, or I wouldn't have
done it."
Can anyone wonder that it is difficult
for me to see in Theodore Dreiser a
martyr for Truth? What a pitiful sum
was involved to have succeeded in punc-
turing the honor of a great man ! True,
all this took place thirteen years ago;
but Theodore Dreiser was no immature
youth, he was married ; and even had he
been a much younger man, does it not
seem as if at least the germ of greatness
would have shown in that daring soul
that later was to champion the cause of
Humanity "confronting Life unafraid"!
Annie Nathan Meyer
Netv York City, April 30
Keeping Tab on the Pro-
fessor
To the Editors of The Review:
In a university, as in any business
organization, it is important that the ad-
ministration should know the conditions
under which work is being done. A rec-
ord of the clock hours and the student
hours for each member of the instruc-
tional staff is information which should
be in the executive office and which may
be used as often for remedying overwork
as for criticising loafers. A college presi-
dent who does not know what his men
are doing is very likely to make mis-
takes.
So far as I have had opportunity of
observing, these records have not been
used as levers for changing the status of
instructors or their salaries. For the
same reason the executives should know
the conditions obtaining in various
rooms, especially those which are
crowded. Plans and estimates for new
buildings can be more reasonably con-
structed if one has a fairly accurate
knowledge of existing conditions. The
relative crowding of different rooms and
buildings tells us where to begin in our
new building programme. We also rec-
ognize the fact that the capacity of the
recitation room is greater than that of
the laboratory of the same size, and this
in turn greater than that afforded by
shop or engine room.
I fail to see why we should stick our
heads in the sand, ostrich-like, and de-
cline to get facts for fear we shall be
tempted to use them wrongly.
C. H. Benjamin
Dean of Purdue University
Lafayette, Ind., March 9
^
May 8, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[487
Book Reviews
Like a Fine Old English
Gentleman
Some Aversions of a Man of Letters. By
Edmund Gosse. New York : Charles
Scribner's Sons.
THOUGH Mr. Gosse is a man of letters
without a thesis and with little
provocative quality, he has developed, in
fifty years devoted to books, much quiet
charm. He leads one through these vari-
ous essays with an easy and experienced
suavity which persuades one from the
outset that suitable things are going to
be said and well said, with gentlemanly
animation but without undue emphasis.
He is so true an Englishman that his
heart will ever respond with an extra
beat at the thought of Raleigh's tragic
story. He is himself so much of the
poet-scholar that he can never cease to
value the spade-work or the cheery notes
of those rather dusty brothers, the
Wartons, back there in the dull mid-
eighteenth century whistling up the
dawn of romanticism. He is so much a
Victorian that he is not quite ready to
acquiesce in the conspiracy of silence
which this generation has formed against
the once-splendid reputations of Bulwer
and Disraeli. A lover of old writers, he
is yet so friendly to new ones that he
weaves a fine garland of poems by soldier
bards, which "Englishmen will not
allow to be forgotten." He is so much a
classicist that he comments with real
relish on Lord Cromer's translations
from Moschus; and so much an aristo-
crat that he enters with perfect sym-
pathy into the literary recreations of a
retired British proconsul. Having oc-
casion to speak of Lord Redesdale's heir,
who fell in the war, he writes: "His
eldest son. Major the Hon. Clement Mil-
ford"; and one feels a pleasant glow of
satisfaction in the assurance that this
is precisely the way in which one should
mention the eldest son of Lord Redes-
dale. Taste, tact, and temper designated
Mr. Gosse from his youth as the man to
call upon when a poet laureate died or
when the hundredth anniversary of a
classic fell to be celebrated or when a
new citizen was to be admitted to good
and regular standing in the Republic of
Letters.
It is not difficult to perform these
' functions after a fashion; but it re-
quires a fine and rare art to perform
them well. It requires an art rooted
in the best traditions and nourished by
habitual contact with men who un-
feignedly value in literature a certain
vital decorum, the unfailing mark of
works worthy of permanent remem-
brance. Mr. Gosse possesses this art; and
therefore his commemorations are not
perfunctory but recreative with the true
academic unction. His literary character
and predilections were formed just be-
fore the fashion of the Victorian age
took its strong bias towards charlatanry
and infected young writers with the
strident vices of journalism. He came
in with a group of knights of the pen,
many of them Scotchmen — Lang, Dob-
son, Archer, Colvin, Henley, Stevenson —
who clung to the old "religion of letters";
identified their style with their honor,
looked upon a page of prose with amorous
but exacting eye, and made their pleasure
their profession. The gusto of amateurs
and the skill of patient craftsmen unite
to constitute the special charm of this
group at its emergence, in its springtime,
when these dashing young talents were
studying old French verse and wearing
out copies of Herrick in the pockets of
their velveteen jackets — before the indi-
vidual members had grown apart, and
grown up, and grown old, and danger-
ously facile and overproductive. Mr.
Gosse, who now speaks of himself as an
aged mourner preparing to attend the
obsequies of the Victorian time, fluted his
lyrics in those vernal days with the
rest of them. Yet forty years ago, when
he was just turned thirty, he was already
marked by R. L. Stevenson, that happy
blend of Villon and Calvin, as a natural
born academician, one manifestly des-
tined, all in due time, to become librarian
to the House of Lords. In 1879 Steven-
son wrote with playful thrust, apropos
of some decorous and mellow utterance of
his friend: "My dear Gosse, I have
greatly enjoyed your article which seems
to me handsome in tone, and written like
a fine old English gentleman."
In forty years Mr. Gosse has lost none
of the virtue of his youth. In the mean-
while that virtue has been steadily dis-
appearing from contemporary English
literature. And so, without thesis or
other provocative qualities, he gives us
a delightful collection of essays, dis-
tinguished in that it is handsome in
tone and written like a fine old English
gentleman. In his half century of letters
he has seen many prosperous reputations
ruined by the vicissitudes of fashion;
and he raises, without explicitly answer-
ing, the question whether there is, after
all, any fixable standard of taste. The
answer which he has accepted for himself
is everywhere implicit in the sustained
amenity of his tone, which one finds
especially charming when he is drawing
from the life, as in his portraits of Lady
Dorothy Nevill, Lord Cromer, and Lord
Redesdale. Any one who desires to vivify
his conception of a "fine old English
gentleman" should turn in this book
to the pages where Mr. Gosse and
the Consul-General from Egypt con-
verse together over the fragments of
Empedocles.
Stuart P. Sherman
Talk of the Best
The Island of Sheep. By Cadmus and
Harmonia. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company.
ARISTOTLE used to say that educa-
tion was an ornament in prosperity
and a refuge in adversity. It is im-
possible to read this delightful book with-
out being convinced of the fact. We are
told that Cadmus is a well-known English
writer and man of action, and we can
easily believe it. Here is the philosophic
mind which only years can bring, not
merely those of the individual himself but
also those of the race of which he is an
exponent, and to this inevitable product of
time are added the positive elements of
wide reading, broad and minute observa-
tion, and calm and wonderfully detached
reflection. Yet more, the tranquillity of
the minds which produced this work is
imparted realistically to all the char-
acters to whom we are introduced:
however strenuous their reasoned con-
clusions, we feel that in every instance
the aim has been to free them from per-
sonal and selfish characteristics and to
obtain, so far as is humanly possible, a
glimpse of the increasing purpose which
runs through the ages.
The time is indeed out of joint, and
presumptuous is he who may think that
he is born to set it right. We are afraid
that not all the guests of Colonel and
Mrs. Lamont on the Island of Sheep are
free from all trace of this vice, yet much
may be condoned where motives are fine
and sincere. A more agreeable company
we can not imagine. The scene is the
north of Scotland. Before the guests ar-
rive we are introduced to Colonel Lamont,
in a pleasant arbor looking down on
spring meadows which sloped towards
the western sea. He is reading Matthew
Arnold :
And by the sea, and in the brakes,
The grass is cool, the seaside air
Buoyant and fresh, the mountain flowers
More virginal and fresh than ours.
And there, they say, two bright and aged
snakes,
Tliat once were Cadmus and Harmonia,
Bask in the glens or on the warm seashore,
In breathless quiet, after all their ills.
He looked up from his book, "Singularly
like us, my dear," he observed to his
wife. She admits that she feels aged,
"but not very bright." The war is over,
and though peace may have its victories
no less renowned than war, it also has
its problems no less disturbing. "This
old world," says Colonel Lamont, "has
got such a twist that I can't see it set-
tling down in our time. I wish to heaven
I knew where we all stood." It is not his
taxes that he is worrying about — he
wouldn't mind paying fifteen shillings in
the pound for the rest of his days. It is
the country that exercises him. The war
has been won ; but for what ? "We have
won, of course, but we don't seem to
I
488]
THE REVIEW
[Vol 2, No. 52
know that we've won. Those damned
politicians are at the job again. I
thought we had washed all that out."
And Bolshevism, remarks Mrs. Laniont.
And ever}- little faction on the globe
wanting to turn itself into a state, he
rejoins. And our own labor people so
discontented, she continues, and all this
business of the League of Nations, was
his conclusion of the antiphony.
Speedily, however, a livelier note is
struck. The guests arrive in rapid suc-
cession— politicians, soldiers, labor lead-
ers—American, French, and English in
nationality — and among them a sprink-
ling of ladies of interrogative instincts.
We could wish none of the company
awaj', with the possible exception of Mr.
Albert Wyper, a progressive journalist,
with a soft shapeless face, a humorless
eye, and an untidy person, who intro-
duces himself with the remark, "I have
found a new theory of Democracy in a
French review and am writing a letter
to the New Republic on the subject."
Will some one tell us why a malign fate
has identified "progressive," a word
not unpleasing in itself, with such
characteristics?
And now we find ourselves in a flood
of discussion, and our only grudge
against Cadmus and Harmonia is that
they allow it to last only a niggardly few
days — a full month would be not too
much ! No sooner do the guests sit down
to their first repast than the keynote is
struck. In a high, clear voice Mrs.
Aspenden, "a lady given to good works,"
discourses of history. "I have been read-
ing all about this place," she announces.
"Do you know that St. B randan came here
on his great voyage? It is his Island of
Sheep where he found the lamb for the
Paschal sacrifice. There is a beautiful
passage about it translated out of some
old Latin chronicle. He sailed, you re-
member, out of tempestuous seas and
came suddenly to a green isle of peace
with sheep feeding among the meadows."
"I like the story," remarks Mr. Chris-
topher Normand, who is a singularly in-
gratiating character. "To come out of
stormy seas to a green isle of quietness !
It is what all are seeking. Democracy is
a great and wonderful thing, but it does
not make for peace." "There !" exclaims
Lady Sevenoaks, "I knew it. Already we
have reached that odious subject."
They have indeed. But it has taken
us so long to set the scene that we can
not rehearse the dialogue. Nor do we
want to; the reader will thank us for
letting him discover for himself the rare
charm of this book. Passion is excluded,
though there is plenty of idealism, and
an abundance of hard, shrewd wit. Na-
tional characteristics are exceedingly well
portrayed. We are proud of the courage
of our countrywoman, Mrs. Lavender,
who, when asked to vouch for the state-
ment by Mr. Jonas, a labor leader, that
"things are easier in America because
they tell me that classes are fluid there
and their boundaries are always shift-
ing," replies, "True. William was raised
in a shack in Idaho, and if the present
rate of taxation goes on, my boys will
be getting back to that shack." And we
may confess a previous acquaintance with
Mr. Merryweather Malone, an American
politician with Irish antecedents, who on
being accused of having acquired an
Oxford accent, replied, "We've all got a
bit of it, ever since Abel. It was that
that made Cain mad." This is of a piece
with his "I'm of Irish stock myself,
and for our sins we've got a good many
like me in the States. That poor little
island is living on a bogus past and try-
ing to screw some pride out of it, while
she's forgetting to do anything to be
proud of right now. The ordinary Irish-
man is ashamed of himself and he has
not the honesty to admit it. No man's
any good unless he has something to
swagger about, and Ireland has not any-
thing except a moth-eaten ragbag of
wrongs. That's her confounded anti-
quarian habit of mind."
Let it be understood that in these
quotations we have hardly touched the
fringe of the discussion embodied in this
work. Nor has any attempt been made
to disclose to the reader the felicities of
style and argument which meet us on
every hand. It is sufficient to say that
there is "here a fineness akin to a for-
gotten art. How does it all end? We
refuse to say. Perhaps we do not know ;
perhaps Cadmus and Harmonia do not
know. Can any valid conclusion be drawn
from the following facts? "The only
hope for Democracy," says Mr. James
Burford, an ex-Labor Member of Parlia-
ment, "is to make it an aristocracy."
Shortly afterwards someone suddenly
asks, "Where's Burford?" Mrs. Lament
answered, "I think he has gone for a
walk with Phillis [her niece] in the
garden."
F. J. Whiting
The Man of Science in the
Future
The Outlook for Research and Invention.
By Nevil Monroe Hopkins. New York :
D. Van Nostrand Company.
THIS book reflects the enthusiasms of
a man who has given his life to the
prosecution of engineering projects, and
who has come in the passing of years to
appreciate with great vividness the fun-
damental significance of scientific research
for national progress. Despite some cu-
rious blunders touching matters of fact,
it has in it much that is informing re-
garding the actual status of American
research and its more obvious defects.
Taking his point of departure from a
somewhat precarious psychology, the
author exhibits in a very striking way
the accidental conditions under which
men at present, by a very haphazard
process of social selection, are picked out
for research careers, and he makes a
good case for the belief that great masses
of the finest research talent remain ster-
ile because of the poverty of our present
devices for identifying, stimulating, and
developing it. The story which he tells
of the indifference of the American pub-
lic, both educated and uneducated, to the
place of scientific research in national life
is somewhat depressing, but well within
the truth. He shows that our national
vanity regarding American inventiveness
rests on rather less substantial founda-
tions than is commonly believed, and
over against this fact is to be put the
relatively meagre accomplishments in
the application of fundamental scien-
tific methods and ideas to practical in-
dustrial processes. Were our industrial
products thrown open to a more equal
competition with those of other nations,
this fact would be brought home to us far
more keenly than with our high tariff
walls has hitherto been in general pos-
sible. His chapter on the tropical devel-
opment of research during the war, and
the part played by the National Research
Council in this movement, is extremely
informing and decidedly encouraging in
its implication of an aroused popular ap-
preciation of scientific men and their
methods.
The reader may well wish that, in con-
nection with his discussion of patents,
the author had gone more nearly to the
root of our whole patent system, the
beneficence of whose operations under
present conditions is decidedly open to
question. He indulges in some admirably
sound advice to inventors, which will
doubtless fail to reach most of those by
whom it is chiefly needed. There are few
more pathetic chapters in the history of
intellectual endeavor than those portray-
ing the year-long struggles of many in-
ventors to perfect devices which were
defective in the essential scientific ideas
upon which they were based, a fact to
which the ignorance — and often secret-
iveness — of the inventor has rendered
him tragically oblivious. Important and
successful inventions represent long and
courageous endeavor, working with two
great tools — creative imagination and
sound scientific knowledge, the latter far
more important than the average individ-
ual at all appreciates.
One need not be wholly Philistine to
call in question the low estimate put by
the author upon humanistic methods of
educational training and his wholly opti-
mistic view regarding the utilization of
scientific materials as the essential nu-
cleus of our educational programme.
Those who have faced the actual job of
teaching in our schools and cofleges, how-
ever sympathetic with the author's gen-
eral position, could disabuse his mind
of certain fallacious preconceptions.
May 8, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[489
The book contains some interesting
speculations on the limits of scientific
discovery, on the applications of re-
search in the industries, and comes to an
end with a somewhat scrappy but not
uninteresting list of problems awaiting
solution, which appears to have been
gathered as the result of enquiry from a
considerable group of scientific men.
The volume belongs to a class of books
which suffer somewhat in the appeal that
they are capable of making to the hu-
manistically trained intellectuals, because
of a certain rawness of cultural outlook
as tested by the conventional standards
of the literary and humanistic critic. On
the other hand, it is replete with indica-
tions of wide and substantial scholarship
in various scientific branches, it is com-
posed with a somewhat infectious enthu-
siasm for the beauties of science, and
perhaps the best thing which can be said
for it is that it is likely to be the fore-
runner of not a few more substantial and
more convincing presentations of the
same general field. The time is ripe for
a distinctly epoch-making treatise on this
whole subject.
Cult and Comedy
The Anchor: A Love Story. By Michael
Sadler. New York: Robert M. McBride
and Company.
Time and Eternity: A Tale of Three
Exiles. By Gilbert Cannan. New York:
George H. Doran Company.
Love and Mr. Lewisham. The Story of a
Very Young Couple. By H. G. Wells.
New York: George H. DorSn Company.
T seems to have been within the mem-
ory of the living that readers of Wil-
liam Black and Mrs. Humphry Ward
were startled and delighted by the ap-
pearance of certain "young" English
novelists named Wells and Bennett, A
little later came the "younger" English
novelists, Cannan, and Walpole, and Mack-
enzie, and the rest of the family who
bear each other so strong a family like-
ness. And now, within a year or two, has
appeared a group of youngest inter-
preters for whom ardent publishers and
complaisant reviewers are claiming much
and predicting more. Distinction is a
favorite word in these estimates. Punch
achieves an amusing superlative. It de-
clares that Michael Sadler's "The An-
chor" reaches an "unusual level of dis-
tinction." Perhaps that is it. Perhaps
its level of distinction is what chiefly
impresses or depresses us in this young-
est fiction. They are all, these perform-
ers, so "extraordinarily clever" (as the
Daily Express calls Mr. Sadler) ; so
knowing, so uniformly unconventional,
.so fluent . . . so young. The back
jacket of "The Anchor" has a well-writ-
ten blurb. Change the proper names to
fit the instance, and you have the fairly
satisfactory description of an imaginary
composite novel made up of all twen-
I
tieth century British novels to date. Add
that Laddie is of Winchester and Oxford
and pursues as a journalist in Paris and
London his "young man's adventures in
love and self-discovery." . . . "Lad-
die McAllister," continues the blurbist,
"is the kind of young man most of us
know; brilliant, acutely self-conscious, a
bit unstable, but lovable, he is in danger
of becoming a mere intellectual drifter.
His unconscious search for an 'anchor'
is complicated by his relations with two
women of antithetic influence, and by his
friendship for Dermot Hill, a quaint and
engaging Irish radical."
Yes, Laddie is one kind of man most
of us know: he is youth, he is egotism,
he is temperament and all that. But it
is odd and not quite normal that he
should be the only kind of man these
youngest novelists, on either side of the
water, seem to know or to be interested
in. Is there no natural medium worth
dealing with between the red-blooded
idiot of movie romance and this mentally
and morally cross-eyed darling of the
younger clan? The truth, as I make it
out, is that in interpreting youth this
modern school fails to transcend youth,
fails of the maturity which beholds
youth in its beauty and its piteousness,
a marvelous phase of life, but not the
whole of it or even surely the best of it.
Youth justifies itself, is its own sufficient
excuse and palliation ; not therefore need
its follies and fecklessnesses, its piracy
and poltroonery, be solemnly elevated for
worship. The Laddie of "The Anchor"
is a commonplace credible young chap,
rather more decent sexually than is the
fashion among his literary kind, recog-
nizable enough as "the kind of young
man most of us know." Perhaps he is even
the kind of young man most of us have
been. But why dig us up again? Aren't
we, in that phase, getting to be an old
and dull spectacle? We admit every-
thing: why keep rubbing it in upon a
politely yawning world? Forget it: and
tell us a story about the fellow we might
have been. He is the man for our money.
In some such reactionary strain I find
myself perusing again and again this
perennial chronicle of the more or less
decent young Briton taking his first flut-
ter at life in a London of newspaper of-
fices and studios and variously com-
plicating females. For Laddie, there is
a Janet much too good. Hearken to him
in the act of proposing marriage:
"Janet — I fell in love with you here—
the first time I ever saw you in the flesh.
I am now going to ask you to consider
marrying me. The prospect is unattrac-
tive— even more unattractive than it
looks. ... I am not a waster. That
is to say I work hard and am intelligent
and sane. Such vices as I have are nega-
tive. But I am an uncreative artist, if
you will allow so priggish an expression.
I mean I love beauty but can not work off
that love in the creation of other beauty.
Consequently I am, in certain things,
rather unstable. If you will take me on
— and I need you, Janet, absolutely, piti-
fully almost — take me on and stand by
me, I shall learn to stand by you. You
are so strong, so — oh, my dear, there are
no words! — but you are safe-harbour,
anchorage, something firm to cling to,
and— I think that's all."
Undeniably a pill for Janet; and an
artificial misunderstanding, based upon a
Potiphar's wife charge against Laddie,
increases the size of the bolus. But she
downs it at last ; and the discovery of his
innocence is thereafter immaterial : "As
if it mattered what you have been or will
be," cries Janet in the ear of her prig-
ling. "You just are. Dear heart — "
All this, you say, is simple and senti-
mental enough — why adduce it as a mod-
ern instance? To which the reply might
be that it is not inherently more senti-
mental than the majority of contem-
porary chronicles of this kind in which
the lad takes Potiphar's wife, as it were,
in his stride. The sentimentality of such
fiction lies in its slavish worship of
youngness — the mere state and act of be-
ing young, of muddling through youth.
Mr. Gilbert Cannan, of course, lays him-
self open to no charge of Victorianism.
Nor does he always deal with the fum-
blings and yearnings of the salad years.
Stephen, of "Time and Eternity," is in
his thirties, by the calendar. But we
have to take Mr. Cannan's word for that.
To all intents Stephen is the eccentric
apprentice at life, just as the young
gentleman in "Pink Roses" was the
amiable dabbler. His youth is static;
and so, we presently observe, is that of
his Valerie and even of the gray experi-
enced Per9katov. These are official
children of the modern world, looking
upon it with astonished rebellious eyes.
A young Englishman, a girl from South
Africa, a Russian Jew, they are exiles in
London as they would be anywhere.
Exiles— but where is their land? I for
one can not make out, unless it be in that
not-world of passionately protestant
youth where respectability and injustice,
old saws and outworn principles, mar-
riage, war, duty have no place. Hap-
lessly offset against them is the honest
but hysterical young romantic, Ducie, the
British "decent sort," not heroically cast
though capable of heroic violence, as
when he seizes an insolent slacker by the
neck and throws him "a dozen yards" —
surely the record put for slackers. A
morsel of his strength he uses later to
strangle Valerie — maybe this is as good
a way as any to dispose of her, though
it leaves Stephen temporarily at a loose
end. Valerie has "given herself" to
Stephen, with much talk about not be-
lieving in marriage or dreaming of a
permanent union between them. Here
they are together: no doubt the thor-
490]
THE REVIEW
[Vol 2, No. 52
outrhly modern reader will perceive what
it is all about:
. . . His only dread was lest he
should fail her, as he most certainly
would if he tried to understand her from
anything external, her appearance, her
actions, her moods, or even her thoughts.
She said :
"If you were not what I thought I
should kill you."
"What do you want me to be?"
"\Vhat you are."
He accepted that she would kill him as
the most natural thing in the world.
After the love they have shared, any be-
trayal of it, however slight, would be
worse than death. Indeed, life outside
the wonder they had created seemed so
fantastic as to be a continual desecration :
soldiers, battle, exhortations to patriot-
ism, food queues, revolution in Russia —
all seemed like incidents in a stage play;
the capricious movements of the crowd
and the incidental characters surround-
ing the drama of passions which knew
their object and would attain them or
destroy.
He protested a little faintly :
"But I don't ask you to be anything
but what you are."
"I am what I am," said Valerie,
firmly.
Which seems to settle matters very
satisfactorily. Firmness is a great thing.
I chanced to turn from these books to
"Love and Mr. Lewisham." It was
written twenty years ago. Someone is
said to have asked Mr. Wells, not long
since, which of his own books he liked
best. He reached for a copy of "Love
and Mr. Lewisham," and said that he
did not know that he had ever done any
better writing than that. I took up
this first American edition of the story
with the half-defined notion that here I
should find something in line with my
"youngest" novels of the moment —
something at least in the way of fore-
cast, for who if not Wells set the ball
of modernity rolling? . . . Yes, here
is the young man in London, fumbling
at life and love, with two women in the
offing. . . . And then we rub our
eyes. Was modernity so old-fashioned a
business, twenty years ago? Or was this
the final indulgence of a delightful
romancer before modernity "got" him?
Here at all events he employs the very
materials of which his literary grand-
children make such bitter or defiant copy,
in the gentlest most believing way. His
comedy remains a comedy, the ancient
comedy of all for love and the world well
lost. Lewisham's dreams of social re-
form, of personal fame, of a distin-
guished career in science, have been
pushed aside by circumstance. He will-
ingly and not ignobly resigns them that
he may bear his part as husband of a
wife and son of a mother and father of
a son. The book is full of sweet humor,
more tender than that of "Mr. Polly"
and more simple than that of "Tono-
Bungay" — the two stories (written some
ten years later) with which I should
place "Love and Mr. Lewisham" as the
purest product of Mr. Wells as a story-
teller.
H. W. BOYNTON
The Run of the Shelves
THE movement for a memorial to the
late Professor Sir William Ramsay,
K. C. B., F. R. S., is making progress
both in England and in France. Early
in the war British science lost in him
one of its great leaders. No short
notice could attempt to describe his ac-
tivities in chemistry, but his researches
were equally remarkable in the more
abstruse sides of the science and in those
that attracted popular attention. To the
public Ramsay will remain best known
for two extraordinary researches. Be-
fore his work, it was believed that the at-
mosphere consisted only of a mixture of
oxygen, nitrogen, and a few other well-
known gases. Starting on the puzzle
that there was a minute difference in
weight between nitrogen as separated
from the oxygen of the air and nitrogen
as prepared from pure chemicals, Ram-
say, after work of remarkable delicacy,
discovered and isolated five new elements
in the atmosphere — argon, neon, xenon,
krypton, and helium. Helium had been
known through spectroscopy to exist in
the sun. When the sun's atmosphere
was examined with the spectroscope,
physicists had seen a blazing green line
that corresponded with no known element.
Just as St. Paul forced the attention of
the Athenians by bringing to them the
"Unknown God," so Ramsay electrified
the scientific world when he isolated and
discovered in the ordinary air the exist-
ence of this element and reproduced in
his laboratory the same spectrum line.
When the Curies discovered and
isolated radium, Ramsay was one of the
pioneers to work on it, and realized the
alchemist's dream of proving the possi-
bility of the break-up of the atom. He
showed that radium, though an element,
decomposes, giving off the gas helium,
and thus led the way to the discovery
of the number of elements through which
radium changes. The work was a miracle
of minute analysis which involved the
handling, through countless processes, of
almost imperceptible quantities of gas.
Sir William Ramsay was never blind
to the close connection of science with
everyday life. When the war broke out,
he devoted himself to the application of
science to the needs at the front, and
he was the first to insist that cotton, as
the basis of explosives, must be made
contraband of war. By so doing, he
greatly embarrassed the German manu-
facturers of explosives and directly con-
tributed to the final victory. The
memorial will consist of a fund for the
provision of Ramsay Research Fellow-
ships, tenable wherever the necessary
equipment may be found, and for the
establishment of a Ramsay Memorial
Laboratory of Chemical Engineering in
connection with University College,
London.
The fourth number of Etudes Ital-
iennes (Paris: Leroux), which has just
reached this country, completes the first
volume of this French quarterly. It pays
this high compliment to Dr. Ernest H.
Wilkins, Professor of the Romance Lan-
guages at Chicago University:
We warmly approve of his active campaign
for the development of Italian studies in the
American educational system. . . . With their
practical ways and their proneness to do
things promptly and on a large scale, are our
American colleagues about to give to the Ital-
ian language in the training of American youth
the place which we in France still hesitate to
give it?
The youth of Sarah Bernhardt is
perennial. Though seventy-six-years old,
she has just finished delivering a series
of public lectures at Paris on the "Grands
Semeurs d'Idees," the closing one being
devoted to Edmond Rostand, "the most
obstinate believer in the final victory."
The gifted actress declaimed some of
the poet's finest verse, and her voice is
described as being as "golden as ever."
And this has been followed up by "the
divine Sarah" actually appearing on the
boards again, as she is now giving
nightly performances at her own Paris
theatre of Racine's "Athalie."
Besides offering the University of
Paris an annual sum of money for the
new Chinese Department, the Pekin
Government has now signified its inten-
tion of depositing in the Sorbonne
library a hundred thousand manuscripts,
probably the most remarkable collection
outside of China.
M. Maurice Barres relates that when
Moreas was on his death-bed, he said to
the former: "There aren't classicists
and romanticists; that's all nonsense. I
am sorry to be in such poor health that
I can't explain this to you."
The Anglo-French Review, of London,
whose chief aim is to draw France and
England more closely together, seems to
be prospering. Beginning with the
April number, it contains sixteen more
pages than the earlier numbers. One
of the French articles is by Leon Bour-
geois, President of the League of Na-
tions, "where we soon hope to find repre-
sentatives of the United States," he says.
M. Rene Puaux, the Paris publicist,
writes on "La Turquie et I'Entente," and
11
May 8, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[491
has this to say of our non-participation
in the matter: "The absence of the
United States was a great disappointment
to the English Government. America's
acceptance of the mandate for Constanti-
nople and Armenia has long appeared to
be the ideal solution of the difficulty.
British statesmen gave it their warmest
approval, and the withdrawal of America
has compromised the whole question. It
is easily understood that the additional
responsibility thrown on France and
England by this lack of collaboration on
the part of the United States has been
a source of considerable anxiety to those
two Governments." There are three ar-
ticles on Prohibition, the last by Dr.
Leonard Williams, one of the leading
London physicians, being entitled "Pause
for Pussyfoot," in which it is stated that
"the white man is not at home on the
American Continent ... the race will
die out . . . the black man will
shortly be complete master of the United
States, and the white man become a rare
bird"; and all this will be due to "this
experiment of Prohibition." John Gould
Fletcher contributes a poem, "In the City
of Night," which he dedicates "to the
memory of Edgar Allan Poe."
A writer in the Temps hails Montes-
sori's plea for periodical instruction in
silence as a fortunate reaction against
the verbosity of pedagogues, which
causes hypertrophy of the children's
memory at the cost of their reasoning
faculty and their critical sense. A bath
of silence is what the brain needs most
of all. Too much talking is going on
all over the world, but especially in Latin
countries. There people get intoxicated
with the spirit of words. If, from child-
hood, people were taught the virtue and
the practice of silence, sound common
sense would not so often be wasted by
"la melomanie de la phrase." But, un-
fortunately, it is the wagging tongue
itself which must help us to fight its in-
temperance. Conferences, meetings, re-
ports, with their immoderate waste of
words, are the only means of persuading
the talking crowds of the boon of silence.
Of Heine's "Buch der Lieder" the six-
tieth edition recently appeared in Berlin.
The same firm, Hoffman & Campe, which
published the original issue, brought out
this latest edition of the book. The pub-
lishers claim to have brought half a
million copies into circulation.
Boris Brasol's "Socialism vs. Civili-
zation" (Scribner) consists of six chap-
ters. Chapter I describes the theory
and the aims of Marxian socialism;
Chapter II criticises the Marxian sys-
tem; Chapter III describes the social-
istic experiment in Russia; Chapter IV
discusses the socialistic excuses for its
failure; Chapter V sketches the social-
istic agitation abroad and at home, and
Chapter VI contains the author's positive
suggestions for remedying the defects in
the existing order. In offering opinion
on his book a sharp distinction should be
drawn between the first four chapters
and the last two ; the book would be twice
as good with the last two eliminated.
In his study and criticism of Marxian
socialism Mr. Brasol states the case
lucidly and persuasively. This sort of
thing has been done before and well
done — by Simkhovitch for instance and
by Skelton — but it is always worth doing
again when it is done well, and Mr.
Brasol has done it. His description of
the Russian "experiment" is interesting
as a broad outline sketch, although it
adds little or nothing to the knowledge
already possessed by an intelligent reader
of the daily press. Indeed, it recalls at
times the kinds of articles contributed to
the Saturday Evening Post by writers of
the Marcosson clan. Nevertheless, it will
do very well. But when we come to the
account of the "socialistic" agitation at
home and abroad and to the final chapter
—"Revolution or Reconstruction" — there
is a swift and sharp decline in both the
interest and the value of the book.
Take, for instance, Mr. Brasol's pro-
posals for "reconstruction." He advo-
cates a "counter propaganda" to Social-
ism by lecture and pamphlet, answering
argument and reason by argument and
reason. So far so good. But he wants
to "curb" revolutionary propaganda, he
wants to "deport" revolutionary agita-
tors, he wants to continue war-time re-
strictions on immigration, he wants to
prevent (by law) strikes in "key indus-
tries," and to make "picketing" illegal.
He wants a "National Institute of Pro-
duction," under State and Federal aus-
pices to correlate industry and increase
productivity. In discussing the "labor"
situation he deals rapidly with "bo-
nuses," "conciliation," and such matters,
but seems to be unaware of the problems
commonly described in the phrase "in-
dustrial democracy." None of this is
very helpful. Some of it reads a little
like the kind of "happy thoughts" that
come to one sometimes in connection with
problems which one imperfectly under-
stands.
Georges Eekhoud, the foremost
French-writing novelist of Flanders, the
author of "La Nouvelle Carthage,"
"L'Autre Vue,""Les Fusilles de Malines,"
was, after the armistice, dismissed as
instructor at the Brussels Academy of
Plastic Arts. He had incurred official
disgrace by his pro-Flemish attitude dur-
ing the German occupation. Unlike his
countryman, Maurice Maeterlinck, who,
though born at Ghent, in the heart of
Flanders, has abused the Flemings as
"rustres" and "lourdauds," Eekhoud has
not become estranged from his own peo-
ple by the fame which his writings have
won him in France. As a protest against
the disgraceful treatment of a great
artist and patriot an imposing indigna-
tion meeting was held on March 27, in
the Lyrical Theatre at Brussels. Both
French and Flemish writers of Belgium,
artists, teachers, students, men of all
classes and professions, joined in an im-
pressive homage to the victim of official
ostracism.
Dr. A. Eekhof, Professor of Theology
in the University of Leiden, is prepar-
ing for publication a history of the Pil-
grim Fathers' life in Holland, from 1608
to 1620. The book will derive its chief
interest from facsimiles of original doc-
uments discovered by the author in the
Dutch archives, amongst others the
only known signature of John Robinson,
which has supplied a key to fresh dis-
coveries in England, and the last will of
John Robinson's widow, Bridget White,
made in the year 1643. Two of the
Pilgrim Fathers, William Brewster and
Thomas Brewer, had a printing business
in Leiden, of whose output little was
known until now. Dr. Eekhof, however,
has been fortunate in finding two book-
lets that came from their press, a dis-
covery which will make his book attrac-
tive to bibliophiles and all those who are
interested in the history of printing. It
will be a lasting contribution to the
tercentenary celebration of the Pilgrim
Fathers' landing at Plymouth, in which
Holland intends to take a prominent part.
The Trembling Year
"AS yet the trembling year is uncon-
-tV firmed," says the poet of "setherial
Mildness." He was the poet of a formal
age, yet now and then he looked the fact
in the face.
Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze.
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving
sleets
Deform the day delightless.
My neighbors express it in more pungent
metaphor — "Looks 's if we was goin' to
have winter all summer," says Uncle
Everett, with a twinkle in his eye. It is
his version of Swift's comment on the
talent for the obvious which leads to
complaints about the weather: "It is
always too hot or too cold, too wet or
too dry; but however God Almighty con-
trives it, 'tis all very well in the end."
At the death-bed of winter we watch
with tense longing for his release. We
may at first think him dying when he
sleeps, but after he has wakened to suc-
cessive bursts of sound and fury we are
fain to think him sleeping when he dies.
The snow shrinks to long streaks mark-
ing the north faces of swales and ridges.
Days rise clear with beneficent sunshine,
and sky that you will swear is a different
color from that of last week; but by ten
492]
THE REVIEW
[Vol 2, No. 52
o'clock clouds threaten, and before long
snow flurries drive past on level winds.
But at sunrise crows converse loudly that
hitherto have floated silently from top to
top of tall pines; bluejays become noisy
and conspicuous; nuthatches talk cheer-
full}'; chickadees begin to practise their
two spring notes ; starlings at a distance
bring you to a halt listening for a new
song that is not of winter. Slants of
sunlight from a higher angle make you
think you see a livelier iris in colored
mists of willow and poplar twigs. Sun-
day walkers triumphantly exhibit budded
pussy willow, but to me he is a prophet
without honor, for he dwells on my own
premises, and year after year I have seen
him slyly bud a few twigs on a warm day
after early cold in November and trust to
his fur to carry him through. In the
open the snow dwindles to untidy patches
like old newspapers blown about and
lodges, but for a month yet it will linger
as a silver undertone to blue veils in the
hills. Wet streaks on the trunks of
maples come not from melting ice but
from bleeding branches broken in winter
gales. Sugar maples don their spring
buckets, and flies and bees that come to
taste the sap tell me that birds may now
come and find food. Then just after the
middle day of March comes a morning
when I snap broad awake with a perva-
sive sense of well-being as from good
news felt but not remembered. It is the
murmurous rejoicing of the bluebirds, so
eagerly awaited that it has entered my
ears with pleasure before it reached my
consciousness. I go to the window and
see them drifting northward in short
flights from bough to bough of the bare
maples against a sunrise sky. Thereafter
my mind is at peace; any further activity
of winter I know to be his death flurry,
at which the year may tremble but not I.
Windless days come with skies that
shed warmth like a benediction. At the
foot of a south-facing brick wall, cro-
cuses bloom close to the ground. Daffodils
impale dead leaves and lift them on the
points of their spears. The rhubarb
pushes the mold upward with gnarled
crimson fists which meet the sunshine
and relax to show the tight-packed con-
volutions of the new leaves. On the edge
of the ditch skunk cabbage protrudes its
mottled horns. Then for a week the sun
sheds no blessing. The wind howls from
the north; the earth stiffens about the
crocuses and their heads are smothered
in snow. Next come slants of white rain
dissolving the new snow, and the song-
sparrow sings bravely. The tone of the
fields has deepened from dead khaki to
olive drab and forestry green. Regi-
ments of cornel and willow shoots make
vague blurs of crimson and chrome yel-
low. Red maple buds have turned back
their tiny blood and orange scales, and
make clouded color through the rain. By
degrees the rain softens to cold mist. A
breeze stirs the curtains of the mist,
tosses them, sweeps them away in shreds.
The whole air moves, and the fog takes
up its march toward the eastern hills.
The sky is revealed as fleets of slaty
clouds beating eastward on a reef breeze
with patches of open blue widening and
closing in their wakes.
Not all the myriad shades of young
green that ethereal mildness in its course
spreads on our hillsides can transcend
the beauty of the mist-like, subtly
blended colors of bare twigs in this time
of the trembling year. At no other sea-
son is there such variety of shade and
tone save in autumn — but autumn flaunts
her clothes, the young year trembles
through diaphanous veils. Colors that
are plain to name when you look at them
closely in small bits, under any effect of
blur, such as distance, atmosphere, or
indirect vision, blend in combinations
that defy one's vocabulary. I know an
elderly pitch pine, the trunk of which,
when "with hands in my pockets I
saunter up close and examine it" has
clearly two main colors, terra cotta and
silver gray. If I look just past the trunk
at something beyond, the effect is the
same as if I look at it from a distance;
the color becomes a nameless pink com-
pounded of silver and terra cotta. So it
is with the thickets of bushy alder and
birch, which run the scale of color from
pale mauve to wine-dark purple accord-
ing to permutations or combinations of
light, moisture, and distance. Near by
and seen against the sun, alder twigs are
a dark indeterminate brown, and the sun
glints white on the glossy bark. At a
little distance, with the sun to one side,
you see the white of the sun-glint mingle
with the color of the bark to make mauve.
The pinker tones, mauve, violet, lavender,
appear when the bushes are near by and
in stronger light; distance, shadow, or
atmosphere (moisture, dust, or smoke in
the air) gives them more blue.
Such colors, hesitant and undeter-
mined, are fit vesture for the trembling
season, but one there is more daring than
anything of autumn, which if it were not
of fairyland would set the world on fire.
On a little knoll that catches a level ray
from the late afternoon sun, I have found
a pool of spirit light blended of moon
and opal, glowing with the incandescence
of a sunset cloud. It comes from a quilt
of moss; I have found no one yet to tell
me its name, but the children know it for
its forest of thread-like stems each up-
holding its little vase which in summer
they love to undress, taking off the tiny
Tam o' Shanter cap and woolly shirt. The
sunlight mingles and touches to fire the
colors of the glossy stems, ranging from
crimson through orange and chrome to
pale green. They dissolve their color in
the light as in liquid or in lambent flame,
a radiance incredible in anything so tiny.
True Thomas himself, "spying ferlies wi'
his ee" as he lay on Huntley bank, saw
no gayer sight unless it was through just
such fairy woods blazing with the fire
of spring that he saw the Queen come
riding.
Now less oft at eve does winter resume
the breeze; morn is no longer pale and
seldom chilled, and if the day is delight-
less it is no recurrence of driving sleet
that deforms it. Willows along the river
rise like rounded clouds of faint green
smoke. Shad and wild cherry float drifts
of blossoms like pale sunshine in woods
and hedgerows. "Brightness falls from
the air" where the sugar maple hangs
out its delicate tracery of pale green
blossoms. The trembling year is quite
confirmed.
Robert Palfrey Utter
Books and the News
France
WHILE some of the public men who
greeted King Albert in America
thought it necessary to remind him that
we do not really believe in kings, there
came from Speaker Gillett, in Congress,
a truthful and manly acknowledgment of
our debt to the nations which suffered
the first and hardest blows against civil-
ization. He introduced the King as "our
friend, our ally, and our defender." To
Belgium and to France, as the cham-
pions of liberty, must go the gratitude
of every lover of liberty. The "intellect-
uals," in England and America, signally
fail to show that they possess any in-
tellects whatever, when they try to prove
their devotion to human freedom by
defending Germany, and snarling at
France.
The true France, and the relations
towards her which will be maintained if
believers in democracy prevail in Amer-
ica and Great Britain, have been set
forth in a number of books by writers
in both countries. An English view,
written during the war by Laurence
Jerrold, is "France Today" (Murray
1916), a study of various sides of French
life, government, and politics. Elizabeth
Shepley Sergeant's "French Perspec-
tives" (Houghton, 1916), and Edith
Wharton's "French Ways and their
Meaning" (Appleton, 1919) are brief
books. Mrs. Wharton, for writing this
book, is denounced as a snob by a critic
in the Neiv Republic, who naturally re-
sents a good word for any countries ex-
cept Germany and Bolshevik Russia.
Visits during the war resulted in Wini-
fred Stephens's "The France I Know"
(Chapman, 1918). Another English
book is "My French Year" (Mills &
Boon, 1919), by Constance E. Maud.
Herbert Adams Gibbons, in "France and
Ourselves" (Century, 1920), publishes
{Continued on page 494)
May 8, 1920]
THE REVIEAV
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By E. T. Raymond
E. T. Raymond is the author of that delightful collection of
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celebrities describing such famous contemporaries as Wood-
row Wilson, the Prince of Wales and Foch. Price, $2.25
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SONGS
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Songs and poems of Amer-
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THE CAIRN
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Irish songs by the author
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THE GIRL FROM FOUR
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THE TURN OF THE TIDE
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Former Secretary of State Robert Lansing says this book
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MANY MANY MOONS
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Poems and songs of the North Woods' Indians, with an in-
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JANE AUSTEN
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Please mention The Review in writing to advertisers.
494]
THE REVIEW
[Vol 2, No. 52
{Continued from page 492)
essaj-s whose aim is to interpret Amer-
ica and France to each other. Robert E.
Dell's "My Second Country" (Lane,
1920) resulted from the war, but goes
far beyond the war in its historical
studies; he avails himself of the free-
dom of a lover of France to indicate the
dangerous situation in which the war has
placed her. Clara E. Laughlin's "The
Martyred Towns of France" (Putnam,
1919) is healthful reading, especially for
those who are overeager to kiss and
make-up with an utterly unrepentant
Germany.
Some of the pleasant books of travel,
and of comment upon French life,
written in the days before 1914, are
Henry James's "A Little Tour in
France" (Houghton, 1884), Mary King
Waddington's "Chateau and Country
Life in France" (Scribner, 1908), Edith
Wharton's "A Motor Flight through
France" (Scribner, 1919; first pub-
lished, 1908), E. V. Lucas's "A Wan-
derer in Paris" (Macmillan 1909), W. C.
Brownell's French Traits" (Scribner),
and Barrett Wendell's "The France of
Today" (Scribner, 1907).
For a book on the government, there
is Ex-President Poincare's "How France
is Governed" (McBride, 1913). A re-
cent history of France, in one volume,
which includes the great war, is William
Sfceams Davis's "History of France"
(Houghton, 1919).
Edmund Lester Pearson
Empire Building by Air
— Cairo to the Cape
ANEW form of empire-building is in
progress. The old venturers who
charted unknown seas in quest of adven-
ture and knowledge — those who threaded
their slow way across untrodden conti-
nents— their day is done. The sea and
the earth have had their share; it is the
turn of the skies. The empire-builder of
to-day has a new element to play with,
new means of swiftly linking up the
uttermost comers of the earth.
In the course of one year the ends of
the British Empire have been reached by
aircraft from England, and the Atlantic
has been spanned. News comes that the
journey of over five thousand miles from
Cairo to the Cape has now been ac-
complished. Twenty-five years ago and
more it was the dream of Cecil Rhodes
to build a railway from Cape Town to
Cairo — but geography prevented it. The
Concerning radical readjustment between the peoplea:
"The Brotherhood of Man"
This book by Dr. A. R. L. Dohmc is an earnest study
of general economic and political conditions. Dr.
Uohme concludes with an interesting practical outline
for a World Sute and new human relationships.
By mail, $1.10. ^
THE NORMAN, REMINGTON COMPANY
Publishers - Baltimar*
airplane has at last given reality to his
dream. And dreams not only his. To
reach Cairo by air one passes over the
Icarian Sea, and the airway to India lies
above Palestine, where Isaiah saw the
vision of the six-winged Seraphim, and
on through Assyria, where winged crea-
tures adorn the palaces.
The new transport has already made
the fame of Sir Frederick Sykes, the
Controller of Aviation in Great Britain.
It was he who had the vision to perceive
that Cairo must become the hub from
which radiate the air-routes of the East.
The preliminary planning, as in the
transatlantic and Australian flights, con-
sumed laborious months. Three survey
parties, charged with laying out the most
suitable air-route over Africa, were
despatched in December, 1918.
The route by air from Cairo to the
southernmost point of South Africa is,
as they laid it, 5,200 miles. Reckoning
100 miles an hour as a fair average fly-
ing speed, only fifty-two hours of actual
flying time will be required to traverse
the entire continent, a week's journey.
The total distance by present means of
communication is 6,223 miles, for which
anything between sixty to seventy-five
days is required, according to ground
conditions in certain sections.
Altogether forty-three airdromes have
been made — many of them over 4,000
feet above sea level. The difficulties en-
countered by the survey parties would
have been practically insurmountable but
for the loyal help of the natives. In
places it was necessary to cut airdromes
out of dense jungle, to fell thousands of
trees and dig up their roots, while the
soil of innumerable ant hills had to be
removed in native baskets. Some of
these ant hills are often 60 feet in height
and between 35 and 45 feet in diameter.
At N'dola, in Northern Rhodesia, seven
hundred natives were working from
April to August of last year and
roughly 25,000 tons were removed. Blast-
ing was tried but was found to be un-
suitable.
Flying risks are perhaps not so grave
as in the Australian flight, but they are
great enough. It is in the central zone of
the journey that the chief difficulties
occur. Most of this is covered with
dense bush and tropical forest, and
landings at other than the prepared
grounds will be exceedingly dangerous, if
not impossible. In some parts there is
no land transport, which makes it diffi-
cult to provide the necessary stores at
the airdromes. Moreover, at some places
the tsetse fly prevents the use of cattle, so
that, failing the provision of light motor
transport — for which special roads would
have to be prepared over some sections —
native bearers will have to be used for
the carriage of stores. Lions, deadly
snakes, white ants, mosquitoes, and other
bloodthirsty creatures, together with a
shortage of water and an unhealthy cli-
mate, do not add to the joys of ordinary
travel, and the fact that the survey
parties completed their work in twelve
months in the face of such obstacles says
much for their hardihood.
Each airman proposing to make the
journey is furnished with elaborate route
directions comprising information as to
the prevailing winds and weather condi-
tions at various points; description of
any conspicuous landmarks such as may
enable the airdrome to be more readily
located, of all obstacles, and of the nature
of the country surrounding each landing
ground; and the distance and location
from each airdrome, of the nearest rail-
way, telegraph, doctor, or hospital, and
drinking water supplies. He has also
been supplied with a diagrammatic
weather chart prepared by the Meteo-
rological Section of the British Air Min-
istry after special investigation of the
prevailing weather conditions along the
route, showing the normal type of
weather to be expected during the vari-
ous seasons of the year. So far as is
possible, pilots will, during the progress
of the journey, receive reports of the
actual weather conditions ahead of them.
All the pilots have to do is to fly and
keep on flying; but in their flights they
would do well to hover for one respectful
instant above a grave on the heights of
the Matoppo Hills.
CuTHBERT Hicks
{Late of the British Air Ministry)
Drama
I
Ibsen on Grand Street— Gil-
bert on Broadway |
A PERFORMANCE of "John Gabriel
Borkman" was given on April 24
at the Neighborhood Playhouse by the
School of Drama of the Carnegie Insti-
tute of Technology. It was not a per-
formance in which the lovers of Ibsen
or lovers of the exhibit of promise in
amateurs could take any unqualified de-
light. The two leading women had un-
disciplined voices that sank in quality as
they rose in power. Mr. C. F. Steen as
Borkman was fortunate in a rich and
wisely governed voice, but his personality i ■
suggested the fallen cleric or neglected j I
poet rather than the Sir Epicure Mam-
mon who Borkman really is. The other
parts were never less than excusable or
more than acceptable, with the single
exception of Vilhelm Foldal, which Mr.
Theodore Viehman acted with a piping
innocence that was sound and plea.sing.
The performance, of which I missed the
first act, was rapid and superficial; the
meaning has to be coaxed out of Ibsen; j
and while deliberation is perilous, I sus-
pect that it is by facing and mastering
{Continued on page 497) , [
I
May 8, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[495
MACMILLAN SPRING NOVELS
St. John Ervine's New Novel
THE FOOLISH LOVERS
By the author of "John Ferguson"
In this story of a headstrong, dominating young Irishman and the effect on his Hfe of the conflicting influences
of various women, Mr. Ervine has done some of his finest wori<. It is a realistic, convincing delineation of
contrasting character — of the contest between a strong but unguided will and the subtle persuasions of diversely
disguised self-interest. To be ready next week.
THE IMPERFECT MOTHER
J. D. BERESFORD'S New Novel
The story of a woman of middle age who
leaves her family to elope with a fascinating but
characterless lover, of her later meeting with
her son at a time when both are in need of af-
fection and sympathy and of their final breach,
brought about by the selfishness of her love.
This penetrating study of character and tem-
perament is bound to stir the most widespread
interest.
JOHN FERGUSON
By St. JOHN ERVINE. New edition with
an Introduction by the Author.
"Never have the tragedies of everyday life been
presented in dramatic form more truthfully or
more poignantly." — The Dial.
"The conspicuous merits of the play consist in
its perfect naturalness, its progressive interest,
the consistency, variety, and vitality of its per-
sonalities, the deep emotional interest, of situa-
tions of its hidden machinery. This work puts
Mr. Ervine in the first rank of living dramatists."
— The Nation.
LABOR'S CHALLENGE TO
THE SOCIAL ORDER
By JOHN GRAHAM BROOKS
This careful and exhaustive study of the causes
and character of the present widespread unrest
is written in a sane and judicial spirit. An in-
clusive analysis of past and present conditions
and a thought provoking discussion of the possi-
bilities of the future make this a work of the
utmost importance and timeliness.
MRS. WARREN^S
DAUGHTER
Sir HARRY JOHNSTON'S New Novel
Following in the footsteps of "The Gay-Dom-
beys" this new novel has as its central character
a personage from another well-known author's
work. It is the intensely interesting story of
Vivien, daughter of Mrs. Warren, from the
point where Bernard Shaw leaves her in his
play, "Mrs. Warren's Profession," and of her
"effort to attain to an honorable position in the
face of her great handicap.
A STRAIGHT DEAL, or
THE ANCIENT GRUDGE
OWEN WISTER'S New Book
A book of facts about England and the British
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THE STRANGER
By ARTHUR BULLARD
The meeting of East and West furnishes the
background for this new sort of love story, shot
through with Oriental color and mysticism and
reflecting the author's intimate acquaintance with
native life and ways in the old Mohammedan
strongholds of North Africa and the Near East.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, Publishers, NEW YORK
Please mention The Review in writing to advertisers.
496]
THE REVIEW [Vol 2, No. 52
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May 8, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[497
(Continued from page 494)
that peril that success in Ibsen per-
formances is achievable. The students
tried to play "John Gabriel Borkman"
for its Broadway values, values which
Broadway perceives to be insufficient.
The play does not show Ibsen's own
dramaturgy at its best. Borkman is
naturally the central figure, but his re-
lation to the main crisis in Act III is
almost peripheral. His death from physi-
cal exposure in Act IV ends a good deal,
but solves or settles nothing. More-
over, death by the elements in psychical
play is an impropriety, and, if the ven-
ture into the air be symbolic, death by
symbolism in a realistic play seems
equally improper.
But the drama has real merits. Bork-
man is vigorously imagined; what is
more, he is one of the few characters
in the Ibsen social plays whose own im-
aginations are vigorous. It is curious
that this dreamer should be a business
man, and that the artists, Solness and
Rubek, should be plodding and mechani-
cal beside him. He fails in business,
as they, in their diverging fashions, fail
in art; and all three by a startling coinci-
dence, perish in a symbolic re-ascent to
irrecoverable heights, Solness on his
tower, Rubek and Borkman on the- hill
or mountain. All three men carry hope
into despair, and Borkman in particular,
so muscular in paralysis, so indomitable
in prostration, attracts and dominates
while he grovels and repels. This note
of failure impresses us strangely in its
reiteration by a successful artist in the
height and blossom of his fame.
There are seven characters in "John
Gabriel Borkman" (omitting servants) ;
in other words, there are seven avidi-
ties. They chase, they seize; their very
love is predatory. For a parallel I
should have to refer to Gogol's "In-
spector-General," or to those Plautine
and Terentian comedies in which the
characters are all teeth. The thing
spares neither sex nor age. In its hope-
less survival in the elderly man whose
career it has darkened and defiled, it is
grim enough; but perhaps its emergence
is even more awful in the tenderly reared,
gentle, and even amiable lad, whose in-
nocence it has not wholly dimmed. Even
the delicate young girl is not fangless.
There is a vivid moral — a moral which
Ibsen may or may not have purposed or
endorsed — in the circumstance that all
this greed is fruitless or calamitous. The
ruin in the old is manifest; in the young
the havoc is foredoomed : Ibsen has not
hesitated to make the elopement as farci-
cal as it is wicked, and the future lowers
or leers at us through the transparence
of its useless veil. In the end the deso-
lation is complete; the two haggard
women have lost the man, the boy, for
whose hearts they have ruthlessly con-
tended. One is dead, the other vanished ;
and their hands meet in unavailing fel-
lowship across the barren memory and
the lifeless frame.
Two special matinees were given last
week at the Knickerbocker Theatre by
the Actors' Fidelity League for the bene-
fit of the Vacation Association, which is
mindful of working girls. There was
presented a faxiciful one-act sketch by
Mr. Oliphant Down called the "Maker of
Dreams," in which Mr. Kyle, the dream-
maker, was fittingly genial, though a
little too robust for his stock-in-trade;
Mr. Ruben was black-haired, white-faced,
and scarlet-lipped, and the midge-like
Miss Ruth Chatterton appeared in an
equal brevity of gown and speech. The
names of Mr. George M. Cohan and Mr.
William Collier were capitalized in a
double sense for the benefit of the pro-
gramme; but neither they nor the rea-
sons for their absence were forthcoming.
Mr. George Copeland was expert at the
piano.
W. S. Gilbert's "Pygmalion and
Galatea" was the mainstay of the enter-
tainment. The attractions of this play
are considerable; its theme is pointed,
its adaptation to the stage is dexterous,
its comedy is zestful, and its satire on
civilized practices, notably war, is the
more deadly, and therefore the more
helpful, for the superlative innocence of
its mouthpiece. The blank verse keeps
out of the way with a beautifully humble
perception of the fact that keeping out
of the way is the first duty of blank
verse in modem comedy. But there are
incongruities enough to qualify one's
pleasure. A statue comes to life. This
is believable only in a very romantic or
a very sportive mood. The dramatist's
mood is not in the least romantic; hence
sportiveness becomes the breath and be-
ing of the play. But what place is there
in a sportive fabric for the blinding of
the scarcely peccant husband, for Pyg-
malion's final cruelty toward Galatea,
for the heartbreak of Galatea's willing
relapse into the shielding insensibility
of stone — one of the bitterest and at the
same time most beautiful indictments of
life that misanthropy has ever framed?
This is all somehow misplaced. The
buoyancies of Sir William Gilbert's
roguish little comedy shudder at the
advent of these spectres like Florizel and
Perdita in the merrymakings of the
"Winter's Tale" at the approach of the
gloomy and irate Polixenes.
But the incongruities do not end here.
Mr. Archer has pointed out with entire
correctness the dramatic impropriety of
Galatea's retort, "What, a paid assassin !"
to Pygmalion's definition of a soldier.
What does Pentelic marble know of paid
assassins? A statue animated a few
hours ago can have no knowledge — not
even knowledge enough to give point to
its ignorance. But its ignorance must
(Continued on page 498)
f^Readers of "Parnassus on
Wheels" will be glad to know that
the whimsical little tale of Roger
Mifflin and his caravan bookshop
is now in its seventh edition.
CHRISTOPHER
MORLEY
is headed for a secure place in our
literature. His unique charm has
won for him a large public.
The success of his latest book,
"Kathleen," is gratifying proof of
his growing popularity. His books
are:
The Haunted Bookshop
Kathleen
Parnassus on Wheels
Shandygaff
DOUBLED AY, PAGE & CO.
NEW EDITION
The History of the
I. W. W.
By Dr. PAUL FREDERICK
BRISSENDEN,
Special Agent, United States Depart-
ment of Labor, 438 pp. octavo, paper
covers, $3.50 net; cloth, $4.00 net; post-
age for two pounds.
"Invaluable to all those interested in the
rise of this sensational organization." —
The New York Times.
"Most important study ever made and
recorded of the L W. W." — The New
York Call.
Everyone wishing to understand the un-
derlying causes of current industrial un-
rest should read this book.
Syndicalism in France
By LOUIS LEVINE, Ph.D.,
Special writer, New York World.
229 pp. octavo, paper covers, $1.50 net ;
cloth, $2.00 net; postage for twenty
ounces.
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
Publishers
NEW YORK
498]
THE REVIEW
[Vol 2, No. 52
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A. C. Downing, Jr.
W. MacNaughten
Assistant Secretaries
E. B. Lewis, Asst. Treas.
FIFTH AVENUE OFFICE
Chaslcs E. Haydock, Vice-President and Manager
Mu. Key Cam mace Assistant Secretary
Rt- SSELL V. WossTELL Assistant Secretary
Otto T. Bannard
S. Reading Bertron
i antes A. Blair
(ortimer N. Buckner
James C. Colgate
Alfred A. Cook
Arthur J. Cumnock
Robert W. de Forest
John B. Dennis
Philip T. Dodge
George Doubleday
Samuel H. Fisher
John A. Garver
Benjamin S. Guinness
F. N. Hoflfstot
TRUSTEES
Buchanan Houston
Frederic B. Jennings
Walter Jennings
Darwin P. Kingsley
John C. McCair
Ogden L. Mills
John J. Mitchell
James Parmclee
Henry C. Pbipps
Norman P. Ream
Dean Sage
Joseph J. Slocum
Myles Tierncy
Clarence M. Woolley
Members of the New York Clearing House Asso-
ciation and of the Federal Reserve System
(Continued from page 497)
be pointed. One may pity even Sir
William Gilbert in the throes of the
baffling double problem of keeping
Galatea's knowledge down to the point
enforced by probability and up to the
point required by comedy. A more
venial inconsistency is the combination
of Greek costume with English manners.
When Pygmalion, very properly, sends
Galatea to his sister's house for the
night, we are moved to search for his
address in the British Who's Who.
The all-star performance was by no
means of solar brilliancy. The best part
was probably Miss Gladys Hanson's hand-
some, sweeping, and imperious Cynisca.
Pygmalion, in Mr. Lester Lonergan's
bluff interpretation was rather a man
about town than an artist. Miss Fay
Bainter as Galatea looked well and posed
well, and combined artlessness with in-
stinctive dignity; but her elocution was
a little too obviously moulded, and there
was a half -doll-like, half -nun-like, quality
in her work that took the savor out of
her lovemaking. Mr. Sidney Toler and
Miss Katherine Hayden were competent
in unexacting parts and Mr. J. W. Ran-
some and Miss Zelda Sears as the art-
patron and his wife had a loudness in
their behavior which their costumes re-
echoed.
0. W. Firkins
How Can America Help Europe?
THE British Ambassador, Sir Auck-
land Geddes, in an address before
the Chamber of Commerce of the United
States on April 28, urged the participa-
tion of the United States in the re-
habilitation of Europe. He expressed
the conviction that Germany and all
Europe would get back to work and life
after more or less suffering. "Perhaps
there will be disorder," he said, "there
may be upheavals, but the people will win
through." He added, "The great ques-
tion you [in the United States] have to
decide is this: Are you going to stand
by and wait for Europe's troubles to
come after you, as come they will, or
are you going to help Europe to win
through to reasonable conditions? I do
not mean help Europe politically, but as
a long-range business proposition."
If this question is directed to Ameri-
can business men, the almost universal
answer, based upon our desires, would be
in favor of helping Europe. The only
difficulty is how to render the help so
that it will be of permanent benefit both
to Europe and to ourselves.
In October, 1919, distinguished dele-
gations of business men and bankers
visited this country from England,
France, Italy, and Belgium, to attend the
International Trade Conference at At-
lantic City. On that occasion the utmost
friendliness for the problems of Europe
was expressed by an assemblage as fully
representative of American business as
any that ever came together in this
country. Ever since then the matter has
been receiving the closest possible study,
and yet no far-reaching progress ap-
pears to have been made. Just what have
been the obstacles to carrying out in
fact what the business leaders of a great
and rich nation almost universally de-
sire in theory to accomplish?
Let us regard the matter briefly, first
from the point of view of Europe, and
secondly from the point of view of the
United States.
From the European standpoint we see
the greater Allied nations making heroic
efforts to get back to work. In repeated
statements the Allied Premiers have rec-
ognized the necessity of balancing their
budgets. They realize the necessity of
increased production in order to provide
goods for export to offset their abnormal
imports. To a great extent, however,
thei^" efforts have been handicapped by
the desires of men to work shorter
hours at the one period perhaps in the
history of the world when enthusiastic
and unremitting labor is most called for.
Gradually the exports of these countries
are increasing and their imports de-
creasing, England is making rapid prog-
ress in this regard, and is amply capable
of taking care of herself. Among the
Continental countries perhaps the best
record is being made by Italy, whose posi-
tion, as recently described in this coun-
try by Professor Attolico, the resident
High Commissioner, indicates a thorough
practical knowledge of the necessity of
reducing inflated currencies and produc-
ing up to the maximum of national
ability.
With the Central and East Central
countries of Europe the situation is dif-
ferent. Recent eye-witnesses of these
conditions tell a story which has no
parallel in human annals. Millions of
people are starving, fields are untilled,
factories are idle because of the lack
of raw materials, freight cars are not
allowed to pass from one country to an-
other because of the lack of mutual con-
fidence and trust. Between two of the
newly created countries, instead of a
mutual interchange of commodities, there
exists a barrier of barbed wire and ma-
chine guns. Poland has a million men
on the Bolshevik front and, in common
with neighboring countries, is flooded
with millions of refugees from the hor-
rors of the Russian regime. The idea
of extending ordinary commercial credits
to such countries, or of making transac-
May 8, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[499
tions with those countries the basis for
the indiscriminate issuance of invest-
ment securities to the American public,
is, of course, not to be entertained.
We have a stake in this situation. The
civilization of America could not con-
tinue if the civilization of Europe were
to break down. The development of
European markets is a vital question for
American exporters. Just at present,
with an intensified domestic demand, we
may look with temporary unconcern on
the decline of American exports to
Europe. But ultimately, all sentiment
aside, we must for our own interest and
protection give consideration to the de-
velopment of markets in Europe. If this
is not a matter to be discussed on a
credit basis, is it a matter which the
United States Government should con-
sider in a less negative way than it has
done during the past year?
The normal attitude of business men
in times of peace is opposed to Govern-
ment interference in business affairs. We
have more or less assumed that our Gov-
ernment should now step out of active
cooperation in European financing, and
the American business public as a whole
has approved the decision of the Govern-
ment not to extend further direct credits
to European nations. What are we to
do, however, when we all admit that the
European situation calls for assistance
in the shape of raw materials, when an
appeal which touches closely both our
hearts and our minds is made to us from
across the water, and when very little
basis exists for transactions on strict
business lines? Does the situation in-
volve not primarily economic, but rather
political and social, elements of vital
significance to the American people as a
whole?
The United States Government has in-
vested on behalf of the American people
nearly ten billion dollars in Europe. We
can only expect repayment of this money
when Europe has returned to a produc-
ing basis. Is not the United States Gov-
ernment as a lender of credit interested
directly in the rehabilitation of its
debtors ?
There is a further factor bearing on
the Government attitude in this trying
situation. Under the terms of the Treaty
of Versailles there were created in
Europe a number of new political units
which are of unproved economic strength.
The unsettlement of these countries must
have a continuing effect upon the orderly
progress of the larger and more stable
nations of Europe. Without entering at
all into the political controversy sur-
rounding the ratification by the United
States Senate of the Treaty of Peace and
the League of Nations, it must be ob-
vious that until some coordinating body
is established in Europe we can not ex-
pect to see the economic stability which
is the only basis for the transaction of
actual business and credit operations on
a large scale.
Are we, then, facing a vicious circle?
Are we taking the position that we can
not extend credits to Europe for the
purchase of raw materials in the United
States until Europe returns to a stable
basis, with budgets balanced and exports
on the increase, while Europe takes the
position that budgets can not be bal-
anced and production stimulated until
raw material is made available by the
United States? The normal processes of
business have not been able to cut this
Gordian knot. From a straight invest-
ment standpoint the American business
community has been in a most unsatis-
factory position, even if the security as
a basis for the extension of credits to
Europe had been clearly available at all
times.
From the American standpoint, it is
true that under the Edge Act the ma-
chinery of credit has existed for some
time. But even those who have had most
deeply at heart the desire to help Europe
in its desperate situation have not up to
this time felt like setting up machinery
which would not operate, thus holding
out hopes to Europe which would be
doomed to disappointment.
Why has it been felt that the ma-
chinery would not operate? This point
can be touched upon only briefly, but
it involves three main considerations.
First, let us suppose that a large cor-
poration under the Edge Act is estab-
lished with capital paid in by banks and
other interested organizations and in-
dividuals. Where is the management to
come from? We have in this country
comparatively few men of wide foreign
experience who are capable of extending
safe credits abroad. The few trained
men are all overworked at present in the
banks and investment houses of the
country. Secondly, suppose the manage-
ment were to be obtained, is it clear that
the kind of sound business which such a
corporation would undertake to do could,
in fact, be done? Is it not true that the
credit need in Europe to-day is greatest
where the credit risk is greatest? Would
it not be necessary, in order to meet the
real crux of the European situation, to
extend credits which would not be safe,
judged by the usual standards of credit
practice? The third point follows nat-
urally from the second. Let us suppose
that a corporation were established with
$50,000,000 capital, and that this $50,-
000,000 were used up in the extension of
credits abroad. This would be a mere
drop in the bucket. Now a corporation
established under the Edge Act is author-
ized to issue debentures for sale to the
general public up to ten times its capital
and surplus. Under this provision the
supposed corporation would be author-
( Continued on page 500)
BROWN BROTHERS & CO.
Philadelphia
Established 1818
NEW YORK
Boston
International Investments
Our booklet on International Investments, now in
its third edition, shows the relation of such in-
vestments to the foreign exchanges and gives an
outline of certain foreign loans issued in dollars.
Copy on request
BROWN, SHIPLEY & COMPANY
Established 1810
Founders Court, Lothbury
LONDON, E. C.
Office for travelers
123lPaU Mall, LONDON, S. W.
500]
THE REVIEW
[Vol 2, No. 52
THE HUDSON COAL CO,
CELEBRATED
LACKAWANNA
THE ARISTOCRAT OF ANTHRACITE
1823
1920
HAS NATURAL QUALITIES AND MAN-MADE REFINEMENT
I D. F. WILLIAMS
Vice-President and General Sales Agent
W. F. SHURTLEFF
Assistant General Sales Agent
SCRANTON, PA.
{Continued from page 499)
ized to issue $500,000,000 of debentures.
Are we prepared to offer such debentures
to the American public as an investment,
assuming that we could issue them on a
basis of return commensurate with
rates obtainable on prime domestic de-
bentures? Could the business commun-
ity afford at the present time to invite
the small investors of this country to
come into this situation without stating
to them frankly that they were entering
not a field of investment, but one of spec-
ulation? And if we frankly offer the
securities as a speculation, will the small
investor be interested to an extent which
will have a substantial effect, assuming,
as we must, that under the present sys-
tem of super-taxes the large investor is
to a great degree out of the market?
These are some of the difficulties
which must be faced in attempting to
solve the European problem. The man
would be heartless who would say that
it ought not to be solved, even though
our domestic demands for capital are
overwhelming at the present time. The
United States is a member of the family
of nations and must give heed to the
sufferings of its friends and associates.
The man would be foolish who would
say that the problem had no solution.
Somehow, and in some way, it must be
solved. But we should be doing an ill
service to Europe and should set back
immeasurably the education of the
American people in foreign investments,
which is one of the most vital necessi-
ties for the future development of Amer-
ican trade, if we were to proceed now
in a hasty and unsound manner. The
whole situation needs to be constantly
studied with an open mind, and if our
earlier conclusions with regard to the
leadership of the United States Govern-
ment must be temporarily revised to
meet an emergency situation, we should
not hesitate to revise them.
The European puzzle has been receiv-
ing the deep and earnest study of the
bankers of America. They have not
been unfaithful to their responsibilities
in this regard, but inexorable facts of a
political and social, as well as an eco-
nomic significance, have determined the
financial history of the world during the
last eighteen months. Unfortunately,
this history could not be shaped by the
impulses which have come from the
hearts of American businessmen.
The eyes of millions will be focused on
the forthcoming conferences to be held
in Brussels and in Paris. If these con-
ferences develop no constructive plans
they must be followed by others until
in some way, some sound and permanent
way, the problem is carried forward
toward solution. The subject requires
from now on the continued sympathetic
attention of the ablest minds in America.
Guy Emerson
K^'
THE REVIEW
Vol. 2, No. 53
New York, Saturday, May 15, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment 501
Editorial Articles:
Johnson and the Chicago Convention 504
Idealism in Vacuo 505
The Faith that is in Us 506
By-Governments in Germany 507
Give Hungary a Chance. By Ex-
aminer 508
The Jubilee of the Metropolitan Mu-
seum. By Frank Jewett Mather,
Jr. 510
Two Plans for a National Budget. By
Ralston Hayden 513
Correspondence 516
Book Reviews:
An Undiplomatic Diplomat 518
Vachel Lindsay, Edgar Lee Masters,
and Others 518
Two Major Fabulists 520
"Him of Cordova" 521
The Run of the Shelves 522
Impressions de Voyage II. By Caspar
F. Goodrich 522
Educational Section:
English Grammar Schools. By Wal-
ter S. Hinchman 523
The Stock Exchange and the "Corner
in Stutz." By T. F. W. 524
Books and the News:
America and England. By Edmund
Lester Pearson 528
pOOR America ! How many twisted
■*• sentiments are expressed in your
name! "If we are to exercise the
kind of leadership to which the
founders of the Republic looked for-
ward and which they depended upon
their successors to establish, we must
do this thing with courage and un-
alterable determination," says the
President, meaning that we must
sign the treaty without reservations.
We had supposed that Washington
truly represented the Americanism
of his day, yet even the freest in-
terpretation of his words furnishes
no authority for such an unrestricted
alliance as that for which the Presi-
dent pleads. Mr. Hillquit, for one,
is certain that Mr. Wilson has for-
sworn his American heritage. "We
[the Socialists] are practically alone
in upholding the somewhat anti-
quated American ideal of govern-
ment of the people, by the people, for
the people." Poor America! Are
you, too, to be "dismembered" by
such taking of your name in vain?
WHAT is the matter with the "cap-
italist press" ? Does it not know
that it ought to suppress any such
outgiving as that of Mr. W. Jett
Lauck, the statistician representing
the railway unions before the Rail-
road Labor Board? And if it can't
be suppressed, it ought to be tucked
away under a little headline in some
obscure page of the paper. Instead
of that, all the great New York dailies
which Big Business hires to keep the
people in ignorance display the thing
conspicuously, under striking head-
lines, and without a word of intro-
duction or comment to break its force.
Here are the headlines, for instance,
in the New York Times:
SAY HUGE PROFITS
RAISE LiyiNG COST
Rail Unions Present Data to Labor Board,
Accusing Capital of Profiteering
NOT DUE TO HIGHER WAGES
Where Pay Rose Only 15% Some Retail Prices
Went Up 300%, They Assert
MASS OF FIGURES SHOWN
What is the use of carefully conceal-
ing from the people what some tenth-
rate Socialist orator may have said
in Paterson, and then giving them
this perilous stuff to feed on? It
looks as though our plutocratic rulers
were not getting anything like their
money's worth out of the editors
whom, as everybody knows, they own
body and soul.
/~\UT of the real world in which we
^-^ are living come two responses to
the voice which Mr. Wilson has lifted
up in the unreal world in which he
dwells, that are worthy of special
note. Mr. Taft, in his usual quiet and
lucid manner, states the cardinal
facts about the treaty as they stand :
The Lodge reservations leave the treaty
nearly as effective as it is without them. The
reservations affect only Article 3i By in-
sisting on the feature of the treaty which can-
not be ratified by the Senate, Mr. Wilson has
endangered the entire Versailles peace.
The Lodge reservations preserve the three
great things in the treaty; first, the limita-
tion of armaments ; second, the settlement of
national differences peaceably; third, open
diplomacy. Article X is not destroyed but
only limited by the reservations. The obliga-
tion of the United States to participate in in-
ternational crises is left to the discretion of
Congress.
AH the other countries in the League are
bound by Article X, but are nevertheless will-
ing to allow the United States to enter under
the reservations proposed. Mr. Wilson, how-
ever, refuses.
Mr. Bryan dwells not upon the partic-
ulars of the compromise, but upon
the no less pertinent fact of the dem-
onstrated state of American political
opinion concerning it, and concludes :
Democratic friends of the League of Na-
tions should join Rej)ublican friends of the
League and by so doing take the issue out of
the campaign and speak peace to war-distracted
Europe.
If these counsels of common sense
were to prevail, if the obstruction of
the President's autocratic obstinacy
could be removed, the gain to the
country and the world would be great
beyond the possibility of computation.
IITR. HOOVER'S statement about
^^ the sugar situation is full of
practical wisdom. While blaming
the Administration for not having
bought last year's Cuban sugar crop,
he lays the emphasis chiefly upon
what can be done for the present and
the future. We are participating, he
says, in the world shortage of sugar
due to decreased European produc-
tion, and our merchants are bidding
against European Governments for
502]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 53
its purchase. One means of remedy
to which he points is for our Govern-
ment to enter into negotiations with
the larger European Governments to
stop bidding against each other and
so secure our fair share of the avail-
able supply. But he does not ignore
the fact — although he does not suffi-
ciently recognize it — that we are
actually getting (however high the
price) very much more than our
proper share. Mr. Hoover proposes
that our consumption of sugar be re-
duced by immediate rationing of the
non-essential consumers. He thinks
that the manufacturers of candy,
sweet drinks, and other non-essen-
tials would voluntarily cooperate to
this end as they did during the war.
It occurs to us, however, that if the
Governnient got control of the for-
eign supply — as undoubtedly Con-
gress could enable it to do even with-
out recourse to any war power — it
would have the reins in its own hands
in the matter of rationing. On the
subject of sugar profiteering Mr.
Hoover says :
The profiteering is international. The situa-
tion is as much disliked by the vast majority
of our manufacturers and distributers as by
the public, foe they do not like even to be
accused of profiteering. The situation can-
not be remedied by the Attorney General's con-
ception that forces of this character can be
handled by putting a few people in jail.
Mr. Hoover may or may not have had
some thought of Chicago in his mind
when he said these things; but noth-
ing is more certain than that if he
were in the White House he would
act along just such lines in any prob-
lem of the kind.
npHE Polish offensive, successfully
-*- led by General Pilsudski, recalls
to mind the hopes of a speedy over-
throw of the Soviet Government en-
tertained at the time of General
Yudenich's military advance upon
Petrograd. The recollection contains
a warning against sanguine expecta-
tions. We shall probably witness a
rallying of Russians, regardless of
political convictions, against the
menace from abroad, tending to re-
inforce the resistance of the Red
armies. The capture of Kiev is, in-
deed, an important success for the
Poles, which will not fail to make
impression upon such neighbors as
are coveting part of the Russian
bear's skin. Rumania, for one, seems
bent on joining the victorious cam-
paign and seizing, across Bessarabia,
the port of Odessa. But to encourage
such aggression, as appears to be the
tendency in Paris, is a reckless policy,
opposed to the spirit of the League in
which France takes a prominent part,
and involving great dangers for the
future. For it alienates from Europe
those liberal Russian elements which
it is hoped will one day recover power
at Moscow.
THE factor of chief interest in the
further development of the Pol-
ish campaign is the attitude of the
Ukrainians. Will Petlura, reinstated
in power at Kiev, remain loyal to
his ally and, if so, will he have suffi-
cient authority to convince the people
of the wisdom and the advantages of
his policy? These are the questions
on the answer to which the success
or failure of Pilsudski's offensive will
ultimately depend. To owe a debt of
gratitude to one's enemy intensifies
the passion of hatred, and it will re-
quire no small amount of skill and
tact on the part of the Poles to spare
the mortified pride of their debtors.
The debt is twofold. The Polish help
will have to be acknowledged in a
tangible form as well. What sacrifice
Petlura has undertaken to make for
Poland's support is still uncertain.
That Pilsudski should have been sat-
isfied with a renunciation by the
Ukraine of all her claims on East
Galicia, provisionally assigned to
Poland, is very unlikely. When it
comes to paying his promissory note,
the Ukrainian alliance and Petlura's
personal prestige will be put to a
hard test.
'T'HE French Federation of Labor
•*■ sounds a hopeful note in its ap-
peals to the workers. And its mem-
bers appear to strike work in ready
response, although they are told that
they must not allow themselves to be
distracted by less essential aims, such
as more pay and less work, as this
would only belittle the movement and
scatter its strength. It is not their
individual welfare the workers are
asked to help improve, but the wel-
fare of the country, which can not
be saved, the leaders assert, by the
reconstruction programme of the
Government. Only the nationaliza-
tion of railroads and the adoption of
the rest of the Socialist programme
can effectively meet the problems now
baffling the responsible rulers in
Paris. That the nation has little
faith in the Socialist gospel became
apparent at the last elections. But
the scepticism of the patient should
not prevent the miracle worker from
applying his cure. The initial treat-
ment is of the simplest. It consists
in doing nothing whatsoever, and in
preventing Work, the real physician,
from attending on the sufferer. It
is the method of the New Thoughters
applied to economic life. But the
danger is great that, by the time the
patient is deemed sufficiently seasoned
for the miracle to take effect, his
body may be too exhausted to rise
from its paralysis.
TN the happy days of the Great So-
-*- ciety we are to depend upon social
ostracism, community pressure, and
all that sort of thing, rather than
upon law, as the corrective of anti-
social action. So at least we judge
from the speculations of Pluralists,
left-wing Liberals, "philosophical"
Anarchists, and various other kinds
of social seers who have dipt into the
future and seen the wonders that will
be. It is curious, therefore, to note
the wail of protest that goes up from
these circles over present-day exer-
cises of this social pressure. Mr. J.
A. Hobson, writing in the London
Nation, expatiates on the difficulty
of an English Liberal in understand-
ing the American idea of freedom.
The Englishman demands the free-
dom to dissent. The American, on
the contrary, demands only the free-
dom to conform. He has the "herd
mind"; he is fanatically intolerant;
he has a brutal disregard of the
claims of private conscience, a con-
tempt for the rights of the minority,
and he denies the right of effective
criticism of public policy. America
is repressive in her laws, but still
more repressive in her extra-legal
community pressure. "Conformity or
trouble" is the popular slogan, and
May 15, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[503
woe be to the non-conformist, es-
pecially in times of "war madness."
Apparently the social force which is
sure to function so ideally in the days
of the Great Society is a most tyran-
nical thing just now.
THE alleged facts given by Mr.
Hobson to support his interpreta-
tion would better have been omitted.
They have been gleaned from various
journals of radical propaganda and
are, like his generalizations, more or
less fantastic. Unquestionably dur-
ing the war there were, at times and
in places, violent and high-handed in-
stances of mob pressure. They were
shameful and inexcusable. But so
much being said, there is also this
to say: first, they were exceptional;
and secondly, the provocation was
sometimes extreme, and would have
been so regarded in any society
strong enough to hold itself together.
Social pressure can not be restricted
to a few carefully chosen fields of ac-
tion. If it expresses itself against
the child-beater and the wife-de-
serter, it is quite as likely to express
itself against the slacker, the plotting
alien, the close-fisted usurer, and the
vociferous revolutionist. One may
rightly denounce its excesses, as any
other kind of excesses. But to pro-
test against its exercise in the field
of sedition, on the ground that it in-
vades the "rights of the minority,"
is to demand for the minority a
special privilege. A "right" for a
minority that enables it, in a life-and-
death matter, to annul or obstruct
the will of the majority is no right
but a charter of exceptional power.
The protection of minorities is the
security of democracy; but the ag-
grandizement of minorities is its
doom. To whatever Utopia we may
come, the community, in its own
extra-legal way, is likely always to
have something to say to the ele-
ment that sets itself, in vital matters,
against the thing regarded as neces-
sary and right.
r)Y whom is Japan governed? By
■'-' the War Office, says Mr. Charles
Hodges, who recently gave the read-
ers of the Revieiv a peep behind the
financing of China. According to
him Premier Hara and Baron Uchida
of the Foreign Office are mere stalk-
ing-horses behind which the military
diplomats skilfully conduct their
manoeuvres. The charge is borne out
by the recent occupation of Vladi-
vostok and the Maritime Province,
which is contrary to the wishes of
the entire press of the country, and
a flagrant repudiation of Mr. Hara's
often repeated formula that Japan
has no territorial or political am->
bitions in Siberia. The War Office
has tried to justify the action of Gen-
eral Takayanagi by the charge that,
while negotiations were on foot be-
tween Russian and Japanese com-
manders, Russian soldiers got out of
hand and attacked the Japanese. We
can only say that, if this attack was
not provoked, it came at an extremely
opportune moment — after the Amer-
icans had evacuated Siberia and be-
fore the Soviet's peace proposals had
been answered — to serve as a pre-
text for an obviously preconcerted
operation in the course of which all
the Russian forces in the district
were attacked by the Japanese and
disarmed after a day or two's fight-
ing. "The Japanese military coup
can only be explained," says the
Japan Advertiser, "on the assump-
tion that it was a predetermined
step in the execution of a deliberate
policy which appears to conflict with
the views of the Cabinet."
pLANS for rushing through Con-
-*- gress a two billion dollar bonus,
or donative, for the soldiers are
not progressing favorably. Each
scheme proposed for charming the
necessary funds into the public purse
raises diflSculties that should finally
make plain the impracticability of
the whole scheme. It is time for Con-
gressmen to ask themselves whether
they may not lose more than they
gain by voting the donative. Such a
course will win them by no means all
the soldier vote and it will lose them
the votes of a great many other citi-
zens whose good feeling towards
the ex-service men is not a bit less
genuine and deep than theirs. Mean-
while, the delays in caring for the
maimed are being looked into. Will
their chances of receiving proper and
speedy attention be better after two
billion dollars have been squandered
in the form of a bonus? Mr. Taft
has put his judgment of the matter
plainly: "This bill should not be
passed."
TVTHY cooperative societies, which
"^ in a number of other countries
have thrived so well, have done so ill
in the United States, has long been a
matter of much speculation. It seems,
however, that the tide has turned, and
that during the last decade there has
been a considerable growth. There
have been, as is well known, striking
instances of the success of producing
societies, such as the California Fruit
Growers' Exchange and various live-
stock shippers' organizations; but it
is not so well known that there has
been a great increase in the number
of successful consumers' societies.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has
now under way a survey of the coop-
erative movement in this country,
and though the volume of data so far
gathered is but meagre, enough is
available to indicate the existence of
about 3,000 of these societies, with a
combined business of some $200,000,-
000 a year. In the Monthly Labor Re-
view for March, Florence E. Parker
summarizes the results of the study
so far made. Most of the cooperative
stores sell at prevailing market
prices, and the monetary benefits to
the members come in the form of divi-
dends, based on the amount of the
individual's purchases — this being the
way in which the great Rochdale co-
operative system in England has
always operated. The average for
the stores dealing in general mer-
chandise is 6 per cent. Indirectly,
of course, there is a further monetary
benefit; for the presence of a co-
operative store tends to prevent
profiteering in the neighborhood. But
cooperation has other benefits than
the merely monetary ones: training
in business methods, training in citi-
zenship, encouragement of latent
abilities in management, habituation
to altruistic modes of thought and ac-
tion. Not unreasonably have many
thoughtful students looked to cooper-
ation as the solution of many of our
most vexing social problems.
504]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 53
Johnson and the Chi-
cago Convention
SENATOR JOHNSON will be a
formidable figure in the Repub-
lican National Convention. The
strength he has shown in the popular
vote in Eastern as well as Western
States establishes that fact beyond
dispute. Into the details it is need-
less to enter, for the real question is
not that of his chance of getting the
nomination. That chance there is
every reason to believe to be very
slight. The convention at Chicago
will have to take Johnson into serious
account not as a possible nominee,
but as a vital factor in determining
who else shall be the nominee; and
the strength that he has been able to
muster in the primaries will likewise
be a potent consideration in the shap-
ing of the platform.
Two months ago, it seemed to al-
most all observers that the Republi-
can campaign would be a walkover;
to-day no such feeling is possible. Not
that the Democratic party has made
any gain, either in its standing be-
fore the country or in the develop-
ment of any hopeful candidate. On
the contrary, so far as that is con-
cerned, the elimination of Hoover as
a Democratic possibility has simpli-
fied the situation for the Republi-
cans. The change in the political sky
has come from within, not from with-
out, the Republican party itself. The
Johnson vote shows very plainly that
the party can not count with certainty
on being able to present a solid front
to its opponent; still less on being
able to poll the doubtful or independ-
ent vote in any such preponderant
measure as seemed certain a short
time ago. In what proportions the
vote for Johnson is to be ascribed to
ordinary political preferences, and in
what proportion to a singular medley
of various forms of discontent and
revolt, may be open to question. But
the intensity of feeling, as well as the
numerical strength, attested by his
following in the primaries, makes it
quite certain that a great mass of
voters are ready to throw overboard
any Republican candidate whom they
may find not to their liking.
There is no prospect that this state
of mind will be bettered by the pro-
ceedings at the Convention. On the
contrary, Johnson will make just the
kind of fight best calculated to in-
tensify it. And if nothing occurs by
way of offset, the Republican party
will have a tough job on its hands in
the campaign, in case the Democrats
put up an attractive platform and a
vote-getting candidate. Johnson has
indicated that he will not bolt; but
whether he stays in the party or not,
there is nothing to compel his fol-
lowers to stay in it. The pro-Ger-
mans, the pro-Irish, and the pro-Rus-
sians who flocked to his standard in
the primaries are not permeated with
any profound affection for the Re-
publican party, and would cheerfully
take out their disappointment at Chi-
cago in the shape of a vote for the
Democratic ticket, if San Francisco
gives them a chance. The same is
true of other varieties of Adullamite
which helped to swell his vote — and
that of La Follette — at the primaries ;
and it is in a great measure true also
of the straight radical element in his
following. The problem before the
Republican leaders at Chicago is that
of a possible serious division in their
own party, with several weeks inter-
vening for the Democrats to guide
themselves by its indications before
making their decision — though, of
course, it is also true that the Demo-
crats face the possibility of dissension
equally serious.
A week or two ago we should have
said that this state of things would
be sure to compel a most serious con-
sideration of Mr. Hoover's candidacy,
although very few of the delegates
would be personally inclined to vote
for him, and still fewer would be
pledged to him. With victory dis-
tinctly in doubt, the knowing ones at
Chicago will of necessity bend their
minds to the task of finding out the
means of removing that doubt. Of
all the men who are in the running
for the nomination. Hoover is the
only one whose candidacy would set
in motion forces that would power-
fully tend to retain in the party, or
to draw towards it, elements which
are now doubtful, and of which the
loss would gravely threaten the loss
of the Presidency. Any other of the
candidates would mean to those who
are holding aloof merely the Repub-
lican party's candidate, though per-
haps a particularly good one; Mr.
Hoover would mean the Republi-
can party's candidate plus Herbert
Hoover. And after the kind of fight
that is pretty sure to take place at
Chicago, a candidate whom hundreds
of thousands of voters, without dis-
tinction of party, ardently desire to
elect on account of their high hopes
of what he would do for the country
and the world, would be an invalu-
able asset to the party that nominated
him.
Unfortunately for Mr. Hoover's
prospects at Chicago, however, the
developments of the past two weeks
have put a different color on the situa-
tion. However gratifying it may be
to his followers that he polled fully
200,000 votes in the California pri-
mary, the fact that Johnson beat him
by 150,000 is a terrible bar to his
nomination. The mere fact that, in a
contest between two Californians,
the one that had a long-established
hold on State politics came out victor
by a large majority would not in itself
be decisive; the trouble comes from
the circumstance that to prefer the
vanquished to the victor would mean
in this case to accentuate Johnson's
grievance, and accordingly to in-
crease the danger of mischief from
the hostility or the sulking of the
Johnson following. If Mr. Hoover
had kept out of the primaries alto-
gether, he would be in a far better
position.
Apart from the personal aspect of
the struggle, there is one cardinal
question of policy which has assumed,
within the past fortnight, quite a new
character. The strength that the
Johnson movement has appeared to
exhibit — in spite of its relatively poor
showing in Indiana and in Maryland
— has intensified anti-League tenden-
cies in the Republican camp. We do
not believe that the votes in the pri-
maries prove anything as to the
judgment of Republican voters gen-
erally on the-Ftrtaject of the League.
But it will be difficult to deny their
negative significance. What has hap-
pened can not be reconciled with the
May 15, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[505
idea that there exists any general and
deep-seated resentment against the
course of the Republican Senators in
insisting upon the Lodge reserva-
tions. And it will be in the highest
degree difficult to draw the line even
at that point, in opposition to the
stand of the irreconcilables, with
Johnson and Borah at their head and
with Knox and Penrose backing them
up. That the outcome of the contest
on the League will be an elastic dec-
laration, leaving the ultimate posi-
tion to future developments, is likely-
enough; but the same motives that
will dictate such an outcome in the
platform will be a powerful make-
weight against the nomination of
Hoover.
Three full weeks still intervene be-
fore the delegates gather at Chicago,
and it is not impossible that the at-
mosphere will undergo a change in
that interval. Even more likely is
it that when the delegates get to-
gether, they will come to realize
more clearly than they do now the
uncertainty of the party's victory,
an idea which to the politicians,
as well as to the country at large,
has until within a short time been
quite unfamiliar. What will be the
result of a sober consideration of
this, it is impossible to forecast. In
the meanwhile, there is one aspect of
the situation which might well re-
pay a little public attention. Presi-
dential primaries are still a novelty
in our political arrangements, and it
behooves us to consider whether
they are justifying either the high
hopes which some had built upon
them or the expenditure of energy
and preoccupation which they in-
volve. Would not the actual thought
of the country, alike upon issues and
upon candidates, have had a better
opportunity both for expression and
for ascertainment without the inter-
position of the primaries? Is not
the element of chance, as well as that
of intrigue and of all sorts of mean-
ingless or factitious combinations,
increased through the operation of
the primary game? We would not
venture to be dogmatic on the sub-
ject, but we are inclined to answer
both of these questions in the
affirmative.
Idealism in Vacuo
TF one could forget everything that
^ has happened since November 11,
1918, one might be thrilled by the
President's appeal to his party and
challenge to its adversary. "It is
time," Mr. Wilson exclaims, "that
the party should proudly avow that
it means to try, without flinching or
turning at any time away from the
path for reasons of expediency, to
apply moral and Christian principles
to the problems of the world." The
time for not flinching and for disre-
garding considerations of expediency,
if such a time there ever was, has
faded into what already seems a dim
and distant past. Turn to the Presi-
dent's speech in New York on Sep-
tember 27, 1918. "It will be neces-
sary," he declared, "that all who sit
down at the peace table shall come
ready and willing to pay the price,
the only price, that will procure a
secure and lasting peace"; and that
price included "not only impartial
justice, but also the satisfaction of
the several peoples whose fortunes are
dealt with." The League of Nations
was to be the means of making secure
not some kind of settlement or other,
but the beautiful and perfect settle-
ment thus foreshadowed. That the
thing was impossible was all along
sufficiently evident. But, impossible
or not in the anticipation, it has cer-
tainly wholly disappeared from the
fulfillment. The flinching, the turn-
ing aside "for reasons of expediency,"
began at Versailles. Of the thou-
sands who were ready enough to
take for reality a dream of to-morrow,
there are few indeed who will accept
a dream of yesterday as a substitute
for the bald truth of to-day.
Not less discordant with Mr. Wil-
son's dream is what has happened
not in the councils of diplomats but
in the actions of the peoples. "Na-
tional purposes," he declared in that
same speech, "have fallen more and
more into the background, and the
common purpose of enlightened man-
kind has taken their place." Ask the
Italians, ask the Jugo-Slavs, ask the
Rumanians, ask the Greeks, ask the
Poles, ask the Irish, whether they
have become completely indifferent to
"national purposes" and are concerned .
only with "the common purpose of
enlightened mankind." Or again,
take the very instrumentality through
means of which the great dream was
to be fulfilled. Long before the strug-
gle began in the Senate, long before
America loomed up as the chief ob-
stacle that Mr. Wilson was to en-
counter in the execution of his grand
design, the central idea of the League
as originally conceived had been aban-
doned. Although Mr. Wilson, even
so late as his Manchester speech on
December 30, 1918, had declared that
the United States "will join no com-
bination of power that is not a com-
bination of all of us," the League
from its very inception wholly ex-
cluded the Central Powers and Rus-
sia, and was constructed upon a basis
of dominance by the five Powers
whose martial strength had achieved
the victory. As for the terms im-
posed upon the vanquished, however
just or however necessary, they left
the defeated nations in just such con-
dition of prostration, and with just
such feelings of bitterness, as have
been the result of devastating wars
in all those past ages in which men
were still walking in the darkness of
national animosities and rivalries,
of national fears and suspicions.
All this is no reason why we should
not strive to raise the world to a
higher plane of action, and, above all,
to lessen in every possible way the
danger of reoccurrence of the appall-
ing calamities of war. But it should
be a reason for recognizing that the
duty of a statesman is to strive for
what is attainable, not to exhort for
what is palpably unattainable; still
less to put to hazard the good that is
clearly within his grasp, upon the
most tenuous of gambler's chances of
attaining something better.
At no time since the President re-
turned from Europe has he evidenced
the slightest feeling of responsibility
for the awful loss which his obstinacy
might inflict upon the world. Last
summer he could have had the treaty
ratified with reservations which, ex-
cept from the point of view of one
blindly addicted to the carrying out
of his own wish, evidently left the
League but slightly, if at all, impaired
506]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 53
in its potentialities for good. The
feeling of the country was then
strongly with Mr. Wilson. Had he
yielded something, public opinion
would have seen to it that he got the
rest. Week by week, month by month,
not only the prestige of the President,
but the authority of the League idea
has steadily declined. The latter has
happened for bad reasons as well
as for good; but it has happened.
The delay and the wrangling have
given opportunity for fanatics and
demagogues, as well as for sincere
and earnest upholders of what they
conceive to be America's own require-
ments, to incite hostility to the treaty.
Sinn Feiners and pro-Germans, So-
cialists and Bolshevists, have gathered
head in their opposition. Nowhere
is there any sign that attachment
to the Covenant without reserva-
tions has grown; on the contrary,
thousands of sincere Americans have
been won over to the idea that res-
ervations are necessary. But so far
as Mr. Wilson is concerned, nothing
whatever has happened. He nails his
colors to the mast. Let the ship go
down if it will, but never let it be
said that Woodrow Wilson has yielded
a jot or tittle to save it. Some may
be tempted to say that this is magnifi-
cent, if it is not statesmanship; for
our part, we can not find that mag-
nificent which must be ascribed at
least as much to colossal self-esteem
as to any more honorable origin.
The Faith that is in Us
"rpHE trouble with the Review,"
■*• wTites one of our readers, de-
clining to renew his subscription, "is
the same as that which the Apostle
Paul found with the Church of
Laodicea." The trouble with the
Church of the Laodiceans was that
it was "neither cold nor hot," but
"lukewarm." Whether our candid
friend bases his judgment on the
general character of the Review or
on its attitude in regard to some
cardinal issue, we are left to con-
jecture. We think we may safely
assume, however, that what he has
in mind is not that fairness in
controversy which so many of our
correspondents have recognized as a
virtue, but the actual position the
Review has taken upon several phases
of the struggle against Socialism
and disloyalty. There are doubtless
others who find the same objection.
But their state of mind, we take it,
is not unlike that which, as we have
been reliably informed, is prevalent
among many of the good up-State
members of the New York Legislature
in regard to Mr. Hughes. "What has
come over the Governor," these peo-
ple say, "has he turned Social-
ist?" But surely nothing can be
less Laodicean than such a protest as
Mr. Hughes made against the pro-
scriptive mania which took possession
of the Legislature at Albany during
its recent session. Mr. Hughes was
not lukewarm, he was hot; and he
was hot, not because of any feeling
in favor of the Socialists, but be-
cause of a most intense feeling in
favor of the institutions which the
Socialist movement is designed to
destroy.
If intolerance were the true meas-
ure of loyalty, if readiness to resort
to extreme measures at the first
alarm were the true test of faith in
our institutions, then that man
would be the best American who was
ready to go the greatest length in
suppressing Socialist publications, in
excluding Socialists from legislative
bodies, in enacting laws giving to
administrative officers sweeping and
arbitrary powers for the hounding
down of every kind of dissenters. But
to our mind it is not those who op-
pose such measures, but those who
uphold them, that are the men of
little faith. If our institutions are
built upon sand, then, to be sure, we
must gather in frantic alarm at the
first sign of storm. But if they are
built upon a rock, we must trust to
the strength of the foundations to re-
sist its onset. And the figure does
less than justice to the actual situa-
tion; for what the headlong defend-
ers, whether at Albany or at Wash-
ington, are so ready to do is to loosen
the foundations themselves for the
sake of finding material with which
to meet the attack. Proscription and
intolerance may, indeed, afford tem-
porary relief from immediate danger ;
but they lessen for good and all the
resources upon which we must rely
for permanent safety.
Nor is the question solely one of
method or policy. Speaking for our- '
selves-^and we believe we may speak
also for the men of whom Mr. Hughes
is a type — we feel it quite safe to say
that we are far more deeply attached
to the fundamentals that are at stake
in the issue of Socialism against in-
dividualism than are those who so
readily forget the traditions of lib-
erty in their eagerness to avert im-
mediate peril to the existing order.
Let some proposal be made which has
in it the most dangerous germs of
paternalism, but which does not on
its face bear the Socialist brand — a
proposal which looks comfortable and
desirable from the standpoint of im-
mediate interest — and you may be
sure that many of those who are keen-
est in the heresy hunt will welcome
it without a qualm. What we are l
concerned about is the essentials of f
that structure of Government and so-
ciety which has been built up by a
people of self-reliant freemen ; and we
mean to defend that structure against
danger, whether it be threatened by
the hostility of enemies or by the
thoughtlessness or ignorance of those
who regard themselves as its friends.
The future of democracy in Amer-
ica is hanging in the balance. It is
our hope, and our confident belief,
that it will come out triumphant from
this time of trial. But if it is to do
so, we must be willing to abide the
test. We must show reason for the
faith that is in us. We must be will-
ing to let all comers do their best to
show that it is not worth preserving,
and we must do our best to show not
that it is without fault, but that with
all its faults it is a precious heritage
which it would be madness to cast
aside. If it be Laodicean to hold that
this can be done, if it be Laodicean
to believe that it will be done, then
we are Laodiceans. But if constancy
of purpose and sincerity of conviction
are to be measured rather by a steady
and quiet adherence to the faith than
by violent and spasmodic manifesta-
tions of panic or intolerance, then we
can not admit the justice of the im-
peachment.
May 15, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[507
By-Governments in
Germany
THE development of affairs in Ger-
many since the farcical five days'
rule of Dr. Kapp bodes little good
for the Government which, after that
reactionary intermezzo, was consti-
tuted as the result of a compromise
with the German trade unions. The
general strike called with the sanc-
tion, if not at the request, of Herr
Bauer's Cabinet, for the defense of
the Constitution against the counter-
revolutionary menace, proved an
equally effective weapon, as soon as
that menace was averted, for render-
ing the lawful Government submis-
sive to the will of Labor. Herr
Legien refused to sheathe the sword
until the Government which it had
served to defend had yielded to his
demands. The ultimatum of the Trade
Unions, as whose spokesman he
acted, required, among other things,
that they should be consulted, for this
once to be sure, in the reconstruction
of both the Imperial and the Prus-
sian Ministries, and that a People's
army should be formed from mem-
bers of trades unions only.
A writer in the New Europe, on
the assumption that "it is the lack of
a direct voice in the state which fre-
quently pushes trade unions into the
uneconomic path of strikes," ex-
presses his belief that "the squaring
of the two conceptions, of the old
state relying on a non-professional
local basis and of the professional
unions, may supply a fruitful chap-
ter in modern constitutional develop-
ment. The experiment made, in sev-
eral countries in Europe, with pro-
portional representation which, elimi-
nating the local constituency, makes
the squaring of the two conceptions
superfluous, has shown how simple
and easy that constitutional develop-
ment is. Any group of professionals
whose members are scattered over
the country can, under that system,
vote as a unit at the polls and, ac-
cording to its numerical strength,
send one or more of its candidates to
Parliament, there to defend the inter-
ests of their particular profession. A
railwaymen's brotherhood, an actors'
union, an association of school teach-
ers, a farmers' league, a policemen's
federation can each acquire, in this
way, a direct voice in the state. But
nowhere has the principle been ac-
cepted that these many voices shall,
except through their power in the
Parliament, have a say in the forma-
tion of the Government.
It is this fear lest the Government's
compliance with Legien's ultimatum
should create a dangerous precedent
for repeated assaults, from the side
of the unions, upon the independence
of the Government, which has be-
come an element of dissension be-
tween the coalition parties supporting
the tottering governmental structure.
There is little hope of a continued co-
operation, after the elections, between
Majority Socialists, Democrats, and
Catholics, and it will be by the merest
chance if the building erected on such
infirm pillars does not collapse be-
fore that time. The old opposition
within the Centre party against the
policy inaugurated by Erzberger in
1917, which raised its head again
after the latter's fall, is gathering
additional strength from the Govern-
ment's weakness, and this agitation
among the Centrists for a rupture
with the Majority Socialists is the
signal for a renewal of the Catholic
movement in the Rhineland against
the centralized state under the con-
trol of Berlin.
But it is not only in the Rhineland,
where anti-Prussian sentiment makes
for disloyalty to the Prussianized em-
pire, but also in the south of Ger-
many that the Government's lack of
backbone is causing a reaction un-
favorable for Berlin. In a com-
munique jointly issued, some weeks
ago, by the Governments of Bavaria,
Wiirttemberg, Baden, and Hesse, a
protest was raised against the dis-
bandment of the "Einwohnerwehren,"
which the Government will be forced
by the Entente to carry through.
Their maintenance, the message de-
clares, is a matter of the most vital
importance to the South German
States. It is not this protest, which,
indeed, is serious enough in itself,
but the way in which the Governments
in question thought fit to enter it,
that is an oriiinous sign for the au-
thority of Berlin. The South German
States are duly represented in the
Reichsrat, where their spokesmen can
advocate their dissentient opinions.
By choosing the unusual way of a
joint official communique they gave
to their protest the character of a
move against the Central Govern-
ment, whose authority seems to be
challenged by an interstate alliance
within the Empire. The declaration
of the Bavarian Minister-President
that Bavaria, even at the risk of a
rupture, would maintain its stand-
point, was hardly calculated to dispel
that impression.
A difficult task, therefore, awaits
Comrades Muller and Koster at the
Spa Conference. Nominally repre-
senting the Imperial Government,
they will feel the force of their own
arguments impaired by the painful
consciousness that whatever they
yield or gaih will be challenged, if
not disavowed, by a power at home
which they lack the means of con-
straining. If they pledge themselves
to the disbandment of the "Einwoh-
nerwehren," the whole of South Ger-
many will be united in resistance
against the orders to that effect from
Berlin ; if, on the other hand, the im-
probable should happen, and they
should succeed in persuading Mille-
rand to consent to the retention of
those forces, they will be faced with
another ultimatum from Labor, re-
minding them of their pledge that
only members of the Trade Unions
shall be deemed worthy of maintain-
ing order at home and safety on the
borders. The interference of by-Gov-
ernments threatens to paralyze all
initiative of the central authority in
Berlin.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Corporation
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars a year in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd.» 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright, 1920, in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Ayres O. W. Firkins
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson
Jerome Landfield
508]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 53
Give Hungary a Chance
A GOOD deal of newspaper and
periodical space is devoted in
these days to denunciation of the
Hungarian Government. If these ar-
ticles, published in the Nation, the
New Republic, and various Socialist
papers, were merely a collection of
scandalous stories like that about
Lieutenant Freiszberger, who amused
himself one evening by hanging eight
men in his own bedroom {Nation,
April 5), they would not be worth
answering, because the good sense of
American readers could be trusted to
class them along with the tales of
Baron Munchhausen. But they are
so clever a combination of truth,
complete falsehood, and dangerous
half-truths that it would be unfair
to Hungary to pass them unnoted.
The United States is technically at
war with Hungary still, but it is char-
acteristic of Americans to demand
fair play even for an enemy, and it
should be the aim of the American
press to point out and support Eu-
ropean efforts towards reconstruc-
tion of economic life wherever they
occur, rather than to dwell on the
inevitable faults of a new Govern-
ment that has not yet gained full con-
trol of the disorganized nation.
The various anti-Hungarian arti-
cles purport to be discussions of the
present Government of Hungary, yet
every bit of evidence concerns a
period before the present Govern-
ment assumed office in the middle of
February of the present year. The
origin of the statements made is in-
teresting. They are almost invari-
ably drawn from Az Ember, a radical
paper published in Vienna by Hun-
garian political refugees, or from
the Arbeiterzeitung, another Vienna
paper controlled by the extreme So-
cialists. Any one who is familiar
with the present-day Vienna press
knows the depths to which it has fall-
en; knows also how often the sen-
sational news printed in these two
papers has been investigated by Al-
lied missions and shown to be entirely
without foundation. Yet, without in-
vestigation, the wild statements of
Az Ember are retailed to American
readers as sober fact. These articles,
reprinted in America, not only ig-
nore dates but ignore the relation-
ships of the various Hungarian lead-
ers mentioned. Friedrich and Horthy
are always coupled as though their
policies and ideals were the same, but
as a matter of fact Horthy, the pres-
ent ruler, dislikes Friedrich and all
that he stands for, and endured him
for a time for political reasons, just
as President Wilson, for a much
longer time, endured his association
with Mr. Bryan. Friedrich exerts
no influence in the present Hungarian
Government and holds no office. He
is a man of very small calibre, nar-
row-minded, reactionary. He came
into power partly through pushing
himself to the fore at a time when
Hungary had no big men to take
charge after the Bela Kun gang es-
caped with their plunder ; and partly
because, as a vociferous opponent of
Socialism, he represented in the pop-
ular mind the antithesis of Bolshe-
vism. Sir George Clerk firmly re-
fused to recognize, in the name of
the Supreme Council, any Govern-
ment of which Friedrich was the
head, and only permitted him to have
a place in that Government because
he so clearly represented the opinion
of the vast majority of the Hun-
garian people. Horthy is a very dif-
ferent personality. He was the head
of the Hungarian army and had won
the unanimous approval of the coun-
try by his loyalty to Hungary in his
dealings with the Rumanians and by
the moderation of his policies. He
has not yet shown himself a great
man, but he is a thoroughly honorable
man who is trying to do his best
under very difficult circumstances.
He was never a supporter of the
Archduke Joseph. He did not in-
vite the ex-Emperor to reestablish
the Hungarian monarchy, but may
well have been in correspondence with
him for the purpose of securing his
formal abdication. Such are the two
men who are usually classed as part-
ners in crime.
The following, in a few words, is
an attempt to tell the truth about
Hungarian conditions, an attempt
made from the American point of
view, not from the radical Socialist
point of view. It is based on facts,
not rumors, and is more concerned
with pointing out the good than the
bad, although it aims not to ignore
the bad where it exists.
The reason for most articles in the
American press on the evils of the
present Hungarian administration is
the flow of rumors from Vienna as to
Hungarian treatment of the Jews. It
would be absurd to deny the fact that
Hungary is anti-Jewish; it is. It
would be absurd to assert that Jews
always receive fair treatment in Hun-
gary; they do not. But before the
Hungarian Government is condemned
on this account it is well to look the
facts straight in the face. The Jews,
of whom there are many in Hungary,
are far better businessmen than the
Magyars, and have got into their
hands most of the banking and gen-
eral industrial life of the country.
For Magyar men of business to hate
them for this is unfair and deplorable,
but is human nature. The hatred of
the Magyar peasant for the Jew has
more foundation. The Jews control
a large part of the agricultural lands
and they have got that control
through the exploitation of the peas-
ants, lamentably ignorant in money
matters. In the larger dealings the
Jews of Hungary have succeeded
through superior business acumen ; in
the smaller dealings they have suc-
ceeded through usury and sometimes
through trickery. They were the
most obvious profiteers during the
war, and the people hate them also for
that. They swarmed into Budapest
from Galicia at the time of the Rus-
sian advance and have refused to go
back to their homes because they like
better the small business opportuni-
ties of the city. But Budapest, like
Vienna, is overcrowded and desper-
ately short of food. Its population
has almost doubled. For this reason
it has been necessary to concentrate
in camps in the country thousands of
refugees, the majority of whom hap-
pen to be Jews. But these refugees
are not, as is often asserted, starving
and dying in typhus-infested camps.
The Hungarian Government is doing
JNIay 15, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[509
the best it can for them, and a com-
mission sent by the International Red
Cross — an organization famous for
its fearless outspokenness — reported
the camps to be in excellent condition,
sanitary, well-managed.
The Jewish question would have
been serious enough for the reasons
stated. It is critical because Jews
were the leaders in the communist
regime and because in consequence
the average Magyar sees in every
Jew a potential Bolshevist. Years of
dislike have been intensified by the
terrible memories of the Soviet and,
try as it will, the Government can
not prevent all manifestations of a
hatred made more dangerous through
fear. But in spite of this there have
been no pogroms. There have been
murders. In Kecskemet the Inter-
Allied missions estimated that twen-
ty-five or thirty persons were mur-
dered. But the statement in the Na-
tion that "the acts of Horthy's White
Army exceed any excesses of the Bol-
sheviki" is not only a lie but a stupid
lie, because all the facts, as distin-
guished from slanderous rumors, dis-
prove it. A good example of specific
rumors quoted as fact by the Ameri-
can Socialist press is, as the Nation
phrased it, "the treatment of certain
well-known Hungarian intellectuals —
specifically the condemnation to death
of Andreas Lazko." Leaving aside
the fact that the plural is used for
the single case cited, the truth is that
Andreas Lazko has not been con-
demned to death, has not even been
arrested, but is living quietly in Hun-
gary. This information, obtained
directly from the American Commis-
sioner in Budapest, ought to give
pause even to those whose aim in
life is to defame every Government
that is not radically socialistic.
Neither Az Ember nor the A^'beiter-
zeitung can endure the fact that in
the elections in Hungary the Socialists
failed to make any showing whatever.
A certain Mr. Bagger, writing in the
Netv Republic of March 17, produced
a somewhat labored argument to
prove that the elections were not fair,
but this argument is contrary to the
statements of Americans who were on
the ground. It is true that some ad-
herents of the fallen Bolshevist
regime were in prison on criminal
charges, but the number was negli-
gible and, had they been at large,
they could not have affected the issue.
The truth was and is that the only
Socialists in Hungary are found
among the laboring classes in the
cities. At the most generous estimate
they do not number over five per
cent, of the population, and the re-
maining ninety-five per cent, were
determined to do away with all dan-
ger of a Socialist regime. Like the
Bolshevist Pravda in Petrograd, how-
ever, the Socialist papers of Vienna
can not endure the rule of the ma-
jority unless the majority happens to
agree with their own views. Their
purpose, therefore, is to discredit the
Government of a majority which, in
Hungary, very nearly represents the
will of all of the people, and to do
this they stoop to all kinds of fan-
tastic slander, attacking even the rep-
resentatives of the United States.
On December 17, 1919, the Ar-
beiterzeitung said of the Kecskemet
massacre :
An American Commission which visited
Kecskemet found sixty-two corpses lying un-
buried and hanging on the trees of a neighbor-
ing forest. This paper is in a position to prove
by an official document that this wholesale
murder was committed by order of the func-
tionaries of the Hungarian State with the
knowledge of the highest authorities and of
the Ministry of Justice, and that it was hushed
up, though the number of victims is said to be
about five thousand. The Allied Powers are
about to conclude peace with this Government
of murderers and thus to receive them into
the community of civilized humanity. The
Rumanians kept these men in check, but hardly
had they left when the slaughtering began.
English, French, and Americans did not permit
them to protect the lives of these miserable
people. The American Colonel Yates under-
takes the supreme control over the Brachialge-
walt, that is, the new forces. And now under
the Stars and Stripes of the United States,
who could hold back these monsters, the mur-
derous work will go on.
This statement was sent by the Amer-
ican Commissioner in Vienna to Gen-
eral Bandholtz in Budapest, who an-
swered :
Every statement in this article as received
and regarding Americans is false. No Ameri-
can Commission visited Kecskemet. Col.
Yates returned to his permanent duties in Ru-
mania over three weeks ago. The American
member of the Inter-Allied Military Mission
was reliev'ed from same on December 13.
Report that Col. Yates undertakes supreme
control over the new forces and that murder-
ous work is going on under the Stars and
Stripes of the United States is inexpressibly
false and libelous, and it is requested that
prompt and eificacious action be taken to ade-
quately punish the perpetrators, to force the
Arbeitcr::citung to retract its false statements.
and to prevent a repetition of such a scurrilous
publication.
The Arbeiterzeitung made a half-
hearted retraction of this particular
tale, but both it and Az Ember have
continued to publish equally libelous
and false statements and to attack
at will the so-called "capitalistic Gov-
ernment of the United States," and
its various agents in Central Europe,
when the result of the investigation
of these agents does not agree with
the preconceived ideas of the papers
in question.
That the Government of Horthy
has made every honest effort to be
fair, to restore prosperity and order
in what is left of Hungary, every can-
did neutral observer admits ; that this
Government will be able to restrain
the Hungarians from propaganda and
even military adventure to regain
some portion of its lost territories,
is not certain, and indeed the Gov-
ernment feels, with the people, that
these territories have been unfairly
taken away. It is also unlikely that,
in spite of all efforts, Horthy will be
able to prevent further murders of
those believed by the Hungarian peo-
ple to be the cause of most of their
misery. All that can be aflSrmed is
that Horthy will work harder along
these lines and with more chance of
success than did the Governments
which intervened between the fall of
Bela Kun and the recent elections. He
is an honest, high-minded man. If
he has the strength to be a dictator
until normal conditions are restored
he will have bravely carried his coun-
try through a critical period and will
give the people new hope.
It must be remembered also that
Horthy has not only popular sentiment
to work against but the grim fact of
continually rising prices. The crown,
from an international point of view,
is worth practically nothing. It still
remains the standard of value in Hun-
gary and the prices of local products
have, therefore, not gone up as arbi-
trarily as have the prices of imported
products. The Nation puts on the
present Government the responsi-
bility for the cost now of forty-five
crowns a day in the hospitals, as
compared with the cost of ten crowns
a day under Bela Kun. The reason
510]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 53
for this is that Bela Kun and the Ru-
manians managed to do away with-
all the medicines, surgical dressings,
and appliances in the various hospi-
tals. Bela Kun also flooded the coun-
try with worthless money. He ad-
mitted that the charge of ten crowns
a day had no relation to the cost of
caring for patients in the hospitals,
and he tried to limit the admissions
only to the working classes. The pres-
ent cost of forty-five crowns is no
more than the ten crowns charged
at the beginning of the Bolshevist
regime, so far as the value of money
is concerned, especially when it is
remembered that the Government
has been compelled to procure all of
its hospital materials from abroad.
This is only one example of the rise
in prices which inevitably bears very
hard on all classes of the population,
but which can not be imputed to any
fault peculiar to the Hungarian Gov-
ernment.
Neither can the tragic condition
of the refugees in Hungary be
brought up against the Government.
These poor people, living as they are
in box cars and in caves in the hills,
have been driven away from their
homes in the territories now owned
by Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and
Serbia. They are an absolute charge
of the state, and the state, with very
limited resources, is doing everything
possible to alleviate their sufferings.
It is quite true that the Govern-
ments of the Archduke, of Friedrich,
and of Huszar had less power than
the Government of Horthy, but as
pointed out above, even those weak
Governments prevented the massa-
cres which were greatly feared. It
is pleasant also to be able to credit
them with some definite attempts to
treat all classes fairly and to work
for the benefit of the suffering and
the oppressed. The American Relief
Administration sent a child welfare
committee to Hungary in August,
1919. This committee did what it
could with its limited resources to
alleviate the abject misery which was
found to exist after the Soviet Gov-
ernment collapsed. It was not au-
thorized to carry on regular work
until October, 1919. In closing its
work, which has been carried on
steadily since then, it has issued a
very illuminating report, and even
those who hate the anti-Socialist Gov-
ernment of Hungary can not accuse
the American Relief Administration
of trying to curry favor by fair
words, inasmuch as its work is over.
This report says, among other things :
The Hungarian Government has, from the
beginning, shown the greatest interest in the
work and has given its steadfast support. In
October, 1919, the Government voted five mil-
lion crowns for administrative expenses and
agreed to furnish forty-four tons of flour and
five tons of fat weekly to supplement the
American programme. Although there was at
times only a three-days' supply of flour and
fats in Budapest, the Hungarian Government
has never failed in its deliveries of flour and
fat for child welfare work.
Later on, this allocation by the Hun-
garian Government was increased.
The pamphlet of the American Re-
lief Administration states clearly
that no distinction was made of race,
creed, or social status. Children
were fed if they were hungry and
undernourished, and it was the poor
of Hungary, and the poor only, who
benefited from this work ; yet the So-
cialist press, reprinting in America
the fantastic tales emanating from
Vienna, has the impudence to assert
that in Hungary to-day it is only
necessary to be poor to be persecuted.
Hungary has been bitterly punished
for its share in the war. Its terri-
tory has been reduced seventy-three
per cent. ; millions of Hungarians are
under alien rule ; the country has been
stripped by Rumanians and Bolshe-
vists; the ancient arrogance of the
Magyars has been punished to the
full. The country should be given
. the opportunity for orderly develop-
ment. It does not want Socialism,
and there is no more reason why the
rest of the world should impose So-
cialism on Hungary than why it
should impose monarchy on the
United States. Let the world guide
and counsel fairly and unselfishly. It
might at least refrain from slander
and give Horthy his chance.
Examiner
The Jubilee of the Metropolitan
Museum
To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of
its founding the Metropolitan Mu-
seum has rearranged its collections,
temporarily incorporating with them
hundreds of precious objects borrowed
from private collectors. The exhibition
thus becomes a record of the influence of
the Museum and a hint of its expecta-
tions. What is remarkable about the
display is it comprehensiveness. In most
separate departments, the Museum still
falls below what is expected in a first-
class museum abroad, but an equally
catholic display could be obtained in
London, Paris, or Berlin only by draw-
ing on several museums. Even in
separate branches — Egyptian and Far
Eastern art, the industrial art of the
Middle Ages, arms and armor, musical
instruments — the Museum offers collec-
tions hardly surpassed in Europe.
It is my pleasant task to trace the fifty
active years that have resulted in this
achievement. My own interest began
when at ten years old I was introduced
to General di Cesnola's smirking Cy-
priote gods, then still in the old Douglas
Mansion, on East Fourteenth street.
Forty years of the growth of the Museum
are quite vivid to me. So, while for
sober facts I shall depend on Miss Wini-
fred E. Howe's excellent history, I shall,
even at the risk of indiscretion, say
something of the remarkable personali-
ties who controlled this development.
There is no great invention, be it tele-
graph or sewing machine, without a rival
inventor. In this case the pale honors
go to the New York Historical Society.
Having considerable collections, from
1860 to 1870 it endeavored to get the
city to provide it with a building in Cen-
tral Park where it might maintain a
general museum of history and art. The
society lacked the energy to put the
scheme through. Theoretically this was
a pity, for the neglected collections of
the society were until nearly 1900 at
once richer than those of the Metropolitan
and more suitable as a nucleus. But
the race is ever to the strong, and the
New York Historical Society was beaten
to the goal by a new set of hardy volun-
teers. The Museum germinated amid the
gayety of an American festival at Paris,
July 7, 1866. Somewhere between
punches and dancing in the tents on the
Pre Catalan, John Jay, whose address
the London Times noted as "lively and
amusing," proposed a "National Institu-
tion and Gallery of Art"; and a com-
mittee was appointed. It eventually re-
ported informally to the Union League
May 15, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[511
Club. Its Art Committee, October 14,
1869, recommended a private foundation,
opining that "it would be folly to depend
upon our governments, either municipal
or national, for judicious support or con-
trol in such an institution; for our gov-
ernments, as a rule, are utterly incom-
petent for the task." They recommended
also that laymen, and not artists, should
control the Museum.
There was a month of preparation,
and on November 23, 1869, a great meet-
ing, to which all the artistic and literary
clubs of New York were invited, was
held in the Union League Club. Some
three hundred gentlemen attended. The
venerable William Cullen Bryant pre-
sided and made a notable address. A
committee of fifty was appointed, which
was subsequently increased to one hun-
dred and sixteen. John Taylor Johnston
was appointed President the last day of
the year 1870, and guided the destinies
of the bantling Museum for nineteen
years. The Museum was incorporated
April 13, 1870. About a year later the
Park Commissioners were authorized to
provide a building. Thus the arrange-
ment by which the City should house
the Museum, but the trustees control
its policy, was firmly inaugurated. But
it took seven years to build the first
fragment of art gallery on the Central
Park site. Meanwhile the Museum, being
in the position of having no works of
art to show, and no place to show them
if it had, became the object of unamiable
ridicule by the press.
It was plainly necessary to show some-
thing. A trustee, William Y. Blodgett,
rose audaciously to the situation, bought,
on the off chance of being repaid, two
collections of old masters, mostly Dutch
and Flemish, and amounting to 174 pic-
tures. The price, for those days heavy,
was $116,000. The Dodworth building at
681 Fifth Avenue was leased for three
years, and what had been a fashionable
dancing academy became a shrine of art.
The Museum was faithful to its origins in
the Pre Catalan. On Washington's Birth-
day, 1872, Mr. Blodgett's old masters,
with a remarkable loan collection from
many sources, were displayed to all
comers. And all comers soon amounted
to about seventy a day for the first three
months. It may be worth noting that
of the first lot of old masters seventy-
seven survived the weeding out of forty-
two years and were still on exhibition
in 1914. Under the severest of tests
Mr. Blodgett's buy looks like a reasonably
good one, while his enterprise gave an
indispensable fillip. Had he not acted,
things might have gone badly with the
new Museum.
Considering this somewhat casual but
sufficient start with the wisdom of hind-
sight, it seems strange that it occurred
to nobody to work in community of in-
terest with the New York Historical
Society. Its very important collections of
Chaldean and Egyptian antiquities, the
miscellaneous paintings inherited from
the Art Union, the Bryan Collection of
primitives, seem to have been regarded
with suspicion when regarded at all.
Even now these remarkable collections
are little visited. The Metropolitan
Museum may have decided wisely in
not attempting to give interest to what
the public had already agreed to ignore.
The same year, 1872, that saw the
modest opening in the Dodworth Build-
ing, President John Taylor Johnston paid
at his own risk $60,000 for the Cesnola
Collection of Cypriote antiquities. Gen-
eral Louis Palma di Cesnola had a
creditable past as a soldier of Italy in
the War of Liberation and the Crimea.
He became an American citizen, served
in the Civil War, and thereby got his
heart's desire in a Consulate at Cyprus.
There, without scientific precautions of
any sort, he gathered in by excavation
and purchase an enormous collection of
the nondescript art of that mongrel
island. Archseologically the material,
representing a meeting point of Chal-
dean, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Grecian
influences, was new and interesting. It
made a considerable stir when taken to
London, and the British Museum wanted
a selection from it. General Cesnola
wished to keep it together under his
own name and to have it go to America.
He persuaded President John Taylor
Johnston to give him $60,000 for the
assortment. Probably the vision of add-
ing to military and consular glories the
directorate of a great museum already
hovered in the General's astute Italian
imagination. In any case, he returned
to Cyprus with his money, dug and
bought more actively than before, and
again in 1876 sold collection No. 2 to
the Metropolitan Museum for another
$60,000. "These purchases of President
Johnston were fateful. It turned out
that the General went with his Cypriote
things. Secretary of the Museum in
1877, director from 1879 to 1904, he was
to guide and limit its policy for over
twenty-five years. It should be recalled
to his credit that whatever his expecta-
tions in making these sales to the Metro-
politan, he gladly sacrificed large imme-
diate profits to keeping his collections
in America, and intact.
Personally, I believe the purchase of
the Cypriote collections was a great blun-
der. It put a vast mass of provinciaf and
ugly objects of art where they would on
the whole do the least good. Any suc-
cess the collection had was one of curi-
osity. Even its archaeological value was
diminished by the way in which it had
been assembled without adequate records
or control. From the point of view of
taste, nothing could have worse mis-
represented the glories of early Ionian
art. We see the exhibited remnant of
the collection to-day shrunk to the pro-
portions of a minor department within
the general classical field. The evident
advantage of the purchase was that it
gave the Metropolitan something distinc-
tive that its older rivals lacked. It
meant prestige of a kind. Having been
bred in awe of the Cesnola collection, I
shall say no more than that under the
personal conditions involved, its purchase
was a natural step, and that the theoreti-
cally better alternative of buying beauti-
ful things was perhaps not at the mo-
ment practicable.
I feel about the same way towards the
energetic activity in assembling archi-
tectural casts which marked the middle
years of the Museum. It is simply heart-
breaking to think what the cost and over-
head represented by these bulky objects
would have bought in fine originals in
those days of cheap prices. On the other
hand, the money might not have been
forthcoming for mere originals, and, had
it been, who was then capable of buying
them safely? Some day or other the
diminishing casts of the Museum will
be reassembled in some New York
Trocadero. Meanwhile they have, as
Chaucer might have said, "served their
day as for their tyme."
It is touching to realize that until
General Cesnola was made secretary in
1877, the Museum staff was the trustees.
These busy men of affairs arranged the
loaTi exhibitions, packed and unpacked
the collections in the moves from the
Dodworth building to the Douglas
Mansion, and thence to Central Park.
Naturally, the Museum got both the
graces and defects of a family enter-
prise which long clung to it and have
not yet wholly disappeared. So we must
account for the long opposition to Sun-
day opening, attained only in 1891, for
the retention of General Cesnola long
after his usefulness was past, for tardi-
ness in grasping the need of expert
curatorship.
No consideration of the Museum from
its final removal to Central Park, in 1879,
to 1904 is possible without an estimate of
that remarkable and potent character.
General Cesnola. To him everybody re-
acted positively. He was constantly at-
tacked for one reason or another. Once
he had to defend a libel suit against
his chief antagonist M. Feuardent. The
issue was whether the Cypriote things
had been bedeviled. The matter was
brought into court, but twelve good men
and true decided that the General was
without fault. At one time or another
young and hopeful newspaper critics en-
deavored to dislodge the General. Clar-
ence Cook began in 1882 and, so far as I
know, I finished in 1902. It was a fas-
cinating game, for the General was a*
broad and shining mark, but we only suc-
ceeded in binding his trustees to him
with hooks of steel.
512]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 53
The trouble with the General may be
brieflj' expressed. He well knew the
limitations of his own archaeological
knowledge, and visitor or curator, he
wanted no one about his Museum who
knew more than himself. He became a
Cerberus. Generally he lurked perdu and
very hard at work. But if you heard a
canine, or rather leonine, clamor through
the corridors, you might be sure that a
guard had caught some miscreant study-
ing the collections and had reported the
offence to the director. The cataloguing
fell into arrears, the labels were often
curious. The General was only too con-
scientious, according to his own lights.
He managed the vast and growing con-
cern with a staff of only three, exclud-
ing an occasional curator of sculpture.
Such work as Mr. Storey, Mr. d'Hervilly,
and Mr. Reynolds did was prodigious.
The late Mr. Reynolds, in particular, re-
joiced in the title of Curator of Textiles
and Classical Antiquities. Like every-
body else, he was a general utility man.
His chief business was to record and
label the exhibits. For one of his in-
dustrj', recording was child's play; he
naturally knew the location of any object
in the Museum. Labelling was a harder
matter. Often he did not know pre-
cisely what a new object was, and there
were no books in the Museum to aid him.
Whenever he brought a critical doubt
to the General the order was label it!
LABEL it! LABEL it! This naturally
resulted occasionally in such labels as
"Curious Christian Object." Mr. Storey
shared the General's antipathy to stu-
dents and the traveling connoisseur who
rechristens pictures gave him profound
distress. Of this hard-worked and abso-
lutely devoted staff, that delightful and
accomplished gentleman Mr. d'Hervilly
alone had a well-developed sense of
humor. If he has left diaries of those
heroic days, they should be incomparable
reading.
In the intervals of the vain assaults
upon the General, and partly because of
them perhaps, the Museum grew apace.
President Johnston retired in 1889, and
Henry S. Marquand succeeded him.
Twice during his administration the
Museum was substantially enlarged. A
man of fine personal taste, possessor of
one of the best general collections of his
day, lover of rugs, enamels, and choice
handicraft of all sorts, Mr. Marquand in-
troduced into the policy of the Museum
the ideal of quality. Besides numerous
collections of industrial art, he gave in
1892 fifty-three paintings of high char-
acter. "The Rembrandts, Van Dycks,
Halses, with the superb Vermeer, Turn-
er's "Salt Ash" were so many master-
pieces that required no apologies or ex-
«plaiiation. People began to realize the
difference between an art museum and
a collection of antiquities. In short, he
brought into the work the priceless ele-
ment of taste. He attached no burden-
some restrictions to his gifts. These are,
to-day, in their logical places in the gal-
leries, where they best serve the art
lover and commemorate their art-loving
donor. By establishing a membership at
ten dollars a year the support and good
will of the Museum were put on a broader
basis. Great gifts came in, the John
Crosby Brown gift and foundation for
musical instruments, the Catherine Loril-
lard Wolfe bequest of 148 modern paint-
ings with a considerable endowment, and
in 1901 the sensational bequest of over-
six million dollars by J. S. Rogers. No-
body ever heard of him. He was merely
one of the new ten dollar members.
Legend has it that he was once graciously
treated by General Cesnola, who did not
know anything about him, in a casual
visit to the galleries. If so, the General
expended his graciousness to good pur-
pose. The Rogers gift immediately put
the Museum into the first rank as a
buyer. The trustees were immediately
enabled to negotiate such purchases as
the Boscoreale frescoes and the Dino col-
lection of armor. President Marquand
died in 1902. President Rhinelander
succeeded him. No steps were taken to
make the necessary reorganization and
increase of staff. The executive capacity
of General Cesnola and his tiny staff
were taxed to the utmost merely to keep
things going. It wore down even his
energy. In 1904 he and President Rhine-
lander died within a few months of each
other. The old regime was at an end.
J. P. Morgan, colossus of art collectors,
and already a trustee and a generous
giver, succeeded to the Presidency, and
called to undertake the great work of
reorganizing the Museum Sir Caspar
Purdon Clarke of the South Kensington
Museum. He was an amiable personality,
thoroughly in sympathy with scholar-
ship, and most eager to extend the pub-
lic influence of the Museum. His own
specialty was Indian arts and crafts.
Under him the growth was largely in
the applied arts. Mr. Morgan soon put
on loan the Hoentschel collection, com-
prising the applied and decorative arts
of Europe from early in the Christian
era to the year 1800. A new wing was
built to accommodate this loan, the
greater part of which through Mr. Mor-
gan's considerate liberality, or that of
his son, was eventually given to the Mu-
seum. The ideal of comprehensiveness,
which had ever hovered before the
founders, was now relatively attained.
Sir Caspar brought into the Museum
a delightful atmosphere of friendliness
and hospitality. His courtesy to us of
the press was unlimited. He denied him-
self to no visitor. I recall leaving the
Museum with him after hours. He
showed me a portfolio which he said
contained correspondence to occupy him
at home till midnight. I pleaded with
him to interpose secretaries between him-
self and unauthorized visitors like myself
with trivial errands. He answered that
he was a public official and must see all
comers. This high if impracticable sense
of duty wore him out in three or four
years. We killed him with curiosity and
kindness. Meanwhile he had given the
Museum a genuine departmental or-
ganization. Expert curators appeared in
Painting, Classical Archaeology, Decora-
tive Art, Armor, and Egyptology; the
gigantic work of sorting, relabelling, re-
exhibiting, and cataloguing the collections
was vigorously undertaken. In all these
matters Dr. Edward Robinson, Assistant
Director since 1905, a veteran archaeolo-
gist and long director of the Boston Art
Museum, was a leading spirit. Mr. Rob-
ert W. de Forest, the new secretary of
the trustees, aided Mr. Robinson in far-
reaching plans for education and pub-
licity. A Bulletin was founded and im-
mediately attained authority among simi-
lar publications. * Skilled guidance was
provided for visitors, and an alliance
sought with the city schools. Money
poured in abundantly for acquisitions,
while the rising cost of maintenance re-
mained a recurrent embarrassment, as
it still is. Over all this presided the
genial exotic spirit of Sir Caspar, with
his South Kensington enthusiasms. I re-
call standing with him before Sir John
Millais' saccharine portrait of the youth-
ful Ellen Terry. Sir Caspar remarked
that the chromolithograph of this picture
hung in a million British homes. I hope
I seemed duly impressed. An incident
which perhaps reveals the tinge of
Philistinism in the man also shows his
real desire to make the Museum count
for the public. He was a generous spirit
glad to fill his halls and study rooms
with those who knew more than him-
self. He assiduously built up a library
and photograph collection which to-day
are models of their kind. He was keenly
conscious of his duties towards contem-
porary art. Here George H. Hearn's
splendid gift of paintings by American
artists, with a generous fund for acquisi-
tions, greatly strengthened his policy.
It meant immediate good will from an
important class of artists and art lovers,
even if in theory this selection from
modern art might better be left to an
especial institution — an American Lux-
embourg. Gifts in Sir Caspar's six fruit-
ful years were too numerous even to be
briefly itemized. Notable among them
was Mr. Thomas F. Ryan's gift of a
whole gallery of sculptures and sketches
by Rodin.
In review, the administration of Sir
Caspar seems a transitional one. His
most responsible curatorships were held
by foreigners like Roger E. Fry and
W. R. Valentiner. Both attacked their
task with zeal and knowledge, and each
had the insight to select the capable
]May 15, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[513
American successor who now holds his
place. In particular, Dr. Valentiner,
protege of that most astute of directors.
Dr. Bode, did a most valuable service in
enlisting the good will of the new gen-
eration of art collectors to the Museum.
When the war called him back to quite
different pursuits, he was sincerely missed
on all hands. When Sir Caspar died in
1910, the directorate inevitably fell to
Mr. Robinson, who had ably conducted
the affairs of the Museum during his,
chief's long invalidism.
Now is not the time to review the
recent years of the Museum. Suffice it
to say that they have been years of
aggressive and successful work in pub-
lic education, of great gifts, in particu-
lar of critical cataloguing. In fact, Mr.
Robinson's greatest work has been to in-
' sist on scholarly competence in his staff.
He has been fortunate in finding trained
curators in America, and through a sys-
tem of voluntary apprenticeship has, with
his secretary, Mr. Henry W. Kent, in-
stituted the first museum school in
America. This farsighted move has as-
sured a highly trained personnel to the
rapidly increasing art museums of the in-
terior. Mr. Robinson also set himself
to loosening the burdensome conditions
with which many of the old gifts had
been saddled. It was the custom to re-
quire segregation of such gifts, to the
destruction of all logical classification.
Generally it sufficed to obtain the consent
of heirs to the distribution of the sep-
arate collections. It soon became ap-
parent that the objects were far more
effective when put in their proper com-
pany, and also that the memorial idea
is better met by scattering through the
general collection fine objects each of
which bears the name of the donor. The
educational effect of all this was tremen-
dous. Wills like that of the late Isaac
D. Fletcher leaving his collections un-
conditionally show the new spirit. From
this point of view I regretted the ac-
ceptance of the Altman gift in 1914,
spendid as it was, and advised Mr. Rob-
inson and certain friends among the
trustees to let the alternative in Mr.
Altman's will — an independent museum
— be carried out. It was the chance to
settle, once for all, the issue of segrega-
tion, while the Altman collection, which
in its own museum would have been an
increasing joy, will now be an increasing
embarrassment. My official friends could
not grasp the truth, quite patent to me,
that no museum has reached its moral
majority which is not willing for good
reason to decline a ten million dollar gift.
Among useful extensions during Mr.
Robinson's administration have been the
new curatorships in Far Eastern Art
and in Prints. Both departments have
I developed with extraordinary swiftness
and success. The accession of Mr. Rob-
ert W. de Forest to the Presidency in
1912, after Mr. Morgan's death, has been
marked by an acceleration of the educa-
tional work of the Museum and by bring-
ing it into relations with current artistic
industries. Of its kind the Metropolitan
Museum is probably the most active mu-
seum in the world. It passes its semi-
centenary with best prospects and high-
est hopes.
If I may prophesy for its near future,
it will give up certain family practices,
natural from its origins, but now detri-
mental. It will, for example, cease to
charge its trustees with that task of
buying for which they are ill fitted. It
will, under proper controls, turn the
buying over to its trained staff, so that
prompt, energetic, and economical buying
shall be practicable. This will stop what
has been a considerable waste of money
and time. In short, the best celebration
that the trustees could make for the
Jubilee would be the abolition of their
obsolete Accessions Committee. Possibly
the best Jubilee resolution for the staff
would be a more systematic policy with
respect to growth. The Museum has
grown amazingly. The present need is
to reduce the quantity of exhibits and
increase the quality. Much of this is
being done automatically by replace-
ments. There remains to be worked out
a more definite policy towards study or
reserve collections, and a method of
utilizing for other institutions the enor-
mous mass of hidden minor treasures.
In this matter I assume more confidently
the risky prophetic role, because I know
the mettle of the Museum staff and trus-
tees. They are not men to linger in ruts
or fall back on past performance. They
celebrate the Jubilee of the Metropolitan
Museum less as laudators of its extraor-
dinary past than as men charged with
its great future.
Such growth in extent and artistic
importance as the Metropolitan Museum
has attained in its fifty years of life has
been approached only in Berlin and has
nowhei-e been equalled. It is perhaps
the most remarkable example of the effi-
cacy of American private enterprise in
the field of spirit. As an achievement
it is far more noteworthy than the great
one-man foundations. It represents an
extraordinary faith, which has indeed
moved mountains — the faith of scores
and hundreds of trustees, donors, and
officials. It represents also a noteworthy
relation of confidence and loyalty be-
tween the City and a private corpora-
tion. The City has housed and largely
maintained the Museum without inter-
fering politically with its management,
and the trustees have ever rewarded that
confidence by an unlimited devotion and
generosity. The Metropolitan is more
than a great museum; it is a peculiarly
American institution. In such coopera-
tion between the state and private initia-
tive consists our American tradition and
lies our American hope.
Frank Jewtett Mather, Jr.
Two Plans for a National Budget
TWO concrete plans for a national
budget and audit system are under
consideration by Congress. One of these
plans is embodied in the Good bill (H.R.
9783), which passed the House of Rep-
resentatives almost unanimously October
21, 1919, and in the accompanying reso-
lution providing for important changes
in the rules of the House (H. Res. 324).
The other project is to be found in the
McCormick amendment to the House
measure, reported to the Senate last
month by the junior Senator from Illi-
nois, which completely re-writes the Good
bill. In the ordinary course of events
the amended bill will go to conference,
and in due time the result will be a com-
promise budget and audit act. Should
the best features of both proposals be
retained, and the Good resolution or its
equivalent be adopted by the House,
Congress will have created a national
financial system which will combine the
most successful elements of British and
Continental budgetary procedure with
certain outstanding advantages of our
present financial practice, and which will
be wholly in harmony with American
governmental institutions.
A comparison of the Good bill with
the substitute Senate measure reveals
radical differences in their respective
provisions for two of the three phases
of governmental finance — for the prep-
aration and presentation of the annual
estimates for receipts and expenditures,
and for the checking up on the expendi-
ture of money appropriated. The most
vital of these differences is in the loca-
tion of, and the placing of responsibility
for, the budget bureau which each bill
proposes to create. The Good bill places
this bureau "in the office of the Presi-
dent," makes its director a Presidential
appointee without Senatorial confirma-
tion, and conceives it as a "mere agency
of the President" in exercising the
powers conferred upon him by the act.
"If duplication, waste, extravagance, and
inefficiency exist in any branch of the
service, the President will be responsible
for them if he includes in his budget an
estimate for their continuance," Mr.
Good says. The bureau of the budget is
to ferret out such conditions, and the
President, acting on the bureau's reports
and recommendations, is to remedy the
evils and see to it that each department
514]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 53
asks Congress for what it needs and no
more. In short, the President is to be-
his own chief financial officer, immedi-
ately responsible for the formulation and
recommendation of the annual financial
and work programme of his administra-
tion. "The primarj- purpose of the bill,"
writes its author, "is to insure the prep-
aration and submission of such a pro-
gramme by the Chief Executive."
The McCormick plan places the budget
bureau in the Treasury Department. A
commissioner and two assistant commis-
sioners of this bureau are to be ap-
pointed by the President, by and with
the advice and consent of the Senate,
and provision is made for the employ-
ment of expert and clerical assistants by
the commissioner. The latter clearly is
intended to be the chief expert in econ-
omy and efficiency in the national ad-
ministration. The amended bill provides
that it shall be his duty, "in the period
prior to, and upon submission to him, of
the budget estimates of the several de-
partments and establishments, to make
a detailed study of the organization,
activities, and methods of business of
the several administrative services of the
Government for the purpose of deter-
mining those changes which, in his opin-
ion, should be made in the existing or-
ganization, activities, and methods of
business of such services or in the ap-
propriation of moneys for the support
and conduct of the work of such services,
or in the assignment of particular activ-
ities to particular services, or in the re-
grouping of services departmentally with
a view to securing greater efficiency and
economy in the conduct of public affairs."
In outlining the method by which the
annual estimates are to be prepared, the
McCormick bill provides that one of the
assistant secretaries, or other chief as-
sistant, in each department, shall be
designated by the departmental chief to
have direct supervision of those services
which have to do with the purely busi-
ness operations of the department, to
perform the duties of a general business
manager and financial secretary, and to
supervise the formulation of all budget
estimates for the department. On or be-
fore October 1, the head of each depart-
ment, having studied, analyzed, and re-
vised these estimates, is required to
submit them to the Commissioner of the
Budget in a form to be prescribed by the
Secretary of the Treasury, together with
explanations of any requests for new
items, or for increases in old ones. All
of the budget estimates for the ensuing
fiscal year, together with the recom-
mendations of the Commissioner of the
Budget, shall be submitted to the Secre-
tary of the Treasury on or before No-
vember 1 of each year. The latter
official shall then "revise, consolidate,
unify, coordinate, reduce, or otherwise
change any item or items of the budget
estimates submitted to him by the Com-
missioner of the Budget . . . as he
may deem necessary to effect economies
and to prevent waste, extravagance, loss,
or duplication," and on or before Novem-
ber 20 shall submit the entire revised
budget to the President. Under seven
heads the bill provides that this budget
shall give a complete picture of the finan-
cial situation of the Government, past,
present, and prospective.
The President is then authorized to
"revise the budget submitted to him by
the Secretary of the Treasury, by the
increase, reduction, or elimination of
any item therein contained, by the addi-
tion of new items, which, in his opinion,
are needed for the proper conduct of
the affairs of the Government, by the
consolidation or grouping of items, or by
making any other changes ... in
any other feature of the organization and
operations of the several services which,
in his opinion, will lead to increased
economy and efficiency in the conduct of
public affairs." Then the President
shall, on or before December 10, "submit
to Congress the Budget, as revised and
approved by him, including a statement
of what, in his opinion, are the revenue
and expenditure needs of the Govern-
ment and how those needs should be
met."
It will be seen that this procedure
aims to make the Secretary of the Treas-
ury responsible for the formulation of
the budget in the first instance, and that
the budget bureau is intended to equip
him to do this work effectively. It is
the President, however, who is ultimately
responsible, because not only must he
personally decide serious issues between
the Secretary of the Treasury and the
other Cabinet officers, but he must pre-
sent the finished programme to Congress
as his own.
Administrators, legislators, and lay ex-
perts are sharply divided upon the ques-
tion whether the director of the budget
should be immediately subordinate to the
President, or to the Secretary of the
Treasury; and where the best opinion is
so evenly balanced, it is likely that either
scheme would work with a fair degree
of satisfaction. Undoubtedly, however,
one actually is preferable to the other,
and the writer believes very strongly
that this happens to be the same one
that is the more closely in accord with
the historic conception of the two great
offices involved. In the days of Wash-
ington and Adams, Hamilton and Gal-
latin, the Presidency was really an execu-
tive rather than an administrative office
— it was the office, in fact, of the Chief
Executive — while the Secretary of the
Treasury was the real fiscal officer of the
Government. As the business of the na-
tion enormously increased in volume and
in complexity, the Presidents were
threatened with inundation by an ever
rising tide of administrative and politi-
cal detail. The point was finally ap-
proached at which, as Mr. Wilson pointed
out years ago, no ordinary man could be
President and live, despite the fact that
most of the administrative functions of
the office had been "put in commission."
To-day it may be said that the degree
to which the President is to be the Chief
Executive contemplated by the Constitu-
tion, and the success with which he is
to solve the great political and adminis-
trative problems to which the world ex-
pects him to address himself, will de-
pend in large part upon his ability to
delegate to others just such administra-
tive details as are involved in threshing
out the annual estimates.
This is not to say that the loose-
jointed, uncoordinated administrative
machine with which we have become
familiar should not be tightened up, or
that the ultimate responsibility for the
efficient and economical operation of that
machine should not rest squarely upon
the President. Far from it. The first
point of articulation, however, should be
somewhat below the White House. In-
stead of decreasing the responsibility ox
the President, this would increase it, be-
cause it would throw into clearer perspec-
tive the greater issues in which alone
he would have to intervene, while at the
same time he would be equally subject to
criticism should he offer a work and
financial programme carelessly prepared
as to details.
In proposing to make the Secretary
of the Treasury the initial point of ad-
ministrative articulation, the McCormick
bill conforms to the practice of almost
every other nation, and with the old feel-
ing that our Secretary of the Treasury
is, or should be, the chief financial min-
ister of the Government. And if it de-
parts from the popular conception of
equality between the members of the
President's Cabinet, it is far more nearly
in line both with American traditions
and with public sentiment to-day to con-
fer definitely stated and universally un-
derstood powers upon one of our great
established political officers than to
create a new functionary, with undeter-
mined status, powers, and responsibility,
and to trust to events to establish him
in satisfactory relations with the Presi-
dent, the Cabinet, the Congress, and the
country. This, beyond cavil, is what the
Good bill would do. It has been said
that the new official would become the
administrative, as the existing private
secretary to the President has become
the executive, or political, secretary to
the Chief Executive. It is self-evident
that in any event he would be either one
of the most powerful men in Washing-
ton or little more than a high-priced
clerk — aut Caesar aut nihil. Is the crea-
tion of such a functionary based upon
sound principles' or upon American tra-
May 15, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[515
ditions? Would it commend itself to
the American people?
The McCormick amendment differs
from the original Good bill also in pro-
. viding that the commissioner and the
I two assistant commissioners shall be ap-
pointed for six-year terms, one to be
selected every second year. This method
of appointment will compel a certain
permanence and continuity in the direct-
ing personnel of the budget bureau, and
at the same time it recognizes the poten-
tially political character of the offices.
While no new administration can make a
clean sweep of the commission, it can
ultimately name two of its members, and
it is hoped that the arrangement will
mean practically a permanent tenure for
commissioners who are both expert and
non-partisan.
In providing for the creation of an ac-
counting department, an establishment
independent of the executive departments
and under the control and direction of the
Controller General of the United States,
both the Good bill and the McCormick
amendment offer definite plans for ac-
complishing the third step in the proc-
esses of national finance. Both abolish
the offices of Controller and Assistant
Controller of the Treasury, and of the six
auditors for the several departments, and
centralize in an accounting department
the auditing and accounting functions
which are now performed by various
agencies in the Treasury and other de-
partments; both provide for an inde-
pendent audit of the accounts of the
Government by officials responsible to
Congress and not to the President; and
both require periodic and special reports
to Congress covering all matters relating
to the receipt and disbursement of funds.
It is thus expected that Congress will be
able to ascertain financial and other con-
ditions in the departments from an in-
dependent source, instead of having to
be content with the evidence of officials
and employees of the executive services
themselves.
The chief differences in the accounting
departments contemplated by the two
bills lie, first, in the organization and
tenure of the staff of higher officials,
and, secondly, in the distribution of func-
tions within the department. The Good
bill provides for a Comptroller General
and an Assistant Comptroller General,
who, though appointed by the President,
by and with the advice and consent of the
Senate, can be removed only by concur-
rent resolution of Congress, after notice
and hearing, when "inefficient, or guilty
of neglect of duty, or of malfeasance in
office, or of any felony, or of conduct in-
volving moral turpitude, and for no other
cause and in no other manner except by
impeachment." The retiring age for both
officers is fixed at seventy years. Under
the Senate amendment the Comptroller
General and three Assistant Comptrollers
General would be appointed by the Presi-
dent, with Senatorial confirmation, for
five-year terms, one being appointed each
year, and would be removable "only for
cause." If the object of Congress is to
create an auditing agency which will
be independent of executive control, or
even of the suspicion thereof, and, so far
as possible, "out of politics," there can
be no question but that the Good plan
is far superior to that of Senator Mc-
Cormick. And certainly a non-partisan,
independent auditing and accounting of
national financial transactions is not only
in accord with the best theory and prac-
tice the world over, but is what is de-
sired by both Congress and the Ameri-
can public to-day.
As to the distribution of functions and
responsibility, the Good plan follows the
British precedent in concentrating au-
thority in the Comptroller General, while
the McCormick substitute prescribes in
detail the functions of each of the higher
officials of the accounting department,
and even sets up an additional board of
appeals to review decisions of the First
Assistant Comptroller General as to the
validity of accounts or claims against the
Government. It is to be gravely doubted
whether this decentralizing of power and
responsibility will result either in greater
fairness and honesty, or in higher effi-
ciency in the performance of the func-
tions of the department.
The passage of either the Good or the
McCormick measure, or of a compromise
bill, will be a great advance towards
governmental economy and efficiency in
the United States. But no budget re-
form will be more than half complete
until the financial procedure of the House
of Representatives is thoroughly over-
hauled. "Congress will not perform its
full duty by requiring the executive de-
partments to adopt business methods if
it refuses to lay down the same rule for
the transaction of the business properly
coming before it," declared the Good com-
mittee in laying before the House its
resolution providing for drastic reforms
in the financial procedure of that body.
The adoption of this resolution, or its
equivalent, will, in fact, be the real test
of the good faith of the House in its
almost unanimous expression of an ar-
dent desire for a national budget sys-
tem. Not unnaturally, the resolution has
been held over pending the passage of
the budget bill, and during the interim
the House should be made to understand
that if it values its reputation for intelli-
gence and common honesty it can not
afford to dally or to take half measures
in this matter.
The Good resolution makes three
changes in the rules of the House: (1)
It centres in one Committee on Appro-
priations, composed of 35 members, the
authority to report all appropriations,
and takes from the Committees on Agri-
culture, Foreign Affairs, Indian Affairs,
Military Affairs, Naval Affairs, the Post
Office and Post Roads, and the Commit-
tee on Rivers and Harbors the authority
now vested in those committees to report
appropriations; (2) it provides means
for limiting the power of the Senate to
increase appropriations; (3) it permits
the raising of a point of order at any
time on any appropriation item carried
in any bill or joint resolution reported
by any committee not having jurisdiction
to report appropriations. The commit-
tee reporting the Good resolution ob-
serves :
It is at once apparent that the principal
change proposed in the rules of the House is
the one centering all appropriations in a single
committee. . . . The adoption of this resolu-
tion will permit the Committee on Appropria-
tions, consisting of 35 members, to divide its
work between the subcommittees which it will
create, so that the budget can come before Con-
gress in one measure. The consideration of
that measure will involve a full and compre-
hensive discussion in Congress of the big prob-
lem of government finance. The financial obli-
gations of the Government viewed in this way
will have a tendency to sober the temper of
Congress when it comes to passing legislative
bills that may mean the taking up of new
Government activities which will require future
appropriations.
The Good committee did not overstate
the importance of the reform which it
has proposed. For years the multi-
plicity of appropriation committees has
been recognized as the centre of the
vicious circle of Congressional finance.
The proposed changes will break this
circle. In addition they will make pos-
sible a great debate upon the entire policy
of the Government as expressed in its
financial programme, and will afford op-
portunity for effective Congressional
criticism of the Administration. It will
permit Congress to become, to some ex-
tent, what the Mother of Parliaments
always has been, the "great inquest of
the nation."
The committee considered the advis-
ability of adopting the cardinal point of
British financial procedure by which the
Government estimates may be reduced
but may not be increased by the legis-
lature, and upon sound grounds decided
against the change. For Congress to
bind itself not to appropriate any money
not requested by the executive would be
to abdicate one of the clearest duties im-
posed upon it by the Constitution, and
to sweep away what remains of the
separation of powers which is at the base
of our governmental structure. The
limitation under which the House of
Commons acts in appropriating money is
workable only as a part of the parlia-
mentary system, or in a despotism. If it
is desired to introduce it into the United
States the proper way is by a revision
of the Constitution, not by Congressional
act or resolution.
Ralston Hayden
»16]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 53
Correspondence
The Pope on Socialism
To the Editors of The Review :
I enclose herewith a translation made
bv a friend of mine, a Jesuit Father, of
a" letter dated March 11, 1920, written
by Pope Benedict to the Bishop of
Bergamo. I thought this might interest
your readers as being of very recent date
and being an authoritative definition of
the attitude of the Catholic Church
toward Socialism and its explanation of
the "varieties of orders in civil life."
L. F. L.
New York. May 7
Venerable Brother:
At the outset we wish all to know that
the course which you have recently
taken has our most hearty approbation.
When the din of arms had been quieted
and the masses had gone back to their
work which had been interrupted, you
held a council in your diocese and
founded an office for promoting the in-
terests of the various classes of work-
ingmen. This is an institution which
is truly excellent and is destined to bear
good fruits, if it is governed by right
principles, which are those taught by re-
ligion. Else what disturbance of the
state it may cause is only too manifest.
Those who are at the head of such an
institute on which the safety of the
state greatly depends, before all must
ever keep before their eyes and most re-
ligiously follow the doctrines of Christ-
ian wisdom on the social question which
have been set forth in the memorable
Encyclical Rerum Novarum and in other
letters of the Apostolic See. Let them
bear in mind especially the following
principles: in this race of life, which is
short and subject to miseries of every
kind, no one is permitted to be per-
fectly happy; happiness true, absolute,
and eternal, as the recompense for a life
well spent, is held out for us in heaven;
to that all we do must look; this is the
cause why we must take more care of
our duties than our rights; yet also in
this mortal life it is right to eliminate,
as far as we can, hindrances of our
happiness and to seek to better our con-
dition; nothing promotes the common
welfare more than the concord and
hearty cooperation of all classes ; and the
greatest of conciliators is Christian
Charity. Therefore let the leaders see
how ill considered for the good of the
workingmen are the schemes of those
who, while promising to better their
condition of life, proffer themselves as
helpers only for gaining possession of
these frail and fleeting things, and not
only neglect to moderate their minds
by admonitions about their Christian
duties, but make them more hostile to
the rich, and do this with that violence
and bitterness of language by which
men alien to us have had the habit of
stirring up the multitudes to overthrow
civil society. Venerable brother, to avert
this great peril, it will be the part of
your vigilance to admonish all who are
truly seeking the interests of the work-
ingmen as you have placed them in office
to do, that they must keep far from the
intemperance usual in the words of So-
cialists and that they must infuse a deep
Christian spirit into all their work for
action and propaganda in defense of this
cause. If they fail in this spirit, they
may do great harm to the cause, cer-
tainly they can do no good for it. It is
a pleasure for us to hope that all will
heed your words. But if any one shall
refuse, without hesitation you will re-
move him from the office which you have
entrusted to him.
But those who, through the munificence
and beneficence of Providence, have re-
ceived more must give more for this pro-
posed Christian elevation, as it is called.
All who are eminent by their station in
life or by their mental culture must not
refuse to stand by the workingmen with
their counsel, influence, voice. In their
dealings with workingmen, those who
have abundant wealth must not exact
extreme justice but follow the rule of
equity. We even earnestly urge them in
this to show themselves indulgent and,
so far as they can, to make generous
and liberal concessions and remittances.
How fittingly fall on their ears the
words of the Apostle to Timothy:
"Charge the rich of this world to give
easily, to communicate to others." By
this means the minds of the poor which
have been alienated by belief in the
greed of the rich, will be gradually rec-
onciled to the latter. However, those
whose station and fortune are inferior
must understand well that variety of
orders in civil society arises from nature
and in the end is derived from God's
will: "for He made the little and the
great" (Wisdom VI. 8), and He did
this most fittingly for the welfare of
both individuals and the community.
Let them be persuaded that no matter
how high they may rise to better things,
by their own industry and the aid of
the good, there will ever remain for
them, as also for other men, no small
portion of sufferings. Whence if they
are wise, they will not aspire in vain to
things higher than they can reach, and
they will endure quietly and constantly
evils which they can not escape, for the
hope of blessings which are everlasting.
Therefore, we beg and beseech the
citizens of Bergamo to be consistent
with their past filial love and reverence
for this Apostolic See and not to let
themselves be deceived by the fallacies
of men who promise wondrous things
and by these promises seek to tear them
away from the faith of their fathers, so
that afterwards they may be able to
drive them to use violence and inaug-
urate universal confusion and disorder. ,
The cause of justice and truth is not de-
fended by aggressive violence and the
subversion of order. Those arms are of
such a nature that those who use them
wound themselves the most grievously.
Against such pernicious enemies of
Catholic faith and civil society, it is the
duty of priests and especially of the
pastors to contend with bravery, hearty 1 1
union with each other, and zealous obe- II
dience and reverence towards you, ven-
erable brother. Let none of them think
that this is a matter which is alien to
the ministry of their sacred order be-
cause it is economic, for in this matter
itself the salvation of souls is in peril.
Whence, we wish them to count this
among their duties, to contribute all the
study, vigilance, and labor they can
exert, to social training and action, and
to cherish with every kind of aid those
who in this matter are working for our
advantage. But at the same time they
must both diligently teach those en-
trusted to their care the precepts for a
Christian life and inform them about
the deceits of the Socialists and aid
them to increase their estates, always,
however, inculcating the lesson taught by
the constant prayer of the Church: that
we may so pass through blessings which
are temporal that we may not lose those
which are eternal.
Senator Weeks on Lodge
and Wilson
To the Editors of The Review:
I am enclosing my check for five dol-
lars to renew my subscription to the
Review, which I have read with interest
and with which I have generally been
in agreement.
As I am writing for the above pur-
pose, I can not refrain from saying a
word about the correspondence which you
have been publishing relating to the con- ,
duct of the League controversy in the |
Senate, commencing with Mr. Beck's '
letter and followed by many others. I
am especially led to make this comment [
in justice to Mr. Lodge, who has been |
many times charged with playing poli-
tics in connection with the League con-
troversy, a charge which is renewed by
Mr. Putnam in your number of April
24, in which he quotes Mr. Lodge as
having said, "I am fighting Mr. Wilson."
Whatever may be said pro or con in
regard to Mr. Lodge's conduct of the
Senate's consideration of the League, it
is unthinkable to anyone who knows him
that he should have ever used that ex-
pression or anything similar to it; be-
cause such a statement would be beneath
>[ay 15, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[517
even the cheapest politician, to say noth-
ing of a statesman of long experience and
international reputation. As a matter
of fact. Senator Lodge has specifically
denied having made such a statement,
and I feel confident that he has not only
never said it or anything like it, but has
never even thought it.
Very few who have not had e.xperience
in a legislative body can appreciate the
difficulties of steering an important bill
through the maze of differences of opin-
ion which exist, not only in obtaining a
definite result, but in keeping the dis-
cordant elements in a temper to finally
permit positive action. Senator Lodge's
success in this controversy has been most
notable and has been commented on
favorably by nearly everyone who has
had occasion to follow the Senate's action.
My belief is that it will, in history, be
considered the most notable achievement
he has ever accomplished in a long and
distinguished career.
The real difficulty has been with the
President himself, who maliciously mixed
the League with the Treaty and who has
been unwilling to even make the conces-
sions which the Allies were willing to ac-
cept. I do not think it is unfair to him
to say that it is the general opinion that
he has been governed in this whole
controversy by personal considerations
rather than his country's best interest.
John W. Weeks
Washington, D. C, May 8
Senator Lodge and Sinn Fein
To the Editors of The Review:
My first impulse after reading Mr.
Beck's letter in the Revieiv of April 10,
finding you had printed it without com-
ment, was at once to enter the lists in
your behalf. Second thought gave as-
surance that more powerful hands than
mine would pick up the gage: Major
Putnam's letter and your own editorial
in the issue of April 24 leave nothing to
be desired, except in one important
particular. Mr. Beck quotes your in-
dictment :
Mr. Lodge has shown himself neither a
larKe-minded statesman nor a competent party
leader, and he has given countenance to many
abominable moves in the game.
and adds,
This would have been more convincing if
you had given any specifications for so severe
a criticism of one of the most experienced
and scholarly statesmen now in the public
life of this country.
Assuredly Mr. Lodge's support of the
"Irish Republic" was "an abominable
move in the game," and I agree with Mr.
Beck to the extent that it should receive
very specific mention. It is the more
ine.xcusable precisely because he is "one
of the most experienced and scholarly
statesmen," none knowing better than
he the consequences to be expected from
such action. The immediate result of
the move, desired and obtained, was of
course the detachment of Senator Walsh
from his party. But the far more seri-
ous result was to give to the Sinn
Fein conspiracy a footing in practical
politics which it could hardly have at-
tained without Mr. Lodge's support.
Apart from all considerations of ordi-
nary decency towards a friendly nation,
in view of our close relations with Great
Britain and the obligations we have been
placed under since 1914 owing to our
lack of preparation against war, Mr.
Lodge's attitude seems peculiarly base.
To what lengths he is willing to go in
support of Sinn Fein hatred of England
and the efforts to embroil us in a war
of unimaginable horror it is hard to say.
Meanwhile let him give a thought to the
growing strength of the Loyal Coalition
— and its votes — and reflect whether
there are not more of us who are ready
to fight our Irish-American enemies than
our British friends.
Harold B. Warren
Cambridge, Mass., May 4
The War and French
Students
[The w'riter of this letter is the head of the
famous ficole Normale Superieure. He is a
member of the French Academy and one of
the leading historians of France.]
To the Editors of The Review:
Last October a series of special en-
trance examinations was held for the
returning soldiers. We were all very
curious to know how our young men
would acquit themselves after the inter-
ruption in their studies occasioned by
the war, and we were prepared to be
rather indulgent. Now let me give some
of the results of these examinations, as
handed in to me by the examiners.
In the department of philosophy, the
average mark "is superior to that ob-
tained in previous Normal School exami-
nations," reports one of my colleagues,
"the candidates showed a solid acquaint-
ance with their subject and, above all, a
real strength of expression, proofs of
their having followed a life full of varied
experiences which had made their young
minds exceptionally mature."
In history, the candidates "thoroughly
comprehended the questions and an-
swered them with precision, some of the
young men showing a really surprising
maturity of thought, while numbers of
them expressed themselves with vigor
and authority."
The report concerning the Greek ex-
amination contains a rather amusing re-
mark. The author translated was that
very Attic orator Lysias, whose text the
candidates somewhat modernized, and
we found in their papers such up-to-date
words as conference, congress, meeting,
etc. Some of the students dispersed
headlines through their paper "The Ar-
rival of the Fleet at the Seaport of
Piraeus," "The Treason of Theramenes,"
etc. All this was not very Attic and the
examiner could not always suppress a
smile; but his report reads: "Superior
qualities, maturity of mind, good judg-
ment, decision of character, very re-
markable qualities of manliness."
The examiner in Latin has been in the
habit for several years of deploring the
falling off of interest in that study. But
this year he is delighted and declares
that the examination "has given him the
joy of a real surprise."
In French "the examination reached a
remarkably high standard, most of the
candidates displaying a maturity of mind
and a firmness of judgment worthy of
the greatest praise."
The examiners show a tendency to feel
rather blue about the German papers,
whereas for the English ones they are in
the best of moods, "the candidates falling
in with the spirit of the text and employ-
ing an English which is as clear as it is
idiomatic."
This testimony, which I might give at
still further length, is very interesting
in itself, since it shows that our French
universities and high schools will have
capable young professors in the future
as in the past, facts which I recommend
to the consideration of our pessimists at
home and to our friends and fellow-pro-
fessors in foreign parts who sometimes
may have doubts as to our future.
Ernest Lavisse
Paris, France, March 11
The Wits of Queen Anne's
Time
To the Editors of The Review:
To professors of English literature
desperate for a mode of approach that
will interest undergraduates in the wits
of Queen Anne's time, I suggest this en-
try in Swift's Journal to Stella, March
27, 1713:
"I went afterwards to see a famous
moving picture, and I never saw any-
thing so pretty. You see a sea ten miles
wide, a town on t'other end, and ships
sailing in the sea and discharging their
cannon. You see a great sky with moon
and stars, etc. I'm a fool."
A little timely pep might be added by
citing a letter to Swift from Colonel
Robert Hunter, Governor of New York,
March 14, 1713:
"Here is the finest air to live upon
in the universe, and if our trees and
birds could speak, and our assemblymen
be quiet, the finest conversation too.
Fe.rt omnia tellus, but not for me."
Fert omnia tellus, but not for us
either, alas.
S. B. G.
University of Nebraska, April 3
518]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 53
Book Reviews
An Undiplomatic Diplomat
Recxeation. By Viscount Grey of Falloden,
K. G. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
TVTHEN war broke out in 1914, nat-
W ural and universal curiosity was
excited regarding the representative
men of the belligerent nations, in whose
hands lay the fate of the world. Our
newspapers and magazines teemed with
articles and illustrations. Among the
faces of warriors, kings, and statesmen,
there was none more fit to haunt the
memor>' than the face of the British
Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey.
The eyes had the black, cavernous depth
of Foe's, of Foe's beholding in proces-
sion all the images of terror from his
wild tales pass before him. It was the
face of a man seeing a ghost, a million
ghosts; and nearly a million of his
countrymen were to die by war before
five years were gone.
The personality behind this mask of
horror was a riddle to friends and foes.
The man chosen by a great nation to
deal with friendly, rival, or hostile
Powers knew no language but his own,
and never left his native island. Now,
if Buffon's adage has any truth in it,
this enigmatic man has revealed himself
in a little book of some forty printed
pages. Last year he delivered an ad-
dress at Harvard on recreation, certainly
not a tragic theme, which is now
published for the benefit of a wider
audience.
Of artifice, literary, or any other, in
the plan or style, there is not a trace.
The writer begins at the beginning, an-
nouncing his subject, recreation, in the
first paragraph; he goes on to the end,
and then stops. The diction is plain and
simple, almost to the point of baldness.
There are no flights and no flowers. An
occasional touch of quiet humor bright-
ens the discussion of a serious topic in
a serious way. The age is a pleasure-
seeking age; whether it finds pleasure
is another matter. Recreation is not the
most important thing in the world; but,
wisely taken, it makes for happiness.
Games, sport, gardening, reading, as
forms of recreation, are treated briefly,
the obvious advantages of each being
pointed out in a few words. Disciples of
Izaak Walton will judge with charity
the confession of his passion for fishing.
In October I used to find myself looking
forward to salmon fishing in the next March
and beginning to spend my spare time think-
ing about it. I lay awake in bed fishing in
imagination the pools which I was not going
to see before March at the earliest, till I felt
I was spending too much time, not in actual
fishing but in sheer looking forward to it. I
made a rule, therefore, that I would not fish
pools in imagination before the first of Janu-
ary so that I might not spend more than two
months of spare time in anticipation alone.
This is not the tortuous utterance of a
modern Metternich; it is frank, human,
almost naive, the admission of an en-
thusiasm.
There is nothing new in his advice
about reading. There can not be, at this
time of day. He recommends poetry and
philosophy, but does not wish to force
them upon the reluctant. His own se-
lection of books for recreation is first.
Gibbon, then, a classic novel, then, a
"modern" work, not closely defined. Plato
he read at Oxford without much appre-
ciation ; but, in his riper years, he found
that the great Greek seemed to "kill"
other philosophical writers. He could
not find the same pleasure in them.
Perhaps the most interesting feature
of this address is the account of his out-
ing in England with Mr. Roosevelt. It
is used to enforce his advice about plan-
ning one's recreation ahead. Before
Mr. Roosevelt started on his famous
travels in Africa, he planned to be in
England in the spring, in order to hear
the song of certain birds. Viscount Grey
took him down to Litchborne, at the ap-
pointed time, and the birds did not dis-
appoint the distinguished pair. Very
English was the Englishman's fear that
his visitor might be bored. He thought,
"Perhaps, after all, he will not care so
very much about birds, and possibly
after an hour or so he will have had
enough of them. If that be so and he
does not care for birds, he will have
nothing but my society, which he will
not find sufficiently interesting for so
long a time." It is equally character-
istic of the American temperament that
Mr. Roosevelt was not only keenly in-
terested in the English song-birds but
he had informed himself about them
before coming to England, and needed
only to hear them, to complete that de-
partment of his knowledge.
Towards the close of the address, the
style rises above its natural and delib-
erate plainness. In speaking of Nature
the Consoler, he expresses what so many
have felt during the war.
Our feelings were indeed aroused by the
heroism of our people, but they were also de-
pressed by the suffering. In England every
village was stricken, there was grief in almost
every house. The thought of the suffering, the
an.xiety for the future destroyed all pleasure.
It came even between one's self and the page
of the book one tried to read. In those dark
days I found some support in the steady
progress unchanged of the beauty of the sea-
sons. Every year, as spring came back unfail-
ing and unfaltering, the leaves came out with
the same tender green, the birds sang, the
fldwers came up and opened, and I felt that
the great power of nature for beauty was not
affected by the war. It was like a great sanc-
tuary into which we could go and find refuge
for a time from even the greatest trouble of
the v/orld, finding there not enervating ease, but
something which gave optimism, confidence,
and security.
And the eyes which took such delight
in the visible world are now dim.
An English poet made his heroic Eng-
lish King describe himself as "a fellow
of plain and uncoined constancy." The
phrase describes Grey of Falloden. To
his enemies, he was the arch-deceiver, .
of more than Machiavellian craft, he was
"Liar Grey." He did indeed deceive, but
it was because he always told the truth,
and could tell nothing but the truth.
Apart from its matter, this little book
is a triumph of the American printer's
art. Type, paper, dimensions of page,
press-work, binding, would make it a dis-
criminating bibliophile's treasure, had
it no other merit.
Archibald MacMechan
Vachel Lindsay, Edgar Lee
Masters, and Others
The Golden Whales of California. By
Vachel Lindsay. New York: The Mac-
millan Company.
Starved Rock. By Edgar Lee Masters. New
York : The Macmillan Company.
The Coat Without a Seam. By Helen Gray
Cone. New York : E. P. Button and
Company.
Chords from Albireo. By Danford Barney.
New York : John Lane Company.
Picture-Show. By Siegfried Sassoon. New
York : E. P. Button and Company.
Georgian Poetry, 1918-1919. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons.
RESISTANCE to Mr. Vachel Lindsay
is eventually futile. One is glad of
its futility. Something in me that
actively questioned or passively antag-
onized his spell has given way before the
"Golden Whales of California." Who
can resist an inundation? The "Golden
Whales" is a triumph of individuality.
To advise men indiscriminately to trust
their own natures is a little as if one
should advise them indiscriminately to
bet on their own horses. Everything de-
pends on the horse; everything depends
on the nature. But when a nature that
is trustworthy is trusted, and requites
the trust, the spectacle is refreshment
and delight to the beholders. The
"Golden Whales" brings to me my first
clear and unqualified acknowledgment of
the greater Lindsay.
In this writer there have always been
two elements: the poet, and what I shall
unceremoniously, but not disrespectfully,
call the urchin. The poet is a gentle-
manly poet; the urchin is a good fellow,
but he is a little boisterous, a little mis-
chievous, more or less unkempt and
unshod, and his life is an unending Hal-
lowe'en. If the neighborhood has been
more amused than shocked at his pranks,
it has also been more amused than edi-
fied; it has not taken him so very seri-
ously. The poet and the urchin lived
apart; they could not find each other.
They have found each other, in my judg-
ment, in the "Golden Whales," and their
meeting is the signal for Mr. Lindsay's
emergence into the upper air of song.
.Alay 15, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[519
Let me cite the first lines in the book :
Yes, I have walked in California,
And the rivers there are blue and white,
Thunderclouds of grapes hang on the moun-
tains.
Bears in the meadows pitch and fight.
(Limber, doublc-joinlcd lords of fate,
Proud native sous of the Golden Gale.)
And flowers burst like bombs in California,
Exploding on tomb and tower.
And the panther-cats chase the red rabbits,
Scatter their young blood every hour.
And the cattle on the hills of California
And the very swine in the holes
Have ears of silk and velvet
And tusks like long white poles.
And the very swine, big hearted,
Walk with pride to their doom
For they feed on the sacred raisins
Where the great black agates loom.
I think that is a passage in which
Wordsworth, himself rather Lindsayan
in his reckless combination of the
Apocalypse and Mother Goose, would
have heard "old Triton blow his
wreathed horn." This is the very splen-
dor and festival of the grotesque, the
union of the infantije (in no depre-
ciatory sense) with the gigantic; giants,
by-the-by, are the special property of in-
fants. It is the day before creation with
the materials for the mighty enterprise
littering the sky-floor with their tumbled
riches; and if there is a smack of the
banjo or of the bagpipe in the accom-
paniment of the morning stars, that, for
the making of a world like ours, is only
an added seasoning and congruity.
The third poem, quite as captivating,
though less poetical, is "John L. Sullivan,
the Strong Boy of Boston." I have never
read a poem quite like "John L. Sullivan,"
a poem which catches a civilization in its
net, or, more exactly, strings a civiliza-
tion, in the giant beads of a motley but
somehow magnificent necklace, on the
bright thread of its lyric joviality. The
poet calls the time provincial, "dear pro-
vincial 1889," and he is right. But it is
an uncompelled, a chosen, provinciality,
the country life of a man who owns a
house in town. Mr. Lindsay, American,
Illinoisian, Springfieldian, as he intrep-
idly and riotously is, has affiliations with
the universal. If your goal is the centre
of the earth you may start as well from
Springfield, Illinois, as from Paris,
Petrograd, or Cairo. Even the poet's
Bryanism has sonorities in which the
chords are sempiternal. He heard in
that movement "time-winds out of Chaos
from the star-fields of the Lord." The
poem from which I quote with its clang-
orous and marching title of "Bryan,
Bryan, Bryan, Bryan" is printed or re-
printed in the culled and discerning
pages of the new-born London Mercury.
That fact has a kernel.
I quite agree with Mrs. Marguerite
Wilkinson, critic of poetry for the New
York Times, that Mr. Masters is of all
contemporary poets the most difficult to
review. "Starved Rock" is the sort of
book that should furnish promptings and
incitements to the wakeful, or even to
the drowsy, reviewer, yet I have rarely
felt so unprompted, so unincited, as in
its presence. Critics do not like to con-
fess that they are baffled, or even wor-
ried; yet I was on the point of making
either one or both of these confessions
when the review that I wanted to write
broke upon me in its luminous entirety.
Perhaps I shall review the man rather
than the book, but "Starved Rock," as
Mr. Masters himself tells us, is an emi-
nence from which one overlooks the sur-
rounding country.
Mr. Masters is a man of undoubted
ability, though much of his output is less
than able. He is even a man of un-
doubted poetical ability, though much of
his ability is not poetic. But the imper-
fection of his culture, the want of self-
discipline, the mixture of indolence and
assiduity, evinced in the lavishness of his
untrammeled outpour, the entertainment
of vague faiths and aspirations which
his skepticism cramped and chilled, but
could not extirpate, the prompt, facile,
and uncritical responsiveness to the
movements confusedly afloat in the tur-
bid air of a distracted age — all these
things are indications of a mind whose
organization nature did not quite com-,
plete. The mind is not quite equal to its
job; its works are approximations.
But, it will be said, what about "Spoon
River"? The question is a probing one.
"Spoon River," whatever its faults or
limitations (and its faults are serious
and its limitations trenchant), is pos-
sessed of certainty. Its poetry may be
questioned, but its faculty for business,
its executive thoroughness, is incontest-
able. • The fitting of means to ends, the
coincidence of design and achievement,
is consummate. Some timely incentive,
some favoring circumstance, perhaps the
Greek Anthology, perhaps Mr. William
Marion Reedy, gave Mr. Masters for once
that property in his subject which his
later volumes have proved to be inter-
missive and exceptional. It is this dif-
ference between the man and his chief
work that makes him a puzzle and plague
to the reviewer. Mr. Masters found in
"Spoon River" what all writers need —
a method that protected him from him-
self. In freedom he would have gone
astray, but he bound himself, like Odys-
seus, to the mast. The misfortune of his
later work has been the absence of some
astute counsellor to warn him when to be
deaf — and when to be dumb.
In "Starved Rock," the reader will not
starve, though he will scarcely feast.
There are the usual monologues, of which
only two are slimy; there are the dis-
coveries of the desirability of doing what
you please — discoveries in which Mr.
Masters has been anticipated by the
savages and the pterodactyls. There are
bulky and hazy philosophies, cosmicisms,
idealisms, feeble sedatives for bitter
griefs. There is an excellent bit of jour-
nalism, self-described in the title, "Saga-
more Hill," in which the lugubriousness
that lies in wait for Mr. Masters in the
intermissions of his onslaughts is hap-
pily relaxed. There are landscapes of an
alluring but unsatisfying picturesque-
ness, a picturesqueness that seems mainly
verbal, whose horizons are the edges of
the page. There are instances of that
lyric pliancy and invitation which sur-
prise the ear among the ruder notes
of Mr. Masters, and there are rare
moments of true inspiration like the
following :
Change now is yours beyond the waters, nights
Of waiting and of doubt have dimmed desire.
Our hands are calm before the dying fire
Of lost delights.
Babylon by the sea knows us no more.
Between the surges' hushes
When on the sand the water rushes
There is no voice of ours upon the shore.
Miss Helen Gray Cone has a substan-
tially perfect technique. The possessor
of a perfect technique is a being set
apart, not only among capable poets, but
among supreme poets. The great are
rarely perfect: to which charge a retort,
if not a rebuttal, might be found in the
assertion that the perfect are rarely
great. The highest originalities are not
open to Miss Cone, but her feeling is
delicate and true, and, in all the agita-
tions of the late war, there is no tremor
in the mounting flame. Her work should
find its own public, and even the lordly
public that looks askance at poetry of this
type should be sensible of the vigor in
the two stanzas which I quote:
The world is a broken ball,
Stained red because it fell
Out of bounds, in a game of kings,
Over the wall of hell:
And now must the spirit of man
Arise and adventure all —
Leap the wall sheer down into hell
And bring up the broken ball.
It is the object of Mr. Danford Bar-
ney's "Chords from Albireo" to evoke
moods rather than impart ideas — such is
the purport of Mr. Lawrence Mason's
tentative but laudatory preface. In a
word, we, as gentlemen and men of taste,
are not to protest if Mr. Barney is unin-
telligible. To this I think the simple but
sufficing answer is that poetry is a
branch of literature, that literature is a
mode of speech, and that men speak to
be understood. Mr. Barney's moods are
conveyed to Mr. Mason by sounds. But
if words generate ideas and sounds gen-
erate moods, and Mr. Barney prefers to
give us moods without ideas, the conse-
quence is plain : he should give us sounds
without words ; "Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we,
to-witta-woo" should be the formula for
his poetry.
I spent ten times as much mental ef-
fort on Mr. Barney's "A Woman Pass-
ing" as I should have spent on an equal
quantity of Tennyson or Wordsworth.
520]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 53
Now if one is striving to reduce the part
of the understanding in the reception of
poetrj-, surely the oddest of all conceiv-
able methods that one could choose to
accomplish that result would be — to in-
crease its burdens. I have a simple,
wholesome, rustic notion that if a man
works a horse, he should feed it. My
complaint against Mr. Danford Barney
is that my understanding is a horse
which he overworks — and starves. All
this would not have been worth saying
in this place, had Mr. Barney been desti-
tute of poetical capacity.
The critical and the uncritical public
seem united in their admiration for the
poetrj- of Mr. Siegfried Sassoon. When
habitual dissidents agree, perhaps the
dissenter from both should hold his
peace. I am, moreover, entirely willing
to concur with both these publics in the
admission that Mr. Sassoon's strong,
simple, honest detestation of war is a
manly thing which manhood the world
over should esteem. War brightens in
the prospect and softens in the retro-
spect so much that we need to keep by
us a man for whom war is everlastingly
in the present tense. When it comes to
sheer poetry, however, I find in Mr.
Sassoon but two outstanding merits, a
feeling for phrase and a sense of the
occult, both present in the degree which
redeems verse from insignificance with-
out lifting it to distinction. His literary
judgment is singularly undeveloped.
I stood with the Dead, so forsaken and still;
When dawn was grey I stood with the Dead
is an excellent beginning for one kind
of poem. "'Fall in!' I shouted; 'Fall
in for your pay !' " is a passable conclu-
sion for another kind. But the use of
the two as beginning and ending of the
same poem indicates that the author is
"unlesson'd, unschooled, unpractis'd" in
his own art. The one poem which I am
inclined to except from the gravamen
of these strictures and restriction is
called "Sick Leave," and is found, not
in "Picture-Show," but in "Georgian
Poetry, 1918-1919."
To this "Georgian Poetry" my final
word pertains. I read the first number
of this anthology years ago with un-
feigned admiration. The same qualities,
the same authors, reappear in part in
the current volume, but my admiration,
though not dead, does not recover its old
alacrity. These poets have unquestion-
able merits. From the infirmities of the
later and lesser Victorians their libera-
tion is complete. They hate the gen-
eral, the banal, the trivial^^all of which
are sound and righteous hatreds. In
phrase they love the condensed and the
concrete — both of which are virtuous
and salutary loves. But there is a con-
trast, if not a conflict, between their
temper and their ideal. Their temper
is calm, measured, resolute — almost an
eighteenth century temper. Their ideal
is the vivid, the striking, the extreme —
almost an Elizabethan ideal. Naturally
enough, their eighteenth century temper
is not quite at home in the handling of
this Elizabethan ideal. Hence the vivid-
ness, which is by no means altogether
wanting, comes to reside less in the ideas
than in the language, less possibly in the
language than in the vocabulary. Their
dictionary is as dynamic as Shake-
speare's, but their style isn't. Their
watchword is deliberate intensity. That
is not an unpromising watchword; it
made the Divine Comedy. But in Dante,
in whom incandescence was the normal
state, the deliberation did not chill the
intensity. In England, under George the
Fifth, the dissipation of heat proceeds
more rapidly.
0. W. Firkins
Two Major Fabulists
Woman Triumphant (La maja desnuda).
By Vicente Blasco-Ibaiiez. Translated
from the Spanish by Hayward Keniston.
With a Special Introductory Note by the
Author. New York: E. P. Dutton and
Company.
Treacherous Ground. By Johan Bojer.
Translated from the Norwegian by Jessie
Muir. New York : Moffat, Yard and
Company.
THESE books are the result of a
natural process which, after we have
been more or less fortuitously "landed"
by some new foreign genius, promptly
picks us up and puts us in the basket.
They are minor as well as earlier pieces
of work. But the authors, in this case,
think them worth our trouble and even
worth some special gloss at their own
hands. The Spaniard supplies an intro-
duction to the English version, and the
Norwegian replies in full to the queries
of a reviewer for the New York Evening
Post. So we know what each of them
intended by his book and what he thinks
it means.
"Woman Triumphant" is recalled by
its writer as a novel which caused "a
scandalous sensation" when it appeared,
many years ago, in Spain. It was
thought to be a sort of libel or satire
on two well-known figures in Madrid
society. The introduction defends it
against this charge as well as against a
possible charge of immorality. In fact,
its treatment of sex matters is cautious
by comparison with much that we are
getting from English-writing contem-
poraries. To a point, its matter is
familiar. A young painter at the turn-
ing of his career marries a good but
Philistine woman. For a time he bows
before her as the embodiment of Beauty.
But she is jealous of what she perceives
to be the true object of his worship.
She turns him from his destined fulfill-
ment as a painter of the nude, and forces
him to become a fashionable success, as
a maker of portraits. Her jealousy still
feeds itself on suspicion of his sitters;
and the time comes when it is justified.
A somewhat notorious beauty with a
fatuous husband becomes his mistress.
Thus far we tread a familiar path. It
is with the wife's death that the im-
portant action begins, a purely mental
and spiritual or, as the slang goes, psy-
chological action. If I ever re-read any
of this book, it will be the hundred
pages of Part III ; the earlier parts might
be summed up in two paragraphs. The
author's interpretation of the tale is un-
consciously confined to the conclusion:
It must be borne in mind that the woman
here is the wife of the protagonist. It is the
wife who triumphs, resurrecting in spirit to
exert an overwhelming influence over the life
of the man who had wished to live without
her. . . . Renovales, the hero, is simply
the personification of human desire, this poor
desire which, in reality, does not know what
it wants, eternally fickle and unsatisfied.
When we finally obtain what we desire, it does
not seem enough. "More, I want more," we
say. If we lose soniething that made life un-
bearable, we immediately wish it back as in-
dispensable to our happiness. Such are we :
poor, deluded children who cried yesterday
for what we scorn to-day and shall want again
to-morrow; poor, deluded beings plunging
across the span of life on the Icarian wings of
caprice.
In such a mood does the author re-peruse
and expound his tale. It is not his de-
termining mood, or there would be no
great public for him. And it is not the
determining mood of his story. For
what moves us in it is that for all their
blundering and wantonness, something
real and abiding has sprung from the
union of Renovales and his maja. In this
the woman triumphs, and life triumphs
through her.
"Treacherous Ground" was written in
1908. Blasco-Ibaiiez has recently said,
"Johan Bojer is a Maupassant of the
North, an impassioned, rapid thinker,
with Latin clarity . . . Such a fiery,
passionate way of telling a story." One
might as well declare Blasco-Ibanez a
Bojer of the South. Bojer has had his
Gallic phase, and owns to an early dis-
cipleship of Zola. But his clarity is the
northern clarity and his passion the
northern passion: his is the cold fire of
the North. He is of the race of Ham-
sun, of Nexo, of Lagerlof — above all, of
Ibsen. "Treacherous Ground" is very
much in the Ibsen tradition. Like "The
Face of the World" and "The Great
Hunger," it shows an idealist and y
dreamer faring hardly in his contact '
with "life." Here, though, we take in
a way the negative side. Erik Evje is a
self-deceived dreamer, a sentimentalist,
selfish like all his kind, who confounds
egotism with idealism. He tries various
pursuits, the church, medicine, labor re- ■
form, and finds them in turn unworthy
of him. He has an old mother at home
on their remote estate who is ready to
turn over everything to him. Very well.
May 15, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[521
he will be a reformer and philanthropist
in his own country. But his schemes for
the improvement of his fellow-men are
tangled up in conceit and indolence. His
beneficiaries are to become his victims;
and for him there is nothing left but
drink. The tale has the bite and "follow
through" of an Ibsen play, a "Wild Duck"
or an "Enemy of the People." It lacks,
accordingly, the rich sympathy of "The
Great Hunger." As for its idea or moral,
Bojer has given his own elucidation of
it. Erik Evje's Nemesis comes when,
confronted with his folly, he sacrifices
everything rather than "lose his crucifix,"
and so "be alone with his sins. He feels
responsible for the sins he has himself
committed, but he is not willing to as-
sume responsibility for the ideal which
has put the welfare of a number of
human beings at stake . . . Tyranny
does not always appear in royal purple.
The greatest tyrant is the dreamer who
tries, come what may, to reform the
world in accordance with his own dreams.
I tried in 'Treacherous Ground' to create
a concrete example of a dreamer who is
a tyrant. I had in mind an idealist who
is an egoist, an uplifter who tries to
forget his own sins by charging them up
to society."
Read, O liberator, 0 new-republican,
0 freeman and denational — read, and
perpend !
H. W. BOYNTON
"Him of Cordova"
Seneca. By Francis Holland. New York :
Longmans, Green and Company.
MR. HOLLAND'S biographical essay,
originally designed to preface a
translation of Seneca's letters to Lucilius,
is now allowed to appear "on the chance
that here or there some readers may be
found to share my interest in the sub-
ject." His full and agreeably written
narrative of the life of the philosopher-
statesman should win readers for Seneca.
And if Mr. Holland's translation of the
Epistles is not to be published, Dr.
Gummere's version in the Loeb Library
is at hand. What Mr. Holland ought to
do is to publish a not too bulky volume
of extracts. Skilfully excerpted and ar-
ranged, the world which has taken so
kindly to Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius
would quickly find a place in its heart
for Seneca. For he, like them, and like
Socrates before and Bacon and Addison
since, was successful in bringing philoso-
phy from the clouds and home to men's
business and bosoms.
If the present age is indifferent to
Seneca, and except as he figures in the
scholarship of the Elizabethan drama it
unquestionably is indifferent, it is the
first of twenty centuries so minded. To
preceding generations the very contrasts
presented by his life made him absorb-
ingly interesting. Preacher of poverty.
he was many times a millionaire: advo-
cate of simple living, he was virtual
ruler of the world; asserter of personal
integrity and independence, he truckled
to a Nero when he could no longer con-
trol him. Only in his death, calmly open-
ing his veins and stepping into a warm
bath to hasten his sluggish blood, do
precept and practice come together. Sup-
posed correspondent of St. Paul's (his
charming and accomplished brother
Gallio, at any rate, came into personal
contact with the Saint at Corinth) he
is hailed as more Christian than the
Christians; a later age condemns him
as an atheist. Extravagantly praised and
imitated in his own day for his pointed
style — his modernity — he is despised in
the next generation for his vulgarity
and verbal antics. In the whole range
of letters it would be hard to find a
man who has been more admired, at-
tacked, patronized, laughed at, and af-
fectionately read than he.
Viewed as a part of an ideally recon-
structed classical world, Seneca is neither
a large nor a brilliant figure. In tragedy
he seems hardly to belong to the genuine
Roman tradition of Ennius, Accius, and
Pacuvius; probably even as a writer of
rhetorical tragedy Ovid surpassed him;
as a metrician he is nothing by the side
of Horace. As a philosopher he can not
stand with Cicero in sweep and con-
tinuity; in a history of Stoicism even
on a large scale he is dismissed with
scant notice. In every view he is
epigonal, second-rate, a little tawdry,
sensational when he is not cold, dry,
staccato. He is of the Silver Age. But
as the Roman world recedes, Seneca re-
mains a promontory long discernible, a
sea-mark by which the hardy spirits of a
later world laid their course back to
Rome. Dante gladly admitted him to
the "philosophic family." Chaucer read
in his works, and for the Middle Ages
generally he pointed many a moral. Over
the new birth of tragedy he presided:
it learned to walk with his stride, to
mouthe with his voice, and some tricks
of his gait and utterance never quite left
it. Plutarch was his only rival in
Montaigne's affection. The Epistles to
Lucilius come more nearly than anything
else to anticipating the modern familiar
essay. "How could it be (as that worthy
oratour sayde) but that walking in the
Sonne . . . yet needes he mought be
sunburnt." So the dedicatory Epistle to
Spenser's "Shepheards Calender," con-
cerning its author. It does not seem to
have been noted that the "oratour" here
referred to is Seneca. They are many
who have taken rhetorical color from his
brilliance.
As a figure in modern literature Seneca
is more lastingly significant than as a
classic. His face is toward the New
World. Columbus is said to have set
sail with a verse from the "Medea" on
his lips, and Governor Bradford, dis-
mally coasting the shores of New Eng-
land in the Mayflower, is reminded of an
apt passage in the Epistles. Seneca's is
one of the few voices of antiquity to be
raised in behalf of slaves and in con-
demnation of the shows of the arena,
facts of which students of Elizabethan
drama who think of him only as the
author of some peculiarly bloody and
sensational plays ought sometimes to re-
mind themselves. Mr. Holland is prob-
ably wrong to deny to Seneca, in passing,
the authorship of the tragedies, only to
attribute them to another man of the
same name. The verses of Sidonius
Apollinaris which distinguished between
Seneca the philosopher and Imperial
counsellor and Seneca the tragedian may
very well owe their origin to a misun-
derstanding of Martial's line about the
two Senecas, father and son. With the
exception of the "Octavia," we need not
deny them to their traditional author.
And even in the case of the "Octavia,"
usually ruled out because Seneca himself
appears as one of the characters, a strong
argument has very recently been made
for conceding its rightful membership in
the canon where the tradition of full fif-
teen hundred years has accorded it a
place.
Into the long and interesting story
of Seneca's literary fortunes it is no
part of Mr. Holland's task to enter. He
is placing the story of his life against
the background of Julio-Claudian Rome.
His tone is that of a discriminating apolo-
gist. Apologist of some sort it is now
almost impossible not to be; it is Seneca's
misfortune that the Roman history which
has come down to us was written from
the point of view of his enemies, while
the writings of his friends have perished.
For some things in his career apology
is not easy; his flattery of Claudius, for
instance, whose "Pumpkinification" he
later celebrated, contained in his "Con-
solation to Polybius" which he wrote
from his Corsican exile. The philosopher
may have professed the whole world his
home, but the man knew where grew the
vines his hand had pruned. As for his
conduct toward Agrippina, the task of
managing such a pair as the daughter
of Germanicus and her precious off-
spring, Nero, asks a little charity in the
judgment. No man who both preached
and practised so much as Seneca could
avoid standing occasionally in apparent
contradiction with himself. In both he
was a practical man rather than heroic
and profound. But even his enemies
credit him with giving to Rome the best
government she enjoyed under the Em-
pire. And his philosophy, designed to
render a man superior to the assaults of
fortune, was good doctrine for the
troubled days which followed. It is not
without significance for ours.
Harry Morgan Ayres
522]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 53
The Run of the Shelves
"From Friend to Friend" (Button) is
the title of a small book of final reminis-
cences from the pen of the late Lady
Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter. The book,
which is copious on Mrs. Cameron, Mrs.
Sartoris, and Mrs. Fanny Kemble, is
sown with greater names. It is more
enjoyable than many books of reminis-
cence, which seem to lack matter, and
to be pinched and downcast in their
genteel poverty. Lady Ritchie abounds
in good-humor, a quality which most of
us are more disposed to like than to
praise. She writes happily, is really
fond of people, never seems to have made
the Thackerayan discoveries that the
smile of hostesses is veneer and that the
smile of life is that of the hostess. Both
smiles are occasionally real; perhaps both
were real for Lady Ritchie. She possesses
style of a kind, though in what nook or
chink of her unpretending English it
takes up its shy abode we should need
an analyst to tell us. An epoch says
"Good-bye" to us in these closing
reminiscences of a prolonged and gra-
cious life. Why are we so kind to
departing individuals, even to departing
nobodies and bores, while we seem to let
even fruitful and worthy epochs perish
without commemoration or regret, "un-
houseled, disappointed, unaneled"?
M. Albert Waddington, correspondent
of the Institute and professor at Lyons
University, says in the preface of his
"Histoire de Prusse" (Paris : Plon) that
"there is no history of Prussia in
French," and adds: "I have taken as
my model what M. Lavisse and his col-
laborators have so well accomplished, and
I have tried to do in a more modest way
for Prussia what they have done for
France." He then thanks a half dozen
German scholars "for their precious aid."
But this volume, which is to be followed
by four others — in fact, the second has
just appeared — was published before the
war. Speaking of himself, the author
says in an unpublished letter:
I was born at Strassburg just ten years be-
fore the city was lost to France, and sorrow
over this forced separation from Alsace-Lor-
raine caused my thoughts to dwell continually
on the hope of their eventual return to France.
This desire decided me, as soon as I was old
enough to choose a career, to make a special
study of Germany in general and of Prussia
in particular, in order to be in a position to
enable my fellow countrymen to understand
better those who had vanquished us, and to
perform the task in such a way that while I
brought out their grave faults— rapacity, per-
fidy, and pride— I would not hide their good
qualities — love of order and discipline and
work. So I spent two years in residence and
study in Germany, and all my teaching in the
university has been in modern history, espe-
cially in the history of the Germanic nations.
We should add, in order to complete
this autobiographical note, that during
the war M. Waddington served as an
interpreter and won the croix de guerre,
and that M. Waddington's family rela-
tionships, connect him with Madame
Waddington, known to all readers of
Scribner's; to the late Eugene Schuyler,
to Colonel Harjes of the Morgan house,
and to young Jean P. Waddington, a
Cornell graduate, who won honors on the
western front.
One of the causes of the intense hatred
for the Germans which exists in France
is due largely to their ruthless destruc-
tion of the churches, and this feeling is
kept alive by the frequent publication
of books and pamphlets on this subject,
in which the illustrations speak to the
popular heart even more keenly than
does the text. One of the finest of the
modern provincial churches of France
was that of Notre-Dame de Brebieres, at
the little town of Albert in Picardy. In
"Une Glorieuse Mutilee" (Paris: Bloud
and Gay), the cure. Abbe Gosset, tells
the sad story of its destruction, and two
score photographs, depicting the edifice
as it was in 1914 and as it is now, drive
home the bitter words of this indignant
prelate, and may awaken a desire in the
reader to help increase the subscription
for its restoration.
A new Section of the Oxford "Eng-
lish Dictionary on Historical Principles"
(London: Humphrey Milford) has just
appeared. It covers a part of the letter
V and is edited by Dr. W. A. Craigie,
who treats 1,571 words, 222 of which are
now obsolete and 65 alien or not fully
naturalized. The vocabulary is pre-
dominantly of Romanic origin, and con-
sists largely of adoptions of, or forma-
tions on, common Latin words and stems.
Many of these are found with little
change of form, in all the modern Ro-
manic languages. Italian has contrib-
uted a few words, including vista, viva,
and volcano. The native English element
is represented by only one important
word, vixen. Of words from remote
sources, is the American negro voodoo.
It is curious that vote was before 1600
almost exclusively in Scottish use. The
lack of obvious meaning in vouchsafe
was no doubt the main cause of the
extraordinary variety of forms and spell-
ings in which it appeared down to the
sixteenth century. Dr. Craigie gives
over fifty examples of this. Under
vivisection and its derivatives, the cam-
paign in England against this practice
comes out interestingly in the illustra-
tive quotations for which this dictionary
is famous. Thus, under Voltairean and
its derivatives peculiar life is given to
the definitions by having them asso-
ciated with the names of Gladstone,
Morley, Carlyle, Canon Liddon, and Mrs.
Browning.
Impressions de Voyage II
Thrice have I been in Manila while the
Spanish flag flew over these islands and
twice since that flag was replaced by the
Stars and Stripes. Even since my last
visit, more than nine years ago, tre-
mendous changes and improvemente have
been effected.
Manila was a horrid but picturesque
pest hole in the '90's. Its streets were
largely mud ruts in the wet season and
narrow, dusty passages during the North
East monsoon, and the gutters were the
only sewers. Now, however, all are
paved and kept in excellent order; sewers
have been constructed ; fairly good water
from the hills has been introduced to
take the place of unsanitary surface
wells. The moat about the old Span-
ish walled city, breeding ground for
mosquitoes, has been filled in to make a
pleasing public park and golf links. The
mosquitoes, which once swarmed in vast
clouds, are hardly to be seen at all. The
city has grown enormously, chiefly, of
course, in the suburbs. Everywhere are
handsome and spacious buildings of an
excellent architectural style either com-
pleted or in course of erection. Rein-
forced concrete seems to be the favored
material.
There is but little visible of the former
Spanish element. Only at rare intervals
can a purely Spanish face be recognized.
Indeed the chief, possibly the only, trace
left of the Spanish occupation is in the
rule of the road — still to the left. The
fashion in native male costume used
to be a pina shirt worn outside the
trousers a la Dicky-Dicky-D'out. It sur-
vives in but occasional instances; Euro-
pean garb, as a rule of white cotton, is
now the vogue. In the country the old
costume is more often seen. Formerly
the inhabitants invariably surrendered
the sidewalk to their Spanish masters.
Now they take pleasure in crowding
Americans into the gutter. They
interpret liberty and equality rather
disagreeably.
We had three delightful days and four
cool nights at Baguio, the summer cap-
ital, some five thousand feet up in the
hills of northern Luzon among the pines.
There is nothing even in British India
superior, if indeed equal, to Baguio,
which was laid out by Mr. D. N. Burn-
ham, the landscape architect; although
it lacks Simla's background of towering
snow-capped Himalayas, beside which
Baguio's peaks seem mere hills.
The approach is by a road which zig-
zags up a picturesque gorge. As we
climbed steadily upwards in a motor we
passed many groups of Tagalogs leading
dogs to the Sunday market to be sold as
a delicacy to the Igorotes who troop in
once a week to Baguio from districts be-
May 15, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[523
yond. In spite of their gastronomic
idiosyncrasies and their scant attire, we
found ourselves inclining to the general
belief that these Igorotes are a better
and more virile lot of men than the Taga-
logs, known to us usually as Filipinos.
To reach Baguio one takes the narrow-
gauge railway which runs due north for
about 120 miles from Manila over a great
alluvial plain. At Dagupan the change
was made to automobile. It may be that
we made the journey at a season when
the rice fields are purposely left fallow.
Whatever be the cause, it was rather
depressing to contrast their deserted ap-
pearance with the throngs that crowd the
streets of Manila. Another explanation
for the absence of any signs of cultiva-
tion throughout hundreds of square miles
of paddy may lie in the governmental
regulation of the price of rice, which has
so discouraged the farmer as to force
him to turn his attention to the raising
of sugar and tobacco, where he encoun-
ters no administrative check.
The general opinion, as I gathered
from Americans with whom I talked, is
that the Filipinos are incapable of self-
government. This harsh judgment may
or may not be true. Derisive comment
is made on certain measures passed at a
recent special session of the Philippine
Legislature, such as granting a large
pension to this person or that or a huge
cash gratuity to another, the provision
for the acquisition by the State of 80
per cent, of the stock of the Manila
Railway. The Government is importuned
to help in the financing of a hanging
garden surpassing that of Babylon in
size and magnificence, while the ordi-
nance by which the Government takes
over all oil wells is soundly berated. But
we Americans should be in a better posi-
tion to find fault if our own legisla-
tive record were more nearly flawless.
What effect on Philippine prosperity
would follow our withdrawal and the
stoppage of annual disbursements of, I
understand, thirty-odd millions of gold
dollars for naval and military purposes
can only be conjectured. "If you do so,"
I am told, "the different races would be
cutting each other's throats without de-
lay and the Moros would move into
Manila. At least America should keep
a military force here to protect the
Philippines." It may sound brutal but I
advocate giving the Filipinos their com-
plete liberty — say after five years' notice.
If it is worth having, it is worth fighting
for. Whether they are or will be grate-
ful for all we have done for them, or for
the vast sums of good American money
spent for their direct and indirect ben-
efit, I can not pretend to say. At least,
we shall have done our full duty by these
wards of ours and have achieved an ap-
proving conscience.
Caspar F. Goodrich
Manila, P. I., March 21
EDUCATIONAL SECTION
English Grammar Schools
The Manchester Grammar School. Alfred
A. Mumford, M.D. New York: Long-
mans, Green and Company.
THOUGH the sudden impetus given to
education at the beginning of the
fifteenth century resulted in the found-
ing of many grammar schools, few of
them have survived the vicissitudes of
four centuries with the stability of the
Manchester Grammar School. One learns
of the existence of a grammar school at
Stratford because Shakespeare may have
gone there; DeQuincey, on the other
hand, was little more than an incident
in the long and honorable history of the
school at Manchester. Not that there
were no dark periods, with rather pa-
thetic efforts to fumble through to the
light; but the significant thing is that
the school did always emerge, and that
its latest emergence was a consciously
constructive effort, without fumbling.
Dedicated to the education of the
common people of Manchester, it never
permanently forgot its true character, in
spite of yielding to occasional tempta-
tions to imitate the more comfortably
successful schools of an "exclusive" type.
When the education of the common
people in the last half of the nineteenth
century came into its own, the Man-
chester school was therefore well adapted
to take a prominent part in the national
scheme. It now numbers above a thou-
sand boys and goes on with an accumu-
lated force which is almost as strong, in
its special field, as the social tradition
of Eton or Winchester.
The composition of the school at the
present time is interesting. Fifteen per
cent, are "free placers," while another
forty per cent, come from the public
elementary schools, some of them, how-
ever, paying the "capitation fees" of il5
a year after they enter the Grammar
School. The other boys come from vari-
ous preparatory schools and, with only
a few exceptions, pay the fees. There is
thus established what in America would
amount to a combination of the virtues
of the public school and the private day-
school, with an evident elimination of
many of the defects of each.
The present character and composi-
tion of the Manchester Grammar School
are naturally more intelligible when
one has some knowledge of its growth
through four centuries. Dr. Mumford
rightly therefore gives considerable at-
tention to the history of the school. His
pages show an affectionate interest that
reveals intimacy with the history of non-
conformist Manchester and long hours
spent among the quaint records of the
school library. Perhaps on this account
the author is led, especially in the early
chapters, to a profusion of detail which
could be of interest only to an "old boy"
of the school. Indeed, some of it hardly
justifies itself even on these grounds.
The early history of the institution,
meagre and rather insignificant, is
padded out with irrelevancies. Heavy
and not wholly accurate ecclesiastical
history (the reader is given the im-
pression, pp. 21-23, that all England went
Calvinistic in Elizabeth's time), consid-
erable space given to Grotius because an
old copy of his works reposes in the
school library, special attention to the
founding of the Manchester almshouse, —
these and similar digressions swell the
early chapters to forbidding bulk; while
the "barring-out" (p. 130) might have
appeared to the author less deserving of
special comment if he had recalled that
even the gentle Joseph Addison took part
in a barring-out and that Dr. Johnson
dismissed it as "a savage license, prac-
tised in many schools, towards the end
of the last (17th) century." The volume,
to be sure, is in one sense a sort of
memorial, and so might be justified in its
digressive bulk, were it not for the
avowed purpose of showing how the
school was in the van of democratic de-
velopments in education. It is of more
than local interest, the author tells us,
"because of the constantly repeated ef-
forts which have been made from its
foundation to free the school from the
limitations of its own age and period
and keep it in touch with the wider
needs of society." The parts of the book
which deal with these efforts are of
distinct value to anyone interested in
education.
The school, founded by Hugh Oldham
in 1515, came near extinction during the
fifty years after the death of its founder.
The feoffees appear to have heeded little
the hope of Oldham that the sons of
Merchant Adventurers and tradesmen
should be brought up "in virtue, cun-
ning, erudition, literature, and good man-
ners." With the appointment of Dr.
Cogan to the high-mastership in 1583,
however, the school renewed its vigor.
The chief study at this time was of
course the classics, but music received
much respectful attention — an attention
worthy the consideration of modern ed-
ucators. The school grew steadily with
the advance of the Puritan movement;
situated in a centre of non-conformist
activity and connected through it with
Leyden and Dutch scholarship, it took a
position of more than local importance
and began to send poor boys to Oxford
and Cambridge. During the following
century it fared less well. Naturally
the new interest in science found sup-
port which was lacking at the more
aristocratic foundations, and the Wes-
524]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 53
leyan Revival had a quickening eflfect on
the school and its neighborhood, but the
easy-going rationalism which settled over
most English institutions of learning
during the eighteenth centurj- gradually
dissipated the traditional fervor that the
Manchester school had inherited from its
Puritan days. This and the increasing
popularity of the more exclusive board-
ing-schools resulted in a decrease in
numbers which in the Tory days of
George IV amounted to a serious men-
ace. The Rev. Jeremiah Smith, high-
master from 1807 to 1837, sought to stem
the tide by remaking the school into "a
high-class boarding-school," with strong
Church and King leanings and with
preparation for the universities a main
feature. This course, though tempo-
rarily successful, ran counter to the
character of the school, and Lord Cot-
tenham's decree in 1839 forbidding uni-
versity "exhibitions" to boarders was
followed in 1848 by a final decision
that boarders be abolished altogether.
All the older trustees resigned; things
looked black for the school. This de-
velopment, however, was really a mercy,
for it threw the institution back to its
natural course, and the genius of F. W.
Walker, high-master from 1859 to 1876,
built out of the confusion a school able
to fit later without great difficulty into
the national scheme of education.
The last chapter of Dr. Mumford's
book contains much valuable material.
As he was for a long time medical ex-
aminer at the school, his testimony
against military training in secondary
schools is important. Other valuable ex-
pert testimony is that given in regard
to the irregular development of the
Bethlehem
Bach Festival
May 28th, 4 p. tn. and 8 p. m.
CanUlBi and Motel
May 29th, 1.30 p. m. and 4 p. m.
M*u in B Minor
LEHIGH UNIVERSITY
Bethlehem, Pa.
Applkatioos are inriled (or u Initractonhip in
Franch and Spanish. Stipend, $2000 or $2200
with the »uninier ichooL Young Canadian or man of
I ^m orifiiu preferred, but applicant! mutt ipeak both
la^nmea and have had college experience in teaching.
Letten, with reieienca and recommendation!, may be
lent to the Dean, Dr. W. Sherwood Fox, Weat-
em Uoiveraity, London, Canada.
Concerninf radical readjtiatment l>etween the peoplea:
"The Brotherhood of Man"
Thj» book br Dr. A. R. L. Dohme is an earnest study
of (eneral economic and political conditions. Dr.
Dolime concludes with an interesting practical outline
{or a World State and new human relationships.
Br mail, SI. 10.
THE NORMAN, REMINGTON COMPANY
PubiUhars - Baltiaora
adolescent. A sort of summary of his
evidence is found in the following
sentences :
All vital activities, whether bodily or mental,
have as a phvsical basis the setting free of a
stream of energy. Their growth does not
increase bv steady and gradual stages coinci-
dent with the calendar age of the child or the
adolescent, but by fitful and somewhat erratic
leaps whose height as well as whose time of
appearance vary greatly. With the full onset
of adolescence a great and sudden increase of
energy output usually takes place, which may.
be restricted to one or few of the functional
systems of the body or may be uniformly
diffused, though this is rare. The rate of de-
velopment of one system or function by no
means affords a guide to that of another, and
violent forcing the pace of any system will be
accompanied by injury, the appearance of
which will be delayed but will not be prevented,
for. in the absence of unusual vigor, precocious
growth involves premature decay.
This of course is not a new discovery,
but it states clearly as well as authori-
tatively a point to which educators have
so far given quite insufficient heed.
Walter S. Hinchman
The Stock Exchange
and the "Corner
in Stutz"
IN the matter of the New York Stock
Exchange and the "corner" in the
stock of the Stutz Motor Company, the
undisputed facts appear to be as follows :
1. The stock of the company— 100,000
shares — was listed on the Exchange and
regularly dealt in on the "floor."
2. In March of this year a spectacular
rise took place on the price of the stock
and the character of the dealings in it
was such as to attract the attention of
the "Committee on Business Conduct."
This body is a sub-committee of the
Board of Governors of the Exchange,
which is charged with the duty of ex-
ercising general supervision over the
business methods and practices of mem-
bers.
3. Investigation by this committee dis-
closed the fact that Allan A. Ryan, a
member of the Exchange and head of
the firm of Allan A. Ryan & Co., per-
sonally owned 80,000 shares of Stutz
Motor stock and that "he and his family,
friends, and immediate associates owned
or had contracts for the delivery to them
of stock aggregating 110,000 shares, or
10,000 shares more than the entire capi-
tal stock of the company" (official state-
ment of the Governing Committee of
the Exchange published April 17, 1920).
4. The "Committee on Business Con-
duct" thus became officially aware of
the existence of a "close corner" in Stutz
Motor stock. It thereupon informed
Ryan "that the situation must not con-
tinue; that he alone was in a position to
put an end to the corner and must take
whatever steps were necessary to do so."
(Ibid.)
5. The statement of the Governing
Committee continues as follows: "The
situation did not improve and no effective .
steps were taken by him" (Ryan) "to
end the corner. At the meeting with
the Business Conduct Committee on the
morning of March 31, Mr. Ryan stated
the terms on which he was willing to
settle. Those terms were $750 per share.
The Exchange itself had no power to
settle the outstanding contracts or fix
the terms which would be proper for
settlement. At the joint meeting of the
Business Conduct Committee and the
Law Committee on the afternoon of the
same day, he stated $500 as his settlement
figure. He was informed that even in
case of a settlement the question must
be raised whether the stock must not
be stricken from the list because it
was not sufficiently distributed to pro-
vide a free and open market. He at
once declared that unless he was assured
that the stock would be allowed to re-
main on the list and that no action would i
be taken in respect thereto, he would not "
settle for $500 and that his settling price
might be $1,000 or more. The Business
Conduct Committee and the Law Com-
mittee at once reported the facts to the
Governing Committee, and the Governing
Committee by unanimous action adopted
the resolution suspending dealings in
Stutz Motor stock." (Ibid.)
6. The effect of this action was to
prevent the rules of the Exchange from
being used by Ryan to make the "shorts"
settle under penalty of "insolvency" un-
der the rules and consequent suspension
from membership in the Exchange.
On April 5 Ryan "at his own request"
(ibid.) appeared before the Low Commit-
tee of the Exchange and made another
offer of settlement, which settlement was
to be made with the Exchange Commit-
tee and enforced by the Exchange upon
its members. The Law Committee de-
clined to enter into negotiations with Mr.
Ryan. It held the view that all ques-
tions arising out of contracts relating to
Stutz Motor stock were to be settled be-
tween the parties to those contracts
. . . (Ibid.)
8. The issue was thus fundamentally
joined. Ryan's position was one of de-
manding that the Exchange Committee
should make a settlement on behalf of
the "shorts" — and enforce this settle-
ment upon them — and that thereafter
Stutz Motor stock should remain on the
"list." The Exchange Committee's posi-
tion was that the matter was one which
concerned the parties to the contracts
and that it was not its business to ar-
range a settlement of the contracts; also
that it could not allow its rules to be
made the means of enforcing what was
admittedly a close "corner"; also that
(Continued on page 526)
May 15, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[525
iRa€iKiBiBt\^MiliiibEjtS«MM^
Niag"ara's Rival /or
Dependable Po"
Still
Leading
Professor Crocker and Dr.
Wheeler were the first to apply
generators to not only the tele-
phone and telegraph — but later
to the wireless.
In 1919 the U. S. Govern-
ment adopted Crocker-Wheeler
Motor Generators for wireless
in conjunction with aeroplanes
in both naval and land use.
^jMjLJ-^3.^^
President
Crocker- Wheeler Co.
Ampere, N. J.
New York
Boston
Syracuse
Chicago
Cleveland
Birmingham
Pittsburgh
Newark
New Haven
Philadelphia
Baltimore
San Francisco
ROMAN ESSAYS AND INTERPRETATIONS
i^v W. Warde Fowler SS'iS
The ripe fruit of a long life of scholarship are these papers
dealing with a variety of subjects in Latin literature and myth-
ology which will interest the folklorist, the student of com-
parative religion and the general reader as well as the classical
student.
POLITICAL IDEALS
An lissay
By C. Delisle Burns $r.8n
This, the third edition, has been corrected and brought
up to date, and two new chapters have been added, one on
Democracy and the other on the League of Nations.
MEDALS OF THE RENAISSANCE
By G. F. Hill Net $25.00
A splendid book covering the entire field of medallic art,
both Continental and English, during the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries, valuable alike as a reference work and for
its fine illustrations. It should be noted that the medals fig-
ured here have for the most part not been previously illus-
trated while references are supplied to many hundreds of
pieces illustrations of which are to be found in other works.
DIPLOMACY AND THE STUDY OF
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
By 'D. P. Heatley Net $3.75
An attempt to portray diplomacy and the conduct of for-
eign policy from the standpoint of history. In the history
of diplomacy we see the fruit for each age in treaties which
express the movements of thought and mark the development
of conventions that are widely recognized.
At all Boosellers, or from the Publishers.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
AMERICAN BRANCH
35 West 32d St., New York ^^y
New edition just published
THE OLD FARMER
AND HIS ALMANACK
By GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE
.riv+^os pages Fully illustrated $3.00
If it is true, as it seems to be, that the progress of our
country has been largely determined by the spirit and
energy of New England men and women, one may claim,
without fear of gainsaying, a position of some dignity for
this unpretentious annual, the Old Farmer's Almanac,
which has, in its successive issues, been their secular
manual of faith and practice for so many years. Profes-
sor Kittredge takes one or another feature of the early
issues as the starting point for each of his chapters, and
with additions from his own marvelous stores of knowledge
draws an entertaining picture of life in Colonial days.
The antiquary, the historian, and the plain "gentle reader"
will find it a book to read again and again for facts as
well as amusement.
AT ALL BOOKSHOPS
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
7 Randall Hall, Cambridge,
Mass.
19 East 47th Street,
New York City
Please mention The Review in writing to advertisers.
526]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 53
THE HUDSON COAL CO.
CELEBRATED
LACKAWANNA
THE ARISTOCRAT OF ANTHRACITE
1823
1920
HAS NATURAL QUALITIES AND MAN-MADE REFINEMENT
D. F. WILLIAMS
Vice-President and General Sales Agent
W. F. SHURTLEFF
Assistant General Sales Agent
SCRANTON, PA.
(Conttmied from page 524)
it could not properly admit to dealings a
stock which was virtually all owned by
one man, for there could not be a free
and open market in it while its owner-
ship was thus concentrated.
The entire affair was thus removed
from the direct purview of the Exchange.
After nearly three weeks of manoeuvring,
a "voluntary settlement" was reached be-
tween Ryan and the "shorts," on April
24, by which the "comer" was dissolved
and the episode ended. During this
period Ryan "resigned" his membership
in the Exchange — his "resignation" has
not as yet been acted upon by the Ex-
change authorities^and the Stutz Motor
Company withdrew its stock from the
Exchange list.
Comment upon the affair has naturally
been widespread. Eliminating from the
discussion everything but the facts, it
is interesting to note the principles in-
volved and to test in the light of those
principles the propriety of the course of
action followed by the Exchange. The
case is interesting because of its unique
character. There have been "comers"
in the past, some of which (as in 1901)
have developed accidentally and some of
which have been carefully engineered.
But the Stutz case is the first wherein
an absolutely "close corner" has been
brought officially to the attention of the
Exchange authorities and offered to them
for adjudication at an early stage of the
operation. The important questions are :
Did the Exchange authorities take proper
action? What principles are involved?
First as to Stock Exchange rules:
These rules require that stock which is
sold shall be delivered on the following
day before 2:15 p.m., that if it be not
delivered by the sellet to the purchaser
before that time, it may be publicly
"bought in under the rules" by the pur-
chaser for account of the seller and that
failure on the part of the seller to de-
liver stock due, or to pay for stock so
"bought in," is an act of insolvency which
involves suspension of membership on
the part of the defaulter. Also under
the rules stock may be borrowed and
must be returned to the lender upran de-
mand made by him upon the borrower,
and if not so returned may be "bought
in under the rules," as in the case above
described, with precisely the same con-
sequences. Failure to "return" stock or
to pay for stock "bought in under the
rules" by the lender is an act of in-
solvency involving suspension of mem- ,
bership.
WTien admission was made to the Busi-
ness Conduct Committee of a "comer"
in Stutz stock, the "shorts" were borrow-
ing stock from the Ryan group, who, as
above stated, held 110,000 shares and
"contracts," as against only 100,000
shares actually in existence. Thus the
"shorts" were subject to demand at any
May 15, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[527
time for return of stock under penalty
of having the same "bought in under the
rules," and the only source of supply for
the stock was the group from whom they
were borrowing. This group was thus
in a position where it could compel the
"shorts" under the rules of the Exchange
to "cover" their commitments at any
price it chose to dictate, for it alone was
in a position to supply stock at any
price.
Confronted with this situation, what
course should the Exchange authorities
have pursued in justice to all parties con-
cerned ?
The position of the Ryan group and
the "shorts" was, in fact, a case of a
claim by the former for damages from
the latter for non-performance of a con-
tract which was in effect impossible of
performance. Enforcement of the "buy-
ing in" rule would enable the Ryan group
S to assess the amount of the damages and
' collect them under penalty of insolvency
and suspension from membership in the
Exchange. For stock ordered "bought in"
by the Ryan group for account of the
"shorts" could be supplied only by that
group at such price as it might choose
to exact, and the price exacted would
' determine the damages to be collected.
This would clearly be an inequitable
method of settling the matter. Moreover,
there were open other ways whereby
the rights of all parties were conserved
' and by which they could be appraised and
I determined. Failing settlement by volun-
: tary agreement between them, there were
available the courts of law whose com-
petence in the matter of assessing dam-
ages for non-fulfillment of contract was
complete and unquestionable. With-
drawal by the Exchange of the use of
its machinery by the Ryan group would
in no way prejudice the rights of that
group, whereas failure to withdraw that
machinery might gravely prejudice the
rights of the "shorts."
The Exchange Committee's course was
therefore clear, and in the main they fol-
lowed it. At the first meeting between
the Business Conduct Committee and
Ryan it appears (from the official state-
ment of the Exchange itself quoted
above) that Ryan was told that he must
take steps to end the corner, and it ap-
pears (from a statement by Ryan issued
April 12) that they requested Ryan to
continue lending the stock pending such
steps — the "buying in" process thus be-
ing temporarily excluded. Finally, on
March 31, no settlement having been
effected, the Board of Governors of the
Exchange threw the whole matter out-
side the purview of the rules of the Ex-
change, leaving it to be adjusted either
by voluntary agreement or by due process
of law. Three weeks later the affair was
adjusted by agreement.
That the Exchange acted in accord
with the principles governing the case
is clear, and it may be laid down as a
general rule that in the case of a "cor-
ner" it is the duty of the Exchange —
and of all similar bodies — at once to
exclude the whole affair from its juris-
diction. Whatever ground there is for
criticism of the Exchange in connection
with the Stutz case is to be found in the
fact that the suspension of all dealing.s
in Stutz stock which was ordered on
March 31 was not ordered on the day
when Ryan first admitted to the Busi-
ness Conduct Committee that there was
a comer in the stock. It is true that
extenuating circumstances may fairly be
urged; the case was without precedent
and the desire of all parties to accom-
modate a new and difficult situation was
natural; besides, it was stipulated that
stock was to be lent and stock loans were
not to be called. Nevertheless, strict
construction of the principle in the case
would have required immediate suspen-
sion of all dealings so far as Stock Ex-
change rules were concerned. While the
delay may be reasonably excused it can
not be justified in principle. With this
exception the Exchange must be ad-
mitted to have handled the matter cor-
rectly and in full accord with equity.
Two other points may be noted in con-
nection with the Stutz corner. One con-
cerns the re-admission to the Exchange
"list" of Stutz stock. The oth^r con-
cerns the process of "short selling" in
general. So long as any stock is owned
entirely by a single individual or a very
few individuals it is not susceptible of
a "free and open market." Presumably
the ownership of Stutz Motor stock is
to-day substantially as it was when the
corner was disclosed, viz. in the hands
of the "Ryan group." No stock thus
controlled is eligible for "listing" on
the Exchange, nor should it be eligible
for listing upon any Exchange which
aims at maintaining a free and open
market for securities dealt in on its
"floor." The reasons are obvious and
need not be recited.
The process of "short selling" (which
involves the "borrowing and lending of
stocks") is very imperfectly understood
by those who have not had access to the
machinery of the operation. Its essence
is in the "borrowing" process. The im-
portant thing to note about it is that
every "short sale" brings into existence
a "contract" which can only be fulfilled
by a purchase of stock from someone
who has it and is willing to sell it. Sup-
pose that in the case of a given com-
pany there are 1,000,000 shares outstand-
ing, owned by 20,000 stockholders. A
speculator sells one hundred shares
"short" which is bought by someone.
The total amount of stock and contracts
now in existence is 1,000,100 shares, or
100 shares more than there are actually
(Continued on page 528)
BROWN BROTHERS & CO.
Philadelphia
Established 1818
NEW YORK
Boston
International Investments
Our booklet on International Investments, now in
its third edition, shows the relation of such in-
vestments to the foreign exchanges and gives an
outline of certain foreign loans issued in dollars.
Copy on request
BROWN, SHIPLEY & COMPANY
Established 1810
Founders Court, Lothbury
LONDON, E. C.
Office for travelers
123 PaU Mall, LONDON, S. W.
528]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. oii
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issued, and there are 20,001 holders. The
"short seller" must borrow from some-
one 100 shares to make good his con-
tract of sale. He now owes 100 shares
of stock at a fixed price to a third party.
Suppose that, instead of 20,001 holders
of the stock and contracts, there were
only one; the "short seller" would then
be "cornered" and would have to buy
from the man to whom he owed stock,
the stock necessary to comply with the
loan. Thus in every "short sale" of stock
there is, mathematically, an "overissue"
of stock and there is, theoretically, a
possibility of a "corner." The reason
why "short selling" is feasible and the
reason why "corners" are so rare is sim-
ply the fact that the stocks dealt in on
the Exchange are mostly scattered in
ownership so that it is almost always
possible to borrow stock or to buy it.
This is what is meant by a "free and
open" market.
One concluding reflection suggests itself.
The Stutz episode aroused in some quar-
ters a demand for "incorporation" of
the Exchange. An "incorporated" Ex-
change could not have dealt with the mat-
ter as it was dealt with by the New
York Stock Exchange. It does not re-
quire much imagination to picture the
series of injunctions, demurrers, and the
like which would have been brought into
play in such a case had the governing
powers of the Exchange authorities been
subject to court review, and the pro-
longed confusion that would have re-
sulted. It was precisely the possession
of plenary power by the governors of
the Exchange that enabled the matter
to be dealt with quickly, and, in the
main, upon right lines.
T. F. W.
Books and the News
America and England
ONE of the most important books of
the spring is Owen Wister's "A
Straight Deal, or The Ancient Grudge"
(Macmillan, 1920). It is about Anglo-
American relations, and it sets forth
directly and emphatically that if we wish
peace to prevail, and civilization, as
Americans understand it, to advance, we
will, both here and in England, con-
tinue to cultivate friendship between the
United States and Great Britain. But
if Americans prefer the triumph of Sinn
Fein, and the interests of Germans and
pro-Germans to the peace of the world,
they will allow themselves to be in-
fluenced by the Sinn Fein-German propa-
ganda, will nurse ancient grudges, and
credit all the slanders and false rumors
set afloat against England by these
allies of the Hun.
These books may be used to counter-
act falsehood. This is what an English-
man has written about the old quarrel:
"The American Revolution" (Longmans,
1899), by Sir George Otto Trevelyan.
And this by an American on English
government: "The Government of Eng- "
land" (Macmillan, 1912), by A. Lawrence
Lowell. An English writer on the same
subject: Sidney Low's "The Governance
of England" (Putnam, 1914). A soldier
of the British Army wrote about the
American Expeditionary Force in "The
Last Million" (Houghton, 1919), by Ian
Hay. An Englishman describes the United
States in "The Future in America" (Har-
per, 1906), by H. G. Wells. Two books
about England: "The Lighter Side of
English Life" (Foulis, 1913), by F.
Frankfort Moore, and "Our English
Cousins" (Harper, 1894), by Richard
Harding Davis.
For the relations between the two
countries: Matthew P. Andrews's "A
Heritage of Freedom" (Doran, 1918),
and Harry H. Powers's "America and
Britain" (Macmillan, 1918).
Four informal and readable books are
Ian Hay's "Getting Together" (Double-
day, 1917), Price Collier's "England and
the English from an American Point of
View" (Scribner, 1910), Frederick De
Sumichrast's "Americans and Britons"
(Appleton, 1914), and J. G. Cook's "An-
glophobia" (Four Seas Co., 1919).
Four books about the historical and
political events in the Anglo-Saxon world
are: William A. Dunning's "The British
Empire and the United States" (Scrib-
ner, 1914), Sinclair Kennedy's "The
Pan-Angles" (Longmans, 1914), Andrew
C. McLaughlin's "America and Britain"
(Dutton, 1919), and Henry Cabot
Lodge's "One Hundred Years of Peace"
(Macmillan, 1913).
Edmund Lester Pearson
Books Received
FICTION
Mix, Jennie I. At Fame's Gateway. Holt.
$1.75 net.
Morris, E. B. The Cresting Wave. Penn
Publishing Co.
Van Vorst, Marie. Fairfax and His Pride.
Small, Maynard. $1.75 net.
The Best Short Stories of 1919, and the
Yearbook of the American Short Story.
Edited by Eugene J. O'Brien. Small, May-
nard.
GOVERNMENT AND ECONOMICS
Atwood, Harry F. Back to the Repu:
Sixth edition. Laird & Lee.
Bunau-Varilla, Philippe. The Great Adven-
ture of Panama. Doubleday, Page.
Butler, Nicholas Murray. Is America Worth
Saving? Scribner. $2 net.
Dawson, Richard. Red Terror and Green.
Dutton.
Falkenhayn, Erick von. The German Gen-
eral Staff, and Its Decisions. 1914-1916.
Dodd, Mead.
Gaston, Herbert E. The Nonpartisan
League. Harcourt, Brace & Howe.
Gibbons, Herbert A. France and Ourselves
Century.
Harrison, Austin. Before and Now. Lane
4
•^
THE REVIEW
Vol. 2, No. 54
New York, Saturday, May 22, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment
Editorial Articles:
America's Duty
Treaty Manoeuvres
Our Merchant Marine
The Socialist Convention
The Turkish Treaty
529
532
532
533
534
535
The Plot Against Mexico. By W. J.
Ghent 536
Hiram W. Johnson in Fact and Fancy.
By Jerome Landfield 537
The Military Coup in Germany. By
Dr. Paul Rohrbach 540
Switzerland and the League of Na-
tions. By Ottfried Nippold 541
Correspondence 542
Book Reviews:
The Beginnings of Modern Italy 544
Japanese Rule in Korea 545
The Puzzle of National Character 546
True Stories 547
The Run of the Shelves 548
My Friend the Print Seller. By Law-
rence Williams 550
Certificate Borrowing and the Floating
Debt. By Jacob H. Hollander 552
Drama:
Sothern and Marlowe at the Shubert
Theatre. By O. W. Firkins 554
Books and the News:
Living Expenses. By Edmund Les-
ter Pearson 556
1M"R. HOOVER has completely dis-
^^ posed of Senator Johnson's sneer
concerning his position on the treaty.
The Senator had spoken of Mr.
Hoover's "recent conversion to the so-
called Lodge reservations, contempo-
raneous with his Republican candi-
dacy," and had thought fit to refer
to it as "evidence of the flexibility
and elasticity of a great statesman's
mind." Not a very brilliant bit of
irony, at the best ; and it turns out to
be entirely without foundation, for
Mr. Hoover wrote a letter to the
President last November, urging him
to accept the Lodge reservations so as
to avoid "the great dangers of voting
the treaty out." He felt, as so many
other earnest advocates of the League
felt, that the reservations, some of
which he objected to, and others of
which he regarded as "constructive,
particularly in rendering it clear that
the war power must be invoked by
Congress," would not prevent the ac-
complishment of the great object of
the League. "The world issues," said
Mr. Hoover, "are so great as not to
warrant the risks involved in delay
in getting it into service, in the hope
of procuring a few per cent, more
ideal structure." In the homely
phrase at the close, we seem to hear
the practical engineer speaking; and
all the way through we see the words
of an honest man anxious for a great
public object, and not of a seeker for
the Presidency or any other office.
Whatever criticisms may be made of
Mr. Hoover, the very last that will
have any chance to stick are those
which impugn his sincerity, or which
charge him with going out of his
way for the sake of capturing the
nomination.
T^HE New Republic, having helped
-'■ to give currency to a reported ut-
terance of General Wood's, of such
preposterously violent character as to
be calculated to do him great injury
in the minds of all sensible persons,
now sets forth with great fullness the
story of its acceptance of that report.
The article closes with the following
words :
The New Republic is, of course, glad to note
General Wood's disavowal of such lawless
statements. It regrets that General Wood was
not fairly quoted by the correspondent who
was present at the address and it regrets hav-
ing given an added circulation to an inaccurate
report,
which sounds like a fairly good ap-
proximation to an apology, but the
heading of the article is "Was Gen-
eral Wood Misquoted?" which makes
the thing as a whole not much more
like a gentleman's apology than 2.75
beer is like real beer. It appears that
the Ne^v Republic went to a great deal
of trouble — and, one would infer, of
expense, too, for money is plentiful
in that office — in the endeavor to find
out whether the report, originally
found in the New York American,
was correct; with the result that
finally the obnoxious passage was
found in a special dispatch from Fort
Collins to the Rocky Mountain News.
In this. General Wood was reported
as saying:
My motto for the Reds is S.O.S.— ship or
shoot. I believe that we should place them all
on ships of stone, with sails of lead and that
their first stopping place should be hell.
In response to a recent inquiry from
a reader of the New Republic, Gen-
eral Wood states that he never said
anything of the kind as in any way
expressing his own view, but was
quoting what Dr. John Wesley Hill
had said, as showing the bitterness
that had been aroused against the
Reds. His own views, the General
adds, have been very often expressed
as follows:
Aliens who are avowed enemies of our gov-
ernment and who seek to pull down our insti-
tutions, if found guilty, after a fair trial,
should be sent to their own country. I have
always emphasized very strongly that there
should be no short-cut or irregular methods;
that they are entitled to full and fair trial be-
fore a court of competent jurisdiction.
General Wood's long record of honor-
able public service has been notable,
among other things, for dignity and
self-control, sometimes under very
trying circumstances. The antecedent
improbability, therefore, of his hav-
ing uttered a sentiment like that
ascribed to him in the Fort Collins
dispatch should have made the editors
of the New Republic unwilling to ac-
cept its authenticity without the most
thorough confirmation. One obvious
means of testing its accuracy, that of
writing to General Wood himself,
does not seem to have occurred to
them as worth while; and now when
they do get his denial, they regard
the statement of an unknown re-
porter for the Rocky Mountain News
— very possibly the same man who
sent the report to Hearst — as only a
shade less trustworthy than the Gen-
eral's denial. Else why the interroga-
tion in the heading? And why the
530]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 54
very carefully stinted language of the
apology? We fancy that the New
Republic is still under the influence
of its "will to believe," and indeed
that it expects its readers to do
likewise.
W7"ITH frankness and humility
" worthy of a Confucian sage a
Mexican official of the latest revolu-
tion confesses the sins of his dis-
tracted country and asks the world
to have patience yet a little. As-
suredly, serior, a world of patience;
the United States most of all, which
has no wish for another Ireland on
its hands, and has grown a little wary
of attempting to pick a winner in the
Mexican free-for-all. It is some com-
fort, at any rate, that the Mexi-
cans can still laugh — laugh at "Tea
Flower" Bonillas and his bad Span-
ish, laugh at Don Venustiano, him-
self chuckling into Chironian whisk-
ers over the success of his splendid
young protege, Juanito Barragan.
Senor Blasco-Ibanez does us a serv-
ice; he humanizes the Mexicans. Let
us laugh with him, and them ; it is a
great aid to patience.
'T'HE career of Levi P. Morton, dead
■'■ at ninety-six, is full of the flavor
of America. A clerk in country
stores, dry-goods merchant, banker.
Congressman, Ambassador, Vice-
President, country gentleman, and
man of the world, he might have be-
gun amid surroundings even more
humble than the parsonage in which
he was bom, and he might, if he had
been a man of genius instead of a man
of sterling American ability, have
gone farther along the road whose
end is history. The significance of
his career lies in its balance — he was
not merely a politician and not merely
a man of business — and in the well-
nigh perfect adjustment which he
was able to establish between his
abilities and his opportunities. He
did not attempt what he could not do,
but what he did attempt he carried
through with a vitality that even
played Old Time himself as good a
match as he often meets with. Withal,
he was never too busy to live. There
are other ways of living than his,
but for most people, on whatever
scale they can manage it, the life he
lived is at once a model and an in-
spiration.
TT would seem as if Signor Nitti
•■■ played a skillful game when, on
May 11, he made the life of the Cab-
inet dependent on the rejection of
the Socialist motion regarding the in-
cidents which had recently occurred
among the personnel of the Postal
and Telegraph services. He thus of-
fered to the opponents of his foreign
policy a chance of defeating him on
a minor question of internal admin-
istration, avoiding thereby a definite
condemnation of his activities as a
member of the Supreme Council. His
forced retirement in consequence of
the Popular party voting with the
Socialists brought on a political crisis
which only served to demonstrate his
indispensableness to the country.
For neither the Catholics nor the So-
cialists, who, having forced the crisis,
were responsible for its solution,
were able or willing to form a new
Government. Though allied in op-
position against Nitti, they refused
to join hands in constructive politics,
and no party in the Italian Chamber
is sufficiently strong to become re-
sponsible for the Government en-
tirely on its own hook. Within a
week from the date of his resigna-
tion, Nitti had the satisfaction of be-
ing requested by the King to form
a new Ministry. He will return con-
siderably stronger for this short re-
tirement.
fpHE Cabinet of M. Millerand has
■'■ requested the Minister of Justice
to open legal proceedings against the
General Federation of Labor with a
view to its dissolution, the charge
being that it has gone beyond the
limits of its lawful activity, which is
the defense of economic interests,
corporate and professional. Its
avowed object in calling the strike
was to enforce upon the country,
against the wishes of the people as
expressed in the last Parliamentary
elections, a hazardous experiment in
social reform desired by a minority
of workers only. In reply to the Gov-
ernment's decision, the Federation
has issued a manifesto which tries to
parry the blow by representing it to
the workers as an act of despair of
the -Cabinet and an admission on its
part of the strength of the movement.
Leon Jouhaux, in taking that stand,
puts a fair face on a foul matter. His ,
cause is evidently lost, and the move
of M. Millerand is more likely to be
a symptom of its collapse, offering
the Government an opportunity of
striking a decisive blow at his turbu-
lent organization.
T ABOR shortage, combined with the
-'-' high price of seed, is expected to
result in a shrinkage of five per cent,
in the acreage planted to potatoes this
season, according to reports from the ,
field agents of the United States Bu-
reau of Markets. There are few I
products of the soil in which average
results fall farther below demon-
strated possibilities than in potatoes.
Under existing circumstances, it
would seem to be the duty, or per-
haps we should say the welcome op-
portunity, of the Department of
Agriculture at Washington, and all
State agencies of similar purpose, to
spread to the utmost a knowledge of
modern methods of increasing the
potato yield and protecting it against
its various enemies. It is entirely
possible that a five per cent, decrease
in acreage may be followed by a de-
cided increase in production, and that,
too, with a very slight relative in-
crease in labor.
'T^HERE is real pleasure in the dis-
■*- covery of at least one set of work-
men who are willing to combine
shorter hours with undiminished pro-
duction. The "congress" of the
American Multigraph Company, at
Cleveland, pledged the workers to
maintain the rate of production at the
ten-hour standard if the company
would grant the nine-hour day. The|
concession was made, in October oi
last year, and the pledge was faith-
fully carried out. The workmen havej
again come forward with a requesi
(not a demand) for an eight-houi
day, pledging themselves to a peace-
able return to the nine-hour systen
in case of failure to maintain an un-
diminished rate of production. Pre
paratory to the request, a committed
appointed by the "congress" had gon(
carefully over the data of productior
and discovered possible changes o
,^Jay 22, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[531
method by which the rate of produc-
tion might be increased. Here ap-
pears to be a case in which workmen
are cooperating with their employers
on the plane of mutual confidence and
common sense, rather than passion
and distrust.
THAT an army officer ought never
to open his mouth on social or
industrial questions is a stock con-
vention in every radical editorial
sanctum. These questions are beyond
his ken ; he can not, in the nature of
things, know anything about them;
and the only service he renders,
when he speaks of them, is to furnish
hilarity for gods and men. And yet
— not always. For when he hap-
pens to say something that seems to
confirm a radical attitude on a par-
ticular matter he becomes all at once
a perspicacious, shrewd, trained, and
experienced observer whose word is
authoritative. Take, for instance,
Major-General Graves and his re-
ported saying that 98 per cent, of
the people in Siberia favor the Bol-
sheviki. On the basis of the returns,
with a few precincts still missing, we
can safely affirm that not a single
radical, liberal, or other sort of in-
surgent periodical in the United
States has failed to print this reputed
saying, with more or less exultant
indorsement of both speech and
speaker. And yet every person in-
formed about Siberia knows that the
utterance can not possibly be true.
No matter how often and how
diversely the popular sentiment has
shifted, and no matter how demo-
cratic, radical, or revolutionary it
may at any time have been, or may
now be, there is no credible evidence
that it is or has been pro-Bolshevik.
At one time it supported Kolchak,
and at a later time it turned violently
against him. But the shift was not
to Bolshevism; it was a reassertion,
in large measure at least, of anti-
Bolshevik democracy. In the mani-
festo of J. Jaxushew, president of the
Siberian Regional Duma, issued last
September, though Kolchak is bitterly
denounced, the Bolsheviki are still
"the enemy at the gates," whom a
year before the "peasants had chased
out of the country." There is no con-
clusive evidence that the Bolsheviki
are in any greater favor in Siberia
now than they were then.
'T'HERE is nothing the insurgent
1
editor, so eagerly gulps as a
seeming disclosure. He knows what
his readers want, and it is his busi-
ness to supply them. They want to
hear about the derelictions of the
great covenants deviously arrived at,
whispers behind locked doors, dark
and mysterious origins of familiar
things. To many of them the prob-
able and the preposterous are one,
and if the disclosure turns out to be
merely a mare's nest there's no loss :
it might just as well have been true,
and anyhow it has furnished its thrill.
These evils occur under capitalism;
therefore they couldn't possibly occur
under some other "ism." Count
Czernin's declaration that "Italian
diplomacy dominated the affairs of
the Entente during the war," moves
the New Republic to the sage com-
ment: "That is something persons
outside of the diplomatic game never
suspected, but if one puts together
such bits of evidence as cropped up
and passed unnoticed, Czernin's state-
ment looks plausible." Of course it
looks plausible. To the insurgent edi-
tor how else could it look? If it had
read that the sinking of the Lusitania
was caused by the devilish machina-
tions of the French holders of Rus-
sian bonds, or that the disaster of
Caporetto was brought about through
the dickerings of A. Mitchell Palmer
with Enver Pasha it would have
looked equally plausible.
"TT is a great mistake," said Presi-
-*• dent Masaryk, President of the
Czecho-Slovak Republic, in his birth-
day address to the National Assem-
bly, "to imagine that the social revo-
lution may be effected by the subjuga-
tion of the so-called bourgeoisie. Vio-
lence, here, too, would fail in its pur-
pose ; violence would only make slaves,
and a slave never and nowhere works
willingly and efficiently." Yet this
threatened violence and compulsion
is an inextricable part of almost all
radical programmes for human up-
lift, and in the case of the two tem-
porarily successful revolutions, in
Russia and Hungary, the threat was
instantly translated into actuality.
The purpose to impose a rule of force
on the unwilling is explicit in al-
most all revolutionary formulae and
propaganda. The phraseology is that
of compulsive power. The revolution-
ists of all schools intend to "seize
and hold," to establish the "dictator-
ship of the proletariat," to enforce
"proletarian discipline," to "subju-
gate the bourgeoisie," and to "crush
out opposition." All of these phrases
are expressions of the primitive de-
light that the revolutionist finds in
the contemplation of a state of things
in which he and his group will have
power to compel others to obedience. -
It does not matter that the revolu-
tionist delusively calls himself a
pacifist, a democrat, an equalitarian,
or any one of a dozen other terms
that imply a disapproval of force and
a hope for the rule of reason and
persuasion. All this is for his more
remote Utopia ; what inspires him for
the immediate future is the vision of
himself and his fellows exercising un-
limited powers against the rest of
mankind.
TN "Neophilologus," a Dutch quar-
■■- terly devoted to the study of mod-
ern languages, we find the reproduc-
tion of a curious portrait of Milton,
which has come to light in Amster-
dam. The "Ryksmuseum" possesses
a collection of lacquered ware por-
traits by an Eighteenth Century Jap-
anese artist, one of which presents
the features of the poet as we know
them from Faithorne's engraving.
The regicide has mixed with unfa-
miliar company in the Japanese
workshop, for the rest of the oval-
shaped miniatures are mostly royal-
ties: Frederick II. of Prussia, Jo-
seph II., Gustavus Adolphus et al.
The artist paid an unconscious trib-
ute to Time's conciliatory power. It
is sad to think that the intrusion of
journalism and the teaching of gen-
eral history have robbed the modern
Japanese of that delightful ignorance
which might cause an artist ingen-
iously to unite in a fraternal series of
portraits the features of Mr. Wilson,
Clemenceau, Wilhelm von Hohenzol-
lern and Gabriele d'Annunzio.
532]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 54
America's Duty
To any one who has taken the
trouble to think of the appalling
situation in Central Europe, Mr.
Davison's moving appeal and power-
ful statement of facts were but a con-
firmation of what one already knew
and already felt. But the appeal and
statement have centred the attention
of the country on the subject, and the
response which the nation will make,
in acts not in words, will be a meas-
ure of its quality, a test alike of its
heart and of its mind.
There is no use in mincing matters
about it. We are not doing our duty
as human beings, and we are not do-
ing our duty as a great and rich and
powerful nation. To dispose of the
matter by saying that "we have
troubles of our own" is to say that,
facing the most stupendous need the
world has ever known, we are unwill-
ing to lessen by a little our extrava-
gances and luxuries, in order to lessen
by a great deal the agonies of mil-
lions of our fellow-men, rendered
helpless by a world calamity that has
left us almost unscathed.
An appropriation of five hundred
million dollars, even if it were an out-
right gift, would be a mere bagatelle
to us, in comparison with the immeas-
urable good it would do, and the un-
speakable urgency of the need. "I
believe," says Mr. Davison, "that the
apathy and indifference which pre-
vail to-day are due only to the fact
that the American people have not
grasped the dreadful facts," and he
believes that when once "the true
bearings of the situation have bitten
into their consciousness, they will
arise and act." But this biting in is
taking an unconscionably long time.
Our duty is to act now, and not after
more millions have starved, after
whole peoples may have been plunged
into chaos, after the world's unrest
has been intensified to the point of
imminent deadly peril, from which we
ourselves shall not be exempt.
Mr. Davison outlines a definite
practical plan, to be instituted by
Congress, under which the relief
would take the shape not of mere
alms, but of constructive aid admin-
istered by a commission of the best
men America can command — "men of
the type of General Pershing, Mr.
Hoover, or ex-Secretary Lane" — the
commission to be vested with com-
plete power; and the aid would be
administered upon such terms of
cooperation on the part of the coun-
tries benefited as would tend to bring
about not mere assuagement of dis-
tress, but genuine restoration. And
when our Government had adopted
the plan, it should "invite other Gov-
ernments in a position to assist, to
participate in the undertaking."
Will America awake to her duty?
Will she rise to her opportunity?
For the opportunity is as magnificent
as the duty is compelling. By under-
taking to lead in this great work of
salvation, by devoting to it an in-
significant fraction of what we stood
ready to devote, if necessary, to the
prosecution of the war, we shall be
making an investment in goodwill
which alone will infinitely more
than repay the outlay. The gratitude
and friendship which was the re-
sponse of Belgium and of other af-
flicted countries to American aid in
fighting destitution and disease dur-
ing the war will once more flow to
us, on an even greater scale and in
more permanent form. Nor will the
effect of this goodwill be limited to
the manifestation of sentiment, for
the improvement of tone and feeling
in the prostrated countries of Cen-
tral Europe will be the most power-
ful agency that can be imagined
towards the prevention of anarchy
and war.
If we have not lost our sense of
proportion, if we do not place a trif-
ling material sacrifice above the im-
perious claims at once of humanity
and of policy, Mr. Davison's stirring
appeal will not have been made in
vain. The only excuse for our inac-
tion is that the terrible need and the
clear duty have not been brought
home to our minds. This excuse can
no longer be pleaded. Mr. Davi-
son's words are a trumpet call to the
nation's conscience. Let every one of
us who is not deaf to the call do his
utmost to drive the duty home to
those in whose hands lies the decision
between duty and inertia, between
honor and shame.
Treaty Manoeuvres
rpHE Knox resolution declaring the
-*- state of war with Germany and
Austria-Hungary at an end was '
passed in the Senate last Saturday
by a majority of only five. Only
three Democrats — Senators Reed,
Shields, and Walsh of Massachusetts
— voted in favor of the resolution;
and two important dissenters from
it. Senators Nelson and McCumber,
are recorded on the Republican side.
The utter hopelessness of any attempt
to pass the resolution over the Presi-
dent's veto is thus demonstrated,
though, of course, no demonstration
was necessary. Any analysis of Mr.
Knox's elaborate argument in favor
of his motion would have been, at
any time, of strictly academic interest
only; and now even that can hardly
be claimed for it. Of mere argumen-
tation on theoretical aspects of the
treaty, the country has, in all con-
science, had enough ; and Mr. Knox's
argument had too much the character
of a lawyer's brief, and too little the
character of a genuine political dis-
cussion, to make it intrinsically a
matter of high public interest. In
so far as the episode of the introduc-
tion and debating of the resolution
may have had real interest, it was as
one more manoeuvre in the long series
which have marked the history of i
the treaty ever since it was presented
to the Senate. But even as a ma-
noeuvre it did not have the kind of in-
terest that attached to preceding
moves in the game; for it did not
offer, as many of the others have
done, the possibility of furnishing a
definition of the issue upon which the
Republican party might plant itself
in the whole matter of the treaty and
the League.
Before the resolution disappears
from view, however, it is worth while
to draw attention to one important
point. In the minds of the people
generally, and in most of the pleas
made for the resolution, the chief ob-
ject to which it was supposed to be
directed was that of bringing to ar
end the conditions in our own countrj
which are predicated upon a state oJ
war. The President is clothed wit)-
extraordinary powers, and many do
May 22, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[533
mestic affairs are subject to abnor-
mal regulations, in virtue of acts of
Congress passed during the war and
remaining in force, according to their
terms, until its termination. The
declaration of a state of peace would
bring the operation of these acts to
an end, and would take from the
President the extraordinary powers
which they conferred upon him. In
addition to the desirability of this ob-
ject in itself, another motive has un-
doubtedly played its part in the push-
ing of the resolution. From the party
standpoint it has been thought to be
good politics to place upon the Presi-
dent the odium of continuing a state
of war when Congress had declared
its desire to bring that condi-
tion to a close. But obviously the
direct object could be attained as well,
and the indirect object vastly better,
by something very different from the
Knox resolution. So far as our do-
mestic conditions are concerned, it
would be quite competent for Con-
gress to repeal all its war acts, and
further to declare that as regards
home affairs the war emergency is at
an end ; this, without introducing any
question of international relations.
In this way, in the first place, all the
complex questions, both of diplomacy
and of constitutional law, would have
been eliminated from the case; and
secondly, if the President had placed
himself in opposition to that proposal
he would have had to shoulder the re-
sponsibility of this opposition without
being able to plead, as of course he
now can, that Congress had gone be-
yond its legitimate province.
Of far greater interest, from the
standpoint of treaty manoeuvring, is
the peace plank in the platform
adopted by the Indiana Republicans.
This is supposed to have been virtu-
ally drafted in the very highest coun-
cils of the Republican party — to rep-
resent the strategy of Senator Lodge
and Chairman Hays and to fore-
shadow the treaty plank of the ap-
proaching Chicago Convention. That
that plank would be "an elastic dec-
laration, leaving the ultimate posi-
tion to future developments, is likely
enough," we said last week was highly
probable; and the Indiana platform
makes it almost certain. Nor do we
feel disposed to find much fault with
such a decision. In spite of all that
has come and gone — or rather be-
cause of all that has come and gone —
the condition of thought on the sub-
ject in the Republican party, and in
fact in the country at large, is the
reverse of definite; and there is no
magic in a platform declaration that
can transmute uncertainty of purpose
and absence of conviction into their
opposites. Unfortunate as it may be,
it is a fact that sentiment will have
to crystallize, and policy will have to
become defined, in the course of the
campaign and not in the little time
that intervenes between now and the
meeting of the Convention. The
choice of candidate, however, may
have a powerful effect in the shaping
of the issue, and it is earnestly to be
hoped that the man chosen will have
both the will and the capacity to fur-
nish a kind of leadership which has
thus far been sadly lacking.
Whatever view be taken of the
rights and wrongs of the long-drawn-
out struggle in the Senate, and be-
tween Senate and President, the one
manifest characteristic of nearly all
of it is that it has been essentially
a series of manoeuvres — strategic
moves for position, sparring for
points. From a very early stage in
the proceedings, it has been evident,
or at least almost evident, that the
President would not accept the Lodge
position, and that the majority of
the Republicans in the Senate would
not bow to the President's will. What
each side hoped for was that time
would operate in its favor; and the
object of particular moves was not to
attain the particular end ostensibly
in question, but to bring about a
favorable protraction of the contest.
The one exception to this state of
things was presented by the "mild
reservationist" group of Republican
Senators. They were really hoping
to accomplish the end which they
proposed, and they really had good
reason to think that the end was at-
tainable. If they had received encour-
agement from the Democratic side —
or if, over and above the sincerity,
and in some instances the high ability,
with which they urged their cause,
they had had a certain quality of
heroic determination in which they
were wanting — they might have
proved the dominant factor in the sit-
uation. To Mr. McCumber is due
high recognition for the constancy
which he has displayed throughout,
the readiness he has shown to do, at
every turn, that which the faithful
pursuance of his original purpose
called upon him to do.
Apart from the endeavors of the
mild reservationists, we have wit-
nessed merely a succession of grap-
ples, which might indeed have re-
sulted in a compromise, which would
have so resulted if the President had
been accessible to reason, but which
now in the retrospect assume the
character of a mere setting of the
stage for what is to happen during the
campaign and after the election. Over
the frightful loss which the world has
thus suffered there is nothing to do
just now but shrug our shoulders;
let us hope that something more
promising of substantial result will
begin to emerge when the Convention
at Chicago shall have completed its
work.
Our Merchant Marine
TN the matter of our merchant ma-
rine, there has not yet been
marked out, in Congress or else-
where, a clear pathway of transition
from the methods forced by war con-
ditions and necessities to a permanent
national policy, which will assign a
proper place to private enterprise,
and will give definite assurance as
to the nature and extent of Govern-
ment control under which such enter-
prise may be exerted.
As an aid in developing such a
policy, the Bankers Trust Company,
of New York City, has compiled an
extremely valuable and interesting
little volume, under the title of
"America's Merchant Marine." The
first few pages sketch the earlier his-
tory of the subject, from the build-
ing of the first ship at the mouth
of the Kennebec, down through the
colonial period and the exciting vicis-
situdes of the Revolution, the Na-
poleonic wars, and the war of 1812,
down to the summit of growth
reached in 1855, when American
584]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 54
yards turned out more than two thou-
sand vessels, with an aggregate ton-
nage of over five millions. At that "
point the turn began, with England's
superior skill in constructing large
iron steamships. American capital
ceased to invest in wooden ships, and
the tonnage built in American yards
fell off nearly two-thirds in five years.
After the historical sketch come
twenty chapters on various phases of
the subject, as for example, Operat-
ing Costs, Labor Factors, the Oil-
burning Ship, Government Aid,
America's World Markets, The Great
Lakes Traffic, American Registry
Laws, Ship Safety Laws, and Marine
Insurance. Businessmen involved,
directly or indirectly, in overseas
trade, the possible investors in ship-
ping shares, and especially our na-
tional lawmakers and their executive
advisers, need at the present time
just such a carefully compiled book
of facts as this.
The Socialist Conven-
tion
IN the funeral procession of Junia,
sister of Marcus Brutus and wife
of Caius Cassius in former years,
Tacitus tells us that images of the
most illustrious families to the num-
ber of twenty were carried; but the
images of Brutus and Cassius out-
shone them all, he says, because (for
obvious political and personal rea-
sons) they were not there. It is a
somewhat similar effect that the So-
cialists were aiming at, in their na-
tional convention of last week, when
they nominated Eugene Debs to lead
them in the coming campaign. His
leadership is expected to be all the
more effective because, barring the
chance of a pardon from the Federal
penitentiary at Atlanta, he will not
be there. There is little reason to
believe, however, that a plea of mar-
tyrdom re.sting on so slender a base
as that of Mr. Debs will make any
effective appeal to voters not already
convinced.
Perhaps the best claim of the re-
cent convention to "Americanism"
could be based on its close imitation
of such old party traditions as the
minutely detailed denunciation of the
other side (Democrats and Republi-
cans lumped, in this case) and the
painfully drawn out applause when
the name of the conquering hero
comes, accompanied by the march-
ing of the delegates around the
convention hall, in a kind of college
boys' snake-dance. Should not the
real industrial revolutionist have
whirled far enough off the old orbit
to have shaken himself loose from
all that? What conservatives might
call an entirely hopeful sign was
the attitude of the convention
towards the present situation in
Russia. Formally, it expressed its ad-
herence to the "Third Internation-
ale," but it just as formally refused
to be led into any indorsement of
"the dictatorship of the Proletariat"
as a test of that adherence ; and vari-
ous speakers, including Victor Ber-
ger, indicated very plainly not merely
their conviction that such a dictator-
ship would not work here, but their
knowledge that it is going awry in
Moscow. The "conservatives" were
roundly hissed by the galleries, but
had their way on the floor in formu-
lating the platform. The defeated,
however, as a salve to their feelings,
were assured by Berger and Hillquit
that the party was not to become
more moderate, but in reality would
be more revolutionary than ever be-
fore. A New York delegate, James
O'Neal, asserted that "bourgeois
democracy, with all its faults, at least
allows decision on important matters
by the civilized method of the ballot.
Dictatorship means sheer brute strug-
gle." In the hurly-burly of debate,
one of the delegates made an implied
admission of rather damaging char-
acter in the assertion that common
sense is the principle of success, and
that the Socialists must mix common
sense with their demands if success
is to be secured.
No complete draft of the platform
is as yet available, with the many
alterations made on the floor of the
convention, and a detailed study of
its provisions must come later. It
declares in the broadest tqrms for
"the socialization of industries," but
does not carry that declaration to
the entirely logical conclusion of de-
manding that the farmer shall sur-
render his property right in his farm.
An outsider is naturally tempted to
see in this an inconsistency due to a
desire for the farmer vote, supposed
to be among the discontented ele-
ments. The convinced Socialist, how-
ever, possibly thinks that the farm-
er's eyes are not yet fully open, and
that a merely temporary concession
must be made to him until he is won
over by seeing the beauty of con-
fi.scation as applied to others.
While the more radical element of
the convention suflfered a formal de-
feat at every point where the test
of a vote was forced, the inner spirit
of the body as a whole was probably
represented by the defeated side. The
concessions were born of expediency, #
rather than conviction. The voter
who really believes in American insti-
tutions, as framed by our forefathers
and developed by generations of ac-
tual working, should not imagine for
a moment that the party which has
come first into the campaign, with
Mr. Debs at its head, is merely one
among several groups of Americans
desiring to put perhaps a different,
but none the less legitimate, interpre-
tation on those institutions. Though
the Socialist party, making a virtue
of necessity, may show itself willing
to submit to the forms of the Consti-
tution as a means of attaining to
power, there is no question of its in-
tent to use that power, if attained,
for the overthrow of the Constitution
as we know it, and as its framers
intended it. The Debs ticket should
have the support of none but those
who believe that our Constitution is
a failure in its most fundamental fea-
tures, and that the abolition of pri-
vate property — progressive and rapid,
even if not immediate and complete
— is the proper basis on which to
build a new form of government to
take its place. The man who does not
believe this, and yet talks of voting
the Socialist ticket as a "protest," is
thoughtlessly playing with a very
dangerous kind of fire. To give the
Socialist full liberty to state his pro-
gramme and support it by argument
is one thing; to lend him support, by
voting his ticket as a mere rebuke to
somebody else, is quite another.
May 22, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[535
The Turkish Treaty
THE Turkish carpet, in which the
green of the fertile crescent, the
gray of the Arabian desert, and the
blue of the ^gean were the most
prominent colors, is to be cut up and
divided among various claimants, the
Sultan retaining a part little larger,
compared to the original carpet, than
a prayer rug. And a prayer rug,
rather than a throne, is the true sym-
bol of his future status. Shorn of
secular power over all but his Turk-
ish subjects, he is only a petty po-
tentate of a small, uncivilized people
which counts for little among the
family of nations. Only as Caliph,
leader of the mosque prayers, does he
remain an important figure in the
Asiatic world. As such his power is
unchallenged. Even his former
Arab subjects, who revolted against
him and shook off the yoke with Brit-
ish aid, still give him the accustomed
homage as the Executive of Islam.
With this functionary the Entente
had no quarrel. The treaty handed
to the Turkish delegation in Paris
concerns only the Sultan of the Otto-
mans, although it is true that the
clause which permits the mainte-
nance of Turkish sovereignty in Con-
stantinople was framed out of con-
sideration for the sovereign in his
capacity of Caliph. This permission,
however, is not given unconditionally.
Its fulfillment by the Entente will de-
pend on Turkey's faithful observance
of the treaty ; in other words, Mehmed
VI as Caliph is made a hostage for
his own good behavior as Sultan of
the Ottomans. The two will wink at
each other in their common sleeve,
the Sultan well knowing that from
breaking the agreement no harm can
come to the Caliph, as the same rea-
sons that prevented the ousting of
him this time will still hold good here-
after. For if the systematic massa-
cres of Greeks and Armenians were
not a sufficient reason to justify the
Turk's expulsion from Europe, the
less heinous crime of infringing the
peace treaty will not, and ought not,
to be so punished, unless the Entente
should demand more respect for its
own dictates than for the dictates of
humanity.
However, the Sultan is left but
little chance of breaking his word.
Turkish sovereignty, though main-
tained in Constantinople, will be a
shadow only of its former self. The
real sovereign in the capital will be
the Great Powers. Since, on March
16, the Allied forces, chiefly English,
took possession of the Ministries of
War and Marine, of the arsenal at
Galata and all military depots, of
the police bureaus, post and telegraph
offices, of the bridges across the
Golden Horn, of the railway station
and the quays, the Sultan and his
Ministers have lost control over
the city. A month is given them for
the consideration of the treaty, but
though it should take them only half
a day, as it probably will, to come
to the conclusion that they can not
accept it, accept it they will, because
the Entente has the power to force
them to sign. This military occupa-
tion is, indeed, a provisional measure,
but it does not follow that with the
withdrawal of the visible instruments
of power the Entente's hold on the
Government will simultaneously be
released. The treaty, which this
military display will help to enforce,
will then become the instrument by
which that hold can be maintained
for good. It gives England, France,
and Italy a permanent and complete
control of Turkish finances, and it is
a commonplace of domestic and his-
torical experience that he who holds
the strings of the purse holds also
the reins of government. Again,
under the interallied control of the
Straits, the access to the city and its
communication with Anatolia is en-
tirely in the hands of the Powers.
The Sultan and his Government will
be mere executives of these, and Eu-
rope, though disappointed of her hope
to rid herself of the Turk, will have
the satisfaction, at least, of seeing
order restored and security of naviga-
tion established in that exposed and
vital part of her continent.
It is not the Turkish Government,
therefore, whose decision can ma-
terially affect the fate of the treaty.
A veto from Washington will have
greater weight than one from the
once Sublime Porte. The full satis-
faction of Greek claims in Thrace
as against those of Bulgaria, the ces-
sion of the Dodecanesos to Italy, and
the continuance of the Sultan's rule
in Constantinople are not in accord
with Mr. Wilson's well-known views,
and will probably be the subject of
a long series of diplomatic notes lead-
ing up to the usual compromise be-
tween principle and expediency. The
second point, we confess, is an ugly
blot on the treaty, ill according with
the tenets of the League of Nations,
whose name is so frequently men-
tioned in the document, and we should
be glad to see Mr. Wilson succeed in
getting the treaty amended on that
minor point.
But the final word on the treaty
will be spoken by Mustapha Kemal.
Though the peace be dictated to the
Government in Constantinople, it is
in Anatolia that it will have to be
enforced against his resistance. His
influence extends beyond the field
of his military activity, into the politi-
cal sphere of the capital. Four-fifths
of the deputies of the Turkish Cham-
ber are members of the Nationalist
party Felah-i-Vatan, or Weal of the
Fatherland, which thus possesses the
power to hamper the activity of any
Government which it considers to be a
tool of the Entente. If Kemal re-
mains successful in defjnng the Great
Powers, the majority in the Chamber
will derive courage from his example
to use that power to the fullest extent.
Hence on the military exertion of the
Entente to bring him and his Nation-
alist following to reason the fate of
the treaty ultimately depends. A dif-
ficult guerrilla warfare in Anatolia
is necessary to establish peace with
Turkey and security for Greeks and
Armenians.
THE REVIEW
A vteekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Cokporatioit
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold ob Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars a ^ear in
advance. Fifteen cents a copjr. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24. Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright. 1920. in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Ayres O. W. FutKim
A. J. Barhouw W. H. JoBKSOir
Jerque Lahdfield
536]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, Njo. 54
The Plot Against Mexico
THE sudden collapse of the Car-
ranza Government from a popu-
lar uprising will appear, to ordinary
folk, a sufficient proof of the evil
social conditions that have lately pre-
vailed in Mexico. A push and a kick,
and all was over. Yet for the last
five years, and particularly for the
last three years, since the adoption
of the present Constitution, these con-
ditions have been constantly misrep-
resented by the insurgent press of the
United States. This press has shown
itself coldly indifferent to the fright-
ful sufferings of the Mexican people ;
it has unquestioningly accepted and
distributed the propaganda of paid
agents of Carranza ; it has ignored or
distorted the most trustworthy evi-
dence ; and in the face of all the easily
ascertainable facts it has kept up a
"wolf! wolf!" cry of Wall Street in-
tervention.
Just such another journalistic epi-
sode was strung along the ten years
ended May 25, 1911. Then it was
the conservative press in solid
front, as of late it has been the
insurgent press. Then it was the
Diaz myth — a benevolent father-king,
wearing out his heart and soul in
devoted service to his backward and
not overgrateful people; just as of
late it has been the Carranza myth
— a fusion of Washington, Lincoln,
and Mazzini, but with nobler vision
than these, patiently building up an
earthly Eden while undergoing the
constant bedevilment of American
capitalists. The same mealy-mouthed
language of palliation and excuse was
then lavished by the conservative
press on the jailings and shootings
of Diaz as of late has been lavished
by the insurgent press on the jailings
and shootings of Carranza. In those
days, as in these later days, hand-
picked observers crossed the line
southward, where they were taken
under protection and guidance and
sumptuously fed on official pap, and
whence they came back with stand-
ardized tales of peace, prosperity, and
contentment. And in those days, as
in these, a shrewd old ruler knew
where to put his money to get results
from the always and ever-to-be bam-
boozled American people.
I think, if a personal word is per-
missible, that I can speak on this
subject with some knowledge and
some right. From the time of the
first prosecutions of Mexican political
refugees in the southwest, I have
taken an eager and a sympathetic in-
terest in all that concerns the Mexi-
can people. The Diaz propaganda,
thickly sown though it was, did not
deceive me. In New York City I
was, I believe, first among those who
sought to get a hearing in the con-
servative press in behalf of the Mexi-
can liberals. I found no opening.
One editor, too young and too indis-
creet for his job, accepted one of my
manuscripts, but the owners of the
magazine suppressed it. The pro-
Diaz censorship was at the time com-
plete. Later, in a few cases, it was
relaxed, and several articles by vari-
ous writers, including one by myself,
appeared in the periodical press.
Then, mysteriously, the lid came
down again, and it stayed down vir-
tually until Diaz was ousted by Ma-
dero. During the ensuing long period
of turmoil I have carefully followed
Mexican events ; I have also followed
the insurgent press for its comment
on Mexico; and I say that, with a
single exception which will be noted
later, so far as I know no radical.
Socialist, revolutionist, or pseudo-
liberal paper in the United States
has made the slightest attempt to tell
the truth about Mexico. Most of these
journals, indeed, have busied them-
selves with misleading propaganda
and with the denunciation of persons
who told the facts.
These facts have been accessible in
greater or less degree to any one who
cared for them. Conditions under
Carranza, especially during the last
year, can be readily summed up.
These conditions, of course, were not
uniform throughout the land. What
could be said of most of Mexico would
not apply to Sonora, Lower Califor-
nia, or parts of Sinaloa. Nor would
any generalization which could be
framed be equally true of all the
other regions. But taken in the lump,
Mexico was ruled by a dictator, held
in power by the aid of bandit chiefs
who looted the big estates and indus- "I
trial properties, terrorized the peo- *
pie, and refused, as a rule, to suppress
the other bandits (the anti-Carranza
ones) because it was more profitable
to dicker with them. Mexican refu-
gees say that though they were |
robbed indiscriminately by both gov- '
ernmental and anti-governmental
bandits, the latter were the more de-
cent, and usually left them something
to eat. The Carranzistas made clean
sweeps.
There was general insecurity of life
and person. General Salvador Al-
varado, in his famous letter to Car-
ranza, some months ago, declared
that between the outlaws and the Car-
ranzistas some 36,000 men were being
killed every year. "No one thinks
of the man," he said ; "let him die like
a dog in the gutter." For hundreds
of thousands of the people there was
no work and no promise of any.
There was great destitution, and
there were no sincere efforts on the
part of the Government to relieve it.
Justice was for sale. "A wave of
shameless and cynical immorality,"
said Alvarado, "pervades the acts of
judges and fehysters, who sell justice
to the highest bidder." Elections
were a farce. There was not even
personal safety for a candidate op-
posing Carranza. Only by the most
extraordinary precautions were the
friends of Obregon able to save his
life from the attempts of Carranza's
thugs.
Far from fostering social and
labor legislation, Carranza over-
turned the results of the Alvarado
and Carrillo regimes in Yucatan, and
he set himself stubbornly against the
remarkable series of reforms insti-
tuted in Sonora by Calles. The sum-
mary of these reforms prepared by
Juan Ortiz Mora shows Sonora in
the creditable light of a most pro-
gressive State, steadily forwarding a
reconstructive programme against
constant obstructions by Carranza.
As for organized labor, Carranza was
its bitter enemy. His remedy for
strikes, though from motives of ex-
pediency not always enforced, was the
May 22< 1920]
THE REVIEW
[587
firing squad and the machine gun
battalion. "By slaying and imprison-
ing workmen," says Juan Rico, of the
Mexican Labor party, "Carranza
ended the general strike of 1916."
The testimony on this matter comes
from a multitude of sources, and is
irrefutable.
On top of all this, the late First
Chief subsidized a wildly revolution-
ist communist monthly magazine.
Gale's. No intelligent person could
fail to see from a glance at this jour-
nal the proofs of its fraudulency. It
excoriated the American Federation
of Labor. It denounced even "mod-
erate Socialism." It declared that
soviet communism was the work-
ers' only hope. It extravagantly
praised Carranza the man, and the
Carranza Government. But the
greater part of its space was taken
up with violent denunciations of al-
leged American projects of interven-
tion. In each issue this intervention
bogey was set forth in all its hideous
deformity, and then bludgeoned,
blacksnaked, and flayed from head to
toes. Now no one can suppose that
Carranza, the dictator, had the slight-
est patience with the soviet doctrines
of this journal. Nor can any in-
formed person believe that he would
have allowed this journal to appear
for a single issue if radicalism had
been its sole note. But any one can
see the value to Carranza of a Mex-
ico City journal written and printed
for the revolutionary gudgeons of the
United States. The first-page legend
which it carried, "20,000 circulation
in English, 5,000 in Spanish," was
probably a falsehood; but there can
be no doubt that by far the greater
number of copies went to the United
States. Despite the glaring evidences
of its fraudulency, it was credulously
accepted by American radicals, who
sent it money (in reply to its frantic
appeals), wrote for it, and promoted
its circulation. I assume that Obre-
gon has already suppressed it as a
notorious swindle.
These facts, as I have said, have
been in greater or less degree ac-
cessible to all who cared to know
them. But they have been studiously
ignored or else angrily denied by the
insurgent press of the United States.
There is one exception. A revolu-
tionary Communist, living in New
York, journeyed to the land of the
heart's desire as pictured in the idylls
of Lincoln StefTens, John Kenneth
Turner, John Reed, L. J. de Bekker,
the Rev. Samuel Guy Inman, and
other poets of the impressionistic-
romantic school. When he arrived he
looked about him. He was completely
disillusioned. In the columns of the
revolutionary Liberator for January
he told his disheartening tale. It
makes out a case against the Car-
ranza Government far worse than
what has been summarized here. The
revelation caused a pretty row in the
columns of the Liberator, but so far
as I know not a single other insurgent
journal has mentioned the matter. As
late as May 5 the New Republic, with
matchless ineptitude, could speak as
follows :
Revolutionary activity in Mexico was to
be expected, since the Presidential elections
are approaching. It is a Mexican method of
electioneering, more dramatic and less expen-
sive than the methods in vogue in the United
States. Usually pains are taken to reduce
the danger of bloodshed to a minimum. In
the present instance the center of revolution-
ary activity is Sonora, seventy-six thousand
square miles of hill and desert with less than
three hundred thousand population, practically
inaccessible to invading forces except from
the United States. Auxiliary centers of revo-
lution appear elsewhere, but the press reports
of troop movements and engagements oflfer no
proof of anything like a determined revolu-
tionary force like those which overthrew Diaz
and Huerta, or even like the Villa assault upon
Carranza. But the noise of Mexican politics
arises opportunely for the purposes of those
in this country who would like to make an
issue out of "cleaning up Mexico."
Liberalism, radicalism, insurgency
in general, accepted a Mexican myth
based partly upon the high-flown
rhetoric (as well as on the confisca-
tory provisions in Article 27) of the
Constitution of 1917 and partly upon
the tales of romantic and sometimes
subsidized travelers and rhapsodists.
All contrary testimony was uniformly
rejected. Insurgent journalism has
played exactly the same game with
regard to the Government of Car-
ranza that it has played with regard
to the Government of Lenin. It has
shamelessly juggled the facts. Events
have shown that the real plot against
Mexico was the plot of Carranza and
his bandit chiefs against the Mexican
people, and that this plot was in this
country perversely abetted, to the
best of their powers, by the professed
organs of truth, justice, and brother-
hood. I
W. J. Ghent
Hiram W. Johnson in Fact
and Fancy
'T'HE energetic campaign which
1
Hiram W. Johnson is waging for
the Republican nomination is attract-
ing keen attention in all circles. His
phenomenal showing in a succession
of State primaries is causing anxiety
among many who a few months ago
did not take his candidacy seriously.
Indeed it now looks as if the Califor-
nia Senator would come to Chicago
next month as General Wood's most
formidable rival. Politicians profess
to minimize the results of the pri-
maries, pointing out that they repre-
sent but a small minority of the
voters, but they are plainly worried.
Conservatives interpret his success as
the result of appeals to the radicals
and the elements of unrest, calling at-
tention to the fact that his strongest
showing has been made in industrial
centres where the greatest discontent
exists. Still others consider it a ver-
dict of popular opinion against Wil-
son and the League of Nations, and
point also to his pacifist, Sinn Fein,
and pro-German following.
Undoubtedly all of these considera-
tions have weight and must be taken
into account, but they are far from
furnishing a satisfactory explana-
tion. Anyone who attended the meet-
ings addressed by Senator Johnson
in New York and Chicago, could not
but be struck by the preponderance
of these obnoxious elements in the
audiences and the direct appeal which
the speaker made to them. But it
is inconceivable that they are suffi-
ciently numerous to account for the
Johnson votes cast in the primaries.
As a matter of fact he owes his
largest support to the prevalence of
what jnay be termed the "Johnson
538]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 54
lesrend." Widely spread over the
country is the belief that Hiram
Johnson is the Hercules that cleaned
the Augean stables of Californian
politics and introduced in that com-
monwealth advanced welfare legisla-
tion and a model system of admin-
istration. It is this belief that has
drawn to the Senator thousands of
good men and women who have be-
come impatient at the slowness of
progress and skeptical of most men
prominent in public life. These
people are convinced that they can
find in Johnson a leader that will
brush away the cobwebs at a stroke
and usher in a new and happier day.
Is there any real foundation for
their belief? Has the Johnson legend
any basis in fact? Surely it is of
the highest importance to study the
record and ascertain the truth. It
Hiram Johnson performed in his
native State the services thus at-
tributed to him, then, indeed, he has
a valid claim to be considered as a
worthy candidate for the highest of-
fice in the land in this transcendent
time of crisis. If, on the other hand,
he is sailing under false colors and
profiting by a reputation which he
does not deserve, then all the world
should know it. It is the purpose of
the writer to analyze Johnson's career
in California objectively with a view
to determining whether his acts, ac-
complishments, and character justify
his popular reputation in the eastern
States.
In California Hiram W. Johnson's
political career has been brief but
spectacular, and those most opposed
to him and his methods will not deny
him the credit of large achievements.
Prior to his first appearance on the
political stage in 1910, when he
was elected Governor, he had been
a rather inconspicuous lawyer. His
legal equipment was considered me-
diocre, and his abilities lay rather in
the line of a certain dramatic elo-
quence and the power of vitriolic
attack in addressing a jury than in
clear reasoning or constructive argu-
ment. Before his campaign for the
Governorship he was chiefly known
for his connection with two cases, the
graft prosecution and the Dalzell
Brown affair.
When Francis J. Heney undertook
the graft prosecution case, Johnson
also entered it, but soon afterward
withdrew, the alleged reason being
that he fell out with Rudolph Spreck-
els, the "angel" of the prosecution,
over the amount of his fee. Later,
when Heney was shot and tempo-
rarily disabled, Johnson volunteered
to take his place. Ruef was con-
victed— as he was certain to be from
the moment of the attack on Heney —
and this at once established the popu-
larity of Johnson.
The other case was that of the de-
fense of Dalzell Brown, who had
looted the California Safe Deposit
and Trust Company. It was a scan-
dalous case and the guilt of the ac-
cused was beyond question. Johnson
was generally believed to have been
employed to use his influence and
"pull" with the district attorney's
office to get his client off with a light
sentence. A judge was called in
from the country, and Brown pleaded
guilty to one charge. The prosecut-
ing officer asked for a nominal sen-
tence on the ground of the assistance
rendered by Brown in untangling the
false entries in the books of the bank.
Later it appeared that Brown had
done nothing of the sort, but had
done all in his power to block the in-
vestigation. There was little doubt
as to the means employed by his at-
torney in securing his escape from
just punishment.
Then came the split in the Repub-
lican party. The so-called Lincoln-
Roosevelt League was formed, with
the avowed purpose of wresting con-
trol of the party machinery from
those who had long held it. Johnson
was asked by the League to run for
Governor, but declined. The then
Governor, James Gillett, was de-
servedly popular and there was little
doubt of his reelection if he should
decide to run again. When, however,
Gillett announced that he would re-
tire and the way seemed open for a
plurality candidate to succeed in the
resulting confusion, Johnson changed
his mind and accepted the leadership
and candidacy of the Lincoln-Roose-
velt League.
He made his campaign on the is-
sue of the Southern Pacific in poli-
tics, and it is upon this that much of
his fame outside his native State
rests. As a matter of fact, the South-
ern Pacific was already out of politics,
had been out of politics for two years,
when he started his campaign. The
facts are open to everyone. Had the
Southern Pacific not given up its po-
litical organizations throughout the
State, Johnson would have had no
show at all. But the legend of South-
ern Pacific political control was still
strong, and Johnson played upon it in
vitriolic attacks. He indulged in
spectacular "shadow-boxing" over
the grave of the self-buried giant. It
is a matter of record that, not long
before, he had sought employment
with the Southern Pacific and had
been turned down.
Reference must be made to one
other issue in this election that has
been misrepresented in the East, the
issue of woman suffrage. It has been
publicly asserted that Johnson was an
advocate of suffrage and was largely
responsible for giving the vote to the
women of California. Nothing could
be further from the case. The Con-
stitutional amendment for suffrage
was before the electors at the same
election in which he was running for
Governor, but in all the speeches he
made up and down the State, never
once did he say one word in favor of
it. On the contrary, he kept dis-
creetly silent, except in private con-
versation, where he could voice his
contempt in safety. Though repeat-
edly urged to make a public declara-
tion on the subject, he declined to do
so.
The campaign resulted in his elec-
tion, together with a Legislature en-
tirely subservient to him. With this
in hand, he started to build up a po-
litical machine unique in the annals
of American politics. Its unique
character lies in the fact that, while
it exercised a control even more com-
plete than that of Tammany, and
utilized the corrupt forces of vice
and graft as exemplified in the ward-
heelers of the underworld and the
waterfront, it was built up "in the
name of the Lord," and counts among
its supporters many of the most
prominent and "forward-looking"
men of California. How was it po3-
May 22, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[539
sible to achieve such an anomalous
result? By patronage, pure and
simple, albeit sometimes disguised
beneath the cover of "v^^elfare" com-
missions.
j It would be unfair to deny Gov-
I ernor Johnson the credit for much
I legislation of enlightened character.
California was far behind in such
I matters, and if perchance Johnson's
! subservient Legislature deserved the
epithet of "freak," which has gen-
i erally been applied to it, due appre-
i ciation must be recorded for the
institution of many needed reforms.
. The drawback was that these reform
I and welfare measures — good as well
as bad — were carried out by the in-
stitution of numerous highly paid
commissions, which cost the people of
the State exorbitant sums and each
of which became a source of patron-
age to the Governor for his ma-
chine. This patronage was abused
in a shocking manner. A large
number of legislators were given
lucrative positions. Saloon-keepers,
professional gamblers, id omne genus,
who controlled large blocks of votes,
were taken care of and even dom-
inated the Republican county com-
mittee of San Francisco. The number
of State employees increased by
leaps and bounds, and the expense
of running the State Government
jumped from $8,376,298 in 1910 to
$15,681,943 in 1916. One illustra-
tion of the increase of the State pay-
roll for political purposes may be
cited as typical. In 1910 the em-
ployees on the San Francisco water
front (State Harbor Board) num-
bered 285 with an annual pay-roll of
$379,936 ; in 1916 these had been in-
creased to 604, with an annual pay-
roll of $702,359. The Harbor Board
controls the belt-line railroad, with
four miles of track and four loco-
motives. For this were provided
seven yardmasters, fifteen firemen,
forty-six machinists' helpers, seven-
teen electricians, and fifteen en-
gineers !
The political degradation of Califor-
nia under the Johnson machine pre-
sents a dark picture. The obedient
Legislature placed the additional
burden of taxation, necessary to meet
the vastly increased expenditures.
upon the public service corporations
and fooled the people into believing
that this came out of their fat profits
and not out of the pockets of the con-
sumers. The owners of these cor-
porations were rendered thoroughly
docile under the threat of confiscatory
taxes without redress, and even to-
day, in the primary just held, many
of them came tamely to heel, realiz-
ing their impotence to kick against
the pricks.
The story of Johnson espousing
the Progressive party and his dis-
franchising of the Republican party
in California forms a chapter by it-
self, but to tell it would transcend
the limits of this article. Here is no
question of the right or propriety of
changing political allegiance. It is
the question of utilizing a personal
machine to seize and change a party
organization. Johnson, through his
complete control of the Republican
State Committee, secured the nomina-
tion as Presidential electors of men
pledged to vote for the Progressive
candidates, and prevented the names
of real Republican electors from ap-
pearing on the ballot. To perpetuate
his control, despite the collapse of the
Progressive party, he secured the
passage of an infamous primary law
that permits any man to vote in the
primary of a party regardless of his
own party affiliation. His attacks on
the Republican party were violent
and offensive, yet when it served his
purpose he directed his followers to
vote in the Republican primaries, and
thereby obtained again the control of
the Republican party organization for
the purpose of securing the nomina-
tion for United States Senator. An-
other step also was necessary. The
Constitution of California forbade a
Governor to become a candidate for
Senator. He had this provision re-
pealed. The iniquitous primary law
made possible at the same time po-
litical deals and trades with the
Democrats.
Such was the situation at the time
of the Hughes-Wilson campaign and
the Johnson-Hughes episode in Cal-
ifornia, which resulted in the elec-
tion of Wilson. In California, Hughes
was defeated by less than 4,000
votes; Johnson was elected Senator
by more than 300,000. This astound-
ing result was lamely explained in
many ways. To this day it is gen-
erally believed in the East that it was
due to the stupidity and Bourbonism
of Republican reactionaries, whom
the people rebuked for slights to their
champion, Johnson. These explana-
tions obviously do not explain. John-
son claimed to be loyal to Hughes, but
had this been true, the slightest nod to
his machine would have made the vic-
tory of Hughes certain. California
was overwhelmingly Republican, and
there was no need for Hughes to in-
clude it in his itinerary, certainly not
before the primaries, where the Sen-
atorial nomination was to be decided.
W. H. Crocker, Republican National
Committeeman, made an earnest plea
that Hughes's visit to California
should be delayed until after the pri-
maries, lest the national candidate
should be injected into the local strug-
gle. But Hughes came, and the
studied break was carefully staged.
Why was it done? To many the an-
swer seemed simple. If Hughes were
elected, four years later he would un-
doubtedly be reelected, or, if not, a
Democrat would succeed him. John-
son's opportunity for the Presidency
lay in the defeat of Hughes and
the election of Wilson, who would
scarcely attempt to run a third time.
Johnson's political career in Cal-
ifornia and at Washington gives a
clear index to his character. Alfred
Holman thus sums it up in the
Argonaut:
Mr. Johnson, a man not without talent and
courage and with exceptional powers of public
appeal, is first, last and always a politician.
He is a statesman only in the sense of an ex-
tended experience in the mechanism of prac-
tical politics. Of world affairs he knows little
and cares less. He has no convictions founded
in broad knowledge or in moral purpose. His
genius is that of destruction ; his talent that of
denunciation. His policy, when not limited to
expediencies, is dominated by his hatreds.
Early in his career he discovered the campaign
value of defamatory onslaught, and he has
attuned his very considerable powers of ora-
tory to this sinister expedient. Mr. Johnson
has not the first qualification for the presi-
dency. He is minus the breadth of mind,
minus the knowledge of affairs, minus the eco-
nomical instinct, minus the judicial spirit,
above all minus the character requisite in the
presidency if it is to be brought back to its
constitutional status and re-established in the
respect of intelligence and patriotism.
This is a harsh arraignment, but
justification may be found for it in
the recent primaries in California.
540]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 54
With almost the whole press of the
State at his beck and call (no less
than thirty-seven editors had been ap-
pointed by him to commissions), a
violent tirade of misrepresentation
and insinuation was launched at his
opponent, Herbert Hoover. Every
day the papers carried hints to the
Democrats that they could vote in the
Republican primaries. Hoover's sup-
porters, amateurs in politics and
starting late, carried on a clean cam-
paign, eschewing these political meth-
ods. They had very limited funds to
spend, which were devoted to sending
out letters and circulars and to pay-
ing for some advertisements in the
Johnson papers, the only way they
could reach the electorate. The
Hoover campaign expenditures in
California were probably less than
one-fifth those of the Johnson com-
mittee, yet they at once provoked the
old familiar cry of "a Saturnalia of
political extravagance," a smoke-
screen to conceal the prodigality on
the other side. Despite the most
powerful political machine ever
known in America, despite the oppo-
sition, the unfair opposition of prac-
tically all the newspapers, despite
their inexperience and lack of funds,
despite the adherence to Johnson of
a crowd of old-line Republicans, who
thereby, prior to the appearance of
Hoover, sought to insure against an-
other betrayal of the party by John-
son at Chicago, nevertheless the sup-
porters of Hoover obtained for him
nearly three votes for every five votes
cast for Johnson. It was a splendid
showing, and the protest which these
210,000 votes expressed should not be
without eifect in opening the eyes of
the East to the true nature of the
Johnson legend.
Jerome Landfield
The Military Coup in Germany
WAS it a military coup? That can
not be subject to doubt when one
considers who were the wirepullers. A
Social-Democratic politician, Herr Oden-
weiler, from Bad Homburg, had, on
March 13, a conversation with General
Ludendorflf at Berlin in the course of
which the General requested Herr Oden-
weiler to bring him into contact with
the Social-Democratic Party Managers
and the executives of the Trade Unions.
The leaders of the conspiracy wanted,
at the very outset, to pacify and placate
the working classes. Among other
things, Ludendorff said: "We have em-
ployed Kapp simply because we had no
better man. We need one with iron
nerves. If you can procure us any, we
are willing to form a Government also
with them."
Ludendorff acted, of course, in the be-
lief that he was doing his country a
service, but a conspiracy against the
German Constitution, such as broke out
on March 13, must be judged by what
actually happened and not according to
the subjective conviction of the principal
actors. The chief agent was Ludendorff's
former assistant in the war. Colonel
Bauer, the very man who, on December
7, 1919, assured the American journal-
ist, Karl H. von Wiegand, in an inter-
view that "with the exception of a few
hotspurs, no one in Germany contem-
plates restoring the monarchy by vio-
lence." During the few days in which
Herr Kapp was the stalking-horse for
the military dictatorship which was to
be established, the participants in the
enterprise publicly denied that they had
any monarchical intentions. But these
protestations were not in accordance with
Bauer's interview, the tenor of which
was that the monarchic movement in Ger-
many was growing and that the restora-
tion of the monarchy, in a form copied
from the English model, would come to
pass "automatically" in the near future.
The Colonel even disclosed at the time
a regular programme: first, the election
of Hindenburg as President, then the
removal under his authority of the ruins
of the old Empire, and finally an invita-
tion to Crown-Prince Friedrich Wilhelm
to take possession of his inheritance.
Such was, doubtless, also the plan under-
lying the attempt of March 13. When
its leaders expressed themselves on the
question of the monarchy in private con-
versation, their denial lacked that de-
cision which they gave to their public
utterances. Those who know Hinden-
burg's character can not believe him to
have been initiated in the conspirators'
plans. The wirepullers behind the scene
had intended him for President because
the m»ral authority and personal wor-
ship which the Marshal commands even
among his political opponents could serve
their purpose unknown to Hindenburg
himself.
The conspiracy might have become
more dangerous if it had not broken out
prematurely. Shortly before, the ma-
jority in the National Assembly decided
that the elections for the Reichstag
should take place in the late autumn, as
soon as the harvest should be over, and
a definite legislative programme should <
have been dispatched. This was against
the wishes of the reactionary monarch-
ists and conservatives. They wanted,
on the contrary, elections at the earliest
possible date, because public feeling, dur-
ing the last months, had been unfavor-
able to the Government. The cost of
living kept going up, the recuperation
of national production proceeded but
slowly, labor showed an increasing tend-
ency towards radicalism, and one could
often hear the remark, "Before the No-
vember Revolution things were in better
shape. Since then they have gone
steadily downward." The average Ger-
man unconsciously confused the conse-
quences of the war with those of the
Revolution, and the pace-makers of the
counter-revolution made the most of this
confusion. Among their circle it was
feared that, if the elections were post-
poned until the late autumn, the Gov-
ernment might succeed meanwhile in
quieting the general discontent by finan-
cial reforms by levying on both capital
and incomes, and by obtaining material
alleviation of the peace terms.
Hardly better pleased were the con-
spirators by the plan, then under dis-
cussion among the majority parties, to
have the President elected not after the
American fashion by the entire nation,
but in the French way by the people's
representatives. That would preclude
the election of Hindenburg, and his moral
prestige was an essential factor for the
realization of their retrogressive move.
At this juncture the Minister of War
and Generalissimo Noske became aware
of the existence of the conspiracy.
Noske was, no doubt, the most ener-
getic man in the Government. For him
the outbreak of the counter-revolution
was a moral defeat, as he had always
guaranteed that the officers and troops,
according to their oath to the Constitu-
tion and the personal assurances of the
Generals, were loyal to him, the Min-
ister, whatever their feelings and con-
victions might be regarding the old Em-
pire. His security was such that even
in the night of March 12, when he in- i
spected the guards in front of the Min-
istries, he did not yet believe in the
seriousness of the situation, and held
himself convinced that he could frustrate
the conspirators' plans. But when, at
3 o'clock in the morning, the Govern-
ment was suddenly faced with the full
danger, Noske said the troops at his
command were four times outnumbered
by the forces then marching upon Ber-
lin. The Government troops had little
inclination to fight against odds, and
received the order to retreat. When the
conspirators entered Berlin, they found
i
May 22, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[541
the city abandoned and most of the mem-
bers of the Government gone.
This flight of the Government was a
disappointment to the leaders of the
counter-revolution. It invalidated their
claim of being the only central authority
in the country. The second obstacle in
their way to success was the refusal of
all the departments both of the Imperial
and Prussian administrations to co-
operate with them. The two assistant
Secretaries of State in the Foreign Of-
fice gave the self-appointed Imperial
Chancellor, Dr. Kapp, to understand that
they would not heed any orders from
him. Even more serious was the hostile
attitude of the Ministry of Finance.
Herr Kapp sent an adjutant to the As-
sistant Secretary of State who, since
Erzberger's fall, had been responsible
for the Department, to ask for a draft of
ten million marks, which he needed for
the pay of the troops. The Secretary's
answer to the officer was literally as
follows : "Tell Dr. Kapp that I have no
money for him, and that he shall not
get a single penny from me." But the
decisive blow to their hopes was given
by the refusal of the officers and soldiers
in the provinces to join the rebels.
A backward look on these five days
of the Kapp regime suggests a three-
fold conclusion. It reveals, first of all,
the fatal mentality of those men to
whom, in the war, the destinies of Ger-
many were entrusted. General Luden-
dorff betrayed, by his remark about the
need of men with iron nerves, that he had
not the slightest notion of the spirit pre-
vailing among the people. Only an abso-
lute lack of political sense can account
for his absurd belief that the counter-
revolution could be forced through with
military power against the will of the
people in its present mood. We under-
stand now why this man and men of his
stripe, such as Kapp, Bauer, and von
Liittwitz, were incapable, during the war,
of reading the signs of the time which
gave them warning to conclude a timely
peace. It was Dr. Kapp who in July,
1917, founded the "Fatherland Party,"
which had for its purpose the continua-
tion of the war until Germany should
have vanquished all her opponents. That
party had, at the time, the support not
of the masses, which then had already
grown tired of the war, but of a large
part of the educated classes. But the
Pan-German spirit had lost its hold on
these, as the failure of Kapp's revolu-
tion has proved beyond any doubt. When
the conspirators realized that they could
not expect material help from that quar-
ter, they changed their tactics and sought
contact with the radical wing of the
Socialists. They offered to the Inde-
pendents the use of their troops, if they
wished to form a Government. Their
idea was to establish a Bolshevist Ger-
many, if their original plan failed, and
to attempt to restore Germany's military
predominance with the help of Soviet
Russia, a plan of despair evidencing a
total absence of political intelligence. Not
even the bulk of the moderate Social-
Democrats, let alone the bourgeois
parties, would have lent support to such
a mad excess of patriotism.
The second conclusion bears on the
question whether the radical and de-
structive counter-move of the general
strike was necessary to repress the re-
volt. It is not to be wondered at that
Labor, under the first impression of the
coup, when Berlin was practically cut off
from all communication with the rest of
the country, and the real situation in
the individual provinces could not be sur-
veyed, should have reacted in the way
it did, honestly believing that everything
was at stake. The movement was spon-
taneous. The lawful Government did
not officially call the strike, but seems
to have recommended it. In that Ebert
and Bauer made a mistake, for which,
however, they are not to blame. For
they could not know the actual strength
of their own position, which the course
of events proved to be greater than they
thought, despite the many mistakes which
they had made and which precluded the
return of their Government in its former
constitution. But these mistakes are re-
corded on another page than the one
which contains the history of the Kapp
revolution.
The third conclusion is that these pa-
triots of the Ludendorff type have caused
the Fatherland a material loss of about
two billion working hours, involving a
retardation of the country's reconstruc-
tion and of the fulfillment of its obliga-
tions. This deplorable effect is only
grist for the mill of the Communists
who aim at the overthrow of Germany's
economic organization and hope to usher
in the world revolution with the help
of Bolshevist Russia. The coup has, in-
deed, offered an occasion for the Ger-
man people to show the world, by its
disavowal of the military reaction, that
a large majority of the nation renounces
its past ambitions. It may justly be said
that this was the first unmistakable
manifestation of the existence of a new,
democratic Germany. But also, this
democratic Germany will have a hard
struggle to prevent a large part, per-
haps the majority, of Labor from being
lured into the radical camp by the suc-
cess of the general strike, which has
proved its effectiveness as a political
weapon. The nebulous dreams of a com-
munistic state, of a Soviet Republic,
and an alliance with Russia have taken
a more definite shape, and the near fu-
ture will probably witness a series of
violent coups from the extreme left. An
effective antidote would be an increased
import of raw materials and foodstuffs.
Only that Government has a chance of
maintaining itself in Germany which pro-
vides the people with the means and
opportunities of remunerative labor and
with the wherewithal to feed and clothe
themselves. In this respect the Entente
is in a better position than the German
Government to avert the dangers which,
as a result of Kapp's coup, are now
threatening the country from the left.
The late experience, finally, has em-
phasized the danger involved in the prin-
ciple of a standing army, which the
Peace Treaty of Versailles has imposed
upon Germany. With a democratic mili-
tia no coups d'etat can be attempted by
ambitious or reactionary generals; with
a professional soldiery, prone to violence
and restlessness, such attempts have a
better chance of success.
Dr. Paul Rohrbach
Berlin
Switzerland and the
League of Nations
[The following article, written long in ad-
vance of the plebiscite of May 16, gives an ac-
count of the conflicting views on the League
of Nations which the results of the referendum
show to be a true reflection. The author was
for many years Professor of International Law
at the University of Berne, is now an active
member of the bar of that city, and is one of
the best-known Swiss authorities on juris-
prudence.]
SWITZERLAND, like America, has
found difficulties in the way that
may finally lead her into the League of
Nations. In both countries membership
in such an alliance seems to stand, at the
outset, in contradiction to fundamental
principles of a traditional foreign policy.
Without attempting to judge, or to pre-
scribe, the course of the United States,
some account of Switzerland's efforts to
solve the problem with which she is
faced may prove useful.
With us, though the Government and
both Parliamentary bodies have urgently
recommended adhesion to the League, it
is still necessary to bring about a clear
conviction in the minds of the people.
The real difficulties began precisely at
this point. It is no easy matter to en-
lighten an entire nation. It is difficult
enough to make our intellectual classes
understand the present international sit-
uation. But to make everybody under-
stand it, every workman, every peasant,
to make men understand it who have
never taken any interest in political
questions, that is an undertaking that
demands great confidence in the political
good sense of a nation, great confidence
in democracy.
What makes the task still more difficult
is the fact that the Covenant of Paris
is far from perfect. No one was gen-
uinely elated over its meagre results in
bringing about obligatory arbitration.
542]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 54
disarmament, and international organiza-
tion. I must say, so far as 1 am con- .
cemed, I, too, was disappointed, although
I had worked for more than twenty-five
years for the advancement of interna-
tional law and was therefore in a posi-
tion to realize the great advance that, in
spite of everything, the Covenant of
Paris provided for the world. The same
could be said of all sincere advocates ot
a League of Nations. Time, no doubt,
was necessary to realize the great ad-
vantages of the Covenant in spite of
eveo'thing else, to realize the ameliora-
tion it provided for the deplorable in-
ternational situation of the entire world
after this war, and also to realize the
disadvantages of a policy of separatism
on the part of those countries deciding
to remain outside of this League. Not
until all this was realized was it possible
to see in the Covenant, as a matter of
fact and in spite of its imperfections, a
tronendous advance, nothing less than
salvation for humanity.
-" There was during the war in German
Switzerland a great deal of pro-Ger-
manism. Our press was in complete sub-
jection to the Empire and defended with
it German imperialism and German mili-
tarism in all its evil consequences. It is
a shame for us, living in a democratic
country, to have to admit that the readers
of our newspapers simply believed all
the falsehoods that our press imported
from beyond the Rhine. We did not have
in German Switzerland a single news-
paper that was truly independent and
that maintained the Swiss point of view
in every respect. (This state of affairs
induced my friends and myself to found
a new paper, the Ncmc Schweizer Zei-
tung.) The press, which was more Ger-
man than Swiss, is above all else respon-
sible for the fact that we have in German
Switzerland many thousands who have
been, and still are, entirely subservient
to Germanism. These thousands, guided
by a mediocre press, are to-day still op-
posed to the entrance of Switzerland into
the League of Nations. If the League
had been decreed from Berlin they would
probably speak and think differently.
But the Covenant comes from Paris, and
that suflices to compromise it in their
eyes.
It is of interest to know that those
who are hostile to the League of Nations
are led, if we leave out of consideration
the small provincial press, for the most
part by a number of our military com-
manders who were counting on the suc-
cess of German militarism. Disappointed
with the result of the war, they are nat-
urally opposed to what they call an
alliance of the victors. In order, how-
ever, to defend their point of view in
a less offensive manner, they use the pre-
text of our policy of neutrality as an
argument against the entrance of Switz-
erland into the alliance. Superior offi-
cers who during the war snapped their
fingers at our neutrality and violated it
flagrantly do not hesitate to-day to use
it as a pretext for entirely opposite ac-
tion.
There are, besides these, still other
opponents who can not be convinced.
These are the Socialist workmen. The
Swiss Socialist party takes its orders, not
from Berne, not from Ziirich, but from
Moscow. They are Bolshevists, with the
exception of the group of Swiss So-
cialists who call themselves the "Griit-
liverein." The others — and they are
unfortunately the great majority — are
followers of Lenin and are therefore op-
posed to a League of Nations the ob-
ject of which is precisely to rescue the
world from Bolshevistic anarchy. They
have but one aim, to destroy the politi-
cal regime and the social order of West-
ern Europe.
It may be seen from what I have said
that Swiss militarism — in the Prussian
sense of the word — and Swiss Socialism
— in the Russian sense of the word — go
hand in hand with regard to the ques-
tion of the entrance of Switzerland into
the League of Nations. And what makes
this affiliation still more interesting is
the fact that these people, who allow the
foreigner, German or Russian, to dictate
their attitude, in order to justify their
attitude, make use of the pretext, the
one party no less than the other, that
the abandonment of our neutrality would
mean a national danger to our country.
They are infinitely dangerous, because
they exploit the emotions of our people
with a view to the triumph of aspirations
which are diametrically opposed to the
true interests of the country.
Besides such opponents of the Cove-
nant, whom I call insincere, there are a
considerable number of very good pa-
triots who are seriously disturbed be-
cause they have not sufficient confidence
in the Covenant as it was made at Paris
and who are alarmed at seeing our Gov-
ernment depart from a traditional policy.
Yet it is clear that to-day the great ma-
jority of our intellectuals and members
of all political parties, with the sole ex-
ception of the Bolshevists, are in favor
of joining the League. That gives us
the confidence that, in spite of all obsta-
cles, the popular vote of the sixteenth
of May will be favorable to the League.
What has made the situation much
easier for us is the fact that the Coun-
cil of the League of Nations has prom-
ised us that within the League we can
maintain our traditional neutrality.
The Council of the League of Nations; while
affirming the principle that the idea of the
neutrality of members of the League of Na-
tions is incompatible with the principle that
all the members of the League shall act in
common in enforcing its obligations, recognizes
the fact that Switzerland is in an unique posi-
tion and is actuated by a tradition of several
centuries which has been explicitly incor-
porated in the laws of nations and which the
members of the League of Nations, Signatories
of the Treaty of Versailles, have duly recog-
nized through article 435, that the guarantees
stipulated by the Treaty of 1815 and espe-
cially by the Act of November 20, 1815, in '
favor of Switzerland constitute international
obligations for the maintenance of peace. . . .
In accepting these declarations (of the Swiss
Government), the Council recognizes that the
perpetual neutrality of Switzerland and the
guarantee of the inviolability of her territory
as incorporated in the laws of nations, espe-
cially in the Treaties and the Act of 1815, are
justified by the interests of universal peace
and therefore compatible with the Covenant.
We, here in Switzerland, are sufficiently
familiar with American idealism to
know that it is absolutely impossible for
a nation which before all others has
been a guide for us in all the problems
with which the League of Nations is
concerned to remain outside of it. The
hour will come when the two democra-
cies, the one the oldest, the other the
greatest, in the world, the two coun-
tries that have set the precedent for the
creation of a League of Nations, will be
members of this organization that will
lead humanity to a happier and a nobler
future. I
Ottfried Nippold
Berne, April 25
Correspondence
"The Faith that Is in Us"
To the Editors of The Review:
Of the many commendable editorial
utterances which have appeared in the
Review, none is more worthy of atten-
tion than that in your issue of May 15,
headed "The Faith that is in Us." This
is the true gospel of wholesome democ-
racy, from which we have witnessed so
many lamentable departures during the
last few years. It is the sane middle
ground between the wild extremism
which would destroy the fruits of ages
and the frenzied reactionism which would
annihilate the spirit of liberty and
progress.
The real radicals of the country, the
inheritors of the spirit of Thomas Jef-
ferson and Wendell Phillips, the true
liberals, the broadminded conservatives,
are at one in their love for the basic
principles of democracy, although differ-
ing widely in their judgment of the merit
of proposed alterations in the method of
applicaton. It is a burning shame that
a word with the splendid historic mean-
ing of "radical" should be almost uni-
versally misapplied at the present time.
Those who seek to subvert the founda-
tions of the Republic are not radicals,
but revolutionary destroyers. Whatever
our different shades of radicalism or
conservatism, it is time for us to realize
that there is need for union against a
twofold enemy. Liberty and order must
May 22, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[543
walk hand in hand. The reactionaries
and victims of the current mob hysteria,
begotten of a pseudo-patriotism, are no
less a menace to the one than the Bol-
shevist spirit in all of its guises to the
other. A plague of both their houses!
James F. Morton, Jr.
New York, May 14
Misstatements About Mexico
To the Editors of The Review:
I have read with interest the article
in the Review on three books on Mexico.
It is a subject very close to me, as I have
spent a good many years, among them
the happiest of my life, in that country,
but in spite of my long sojourn there, I
every day realize my ignorance of the
subject, and am correspondingly amazed
at the assurance of men like Mr. de
Bekker, who, after a five weeks' junket
in Mexico, consider themselves suffi-
ciently well informed to instruct the
American public on her social, political,
and economic problems.
As might be expected, his book fairly
bristles with misstatements which would
be funny if they did not contain many
malicious insinuations and misrepre-
sentations of fellow countrymen estab-
lished in Mexico.
Thus, on page 31 of his book, "The
Plot against Mexico," he says: "But
how does Villa maintain himself?
Partly by stealing cattle, partly by rob-
bing ranches and mines, but chiefly
through the charity of his American
friends."
Not a particle of proof is produced in
support of this assertion, which of
course is merely a repetition of what Mr.
de Bekker heard from some of the Mex-
ican officials, whose guest he was during
his trip. If Mr. de Bekker had taken the
trouble to study Mexican history, he
would have come to understand the ten-
dency of Mexican politicians to throw
the blame for their political troubles
upon outsiders, preferably the United
States; his readiness to accept without
investigation charges made by parties
obviously biased is not creditable.
The accuracy of Mr. de Bekker's book
may be judged from the following speci-
men found on page 205: "Spanish land
grants conveyed merely the surface soil,
reserving mineral rights to the State.
Coal, natural gas and petroleum were
not specifically included because their
value was unknown." Whatever may
have been the law of Spain, a country
which lost her rights over Mexico in
1821, the Mexican Mining Code of 1892
states specifically that "the owner of the
soil is entitled to work freely, without
the necessity of special license, the fol-
lowing mineral substances: Mineral
fuels; mineral oils and waters, rocks
in general for building or decorative
purposes."
Again, on page 55 he says : "Carranza
has run the Mexican railways at a profit
and without raising the tariff for pas-
senger traffic." It is not until page 195
that he admits that on July 1, 1917, the
railroads already owed over 71,000,000
pesos for capital and interest matured;
it is almost superfluous to add that not
only this debt but the interest accrued
on bonds since then remain unpaid, and
that there have been no replacements of
the rolling stock worn out or destroyed.
With bookkeeping of this sort it is
always possible to figure out a paper
profit.
Dr. Samuel G. Inman, who lived in
Mexico for several years, can not even
plead ignorance of conditions there as
an excuse for such a statement as this,
which he makes on page 118 of "In-
tervention in Mexico." "Property has
always been a most sacred thing to
Anglo-Saxons. The loss of American
lives in Mexico will not be the reason
for our intervening. It may well serve
as the pretext, but the real reason will
be in order to protect American in-
vestors. It would not take a great deal
more misrepresentations by the Ameri-
can press about the chaos that exists in
Mexico than we now have if there were
only another border raid or two, quite
easily arranged, to make the majority
(of Americans) honestly vote for such a
war!"
When examined as to this statement
by Senator Fall, Inman was obliged to
admit that he was simply quoting de
Bekker.
"What knowledge have you about ar-
ranging raids between Mexico and this
country?" asked Mr. Fall.
"I haven't any knowledge except what
has been published in various papers
and books that these raids have been
financed that way."
This is the kind of information on
Mexico which the American public gets
from certain sources.
Far more worthy of consideration is
Mr. P. Harvey Middleton's "Industrial
Mexico," which on the surface at least
appears to be a serious attempt at pre-
senting the economic situation of that
country, though the execution is de-
cidedly amateurish and Mr. Middleton
evinces a disposition to see things in a
rosy light.
For instance, speaking of the pros-
perity ' in evidence in Mexico City in
April and May of 1919, he mentions the
well-patronized restaurants. I dislike to
spoil a good story, but at the very time
to which he refers, I was patronizing
Mexico's restaurants myself and it often
happened to me that I would be the only
guest. Mr. Middleton, in his description
of Mexico's seaports, tells of the amount
of money that has been spent on harbor
improvements, but neglects to mention
that these improvements were almost all
made under Porfirio Diaz and that since
his downfall they have been allowed to
go to pieces. The reference on page 265
to the rapidly growing traffic of Vera
Cruz is particularly humorous and will
no doubt be appreciated by the mer-
chants of that port, while the "new and
substantial" wharves there of which he
speaks were built in 1901.
Much of Mr. Middleton's eulogy of
Mexican conditions is in the future
tense, as when he speaks of the numer-
ous proposed new railroads and the es-
tablishment of factories and foundries
by Japanese or Americans, and in his
chapters on stock raising, agriculture,
lumbering, and sugar production, he
complacently ignores a state of affairs
that has driven from their homes hun-
dreds of Americans and countless thou-
sands of Mexican farmers, and has cost
them their property and often their
lives. Of the henequen industry, the
utter demoralization of which was no-
torious, owing to the manipulation of
the Comision Reguladora, he says, in
passing, that for 1919 "it is expected
that the output will exceed that of 1918."
At the time of his writing, something
like 700,000 bales of henequen remained
unsold in the warehouse of Yucatan.
In only one place does Mr. Middleton
issue a warning as to the dangers of
the country, as when, on page 167, he
says: "It can not be too strongly em-
phasized that bandits and rebels are still
active in some of the best coffee grow-
ing districts, and no American should
venture either his money or his person
until he is assured of adequate protec-
tion," a statement which might be made
with equal justice in regard to almost
any occupation in Mexico, save those
which can be carried on in the largest
cities.
The scandalous repudiation of 670,-
000,000 of paper money is glossed over
on page 208 with the statement that the
larger part was redeemed as taxes, rail-
road fares, etc. The truth, known to
everyone in Mexico, is that taxes and
duties were made payable in gold; later,
a surtax of a hundred per cent, was
added, payable in paper money, which
in this way was withdrawn from
circulation.
Surely, "Industrial Mexico" will never
go down in history as a model of ac-
curacy.
G. W. Knoblauch
New York, May 1
The Ability of France to
Pay Her Debts
[The author of the following letter is one
of the most distinguished French Senators and
one of the leading authorities in France on
agriculture. He was deputy from the Vosges
from 1872 to 1903, Minister of Agriculture
from 1883 to 1885, President of the Chamber
544]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 54
of Deputies from 1888 to 1889, and Prime
Minister from 1896 to 1898.]
To the Editors of The Review :
I am ver>' glad of the opportunity to
give to the public of a country which
stood with us in saving civilization, and
with which we wish to continue to go
hand in hand, the gist of a recent speech
of mine.
Here in France we are weighed with a
heavy charge caused by the German in-
vasion and the necessary debts con-
tracted in order to win the victory. It
will take us twenty years to restore the
devastated parts of our country, and we
must go on borrowing in order to con-
tinue this reconstruction work and to
pay these debts. There are doubters
amongst us who say that France is inca-
pable of paying these sums. But they
are wrong, and I say it with sincerity
and without ostentation. We have an
asset which they do not take into account.
I refer to the return to France of Alsace
with all its great riches, especially its
potassium mines, its recently discovered
oil wells, and probably other sources of
wealth. Lorraine brings back to us iron
mines unsurpassed by those in any other
part of the world. These riches alone
would suffice to pay off our national debt.
But these are not the only resources of
revenue. The principal one is our indus-
tries which create capital and revenue.
We have every reason to believe that our
industries will be normal again in a few
years. Our revenues will also be in-
creased by a return to the economical
habits peculiar to our country. Every
unnecessary expenditure will be avoided.
There will be reforms in this direction
and all red tape will be eradicated. There
will be changes in our parliamentary sys-
tem, too. Great attention will be paid to
our agriculture. I am urging that com-
mittees for this purpose be organized in
all our Departments, and that our farm-
ers' wives and daughters, who saved the
country from famine during the war, be
admitted to membership on these com-
mittees. And finally the "sacred union,"
which was observed during the war, will
continue during the peace, while every
Frenchman will work until his death.
For a moment last autumn I was disposed
on account of my eighty years and more
to decline reelection to the Senate. But
here I am again at the Luxembourg.
Jules Meline
Paris, March 10
Conservation of Wild Life
To the Editors of The Review:
I am much interested to note in your
periodical an editorial advocating the
formation of a commission for the con-
servation of wild life. This idea I am
heartily in favor of. Such an official
organization with proper authority could
tremendously benefit and help maintain
our wild life. I trust you may continue
to advocate such an organization.
The Bureau of Biological Survey of
the Department of Agriculture is the
one Government bureau largely devoted
to the study and conservation of our
wild life, under restrictions, however,
which prevent it from accomplishing as
much good as it might otherwise bring
about. One of our larger activities is
the administration of the Migratory Bird
Treaty Act, the constitutionality of
which has just been sustained by the
Supreme Court. The Migratory Bird
Treaty Act and the decision give us a
solid foundation for the conservation and
increase of our useful bird life. Accord-
ing to all reports this work has already
accomplished much good.
E. W. Nelson
Chief of Bureau
Washington, D. C, April 26
Book Reviews
The Beginnings of Modern
Italy
Italy from Dante to Tasso (1300-1600). By
H. B. Cotterill. New York : Frederick A.
Stokes Company.
PERHAPS for readers accustomed to
see propaganda in everything, Mr.
Cotterill's book may seem to be part of
a subtle plan on the part of the Italian
Government to make the world forget
Fiume and Istria and remember the
Florence and Siena that have, after all,
been Italy's greatest asset. The volume
bears on its paper cover the delicate out-
line of Giotto's Dante, or what we like
to think is Giotto's Dante, holding his
yellow pomegranates against the faded
background of the Bargello Chapel. It
is prefaced by the familiar portrait that
used to hang in the window of every pic-
ture shop, the delicately drawn head and
shoulders of Beatrice d' Este, the gentle
girl-wife of Lodovico il Moro, with its
pearl-edged cap and the pendant neck-
lace, and the golden circlet binding the
hair. Within are all the other dear and
familiar landmarks of Alinari and Brogi
illustration — Ghiberti's Baptistry Door,
the Campo Santo at Pisa, the tombs
of the Vendramin and Mocenigo, with
others less familiar.
To attempt in a volume of six hundred
pages to treat popularly, yet with due re-
gard for scholarly accuracy, the political
history as "viewed from the standpoints
of the chief cities, with descriptions of
important episodes and personalities and
of the art and literature of the three
centuries" from Dante to Tasso is ob-
viously a large order. In 1300 Dante
was exactly in that "middle of our
mortal life" when he met the vision of
Virgil, who was to take him on his im-
mortal journey. In 1600 Tasso had been
dead for five years. Between these two
dates there grew up an almost legend-
ary world, packed with action, rich in
color, a world that saw the development
of the arts to the highest point of per-
fection and that produced some of the
greatest names in literature, history,
poetry, and science. The author has
adopted an excellent and satisfactory
plan for compassing his enormous field
and clarifying the immense detail that
goes to make up the history of these per-
haps most significant centuries in the
world's history. For each century he
gives an historical outline, the history
of the principal cities, Rome, Naples,
Milan, Florence, Venice, with a critical
chapter setting forth the principal liter-
ary productions, and another chapter on
the art, dealing separately with paint-
ing, sculpture, and architecture. The
historical outlines of the century he has
given in thirty-year divisions in an at-
tempt to untangle the complicated web
of Italian politics. The book was evi-
dently written during the war and the
author is frequently, rather amusingly,
pleased to find German authorities in
error. He misses no opportunity to dis-
pute with so distinguished a Teuton
authority as Gregorovius and to trace to
Germanic influences the obvious degrada-
tions of Italian taste in decoration.
Italian history shows a singular contin-
uity of spirit. Reading these fascinating
pages of the exploits of the Visconti
and the Sforze, the Montefeltri, the
Medici, and the Gonzaghe, one sees that
D'Annunzio, pouring out fiery proc-
lamations and verses in his Colonel's
uniform, is, at best, but a modem condot-
tiere. Four centuries ago they too were
not only soldiers but poets and painters
and aesthetes and patrons of art.
From 1300 to 1600 are the centuries
that not only developed the arts of
sculpture, painting, architecture, and
poetry as evidenced by such supreme
names as Michael-Angelo, Raphael,
Titian, Petrarch, Poliziano, Brunelleschi,
Leonardo da Vinci, but that developed
and conceived to a greater degree than is
generally recognized the republican and
national ideals of the Italian peninsula.
Most books on Italian history are his-
tories of the rulers and not of the people.
The people appear occasionally, as in the
dramatic and tragic stories of the Com-
munes, especially of such as Cola di
Rienzo, but the emphasis still falls on the
triumphs and tyrannies of popes and
doges, of emperors and condottieri,
rather than on the growth and develop-
ment of liberating ideas which are be-
coming of increasingly greater interest
to a generation that has gone through
a great war and is rather fed up on
ducal tombs and frescoed chapels.
The national concept of Rome as the
centre of an Italian world bounded by
May 22, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[545
the natural geographical limits of moun-
tain and sea, ruled by a native king,
freed from the authority of the Church,
which lost its authority when it lost its
simplicity — this is not a modern doctrine
but a fundamental idea in Italian litera-
ture and political philosophy since the
days of Dante. Dante merely completed
the mediaeval conception that saw in
Pope and Emperor, representing Church
and State, not sun and moon but two suns
of equal power, authority, and holiness.
Dante's whole political philosophy rests
on the theory of the absolute separation
of two necessary guides, Pope and Em-
peror, co-equal, independent, deriving
each his authority from divine sanction.
To Dante the hope of Italy lay in the
restoration of simplicity to the Pope and
of power to the Emperor. Petrarch's
"Spirto Gentil," addressed to Cola di
Rienzo, Machiavelli's "Deliverer," of the
last chapter of the "Prince," Fazio degli
Uberti's "vertudioso re," all reflected the
eternal hope of the poets for a united
Italy under a human power, free from
external dominion. Dante saw this ideal
realized in the adored person of Henry
VII of Luxemburg, the "Messo di Dio,"
whom he put into Paradise as a reward
for his supreme virtues and his tragic
ill fortunes. Petrarch, the first to love
Italy civilly like an Italian and not like
a Guelf or a Ghibelline, was the first to
perceive and to express the real essence
of the new humanism and the growing
enthusiasm for democracy. He heard
the voice of the revolt against the Middle
Ages, not from papal or royal palace,
but from the Forum, where the people
were becoming accustomed to the sound
of their own voices. Cola di Rienzo, the
plebeian archaeologist, who felt himself
the reincarnation of the spirit of Rome
and who was proclaimed as Tribune of
the people in the Campidoglio, became
for Petrarch, though unhappily but for
a short time, the embodiment of the popu-
lar ideal, the protector of Liberty, "dolce
e desiato bene." Convinced by the per-
petual perfidy of foreign dominators that
the monarchy was the only means of re-
storing the Roman republic, the voice of
Italian patriotism called successively to
such redeemers as Robert of Naples and
even to the tyrannical, liberty-destroy-
ing dynasties of Milan and Ferrara and
Mantua, seeing in the power, though it
be that of a tyrant, at least the power of
a native Italian prince, believing that the
voluntary renunciation of municipal in-
dependence was compensated by the sav-
ing influence of a strong patron. Hope
culminated in Gian Galeazzo Visconti
who, because of his great territorial con-
quests, seemed to embody the mon-
archical principle of unity under a native
emperor as opposed to the Florentine
principle of communal liberty with a
loosely federated union under the Pope.
Thus the monarchical concept which
would break up municipal strongholds,
reduce municipal franchises, and join the
separate provinces under a strong politi-
cal head became a principle of federation
and political equilibrium which finally re-
sulted in the foundation of the modern
Italian kingdom. And it is very interest-
ing to see that in the eyes of modern Ital-
ians Victor Emanuel II, the native Prince
who finally mounted the throne, became
the embodiment of the ideals of Dante and
of Fazio's famous prophecy of the com-
ing of the king to rule over the Italian
garden "enclosed by mountains and its
own seas, in the perpetual succession of
whose princely dynasty should lie safety
and hope for Italy."
Beulah B. Amram
Japanese Rule in Korea
Korea's Fight for Freedom. By F. A. Mc-
Kenzie. New York: Fleming H. Revell
Company.
IN 1907, Mr. McKenzie, the well-known
newspaper correspondent, published a
volume entitled the "Tragedy of Korea,"
and based upon personal observations
which he had been able to make by es-
caping from the Japanese authorities at
Seoul, going into the interior of Korea,
and studying the police methods which
the Japanese were employing as the de
facto rulers of the country. He has now
issued a new volume, including some of
the chapters of the old and bringing the
account to date.
It is now some months since the Fed-
eral Council of Churches of Christ in
America felt compelled to issue a report
describing the atrocities of which the
Japanese soldiers had been guilty against
a wholly defenseless people. This report
was especially significant in view of the
well-known reluctance upon the part of
all church organizations to animadvert
on political conditions in countries in
which they maintain missionary stations.
It was further significant that one of the
signers of the report was Mr. Sidney L.
Gulick, who for years had been known
as one of the foremost defenders in this
country of what he conceives to be the
rights of the Japanese. Mr. McKenzie,
however, charges Mr. Gulick with hav-
ing exerted every possible influence to
prevent the early appearance of the report
which, as Secretary of the Council, he
felt compelled to sign, with the result
that the report did not appear until some
four or five months after the atrocities
described in it had begun.
As to his own point of view, Mr.
McKenzie, in his Preface, says :
Some critics have sought to charge me with
being "Anti-Japanese." No man has written
more appreciatively of certain phases of Jap-
anese character and accomplishments than my-
self. ... I have long been convinced, however,
that the policy of Imperial expansion adopted
by Japan, and the means employed in advanc-
ing it, are a grave menace to her own perma-
nent well-being and to the future peace of the
world. I am further convinced that the mili-
tarist party really controls Japanese policy,
and that temporary modifications which have
been recently announced do not imply any
essential change of national plans and ambi-
tions. If to believe and to proclaim this is
"Anti-Japanese," then I plead guilty to the
charge. I share my guilt with many patriotic
Japanese subjects who see, as I see, the perils
ahead.
Mr. McKenzie, as he suggests, is not
alone in the belief that many of the acts
of recent years which have brought the
Japanese Government as defendant be-
fore the bar of the world's moral judg-
ment have been due to the fact that the
civil authorities in Japan, and especially
those entrusted with the foreign policies
of the Government, have not been able to
control the actions of the military au-
thorities, and have thus often found
themselves in the humiliating position of
having made promises that have not been
fulfilled; of having made statements of
facts, which have later appeared to be
false; and of having been forced to ac-
cept lines of conduct concerning the wis-
dom, not to speak of the morality, of
which they have been almost surely un-
convinced. This dominance in Japan of
the militarists was especially emphasized
by Professor McLaren, an authority on
Japanese political institutions, in an ad-
dress which he recently made at Cleve-
land before the American Historical As-
sociation. This feature of Japan's po-
litical life is also continually referred to
by such journals as the Japanese Adver-
tiser and the Kobe Chronicle in explana-
tion of occurrences which seem remark-
able to Americans and Europeans; and,
for that matter, the same explanation is
frequently given in the Japanese vernac-
ular papers. For example, in a recent
issue of the Tokyo Asahi it was reported
that the Government had been interpel-
lated in Parliament as to whether there
was any basis to the rumor abroad that
while the Japanese foreign office was con-
ducting diplomatic affairs through proper
channels, the military authorities were
secretly interfering. In reply, Mr.
Tanaka, the Minister of War, had replied
that there was no foundation for such a
report. The Asahi, however, made the
following comment:
Perhaps the War Minister could give iio
other reply. In our opinion it can not be said
that the rumor has no foundation whatever.
Of course, it may be untrue that the Japanese
military officers should clandestinely interfere
in the affairs of other countries or foment in-
ternal trouble. We believe so for the sake of
the good name of the Japanese soldier; per-
haps the rumor is a misapplication of the state
of affairs in the Balkans and in Central
American states. But we regret to have to
admit the broad fact that Japan has military
diplomacy besides that of the Foreign Office.
What of our diplomacy towards China? Has
it never happened that while the Foreign
Office was making arrangements in accord-
ance with a definite policy, the Japanese mili-
tary officers in China took a different course
of action and showed much activity behind
546]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 54
the scene? Did not the army differ from the
Foreign Office in regard to our policy towards
China and try to override the Foreign Office
with the assistance ot" the Genro? What about
Siberia? The Japanese diplomatic authorities
and military- officers in Siberia are not neces-
sarily in harmony; on the contrary, there is a
wide' gull between the two.*
The great power exercised in Japan by
that extra-constitutional body, the Genro,
is well known. At its head is Prince
Yamagata, who for more than forty
years has been the chief of the military
party. Furthermore, by Imperial man-
date, it is provided that in every Cabinet
the portfolios of the War and Navy De-
partments shall be held by military offi-
cers of high rank. The result from this
provision is that these two Departments
have the power, which upon occasion
they have not hesitated to exercise, to
prevent the formation or continuance of
a Cabinet not acceptable to them, by re-
fusing to appoint to it, or by withdraw-
ing from it, their representatives.
It is a regrettable fact that the Japa-
nese people do not seem to have felt a
general moral indignation at the acts
of their military forces in Korea — acts
the commission of which they do not
deny — but they do seem very generally
to have recognized that political wisdom
has not been shown by their Government
in its management of Korean affairs.
The continued and, indeed, increasing re-
pugnance of the Koreans to Japanese
rule has sufficiently convinced them of
this. But the writer has been able to
find little evidence that the Japanese
have even begun to question the wisdom
or the moral propriety of the funda-
mental policy which their Government
has pursued in Korea. This policy has
been essentially the same as that which,
before the war, controlled the Prussian
Government in its dealings with the
Polish provinces. Japan has sought to
crush out all that is distinctive in Korean
civilization and to substitute for it her
own culture and ideals. The only politi-
cal status reserved for the former king-
dom of Korea has been that of an incor-
porated administrative area of the Jap-
anese Empire. And the same blindness
that has made it impossible for the Jap-
anese to understand why a people should
be unwilling to abandon their sovereignty
and their nationality in return for the
assumed benefits of Japanese rule also
accounts for what seems to be their gen-
uine surprise that the Chinese should
not be willing to cooperate with them on
terms which would mean the subjection
of Chinese interests to Japanese direc-
tion and control.
These observations upon Japan's poli-
cies in Korea have a significance broader
than that which they have with regard
to the welfare of the Koreans. They
have a direct bearing upon the question
*Cf. The Japan Advertiser, January 30, 1920.
whether the rest of the world may look
with approval upon the progressive real-
ization of Japan's imperialistic ambitions
throughout the Far East. They raise
the question whether it will be an ad-
vantage to the millions of Asiatics, or,
indeed, to the rest of the world, that the
political ideals for which Japan avowedly
stands should find further scope for ap-
plication.
It is but just to Japan to say that she
had recently instituted important changes
in the administration of Korean affairs,
the two most important of which are the
abolition of the requirement that the
Governor-General of the peninsula shall
be an officer of high rank in the active
military service and that the gendarmerie
shall be replaced by policemen. There
has, however, been no abandonment, or
suggestion of abandonment, of the funda-
mental aim of Japan — the Japanization
of the Koreans.
W. W. WiLLOUGHBY
The Puzzle of National
Character
Arrows of Desire. By J. S. Mackenzie. New
York : The Macmillan Company.
IN spite of Burke's declaration that he
did not know how to do it, we are
perpetually drawing up indictments
against whole nations. We call them es-
timates of national character. The Eng-
lish, for example, are reputed dull, slug-
gish, unable to see a joke, in spite of
their long array of brilliant wits, Lamb,
Praed, Barham, Thackeray, Lang, Gil-
bert, Calverley, J. K. Stephen, Owen Sea-
man, Chesterton, and in spite of having
produced the greatest and most popular
master of the comic, since Rabelais, by
name Charles Dickens. If any idea was
firmly fixed in the English mind, it was
the levity of the French.
The English have a scornful insular way
Of calling the French light. . . .
... Is a bullet light,
That dashes from the gun-mouth, while the
eye
Winks and the heart beats one, to flatten itself
To a wafer on the white speck on a wall
A hundred paces off? Even so direct,
So sternly undivertible of aim.
Is this French people.
During the war, it was a common obser-
vation that the races had interchanged
characteristics. How steadfast the
French were, let the long-drawn agony
of Verdun attest, and the stone-wall reso-
lution never to submit or yield of the
whole French people. And the French
noted with surprise the inexhaustible
gayety of the English in camp and their
reckless, headlong elan in the field. How
the popular estimates of German charac-
ter have changed need not be detailed.
It has remained for Dr. J. S. Macken-
zie, who at one time held the chair of
Logic and Philosophy at Cardiff, to dis-
cover that the English are a race of
poseurs. That is the form his indict-
ment takes in his series of essays, with
the fanciful title from a line of Blake's.
Henry V, as represented by Shakespeare,
is a typical Englishman, not "Shakes-
peare's conception of the very perfect
knight" (p. 20), but "a character of
many conflicting 'humors,' leading to a
succession of more or less conscious
poses" (p. 24). Dr. Mackenzie is "well
aware that this is not the view that has
been commonly taken," but he would not
go as far as "Mr. B. Wendell" (who is
barely recognizable as our own and only
Barrett) in calling "Henry V" a dull play.
As becomes a philosopher and logician,
he is addicted to hedging, that is, guard-
ing himself against attack or retort, by
such devices as the verb "seem," and the
phrase "more or less." "Shakespeare's
answer to this question seems to have
been" (p. 24), "that kind of affection at
least seems to be distinctly shown"
(p. 26) ; "Henry proceeds to consider
practical difficulties in a way that seems
to imply" (p. 32). Even more virtue
resides in "more or less"; it is a most
convenient starting-hole for the fox of
argument. In regard to Prince Hal's
declaration in his speech over his father's
crown.
You won it, wore it, kept it, gave it me;
Dr. Mackenzie writes, "we realize that
the precious air of humility, though not
altogether hypocritical, was a more or
less unconscious pose" (p. 29).
To "try confusions" with such a rea-
soner is like trying to bind Proteus.
What is a poseur? Dr. Mackenzie says
(p. 37), "Henry comes more and more
to pose as the simple soldier," and on
p. 43, he reaches this astounding con-
clusion, "He was not an actor, but an
unconscious poseur." Surely the essence
of posing is consciousness. The plain
dictionary meaning of poseur is "affected
person," and of posing, "assuming an
attitude for artistic purposes." How can
one assume an attitude for a specific pur-
pose, and be unconscious of so doing?
Such logic is too much for the. plain
man. There can be no argument with-
out new definition of the terms.
Setting aside for the moment these
cobwebs of subtlety, let us consider the
origin of "Henry V," and the other his-
torical plays of Shakespeare. When Eng-
land became a nest of singing-birds, Eng-
land was a tiny nation of less than five
million people, and she had been fight-
ing for the bare life, against the huge,
wealthy, world power, Spain. The de-
liverance of 1588 was not less than the
deliverance of 1918. England was on the
brink of destruction and was saved. One
result was a great outburst of national
pride, as plainly to be read in "The
Faerie Queene," as in Shakespeare's his-
torical dramas. Patriotism was not yet
i
May 22, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[547
classed as a vice ; the term "chauvinism"
was not invented. To rejoice that the
enemies of the nation were overthrown
was no more reckoned a sin than it was
in the days of Deborah, and Barak, the
son of Abinoam. Moreover, Shakespeare
found the historical Henry V emphati-
cally a good king. English history is not
a flatterer of English kings, nor is
Shakespeare. He represents them as
cruel, tyrannical, treacherous, murder-
ous, weak, incapable of ruling, inferior to
their subjects in manhood. He found
Henry V already idealized, the figure of
an heroic, patriotic king, at whose famous
victories over the secular foe every good
Englishman would "whinny," as one
contemporary critic notes. In his delinea-
tion he simply continued a great tradi-
tion.
In order to make this heroic figure
human, Shakespeare makes him (blessed
word!) "democratic." Prince Hal likes
to escape from the dulness and strict
etiquette of court, and get into touch
with reality in the taverns. He likes
fun; he likes practical jokes; he likes
characters such as Falstaff, Fluellen,
Williams, that typical British Tommy.
When it comes to courting a princess,
he shies ofl, with an Englishman's dis-
like of humbug, from doing it in the
high style and making a speech. Ap-
parently Dr. Mackenzie sees no comedy
in this delightful wooing. Before the
great battle, round which the play re-
volves, the king finds reality by mak-
ing the rounds of the sentries and see-
ing how they feel, with their backs to
the walU The knowledge drives him to
his knees. In the twentieth century, the
same English tendency to insist on their
rulers being human is as plain as in the
spacious times of great Elizabeth. The
behavior of George V during the war,
the Prince of Wales on his tours are
cases in point. It was not an English
king who declared that he was the State,
or assumed the title of "All-highest."
The other essays on national character,
Scottish, Welsh, Irish, leave the reader
with much the same impressions as those
obtained by the six blind men who felt
the elephant's tail, tusks, proboscis, legs,
and side.
Where everyone is free to dogmatize,
and no harm done, the present reviewer
would "seem" to aver that the outstand-
ing national English trait is a sense of
humor "more or less." Where is vis
comica more evident than in Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Fielding, Dickens, all of
them English to the backbone? In this
opinion, a forgotten American concurs.
He wrote, in a forgotten book:
and stout oaken cudgel. They have thus taken
a singular delight in exhibiting their most
private foil)les in a laughable point of view;
and they have been so successful in their de-
lineations, that there is scarcely a being in
actual existence more absolutely present to the
public mind than that eccentric personage, John
Bull.
The caricature, or national emblem,
which Arbuthnot invented in the eigh-
teenth century, and Irving noted in the
nineteenth, is, with changed head-gear,
more widely known than ever in the
twentieth. It probably comes nearer the
essential truth than the learned and in-
genious volumes of this Scottish logician
and philosopher.
Archibald MacMechan
True Stories
It is characteristic of the peculiar humor of
the English, and of their love for what is
blunt, comic, and familiar, that thev have em-
bodied their national oddities in the figure of
a sturdy, corpulent old fellow, with a three-
cornered hat, red waistcoat, leather breeches
Up the Mazaruni for Diamonds. By William
J. La Varre. (Veteran Scout.) Boston:
Marshall Jones Company.
The Road to En-dor: Being an Account of
How Two Prisoners of War at Yozgadi
m Turkey Won Their Way to Freedom
By E. H. Jones, Lt, I.A,R.O. With Illus-
trations by C. W. Hill, Lt. R.A.F. New
lork: John Lane Company.
TTTIGHLY as he may esteem the art of
A-l fiction, every novel-reader has ex-
perienced the relief of stepping now and
again into the free air of the "true
story." It is like opening a door out
of a hothouse into a garden. A true
story, to be worth anything, must be
much more than a helter-skelter jotting
down of facts. A good narrative is
bound to be an arrangement. But the
sorting and setting forth of things that
have happened is a basically different af-
fair from fiction. We can dismiss at
once the wear and tear of assessing the
value of the narrative as an invention.
So far the art of the story is simpler
than that of the "fiction-story," to em-
ploy the newspaperman's distinction.
But we are more aware than we realize,
that the narrative based on fact is an
art by itself; though our quaint impulse
is to express our praise of it by calling it
"as good as a story," that is, as an in-
vented narrative or "fiction-story."
Treasure-hunting is one of the three
or four classic bases for "juvenile" fic-
tion. "Up the Mazaruni for Diamonds"
appears to be the true narrative by an
American boy of a diamond-seeking ex-
pedition into the jungles of British
Guiana. In his foreword the explorer,
Anthony Fiala, commends the spirit in
which young La Varre undertook and
carried out his adventure. It sounds
casual enough from the account itself.
One day in the spring of 1917, La Varre
(being then nineteen) got a letter from
a friend named Lewis in British Guiana.
Friend Lewis "needed a partner in a
diamond-mining venture." Is La Varre
"game to try it out with him"? There
will be plenty of hard work and danger
in it, "but there are diamonds here to
be had for the digging." This appealed
at once to friend La Varre. "I had little
trouble in arranging this," he remarks,
and wrote him that I would come."
Clearly, the stars must have moved kindly
in their courses. What fiction-writer
would dare begin a narrative in this off-
hand fashion? Instead of fifty words
he would use a chapter explaining how
Bill La v., a Virginian by birth, had
longed from infancy to be an explorer;
how (as is the fact) he rose to the
head of the Boy Scouts of New York
City; how he sought experience in the
open at every opportunity and diligently
studied the science and arts useful to
explorers. And finally, with a deal of
ingenuity, he would account for the fact
that our nineteen-year-old hero was suflS-
ciently footloose and handfree to be able
to arrange a perilous and presumably
expensive journey into the southern wilds
without diflficulty or delay. Mr. Fiala
tells us the other things; but the final
mystery remains unexplained. However,
in fifty words we are off for Barbados,'
where friend Lewis meets us; and so to
Georgetown, British Guiana, and the
treacherous Mazaruni River. Far up
the Mazaruni, through the fever-stricken
jungle, lie the diamond fields. How our
two adventurer-explorers win to them,
how they fare there, and how they finally
escape with their lives and some thirty
thousand in diamonds, is the substance
of a remarkably simple, vigorous, and
interesting story. Ten of these hundred
and forty pages are given to the diamond-
mining and its outcome; the rest of the
book presents the country, the people,
and the conditions of living and traveling
in that far land. This is proof of the
adventurer's mettle to Mr. Fiala: that
"he has brought back from the field in-
formation which will help others who in-
tend to traverse similar trails." To blaze
one tree in advance is always the primary
object of your true explorer.
"The Road to En-dor" is a true story
of still more absorbing interest. There
is no book like it. Perhaps there is no book
which more strongly expresses the "An-
glo-Saxon" genius— though the author
happens to be a Welshman. A lieutenant
in the British forces captured by the
Turks at Kut-el-Amara in 1916, he was
among the survivors of the brutal cross-
country march, or drive, which landed
the survivors in prison camp at Yozgad,
300 miles in the interior. It was the
Turkish "punishment camp" for British
ofl^cers of all grades who were suspected
of meditating escape. Out of the dullness
of camp life begins the action. Lieuten-
ant Hill happens to receive a postcard
from Home with the picture of a Ouija
board on it. He makes one. He thinks
experimenting with it may be at least
a new game. He and some cronies play
with it for several weeks. Their inter-
548]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 54
est is kept up by the fact that the glass
(.used as a pointer) undoubtedly moves.
But nothing else happens, nothing in-
telligible is spelt out. It is agreed that
after one more night of attempt, they
would give it up. The moment comes
for the last "shot"; and Jones, lest this
faint object of interest be taken from
his friends, makes the board write the
name "Sally"; and the fun begins. They
work with their eyes shut, but Jones
finds that he has unconsciously memo-
rized the position of the letters. The
"spoof" works merrily, but the manipu-
lator expects to be caught. To his amaze-
ment he is not; and presently the time
has passed for voluntary confession. He
begins to make converts to spiritualism
among his fellow-officers. Then notice
is taken by the Turkish Commandant of
certain alleged war-news communicated
telepathically through Jones. The idea
comes to Jones that by hoaxing the
authorities he may somehow pave the
way for escape. And so the big game is
on. With amazing patience and inge-
nuity the commandant and two others are
enmeshed in a scheme by which Jones
and an officer whom he chooses as con-
federate may be taken to the coast and
given opportunity for escape by water.
This plan is blocked by the clumsiness of
a well-meaning fellow-prisoner. The re-
maining hope lies in feigning madness.
By this means, they cause themselves to
be sent to Constantinople ; and, after long
months of examination by experts and
surveillance by hospital attendants and
others, are actually sent Home — some
two weeks before their quiescent fellow-
prisoners are released by the armistice.
"We've been through a good deal, and
for very little," is Lieutenant Jones's
comment as he shakes hands with his
comrade on reaching English soil. . . .
"Never mind," answers Hill. "We did
our best." Their best has included
trifles like self-starvation to the point of
collapse, a joint self-hanging (as evi-
dence of madness) from which they are
barely rescued, the courting of physical
violence on the part of their guards, and
so on. But they have played the game,
and that ends it.
Apart from its interest as a story, the
book has, and means to have, value as
evidence against the spook mania. The
author, who performed so many marvels
in the name of the occult, has not a shred
of belief in any aspect of the spirit-
ualist, or psychical, manifestations which
the Sir Oliver Lodges and their followers
are taking so seriously. His Preface is
headed by a text from Huxley: "The
only good that I can see in the demon-
stration of the truth of 'spiritualism'
is to furnish an additional argument
against suicide. Better live a crossing-
sweeper than die and be made to talk
twaddle by a 'medium' hired at a guinea
a stance." And the author makes his
own vigorous protest later on: "God
knows I have feared Death. Yet Death
has ever had for me one strong con-
solation— it brings the peace that pass-
eth all understanding. Like rtie, perhaps,
you have watched it come to your friends
and lay its quiet fingers on their grey
faces. You have seen the relaxation
from suffering, the gentle passing away
and then the ineffable Peace. And is my
Peace, when it comes, to be marred by
this task of shifting tables, and chairs,
and glasses, Sir Oliver? Am I to be at
the beck and call of some hysterical,
guinea-grabbing medium — a sort of tele-
phone boy in Heaven or Hell? I hope
not. Sir. I trust there is nobler work
beyond the bar for us poor mortals."
H. W. BOYNTON
The Run of the Shelves
THREE things tend to abate human
pride and to teach the Christian
grace of humility — a photographer's
show-window, the monkey-house in the
zoo, and the modern autobiography.
Most photographs are smirking, self-
conscious imbecilities, the monkeys never
allow us to forget that they are our
poor relations, and autobiographies, from
Rousseau down, are too often so many
cases of indecent exposure. Autobiogra-
phy requires some justification for its
existence, such as fdme, achievement,
noteworthy experience, contact with
great men or great events. Darwin turns
the whole current of human thought
into a new channel, and can with diffi-
culty be persuaded to pen a few memo-
randa of his career; but, uninvited and
undesired, all sorts of nobodies rush into
print with "personal and private things,"
for the edification of a relatively indif-
ferent public.
On meeting some married pairs, an
almost irresistible impulse arises in one
to ask, "My dear sir, how did you come
to marry that woman?" or, "My dear
lady, how did you come to marry that
man?" But the impulse must be resisted
or human intercourse would dissolve. In
regard to such books as Mrs. Helen Bart-
lett's "Within My Horizon" (Small, May-
nard), the question is "How did it get
into print?" Could it be possible that
the writer herself footed the printer's
bill?
A writer in the Figaro makes the fol-
lowing rather unexpected comment on
American insight into French literature :
There is no foreign country, I think, where
our literature is better understood or fol-
lowed more attentively than it is to-day in
the United States ; and one is astonished to
find some of our modern and "difficult"
authors judged in that country with an origi-
nality and a penetration that would do honor
to French readers.
After the Germans had made Dinant
a martyr town and a place of pilgrimage
for Belgian and foreigner by its de-
struction and by the massacre of hun-
dreds of its inhabitants, the Governor-
General, Freiherr von Bissing, ordered
a Professor Heinrich to prepare a book
on Dinant, which was to describe, with
German thoroughness, the topography,
history, and architecture of the place.
To this scholarly interest of the torturer
in his victim, of which a German alone
is capable in his "unverfrorenheit," we
owe a valuable monograph, published at
Munich by the Roland-Verlag under the
title "Dinant, Eine Denkschrift." It is
difficult to understand the mentality of
people who take a pleasure in erecting
memorials to their own crimes.
The son of the former Imperial Chan-
cellor von Hertling has published recol-
lections of his father's tenure of that
high office under the title "Ein Jahr in
der Reichskanzlei" (Herdersche Verlags-
handlung). If the book relied on the au-
thor's gift for presenting his facts and
not on the facts themselves, it would
hardly reach a second edition. But the
facts invite an interest in the volume
which the manner of presentation can
not command. Many of them throw a
new light on the events of the period
from the summer of 1917 to the autumn
of 1918, and make the book a valuable
complement to Ludendorff's "Kriegserin-
nerungen." It contains some hitherto
unpublished documents, amongst others
a remarkable letter of Cardinal Mercier
dated February 14, 1918, and a plan of
the Admiralty for a new sea barrage
against America of June, 1918.
Should a dramatist be allowed the
right to veto an inartistic production of
his work? The French author Lucien
Descares and the Compagnie Generale
du Travail have widely different views
on this matter. A play by Descares was
having a run last month in the Theatre
des Arts at Paris. The Compagnie
Generale du Travail, being informed that
one of the parts was taken by an actress
who was not registered as a member of
that organization, demanded that she
should be replaced by a "cegetiste." The
manager obediently complied and as-
signed the part to a "syndically" de-
serving actress. But the author's appre-
ciation of her desert was gained from a
totally different point of view and did
not fall in line with that of the C. G. T.
He fondly believed that considerations of
talent should override the question of con-
formity to union rules and demanded the
return of the dismissed actress. The
manager, compelled to choose between
yielding to his fear of the powerful
union or to his respect for the artist,
gave in to Descares. But the interests
of unionized labor could not thus be
{Continued on page 550)
May 22, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[549
|£BaigKi&B<iWiMiElElLi|E'iE«liil^|||ii
ependable Pdw
Telephone
and
Telegraph
Both Professor Crocker and
Dr. Wheeler operated the tele-
graph key prior to the invention
of the telephone in 1876. At
that date these two electrical
engineers manufactured a tele-
phone a model of which is still
in existence.
Both Professor Crocker and
Dr. Wheeler manufactured
batteries for telephone and tele-
graph.
President
Crocker- Wheeler Co.
Ampere, N. J.
New York
Boston
Syracuse
Chicago
Cleveland
Birmingham
Pittsburgh
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Philadelphia
Baltimore
San Francisco
Alfred L. Aiken, President, National
Shawmut Bank, Boston, Massachusetts,
says:
"I want to congratulate you on your
success in developing The Review.
I think it is filling a real need and
I heartily approve of the general
editorial policies of the paper. In
these troublous times, it is refreshing
to have a weekly journal dealing so
sanely and wisely with the social and
economic problems with which the
country is confronted."
$5 a year
140 Nassau Street
New York
Please mention The Review in writing to advertisers.
550]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 54
(Continued from page 548)
sacrificed to the claim of art without
challenge. The C. G. T., acting on be-
half of the cegctiste actress, sued the
manager, on a charge of breach of con-
tract, for an indemnity of fr. 5,000. We
shall soon hear, no doubt, that no plays
can be produced in Paris which are the
work of non-c6getist authors. In this
way the golden era of the proletarian
theatre is being brought nearer.
A German comrade, Rudolph Leon-
hard, explains in Die Neue Schau-
biihne why this proletarian theatre will
be far superior to that of the bourgeoisie.
"The latter remains ineffective because
its audience is an accidental gathering of
people, unknown to, and out of sympathy
with, one another, so that even a power-
ful drama can not unify them in emo-
tion. They are brought together by the
expectation of the play, and if that suf-
fices to keep them quiet and good-tem-
pered within the same walls, what rap-
turous effect must the performance have
on an audience which forms a closely
knit community in and outside the thea-
tre! The proletariat alone, the people
of the future, with strong feeling and
united will, forms the ideal audience for
the theatre." We should have thought
that the beauty of art's miracle was in
its very power of purifying the hetero-
geneous mass of their conflicting evil
passions, restoring to the many that com-
munal spirit of primitive man from
which all art has sprung. But in the
proletarian theatre the miracle is fore-
stalled by the picking of its audience.
The momentary dramatic emotion has its
substitute there in the permanent
brotherhood of the audience. But would
not even the proletarian prefer the thrill
of the accidental to the monotony of the
permanent ?
"The question of Thrace," by J. Saxon
Mills, M. A., and Matthew G. Crussachi,
B. A. (London: Edward Stanford), de-
serves special notice now that the treaty
with Turkey is the subject of various
comments and criticism in the press. The
book attempts to pe'suade its readers
of the justice of the Grecian claims on
Thrace by the most direct and convincing
argument: the presentation of ethno-
graphic maps. The distribution of the
colors representing the various races
gives an immediate and comprehensive
conception of the ethnic conditions in
the Balkans, such as the laborious
perusal of a written expose can never
yield. The reliability of the carto-
graphic material is established by the
fact that the larger part of it is based
on Bulgarian data, although the volume
has the professed purpose of refuting
Bulgarian claims. Those data are de-
rived from a book brought out in 1917
by Dr. Dimitri Rizoff, then Bulgarian
Minister at Berlin, entitled "The Bul-
garians in their Historical, Ethnographi-
cal and Political Frontiers." Rizoff wrote
with a view to proving the Bulgarian
claims as against Serbia and Rumania
in the Dobrudja, the Morava, and Timok
valleys and Macedonia, but -incidentally
the book affords very substantial evi-
dence in refutation of any Bulgarian
claim to Thrace. To those who are in-
terested in the Balkans and the problems
which that part of Europe supplies for
the League of Nations to solve, "The
Question of Thrace" will prove a helpful
guide.
There are two ways of writing a book
on American literature for the use of
high school or college students. Each
may recognize that the most instructive
fact about our literature is that Amer-
icans have produced it, that it is the best
medium for a study of the development
of American intellectual character as we
now understand it. One book, however,
will attempt to indicate the steps in that
development as illustrated by the most
significant writers, subordinating to that
purpose the presentation of information.
The other will offer the information
chronologically or topically arranged but
leave most of the necessary interpreta-
tion to be done by the teacher in the
class room. Percy H. Boynton's "Amer-
ican Literature" (Boston: Ginn and
Company) is a book of the first sort,
Walter C. Bronson's with the same title
(New York: D. C. Heath and Company),
of the second. Each has the merits and
defects of its kind. The former makes
by far the better reading. Sufficient
space is given to such figures as Jonathan
Edwards, Crevecoeur, Emerson, Long-
fellow, Whitman, and Mark Twain to
enable the author to state vigorously
what he conceives to be each man's essen-
tial contribution to intellectual history.
Critical apparatus is conveniently put
into chapter appendices, fortified by sug-
gestions for further reading and discus-
sion. Space is not sufficient, however,
for explicit presentation of an ordered
conception of the growth itself. Conse-
quently the book reads, at times, not like
a history but like a series of more or
less loosely related but suggestive essays
on American authors. Professor Bron-
son's book, on the other hand, though at-
tempting "to give ... a literary
atmosphere, in the conviction that text-
books on literature should contribute
directly to the student's culture as well
as to his knowledge of facts," does in
effect give him more facts than atmos-
phere. It runs over the bead-roll of
American authors of all magnitudes, and
gains or suffers accordingly. It includes
much, but it interprets little, and that
little, through compression, in terms
rather abstract and conventional. As a
small manual for reference, however, it
is excellent.
My
Friend the Print
Seller * |
THERE is an old print shop behind
Grace Church that has been a
chosen haunt for the collector of en-
gravings for more than twenty years.
And old Goodbody, the presiding genius
of the place, is considered by many of his
customers to be the most interesting
item in his endless collection. He has
the stock, and he knows probably more
about prints and "states" and values than
most of the fashionable uptown dealers
will ever know.
Old Goodbody is a man of infinite
humor. He is as round as Mr. Pickwick
and as merry. His clear gray eyes beam
at you through gold-rim spectacles while
he tells you a tale of some fortunate find
in a Brooklyn attic, or introduces you to
one of his patrons who happens to be
looking for the same kind of sporting
prints or old ships you are after. The
shop is a meeting place for characters.
Here come men of every temper, bent,
and bias in the goodly fellowship of print
collectors, from the picker-up of uncon-
sidered trifles to the expert on old
masters, who turn the shop into a riding
school for their hobbies. I have met'
every kind there; artists, actors, lawyers,
brokers, cabinet members, sailors, and
doctors. Among all the professions
doctors seem to be the most constant
and intelligent buyers. They go in for!
Whistler or Meryon or Seymour Haden. '
There is something about the clean, sure
lines of an etching that appeals to their
trained eye and practised hand. The
etching needle, like the lancet, must be
deft and unerring, and the work of a
master hand is never lost on a doctor.
He will not tolerate the second rate.
Since the days of Hogarth the print
seller's window has always been the pooi
man's picture gallery. There you saw
the newest political cartoon, the carl
catures of Gilray and Rowlandson, ant
the latest portrait of popular actor oi
divine, the sweet domestic groups o
Moreland or the spritely quips of Cruik
shank. It cost you never a pin to look
You could laugh or curse over the print:
Concerning radical readjustment between the peoples
"The Brotherhood of Man
This book by Dr. A. R. L. Dohme is an earnest ttuii
of general economic and political conditions. D:
Dohme concludes with an interesting practical outlin
for a World State and new human relationship:
By mail, $1.10.
THE NORMAN, REMINGTON COMPANY
Publishers - Baltimors
Applications are invited (or an InatractorMp i
French and Spanish. Stipend, $2000 or $22C
with the summer school. Young Canadian or man
Latin origins preferred, but applicants musi speak bo
languages and have had college experience in leachin
Letters, with references and recommendations, may I
sent to the Dean, Dr. W. Sherwood Fox, Wes
ern University, London, Canada.
I May 22, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[551
exhibited quite as freely as the dilettante
at your elbow who could afford to go in-
side and buy an impression for his cab-
iiiet. So to-day you will usually find a
knot of idlers gazing in at Goodbody's
window display with much the same
curiosity. There is a row of the
Houbraken heads of English worthies
hung along the top and below the big
Piranesi plates of old Rome.
But these hold me only a moment out-
side. I step down the long, gloomy shop,
lit by tiny points of gas, past the count-
ers and tables heaped with interminable
piles of prints, the cheap, the senti-
mental, the curious. At the far end sits
old Goodbody, the light shining on his
bald head as he bends over his table
checking up a catalogue for to-morrow's
sale. The short cigar that he is forever
relighting is already a stump and I share
a match with him while he shows his
latest bargain. In defiance of the fact
that the neatly indexed shelves around
us are groaning with old portraits, the
drawers and portfolios bursting with
mezzotints and etchings, he is forever
buying more. Of course there are a few
old masters that he keeps for his own
private relish. Albert Durer is one of
these. Here is an artist-craftsman whom
he loves for the simple directness of his
line and the romantic invention of his
subjects. He fingers the paper as ten-
derly as old lace and hands you a glass
jto study the delicate beauties of "St.
Hubert" kneeling before a stag, with a
miraculous crucifix on its head, or the
exquisite skill and vigor of "St. Jerome
in his cell."
There is one process of Goodbody's
trade that I as a booklover can never
luite forgive. It is to find him some
afternoon ripping a pile of old books
ipart to get out the engravings. I know
:hat the letterpress is rubbish and the
jrints thus brought to light are worth
nore than the books can ever bring, yet
his body-snatching business did gag me
it first. The people who revel in this
jnholy pursuit are known as "Gran-
^erizers," from the Rev. James Granger,
I pious vicar of Oxfordshire who pub-
ished in 1769 a "Biographical History
)f England" in which he strongly urged
he value of a collection of engraved
)ortraits. Thus the craze for extra-
llustration began. It has grown now
|intil these vandals think nothing of de-
•.troying a whole set of books in order
0 illustrate one. I have met them often
it Goodbody's feverishly thumbing over
mall prints of historical or biographical
nterest with which to extra-illustrate
ome favorite author. Whatever their
iubject they never seem to get quite all
'hey know must have been engraved for
heir purpose. Napoleon and the French
levolution are prime favorites. Here
:omes a customer who has just about
(Continued on page 552)
New STOKES Books
POEMS BY A LITTLE GIRL
HILDA CONKLING
"Probably no other book of the season will stimulate a greater interest and
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it was written by a child but because it contains beautiful poetry."
Miss Amy Lowell, in her Preface, says of this verse by eight-year-old Hilda,
"I wish at the outset to state, and emphatically, that it is poetry, the stuff and essence
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FLYING the ATLANTIC By sir Arthur written brown
In SIXTEEN HOURS AtiUted by C»pt. Al»n BoH
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SOCIAL THEORY
By G. D. H. COLE
A consistent analysis of social theories, so dispassionately and logically
developed that the whole question of man's relationships in his various associa-
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exposition is so brilliantly convincing that the air is at once cleared of all
mistaken ideas. An invaluable book for teachers and students of economics
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"SHAKESPEARE" IDENTIFIED
By J. THOMAS LOONEY
There is no cipher, no cryptogram, no mystery in this important treatment
of the Shakespearean controversy. Its straightforward attitude must appeal
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Oxford, as the real author of the plays. Net $5.00.
WOMEN'S WILD ri Ajg ^y ^- gasquoine hartley
Downright, straight-from-the shoulder common sense on the present relation-
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MR. WU
By LOUISE JORDAN MILN
If you like thrilling mystery, tender love scenes, beauty, there's a real adventure
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WILLIAM, AN ENGLISHMAN By cicely Hamilton
"It seems rather surprising that a book which won the French Academy
prize of 20,000 francs as the best novel of the year published in any language
should not have been taken up by some enterprising American publisher," says
George H. Sargent in last Saturday's Boston Transcript. We accepted this novel
novel last Summer, but strikes and other manufacturing delays held back publica-
tion. Noiv ready at all bookshops, net $1.2$-
443FourthAve. FREDERICK A. STOKES COM PAN Y NewVork
552]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 54
(Continued from page 551)
completed his set of portraits for Bos-
well's "Life of Johnson," which will-
probably be extended to twenty volumes
before he has done.
A rainy afternoon is the best time
to find old Goodbody alone. Then he is
content to fold his legs and have his talk
out, while the air grows pleasantly dim
with tobacco smoke. Such stories as he
can tell of dealers and queer customers
and adventures with old Mr. Keppel, the
veteran print seller, who often called
Goodbody in consultation over a faked
print or a forgery. There are shoplifters,
too, clever gentry who collect in their
own secret way whatever their chance
offers. A stolen print, however, never
gets very far away in these days of the
telephone, for dealers have their own
private marks, and the thief never fools
the same dealer twice. My friend's
knowledge and unvarying honesty has
won the confidence of many collectors
who will not buy anywhere without his
assurance that their purchase is genuine.
Behind the shop are a couple of dark
rooms where Goodbody keeps his choicest
treasures. This is the inner shrine of
his collection which is not opened for the
casual or merely curious shoppers. Some
name will come up in our talk and to
settle a point he will beckon me into the
sanctuary, switch on the light and
display for my special delectation an
exquisite impression from Whistler's
"Venice Set," a Lapere landscape or one
of C. Y. Cameron's cathedral etchings.
Here his rare prints are shown in glass
cases along the wall. Higher up hang
framed engravings of prelates and
princes of old France and mezzotint
portraits of belles and statesmen who sat
to Reynolds and Lawrence. There is still
an inner room, beyond this little portrait
gallery, for paintings, drawings, and a
great variety of framed lithographs of
old New York. It is amazing the pricea
these early views and maps of Manhattan
bring. Goodbody, as a bom and bred
New Yorker, has a sentimental as well
as a collector's interest in these vanished
landmarks. A color print of the Battery
with Castle Garden among the trees will
start him talking of Jenny Lind's first
appearance there. The scenes on Broad-
way showing Bamum's Museum, the old
Astor House, and the horse busses run-
ning as far uptown as Union Square, all
awaken for him vivid recollections of the
time when skyscrapers and subways were
as yet undreamed of.
One of the greatest buyers of old
prints I ever met at Goodbody's was
the late Evert J. Wendell. By "great"
I mean a purchaser of mere bulk, for
he bought literally everything he could
find in his chosen field, the drama. At
the time of his death this vast hoard,
stored away in packing cases, filled an
e^itire floor in a loft building. The whole
mass of prints, playbills, books, and
photographs was bequeathed to the Har-
vard Library. They selected the best but
found enough duplicates to stock a score
of libraries on the theatre. It took three
weeks of three sessions a day to dispose
of the remainder at auction. Goodbody
would often caution his patron against
buying duplicates of a print when he
had several copies of it already, but the
warning was useless. This habit of ac-
cumulation was too strong to resist. An-
other collector of the drama whom I
know, was a more cautious buyer. He
waited three years to pay Goodbody his
price for an old John Street Theatre
playbill, only to find that it had been
sold an hour before he got to the shop.
A love of old prints grows by what it
feeds on. There is always a feast at
the Museum or the Public Library Print
Room and a variety of shows at the
dealers to pique your appetite and im-
prove your taste. You look and long
and wonder how you can manage to pos-
sess this "cheap luxury." Charles Lamb
had a special love for his set of Ho-
garths in their neat black frames, and
he tells how at each new purchase he
and Mary "used to debate two or three
days before, and to weigh the for and
against, and think what we might spare
it out of." Among his prints after
Raphael, Poussin, and the older painters
was a graceful head by Leonardo da
Vinci which he had christened the "Lady
Blanch." One day he was showing this
print to a dull gentleman whose matter-
of-fact soul betrayed him into a remark
that must have delighted Elia. "After
he had examined it minutely I ventured
to ask him how he liked 'My Beauty' (a
foolish name it goes by among my
friends)— when he very gravely an-
swered me that 'he had considerable
respect for my character and talents' (so
he was pleased to say), 'but had not
given himself much thought about the
degree of my personal pretensions.' "
Lawrence Williams
Certificate Borrowing and the
Floating Debt
[Dr. Jacob H. Hollander, Professor of On April 30, 1920, the unfunded pub-
Political Economy at Johns Hopkins Uiii- ^c debt (exclusive of War Savings Se-
versity, has long given special attention to the „„_;tip«^ wnq t? qq4 ?79 «!';';— nil nut
important question of borrowing by United curities) was $Z,y94,Z/Z,&&&— all OUt-
States Treasury certificates, which he dis- standmg in the form of Treasury certifi-
cusses in the following paper.] cates of indebtedness bearing interest
THE papers on "Inflation" re:id at the from 4% to 51/4 per cent., and of various
recent meeting of the Academy of maturities extending up to March 15,
Political Science give an enlightening ac- 1921. The aggregate of Treasury cer-
count of the relation of our public finan- tificates was made up as follows:
cing to credit expansion and high prices. Tax $2,278,495,500
Even where the exposition is official 1;?*" ■ ■ •; 455,204.500
ii. i-T. i-i- 1. • -1. Pittman Act 250,375,000
rather than thorough-going it possesses Special issues i,i97,555
an important documentary value as set-
ting forth the purposes governing our $2,994,272,555
financial administrators during and after The manner in which this huge "float-
the war. ing debt" will be cared for in the next
In one particular, however, the ex- twelve months is of the gravest national
hibit of the factors responsible for infla- concern. On the one hand lies the hard
tion is glaringly defective. A signifi- straight course of liquidation and fund-
cant allusion in the brief but trenchant ing — the course which England, in like
comment of that sturdy champion of plight, is now about to enter upon with a
sound financial practice, A. Barton Hep- fine loyalty to her best financial tradi-
burn, is practically the only reference to tions. On the other hand is the easy
the part that the Treasury's war-time tempting descent to further bank loan
and after-war-time practice of bank bor- renewal with its certain penalties of fis-
rowing by means of certificates of indebt- cal danger, business embarrassment, and
edness has played in bringing us to the social injustice. Our one chance of fol-
present pass. Emphasis is put upon the lowing the first course and of avoiding
use of bank credit by the general public the second is to understand clearly the
in Liberty Loan and Victory Note buy- evil which the Treasury's policy of cer- ^
ing; but to the Treasury's wholesale re- tificate borrowing has caused in the past
sort to such credit in its certificate bor- and the mischief which it threatens for
rowing, during and since the war, the the future.
barest reference is made. The omission Bank borrowing as practiced by the
is unfortunate not only as impairing a Treasury during the war and as resumed
complete analysis, but more practically in on August 1, 1919, eight months after
relation to the Treasury's impending the armistice, and continued uninter-
problem — sound treatment of the nation's ruptedly up to the present time, has con-
floating debt. sisted in the issue of certificates of in-
May 22, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[553
debtedness nominally in anticipation of
war loans and taxes, but more recently
in renewal of maturing unfunded obliga-
tions and in discharge of actual deficit
requirements. Such certificates of in-
debtedness when emitted by the Treasury
have been taken, under a form of ad-
ministrative compulsion, almost entirely
by the banks for themselves and their
customers. In either event they have
been paid for by the banks, again almost
entirely by credit. The purchasing banks,
qualified as Government depositaries,
have credited the purchase price to the
account of the Treasury as Government
deposits and against such Government
deposits no reserves have been held.
From time to time, as required, such de-
posits have been withdrawn by the
Treasury and disbursed through the Fed-
eral Reserve Banks in payment of pub-
lic accounts, ultimately accumulating in
individual deposit accounts. An addi-
tional volume of deposit currency has
thus been created, dictated solely by the
Treasury's convenience and entirely un-
related to commercial requirement. As
I have elsewhere stated, if the green-
backs of our Civil War period are prop-
erly described as fiat money, it is right to
speak of Government bank deposits made
in this way as fiat credit.
Certificate borrowing has had an un-
wholesome eflfect in three quarters — (1)
the price level, (2) the money market,
and (3) the Treasury. As to the price
level, the certain tendency of certificate
borrowing has been to aggravate the
problem of rising prices by the direct
creation of additional deposit currency
in obedience to fiscal convenience rather
than to business needs. Such emissions
of bank credit, liberated among indi-
vidual deposit accounts, have operated,
first, to increase prices, and thereafter,
to delay, restrict, or prevent an other-
wise possible fall.
As to the money market, the signal
advantage of certificate borrowing was
avoidance of monetary strain — as long
as the Treasury pursued, under justifi-
cation of war-time exigency, its policy
of a mounting balance and as long as
the banks could meet withdrawals from
certificate-created deposits by prefer-
ential rediscounting with the Federal
Reserve Banks. This artificial ease dis-
appeared as soon as the reduced Treas-
ury balance made it impracticable for
certificate credits to be left for any con-
siderable time in the depositary banks,
and the profit-yielding differential on
war paper was wiped out. Thereafter,
withdrawal of funds subjected the re-
sources of the banks working with scanty
reserves to strain and the money market
to pressure. Eventually, resort was of
necessity had to the Federal Reserve
Banks, with a consequent further re-
duction in the reserve ratio and ultimate
(Continued on page 554)
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554]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 54
(Continued from page 553)
recourse to deliberate credit restriction.
As to the Treasury, certificate borrow-
ing exposed us, disadvantageously, to
the hazards of a floating debt policy.
Four months ago I ventured to say:
Were the prospect encouraging that such
floating indebtedness could, in the near future,
be either extinguished from surplus revenue
or funded upon more advantageous terms than
are now obtainable, the wisdom of delay would
at best turn upon the question of whether or
not such ultimate gains, if realized, more than
counterbalanced the present injuries of renewal.
But there is no possibility of extinguishing
floating indebtedness from out of current sur-
plus, certainly none within the present fiscal
year; and the prospect of radical improve-
ment in the investment market is an uncer-
tain chance more congenial to speculative ven-
ture than to prudent financial administration.
In this venture, it is now possible to
assert definitely, the Treasury has lost.
The most recent issue of certificates were
placed at 5*4 per cent., with an imme-
diate corresponding reaction upon the
market value of all other Government
obligations.
These are, then, the conditions which
the Treasury faces: Continued adher-
ence to the practice of certificate bor-
rowing with the likelihood of added price
inflation, progressive monetary strain
and ultimate fiscal inconvenience — or a
frank recognition of the facts of the case,
and courageous resort to retrenchment,
taxation, and funding.
Jacob H. Hollander
Drama
Sothern and Marlowe at the
Shubert Theatre
THE performance of "Twelfth Night"
was at the same time zestful and
mellow; that union was its keynote, the
keynote of Miss Marlowe's Viola, which
was the heart and mainstay of the pres-
entation. No performance could be more
active; action is not only brought out, it
is brought in. When Sir Toby expresses
his modest intention of living forever, the
text gives to the clown the natural re-
tort: "Sir Toby, there you lie." This
thrust, purely verbal in Shakespeare, is
made the occasion for the lying down of
Sir Toby on the stage floor and the
clown's use of him as a seat. But, though
lavish, the action is hardly extravagant;
frolic does not broaden into orgy. The
poetry is always there, or, if not actually
there in the sorties of burlesque, is no
further off than the church from the
Clown's dwelling.
The Malvolio of Mr. Sothern is not one
of his larger parts. The capers of sol-
emnity are always diverting, and Mr.
Sothern extracts plenty of amusement
from the grimaces of the puritanical
steward. But Shakespeare's Malvolio is
not merely puff-ball. He is fatuous, I
grant, but not inane ; Mr. Sothern's Mal-
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volio is inane as well as fatuous. It is
true that in the last scenes, where Mal-
volio unquestionably rises, Mr. Sothern
seeks to rise with him. In the Topas
scene he nearly re-creates the part, but
there are times when, between his grave
and moving utterance, he inserts sounds
which may almost be described as whin-
nies. The effect is intentional, but
hardly good. Likewise in his last minute
on the stage he is strong, and Malvolio
seems about to pluck a dignity from the
very mire and pit of his humiliations,
when Mr. Sothern reconsiders and re-
stores the old Malvolio by a parting antic.
The actor fears lest his Malvolio should
not be fatuous enough. His alarm is
groundless.
Miss Marlowe has imparted to her
Viola a fine originality, a delicate con-
sistency, and a surprising variety of de-
tail and perfection of finish. If her
Viola is not precisely Shakespearean, it
is exactly in accord with certain hints
of Shakespeare's. The dramatist's Viola
is a woman, who, while tears for a
brother's death still mingle with the sea-
spray on her face, can interest herself
in the fact that Orsino is a bachelor.
That is Miss Marlowe's Viola to the life.
Both Violas are combinations of art-
lessness and sophistication; but in
Shakespeare's the groundwork is the art-
lessness; in Miss Marlowe's it is the
sophistication. Here is a very knowing
Viola, even a naughty and saucy Viola,
though the naughtiness is never madcap
and the sauciness is never pert. What
is crisp in the common actress becomes
mellow in her hands.
For Miss Marlowe the part is almost
purely humorous. The sensibility is
present as the occasion for the humor.
For instance, I had always taken in en-
tire seriousness Viola's two little replies
to the Duke: "Of your complexion" and
"About your years my lord." In Miss
Marlowe they are comic, pleasingly comic.
In the duel scene her fright is genuine,
but she mocks at her fright nevertheless.
In fact, she abounds in that delicious
self-mockery which is the only decent
apology and atonement human nature can
make for the mockery of other people.
She can be cooingly innocent, but the in-
nocence itself is comedy; the child in
her, like the man, is nothing but ap-
parel. If this infiltration of sensibility
into humor obscures the sensibility, it
bestows on the humor a rare delicacy and
richness. Possibly in this point Miss
Marlowe goes a step beyond Shakespeare,
but Shakespeare himself, in the whole
frame and temper of the comedy, has
furnished her with the incentive. The
sentiment in the play, the Duke's,
Olivia's, even Viola's, if it is not part of
the joke, is at all events part of the
game. Miss Marlowe's Viola is a be-
guiling incarnation of this spirit.
Mr. Sothern's Petruchio is best in the
May 22, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[555
earlier scenes of "The Taming of the
Shrew"; Miss Marlowe's Katharina in
the later. The scold is hardly imitable
by Miss Marlowe. Vixenish indeed,
though only in jets and sallies, she can
be; but she lacks the hardihood, lacks the
constitution, required by the histrionic
shrew. She has the effect of reminding
herself at intervals that she is a terma-
gant. Her strong work is done in the later
scenes, in the element of slyness and play-
ful malice in the reformed Katharina,
the indulgence, the mockery, the con-
descension, which almost put the rough
master in the position of a rude school-
boy. There is scope here for that deli-
cate embroidery which is the distinction
and attraction of her art.
One finds in Mr. Sothern's Petruchio a
fine heartiness and impetuosity. From
the first he is a walking riot, but a riot
in which the man is seen behind the
brawler and the gentleman divined, if
not discerned, behind the man. He is
happy in the first scene with Katharina,
where, making much of her in the ab-
stract, in the third person, so to speak,
he ignores, smothers, obliterates her as
a partner or opposite in conversation.
He surrounds her, both literally and fig-
uratively; there is no egress from his
arms or from his volubility. In the later
scenes I felt the presence of an excess
which I do not clearly recall in the per-
formances of earlier times. Torrential
Mr. Sothern is and ought to be; but he is
also battering, and I doubt the rightness
of the latter trait. The deliciousness
and subtlety of the part, its point of dif-
ference from the vulgar handling of a
common theme, is Petruchio's good-
humor toward Katharina, a tempestuous,
but still a real, good-humor. Shakes-
peare himself has not been quite unfalter-
ing in his adhesion to this excellent ideal,
and the actor has exaggerated the devia-
tions of Shakespeare.
Mr. Sothern's Hamlet does not grow
old; no auditor could fasten on him the
words, "He's fat and scant of breath," in
which the queen showed herself possessed
of an unmotherly, but not unwomanly
capacity, for retaliations. He is active,
dexterous, and versatile. The part has
been studied minutely and intensely ; not
a comma has escaped the probe. The re-
sult is a variegated, a profoundly check-
ered, Hamlet ; the part lightens and dark-
ens, flushes and pales, mellows and
roughens, from passage to passage, often
from moment to moment. In this he has
Shakespeare behind him — behind him in
a quite special sense, since this is a point
in which he has pursued Shakespeare,
overtaken him, and to my feeling passed
— I would not say surpassed — the poet.
He has even passed beyond his former
self.
If an example is wanted, one of the
things that went straight to my heart in
(Continued on page 556)
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556]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 54
(Continued from page 555)
the earlier personation was the "Except
my life, except my life, except my life,"
in which the monotony of the iteration
carried with it the terrible implication
that the hatred of life had already become
grey and commonplace. Mr. Sothern
now makes three points out of these
three phrases, and enlarges and enforces
the third by the strong measure of fling-
ing himself in a half-recumbent posture
upon the steps. The fashion of the act
is excellent, but I was more touched by
the earlier simplicity. The agility of an
actor's mind and frame must find its
correlate and limit in the agility of the
observer's mind and eye. For my part,
I can not feel three ways in three
seconds.
This leads to a word on the invented
and inserted business in the play. Every
actor does, and must, introduce action
that is not enjoined by the text, but
there is a clear distinction between ac-
tion that reenforces or fulfills Shakes-
peare's recorded word, and action that is
not only unprescribed, but unsuggested;
to underline and interline are distinct
processes. For example, Hamlet's affec-
tionate gesture toward Ophelia in Act
III, Scene I — by no means peculiar to
Mr. Sothern — practically rebuilds or re-
writes the entire scene; it turns all Ham-
let's brutality into feint and semblance.
Again in Act I, Scene II, Hamlet bestows
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a caress upon the fool whom Mr. Sothern
. has imposed upon the play for the ex-
press purpose of receiving that unauthor-
ized caress. I am of two minds with re-
spect to insertions of this kind; I am con-
founded by the actor's boldness and am
thankful for his mercy. Hamlet on the
stage rather daunts and confuses me; I
am reduced to a sort of daze by the gyra-
tions of that mercurial and vertiginous
young man. This is a mask undoubtedly,
but the slits in the mask through which
the tender and contemplative Hamlet is
descried are too few and too narrow for
my comfort. On this point Mr. Sothern
feels as I do; he feels, in other words,
that the play's Hamlet is much less
tender than Shakespeare's. He accord-
ingly injects a little more Shakespeare
into the play.
I am a little surprised by the extent
of Miss Marlowe's success as Ophelia.
Ophelia is of all Shakespeare's characters,
with the possible exception of Virgilia,
the most inarticulate. Miss Marlowe, on
the other hand, is the most articulate of
actresses. Articulation means in essence
the division of the flow of the voice into
significant elements. Taken in a broad
sense, this division is the specialty, the
virtue, almost the excess and eccentricity,
of Miss Marlowe. The final speech in
"The Taming of the Shrew" may serve
as illustration. It is greatly to her credit
that a pencil so exact can be just to a
figure like Ophelia's which is half a blur.
Even the hardest speech in the role, the
"0! what a noble mind" (hardest be-
cause its savor of official panegyric
seems wholly misplaced in Ophelia's
mouth) is simplified, is liquefied as it
were, with an admirable instinct for con-
gruity. She is happy also in the straying
quality of the mad scenes, the quality
which binds the scattered fragments to-
gether by the very deftness with which
it marks their separation.
O. W. Firkins
Books and the News
Living Expenses
THREE subjects have been on the
front pages of the newspapers prac-
tically every day since I began to write
these book-lists. These are : strikes, the
Treaty of Versailles, and the high cost
of living. Books have been suggested
with reference to the first two of them.
Here are some about that subject which
is so dreary to all but the political econo-
mist, and so urgent with every one of
us — living expenses.
A general treatise is J. Laurence
Laughlin's "Money and Prices" (Scrib-
ner, 1919). Frederick C. Howe's "The
High Cost of Living" (Scribner, 1917)
and Fabian Franklin's "Cost of Living"
(Doubleday, 1915) are specific discus-
sions, as are Walter E. Clark's "The Cost
of Living" (McClurg, 1915) and W. Jett
Lauck's "Cost of Living and the War"
(Doyle & Waltz, 1918).
A few of the books, not so recent in
date, are Scott Hearing's "Reducing the
Cost of Living" (Jacobs, 1914) and
"Financing the Wage-Earner's Family"
(Huebsch, 1913), by the same writerj
John A. Hobson's "Gold, Prices and
Wages" (Doran, 1913), and Harrison H^
Brace's "Gold Production and Future
Prices" (Bankers' Pub. Co., 1910).
Some later ones are "The Flow of
Value" (Century, 1919), by Logan Gj
McPherson; Irving Fisher's "Why Is the
Dollar Shrinking?" (Macmillan, 1915);
G. H. Gerber's "The High Cost of Liv-^
ing" (N. Y. Book Co., 1915) ; Oswald FJ
Boucke's "Rising Costs of Living'^
(Banta, 1916) ; Clyde L. King's "Lower
Living Costs in Cities" (Appleton, 1915)^
and Winifred S. Gibbs's "The Minimun
Cost of Living: a Study of Families of
Limited Income in New York City"j
(Macmillan, 1917).
A book upon a related and pertinent
topic is Ellen H. Richards's "The Cost
of Living as Modified by Sanitary Sci-
ence" (Wiley, 1910), while a contribution
to the belles lettres of this subject, and
perhaps a pleasant relief after so many
graphs and tables, is "The Art of Liv-'
ing" (Scribner, 1899), by Robert Grant'
Edmund Lester Pearson
Current Investment
Publications
A twenty-eight-page illustrated booklet
under the caption "Greater France and Three
Cities" (Bordeaux-Lyons-Marseilles) was re-
cently issued by the Guaranty Trust Company,
New York. Its pages include a clear and
forceful statement of the resources of France
and her three southern industrial centres.
"Some Recent Issues of Industrial Pre-
ferred Stocks" is the title of a booklet just
issued by Dominick & Dominick, members of
the New York Stock Exchange, 115 Broadway,
New York. The recent preferred stock issues
of forty industrial corporations are described
and explained. The arrangement of the mat-
ter is designed to make easy thorough com-
parisons between the stocks of the several
companies whose issues are included.
"A Trust Company as Transfer Agent and
Registrar," a new booklet published by the
United States Mortgage & Trust Company, 55
Cedar Street, New York, presents a brief
statement of the manifold advantages of such
service by a trust company fully qualified and
equipped to act. Its appeal is addressed par-
ticularly to those organizing new corporations.
"International Investments and their Rela-
tions to the Foreign Exchanges," a booklet
issued by Brown Brothers & Company, New
York, includes the description of a number of
bond issues of foreign Governments and
municipalities,^ along with an explanatory
foreword. This publication is in the second
edition.
Readers of the Review desiring copies of
any of the booklets noted in the foregoing
should write directly to the issuing house.
Copies are free.
u^^
THE REVIEW
Vol. 2, No. 55
New York, Saturday, May 29, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
557
'Brief Comment
Editorial Articles:
Two Aspects of Mr. Hoover's Candi-
dacy 560
The Wave of Price-Slashing 560
Stock Dividends Again 561
I Peace for Hungary 563
,rhe Problem of Palestine. By Edward
Bliss Reed 564
The Social Revolution in France. By
Raymond Buell 566
\ Composing Room Colloquy. By
Weare Holbrook 568
k Canadian Ambassador at Washing-
ton. By J. K. F. 568
Correspondence 569
Book Reviews:
What to Do About News Juggling 571
Is There a Religious Revival in
France? 572
Germany on the Eve of the War 572
Yeast and Phosphorus 573
Minor Dutch Painters 574
The Run of the Shelves 575
Dramatic Art in Holland. By J. L.
Walch 577
Books and the News: Motor Trips. By
Edmund Lester Pearson 578
Educational Section 579
The Collapse of Japan's After-War
Boom. By Charles Hodges 582
'T'O consider the question of our tak-
^•■- ing a mandate over Armenia in
the light of a financial investment, as
Senators Smoot and Borah are re-
ported as doing, is to disgrace the
Senate and the country. The des-
perate plight of Armenia is one which
should go straight to our hearts. The
jreat majority of Americans, we are
confident, already see, or could easily
ae made to see, that nothing should
3e left undone to relieve the distress
md to safeguard the rights of this
inuch-tormented people ; and he must
36 a hidebound politician who is not
stirred by President Wilson's message
bo the Senate. If the question could
oe answered by resorting to the direct
mpulse of the Senate and the Ameri-
i;an people, there is little doubt that
;he President would get a favorable,
learty response. Unfortunately, the
ijroblem is not as simple as it might
seem, and is precipitated upon the
Senate at the tail end of a distracted
session, when it is impossible to give
to the complexities involved anything
like the proper amount of thought.
The question of the mandate over
Armenia should not be mixed up with
party politics, as it is almost sure to
be by any hasty discussion at this
time.
ARCHBISHOP KHOREN of Ar-
/\
menia, who, prior to the forma-
tion of the present Republic, was
president of the National Union then
ruling the country, says that Presi-
dent Wilson virtually promised the
Armenian delegates in Paris that
America would take the mandate for
Armenia, should such an offer be
made. The Armenians are threatened
with war and fresh massacres from
the Turkish and the Russian side.
The Soviet Government of Azer-
baijan, therein supported by the Bol-
shevist commissary of northern Cau-
casus, has demanded from Armenia
the immediate evacuation of the dis-
tricts of Karabagh and Cangezour,
while the Turks are making prepara-
tions to attack them from Erzerum.
Turk and Bolshevik together will
have delimited, in their Asiatic
fashion, the frontiers of the new Ar-
menia, we fear, before Mr. Wilson
can give effect to his acceptance of the
task assigned to him by the Allies.
Immediate action is necessary, as
otherwise there will soon be no na-
tion left for Mr. Wilson to circum-
scribe with border lines.
WHEN the House Foreign Affairs
Committee asked the Secretary
of State to appear before it for the
purpose of throwing light on the Irish
resolutions it was considering, of
which the principal one proposes rec-
ognition of the "Irish Republic" and
the sending of an American repre-
sentative to it, the object of the com-
mittee was either to get information
or to put the President in a hole. In
either case, Secretary Colby's letter
was an entirely proper answer to the
request and to Chairman Porter's
letter of inquiry. Anybody that needs
information as to the propriety of rec-
ognizing the "Irish Republic" is in-
capable of profiting by it. And of
course the State Department, as Mr.
Colby says, is in possession of no
facts "which should deter your com-
mittee from any action which is
dictated by good judgment and which
it may feel conscientiously impelled
to take." If the committee does
nothing but what it is "conscienti-
ously impelled" to do, we shall hear
nothing more of the resolution. But
the "judgment," good or bad, which
Congress has exercised on Irish reso-
lutions has related to the political
value of a given amount of buncombe,
and has had no more to do with con-
science than with astronomy.
T^HE whole batch of heresy-hunting
-*- bills, the passage of which, to-
gether with the expulsion of the five
Socialist Assemblymen, was the prin-
cipal achievement of the New York
Legislature at its recent session, have
been vetoed by Governor Smith. This
action will redound to his lasting
credit, and will doubtless also be of
advantage to the Democratic party in
the coming election. In the reasons
assigned for his vetoes, the Governor
hits straight from the shoulder. Con-
cerning the monstrous bill designed
to rule the Socialist party off the of-
ficial ballot, he first points out the
fatal objection relating to the pro-
scriptive power which it would vest
in a particular court; but he goes on
to enunciate the broad principle
involved :
The voters of this State are entitled to the
privilege of choosing their own candidates and
their own officials and to enunciate their own
platforms. No majority should have the right
to exclude any minority from its just partici-
pation in the functions of government.
558]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 55
Likewise on the school censorship bill
he says :
It is unthinkable that in a representative de-
mocracj- there should be delegated to any body
of men the absolute power to prohibit the
teaching of any subject of which it may dis-
approve.
Altogether, Governor Smith makes a
clean sweep of the curious mass of
intolerance to which — at first under a
momentary obsession, and afterwards
apparently through obstinacy or fear
of seeming inconsistent — the Repub-
lican leaders at Albany and the bulk
of their followers committed them-
selves. The State of New York is to
be congratulated on having its statute
books unstained by legislation of
which, before long, we are sure that
nearly aU of its citizens would have
been ashamed.
CENATOR JOHNSON, defending
*^ himself from a grievous charge,
says that the word radical is one of
the "war-torn epithets" that are be-
ing "hurled at all who will not bow to
arrogant power or exploiting wealth."
We are not concerned about the
meaning of "radical." It used to
mean something fairly definite; now
it serves well enough to describe
a group of persons violently and
vaguely disgruntled. Measured by
this test. Senator Johnson easily qual-
ifies for membership in the group. He
has the radicals' manner, and man-
ner is everything in these matters;
since of any definite body of intel-
lectual doctrine among our strong-
feeling American radicals there is no
trace.
"TfTE gave no encouragement what-
"^ ever to the Polish Government
in its offensive and expressed no
opinion," said Bonar Law, as the Gov-
ernment's spokesman, in reply to
questions asked by members in the
House of Commons. The second half
of the denial amounts to a refutation
of the first, because for the British
Government not to express any opin-
ion on the Polish action is equivalent
to a silent approval of it. The Poles
appear to take it as such, and claim
to be doing work deemed necessary
by the Entente. And their official
spokesmen will cling the more firmly
to this cat's paw version of Poland's
offensive if, as seems not improbable,
the initial victory is gradually turned
by subsequent events into a defeat.
'C'RENCH opinions on the upshot of
^ the conference at Hythe vary
greatly, ranging from denunciation
of Millerand's alleged outwitting by
Lloyd George to eulogies of his dip-
lomatic achievement. The criticism,
however, is more insistent and vocif-
erous than the praise. The chief ques-
tion at issue, the fixing of the amount
of reparation to be paid by Germany,
is still left pending, as the tentative
figure of a hundred and twenty billion
marks in gold will be submitted to the
opinion of experts, on whose report
the definite decision will be based.
Nor is there great satisfaction over
the arrangement which releases
France of the obligation to pay her
debt to England in case of Germany's
failure to discharge her debt to
France.
npHE decision taken at Hythe to
■'- postpone the Spa Conference un-
til after the German elections gives
support to the distrust in the correct-
ness of the statement that the Ger-
man delegates will not be allowed to
discuss the decisions of the Allies.
There would be no reason for holding
that Conference at all, let alone for
postponing it on account of a prospec-
tive change of government in Ger-
many, if that country's representa-
tives were to remain without the
slightest responsibility for what the
Conference should decide. Herr
Miiller would do just as well as any
other German, reactionary, commun-
ist, or moderate, who may rise in June
to the head of affairs, if his only busi-
ness at Spa were to receive with a
stiff bow and in silence the dictates of
the three Premiers.
'T'HE German and neutral press is
■*- being supplied by Berlin head-
quarters with information "from
strictly reliable sources," with rumors
and hearsays as to the programme
which the German delegates at Spa
will try to carry through. Retention
of Northern Silesia and restitution of
part of the mercantile fleet and of
some of the German colonies are said
to be included in the list. The relia-
ble sources will, no doubt, go on
bubbling until the opening of the Con-
ference, bringing up to the surface
such a variety of demands as, if
granted, would cancel the principal
part of the Peace Treaty. The ob-
ject of this active rumor-floating is
obvious: having prepared the public
in Germany and neutral countries to
expect an impressive array of de-
mands, the German Government will
seem, by comparison, extremely mod-
erate when the actual list comes to
be presented at the Conference;
whereas the Allies can then be de-
cried as being set on ruining innocent
and well-meaning Germany, on the
evidence of their refusal to grant
even the little that was asked.
'T'HE gifted seer who pens the
■*- American editorials for the Man-
chester Guardian sets forth his care-
fully framed judgment that the recent
outlaw railway strike "may be said
to mark the definite passing of con-
servative unionism and to foreshadow
the overthrow of Mr. Samuel Gom-
pers." It may be so. We do not pro-
fess to know. But we recognize that
there ought to be some measure of
truth in a saying so venerable and so
often repeated. Away back in 1885
it was the invention and property of
the Knights of Labor. Later it came
into the possession of Daniel De Leon,
the head and front of the Socialist
Labor party, and from the early
nineties onward was used in hard and
frequent service. As Partridge, the
almanac maker, was wont regularly,
over a long period of years,
to foredoom
The fate of Louis and the fall of Rome,
SO De Leon regularly predicted the
collapse of trade-unionism and the ex-
tinction of Mr. Gompers. The So-
cialist partyites (most, but not all oii
them) took up the prediction, the
I. W. W. followed, and more lately i1
has been conscripted to serve undei
the banners of the New Republic, the
Nation, and other journals of thai
sort. That it has crossed the seaf
for foreign service is but new prool
of its unimpaired robustness. Agf
can not wither it, nor custom stale
its viridity. Malatesta will take ii
next, Trotsky before long; and aftei
May 29, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[559
the Bashi-Bazouks have been bolshe-
vized and they begin to look over this
way for signs and omens, they, too,
will repeat it in the identical form in
which it appeared in 1885. In the
meantime Mr. Gompers can be found
any day at the old stand.
MOST of the big chiefs of Soviet
Russia, including Lenin and
Zinoviev, contributed to a special
Easter publication, for circulation
• among the faithful, articles on the
new labor code. All of them, accord-
ing to a sympathetic source, explained
I "the difference between compulsion
land disciplined labor in the capitalist
state and the same in the Socialist
state by saying that in one men were
working for employers, and in the
latter each man was working for the
good of all, including himself." It
is an interesting explanation, but one
can not help wondering how, among
other than the most stupidly credu-
lous, it was received. The argument
that each man's toil is for the good of
all was quite as serviceable in the
Tsar's day as it is in the day of Lenin.
And as for the matter of employers,
they are increasing in number all the
time in Soviet Russia, and should for-
eign capital accept the tempting offers
made, the number will be immeasur-
ably augmented. Prospective em-
ployers, officially assured not only of
valuable concessions but of a steady
supply of compulsory labor, merely
await a signal from the Allies in order
to begin. The Russian worker of
even ordinary intelligence must there-
fore look at the official explanations
with some dubiety. For even if there
were no private employers, he knows
that forced labor is forced labor, no
matter what Lenin calls it. "Disguise
thyself as thou wilt," said Sterne in
the episode of the starling, "still,
Slavery, still thou art a bitter
draught." No degree of stupid cre-
dulity can long serve to hide its
reality.
DELGIUM is showing the same
■^ pluck in tying up the broken
threads of her industrial life that she
displayed in holding to her moral in-
tegrity, first against the attempted
bribes, and then under the crushing
heel, of the invader. The Guaranty
Trust Company of New York has
compiled some highly gratifying sta-
tistics of the rapid progress already
made in reconstruction. Although
2,000 kilometers of her railways and
1,800 bridges had been destroyed, and
60,000 cars and 2,500 locomotives had
been taken, 80 per cent, of the pre-
war number of freight trains were
moved during the first quarter of
1920, and 60 per cent, of the pre-war
passenger trains. Steel mills reached
40 per cent, of their pre-war produc-
tion, textile factories 80 per cent.,
while the woolen mills reached the
normal pre-war level. The output of
the Belgian coal mines for the entire
year 1919 was over 80 per cent, of
the 1913 production, while the rate so
far for 1920 is above that of 1913.
The movement of exports and im-
ports indicates that by the end of the
present year Belgium will be free
from the necessity of appealing to
foreign financial markets for assist-
ance. There can be no jealousy over
Belgium's precedence in the pathway
of post-war reconstruction; it is
thoroughly fitting that she should be
first to rise again, as she was first to
suffer.
1%/rR. CLINTON SCOLLARD is,
■'-*■'• needless to say, wholly within
his rights in penning "An Epistle to
Alexander Pope," which appears in
the May Harper's. But he invades
others' rights, including Pope's,
when he makes such a jingle as this:
But just a sort of rhyming sham,
As formal as your Twickenham.
It won't do. The name Twicken-
ham, as is not unknown to the world,
is one that gives the word of promise
to the eye only to break it to the ear ;
and no possible twist to its pronun-
ciation can furnish a rhyme for
"sham." To Pope himself it was
"Twitenham" in prose, or "Twit'nam"
in verse. In the "Epistle to Dr. Ar-
buthnot" we have:
All fly to Twit'nam and in humble strain
Apply to me to keep them mad or vain.
"Twickenham" is "formal" enough,
as Mr. Scollard rightly avers; but it
is altogether too formal for the use he
has made of it. So we protest. And
while we are on this subject we may
as well caution Mr. F. P. Adams to
look out for one of the contributors
to his "Conning Tower" who insists
on rhyming "bowie" with Chloe. Of
course that will do here in Gotham,
where the article is unknown ; but in
the Great Southwest, where it flour-
ishes (or is flourished), a usage so
gross will hardly pass without trou-
ble. Gun play, or even bowie play,
has followed less provocation. In
no lyric to Chloe, nor yet in any
threnody on the death of John Alex-
ander Dowie will the word furnish a
serviceable rhyme. But should one
want to sing something about Le
Grand Monarque, or any of his thir-
teen predecessors or four successors
of that name, then, indeed, he may
clinch the word at the line's end as
often as he pleases.
'T'HE tentative and fitful appearance
-*■ of the straw hat in spring — first
one in the streets, then a dozen,
then none at all if the day proves
inclement, and finally, when the
weather has declared itself indubi-
tably for summer, a whole sea of jolly,
dancing little baskets — is in striking
contrast with the sudden' and com-
plete disappearance of the same head-
gear in the autumn. It is a foolish
custom that proscribes the straw hat
after September fifteenth. The sun
has still something of his summer
fervor, which he will show on occa-
sion, to the end of the month, and
for good St. Martin's sake reserves
a taste of his quality even for No-
vember. While the leaf clings to the
bough, let the straw hat hencefor-
ward remain unmolested on the head
of him who chooses to exercise his
God-given reason and to wear it.
Henceforward, whoever lays aside a
still wearable hat out of deference to
a foolish custom should be held a fool
for his pains ; and whoever presumes
with his more courageous neighbor
"greatly to find quarrel in a straw"
should be known for an enemy to so-
ciety. The public is no longer a
shackled slave; it has learned its
power and has used it. The tyranny
of a few Wall Street brokers' clerks,
who may be supposed to have been
the authors of the by-no-means an-
cient taboo, should no longer be
borne.
560]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 55
Two Aspects of Mr.
Hoover's Candidacy
TJTHEN the candidacy of Mr.
" Hoover first became a conspicu-
ous subject of national interest, the
Review expressed in the strongest
possible terms its appreciation of his
superb achievements and his splendid
character. Those achievements and
that character give ample assurance
that in everything that pertains to
administrative excellence and effi-
ciency Mr. Hoover would be a Presi-
dent whom the country would be most
fortunate in having at the head of its
affairs. Moreover, the situation of
the country at the present time, and
also its relations, financial and phil-
anthropic, with the old-world coun-
tries struggling up from a condition
of unparalleled difficulty and distress,
make the exercise of those abilities
in which Mr. Hoover so remarkably
excels a matter of supreme impor-
tance. It is impossible to over-
estimate the benefits that might flow
from his proved skill, his inexhaust-
ible energy, and his coordinating
genius in the handling of the great
concrete problems which will press
upon us in the next four years.
Feeling so strongly as we did — and
do — on this great aspect of the ques-
tion of Mr. Hoover's claims to the
Presidency, we nevertheless expressed
a doubt relating to another aspect to
which we could not shut our eyes.
We may be pardoned, perhaps, for re-
producing here what we said upon
that occasion on this second aspect of
the question:
Whatever other issues there may be in the
Presidential campaign, one issue is bound to
run through it, whether explicitly formulated
or not. We are either going to stand by the
fundamental principles of the American polit-
ical and economic system, or we are going to
drift away from them. It may or may not be
that Mr. Hoover has profound or well-defined
convictions on these principles; it may or may
not be that he realizes the essential importance
of surrounding himself with men who are de-
voted to them. We can not afford to be saved
by a wonder-worker, or a superman. We want
to get the benefit that such a man is capable of
conferring on us in a time of great and ex-
traordinary need, but we do not want to pur-
chase those benefits at the sacrifice of the
permanent character of our institutions. In
a word, we must know what the election of
Hoover would mean politically, before we can
decide whether he is the man that we ought to
have for President.
What leads us to hark back to this
is the publication in the newspapers
of some extracts from an article by
Mr. Hoover which is to appear in the
forthcoming July number of System.
In this article Mr. Hoover says many
things that are both sensible and
humane about the relations between
labor and capital, and between both
and the general public. But he also
indulges in some very broad general-
ities, which perhaps he set down with-
out careful deliberation, but which,
coming from a leading candidate
for the Presidency, will certainly be
taken by the "man in the street" as
meaning all they say and probably
more. We have in mind especially
this passage.
The problem goes far beyond the mere set-
tling of disputes. I have seen growing out of
the masses of people in every country aspira-
tions for a great economic change. That
change broadly will be that those who work
with their hands will obtain a larger propor-
tion of this world's goods and those who work
with their brains will obtain less. Those who
io not work will probably obtain nothing.
Now, it is highly probable that those
who work with their hands will, in
the course of an economic develop-
ment which is already well under
way, obtain a larger proportion, and
those who work with their brains, a
smaller proportion, of the joint prod-
uct than has hitherto been the case.
And there is no harm in attention
being called to this fact. But what
does Mr. Hoover mean by saying that
"those who do not work will probably
obtain nothing" ? Does he mean that
inheritance is to be abolished? Does
he mean that interest on capital is to
exist no more? If he does not mean
either of these things, it is difficult to
see what he does mean ; for he could
hardly be thinking of the mere triv-
iality that rich men, while in the en-
joyment of income from property,
should be compelled to work a certain
number of hours a day, as con-
templated in the childish anti-loafing
laws which for a time were a popular
fad. The sentence may have been a
mere slip, but if so it was a very bad
slip, and not the kind of slip that a
man would be likely to make who has
profound and well-defined convictions
on the fundamental principles of our
economic and political system.
It is in no spirit of hypercriticism
that we dwell on this element of doubt
in relation to Mr. Hoover's potentiali-
ties. Of all the candidates named he
is the only one whose past career
gives solid reason for expecting per-
sonal achievement of extraordinary
character, and of surpassing value to
the nation. But precisely because of '
his strong qualities, and especially of
his life-long habit of pursuing to
achievement anything he undertakes,
any error he may commit in his atti-
tude toward the fundamentals of our
political and economic life will be
fraught with unbounded possibilities
of evil. The influence he has so well
deserved by his acts will extend to his
opinions. If those opinions are crude
or undefined, if his hold on funda-
mentals is not sure and strong, there
is no telling what sacrifice of perma-
nent good may result from his lead-
ership, however admirable it may be
in meeting the immediate exigencies
of the time.
The Wave of Price-
Slashing
nnHE overalls crusade, of little con-
-'- sequence in itself, has proved to
be of great significance as a symbol.
Determination to curtail spending has
become so widespread as to cause, at
least in the case of clothing and simi-
lar articles, a general lowering of re-
tail prices. The wave of price-cutting
by retailers that has swept over the
country is pretty unanimously ex-
plained as due in the main to down-
right necessity, and this necessity has
been created by a combination of two
factors — the attitude of the consum-
ing public and the attitude of the
banks. The restrictions on credit,
which had for some months been in-
creasingly put into effect, in pur-
suance of the policy of the Federal
Reserve Board, naturally bore with
peculiar force on the situation which
confronted dealers stocked with a
large supply of goods which they had
expected to sell at high-water-mark
prices, and which the public refused
to buy. Whether the mood of the
public would have held out, and in any
event gained its point, is matter for
conjecture ; in point of fact, the mer-
chants were in large measure com-
pelled to convert their stocks into
money at reduced prices, for want of
May 29, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[561
any other way of getting necessary
funds.
Whether the reduction of prices is
permanent, and whether, if so, it will
be attended by acute depression and
disastrous disturbance of business, is
also a matter on which it is impossi-
ble to form a confident judgment. No
question is more difficult, and no
problem is more delicate, than that
of the descent from a scale of inflated
prices. Rise of prices takes care of
itself; it inflicts serious hardships on
consumers, but, broadly speaking, it
does not result in economic disasters.
On the other hand, falling prices may
bring about the bankruptcy of many
business enterprises and the slow-
ing-up of others, with the result of
causing widespread unemployment,
which in turn accentuates and ex-
tends the depression. It may be that
we shall have to go through such a
stage; and the problem of banking
policy — as tough a problem as it ever
has to tackle — is to effect the neces-
sary restraint upon credit so cau-
tiously in point of degree, and so
judiciously as regards the particular
directions in which it is applied, that
the process shall be attended with as
little damage as possible.
While reduction of prices is a prime
need of the public, it is agreed on all
hands that increase of production is
an equally fundamental need, both for
its own sake and as a means of bring-
ing down prices. If prices had come
down through an increase of output
of the goods the public needs, the
state of things would be compara-
tively simple. But so far from this
having happened, it seems to be the
fact that the physical volume of the
nation's production is decidedly be-
low nonnal, and was less last year
than the year before. Now a lower-
ing of prices tends, in the first in-
stance— whatever may be the case
after a readjustment has been effected
all round — to discourage and diminsh
production; and this is one of the
reasons why in many quarters doubt
is expressed as to the remedial efficacy
of this particular kind of drive
against high prices. But the ques-
tion, as we have said, is too complex
to admit of confident prophecy.
One consideration pertaining to it
is of more cheerful augury. Dimin-
ished production has been due to a
great number of causes — among them
strikes, slack labor, disorganization
of transportation, etc. But a highly
important element in the case is the
impairment of capital not through de-
struction in any ordinary sense, but
through failure to keep it up in quan-
tity and character. If, as is usually
and probably correctly said, we have
been consuming on a magnified scale
and yet producing on a diminished
scale, how has the consumption been
supplied? There would seem to be
but one answer — that a large part of
the productive activity that should
have been devoted to the maintenance
or enlargement of capital has been
directed towards the supply of imme-
diately consumable commodities. The
railroads furnish an example of this
on a grand scale ; roadbeds have been
wearing down, and rolling-stock has
become sadly deficient. But the same
thing must have gone on in a hundred
directions. The building of houses,
the making of repairs, the upkeep of
machinery and the installation of new
machinery — in these and many other
things there has doubtless been such
deficiency as to affect materially the
productive capacity of the country.
And the point we have in mind is
that if the country is entering upon
a long period of genuine thrift, then,
whatever may be the momentary con-
sequence of the new departure, its
result before very long must be a
great increase in productive effi-
ciency. The money which people
stop squandering they will not hide
away in stockings, but will invest;
and that means that the productive
energy which has been directed to the
satisfaction of wasteful expenditure
will be turned to the upbuilding of
productive capital. When we add to
this the even more direct relief that
would come from the reduction of the
vast number of persons now engaged
in producing luxuries — whether it be
automobiles or millinery — and their
utilization in production more condu-
cive to the general welfare, we may
see in the thrift movement, provided
it is a genuine one, the promise of real
amelioration of the conditions under
which we have been laboring.
Stock Dividends Again
'yHE stock-dividend tax which is
■■■ provided for in the bill reported
by the House Ways and Means Com-
mittee for the purpose of raising
money for the proposed bonus, will
revive interest in the general ques-
tion of taxation of stock dividends.
When the Supreme Court rendered
its decision declaring that stock divi-
dends were not income, and therefore
could not be taxed under the Income
Tax amendment to the Constitution,
we set forth with some fullness the
reasons why we regarded that deci-
sion as absolutely sound. Doubtless
the first impression of many persons
on reading of the tax now proposed
will be that it is an attempt to nullify
the Supreme Court decision, but such
is not in any proper sense the case.
The proposed new tax is not a tax
upon the individual receiving the
stock dividends, but a tax on the cor-
poration for the privilege of dealing
with its stock in that particular way.
The distinction is not a mere technical
subterfuge, but a real distinction.
The Federal Government has a right
to lay a tax upon any particular kind
of corporation action, if in its judg-
ment such tax is called for in the
public interest. If a ten per cent, tax
on the issuing of stock dividends is
desirable from the standpoint of pub-
lic policy, there does not seem to be
any Constitutional bar to its enact-
ment. A stock dividend is of course
not income to the corporation, and
the proposed taxation of it could not
pretend to be an income tax ; the pro-
posed tax is an excise tax, not based
upon the idea of income at all. To
our mind it is equally clear that a
stock dividend is not income to the in-
dividual receiving it ; this is the point
that was decided by the Supreme
Court. The point that would be raised
by the corporation tax now proposed,
if it were enacted and came before
the Supreme Court for decision,
would be wholly unrelated to the
question decided in the recent case.
So much for the main principle of
the matter. The retroactive feature
of the proposal brings up a different
order of considerations. Whether
Constitutional or not, a retroactive
562]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 55
tax of this kind is wrong in principle,
besides being open to grave objection
from the standpoint of practical busi-
ness policy. The corporations which
declared stock dividends after the
Supreme Court had rendered its de-
cision were acting upon a state of
facts which they had every reason to
regard as absolutely settled so far as
concerned any action taken at the
time. Any tax laid upon them for
action thus taken would be essentially
punitive, whether technically so or
not; and would therefore be open to
all the objection that lies against
ex post facto laws in general. The
tax upon future dividends would be
deterrent, but not punitive; and the
question whether it should be levied
or not is purely a question of good
public policy.
The effect of the issue of a stock
dividend is solely that of causing
actual money dividends of a given
amount to have the appearance of a
lower percentage rate than they
would otherwise have. A company
that has been in the habit of declar-
ing dividends at the rate of eight per
cent, a year, for example, issues a
stock dividend of fifty per cent., and
continues its eight per cent, annual
rate. The shareholders will there-
after, as theretofore, receive eight
dollars a year on every hundred-dol-
lar share they possess, but this will
be equivalent to twelve dollars on
every hundred-dollar share that they
held before the stock dividend was
declared. • Their income from the
shares will have been increased by
fifty per cent., and on this increased
income they will be taxed; the mere
bits of paper representing the stock
dividend, on the other hand, were not
to them income at all, and, as the
Supreme Court decided, could not be
taxed as income. But if Congress
desires to discourage this method of
concealing from superficial view the
advance that has taken place in the
rate of return on the original shares,
it has a right to do so by taxing the
corporation for the privilege. Nor is
this a merely legal distinction. The
practical difference is that in the one
case you break down the Constitu-
tional limitation on the general tax-
ing power of the Federal Govern-
ment, and in the other case you
do not.
The matter of retroactive taxes
had come up in a different form in a
previous project connected with the
bonus. It had been proposed to levy
a fresh tax on incomes (though only
on that particular part of incomes
which is designated as "war profits"
or as "excess profits") covering the
entire period since the beginning of
the war — a tax additional to that
which had been paid year by year, as
existing law required. The question
was accordingly raised, "How long is
income income?" Discussing this
question, the New York Evening Sun
made these pertinent remarks :
Plainly the receipts or profits of any given
year from investment or activity are income
during that year. But can they be regarded in
any sense as income in the succeeding twelve
months? If so, will they be still income in
the following year or ten years hence? Con-
versely, if the gains of 1919 are still income,
and those of 1917 are still income, why not
those of any year back to 1913, when the
income tax first became constitutional? Where
is the line to be drawn whereat money received
ceases to be income and becomes personal
property? ... If the line is a movable
one, subject to relocation at the whim of
Congress, plainly nothing any man owns is
safe, for it was income at some time, even
though that time had been the day of his
birth.
While there is doubtless room for
argument on the subject, it seems
fairly plain to us that only current
income can properly be regarded as
income for purposes of income tax-
ation. If a law passed in 1933 can
not lay a tax upon what was income
in 1913 but has since either been
spent or become capital, neither can
it do so in the case of the income of
1923 or of 1928 ; there is no difference
in principle between the cases. When
it comes to the very next preceding
year, the case may be regarded as
somewhat different, but rather upon
the maxim de minimis non curat lex
than for any other reason.
This does not offer any obstacle,
however, to the taxation as income,
in a given year, of gains that may
have been accruing for many years
but which did not take the shape of
income until the current year. It is
a more or less disputable question
whether the gain which a person
makes through the sale of property
should be regarded as income or as
increment of capital. But if it be re-
garded as income, as it is under our
laws, then it does not matter how
long a time that gain has taken in
accruing; the whole of it is income,
just as much as if it had accrued
within one year, or within one month.
The gain from year to year in the
market value of the property was not
income, and was not treated as such ;
the whole amount of the gain became
income, and subject to taxation as
such, when it was realized through an
actual sale.
There is, however, a further point
in connection with this which is of
most important practical bearing, and
which ought to receive the attention
of our lawmakers. While the entire
gain realized on a sale, however long
the property may have been held, can,
so far as the legal aspect of the ques-
tion is concerned, be regarded as
income, yet it is not fair to treat that
gain as income for the single year in
which the sale is effected. If the
income tax were at a horizontal rate,
this would be a question of little im-
portance; but with a graded tax it
becomes the cause of obvious and
avoidable injustice. A person whose
usual income is $6,000 a year, say,
may sell his entire possessions — the
result perhaps of many years of care-
ful management and saving — for the
purpose of investing the proceeds in
some form desirable as permanent
provision for his family and for his
own old age. If the gain he realizes
on the sale is $100,000, he has to pay
a very heavy supertax, a supertax de-
signed, of course, to be borne only
by very wealthy persons, persons
whose annual income is something
like $100,000; in his case the $100,-
000 is the accumulation of perhaps
twenty or thirty years. The tax
ought to be reckoned accordingly;
the whole amount ought to be taxed,
but it ought to be taxed not as $100,-
000 acquired in one year, but as
$5,000 acquired in each of twenty
years, or something of the kind.
This, however, is a question of equity,
not of law ; and moreover it is but one
example of many imperfections which
exist in the law, and which call for
remedy by Congress, acting after
thorough-going consideration by the
most competent experts.
I
May 29, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[563
Peace for Hungary
/^N the 4th of June the Hungarian
^ delegation will sign the peace
treaty in the Grand Trianon Pal-
ace at Versailles. The ceremony
officially closes a period of nearly
four hundred years in which the
destinies of Hungary were knit up
with those of Austria and the
Hapsburg dynasty. It was in 1527
that the Hungarians offered the
Crown of St. Stephen to Ferdinand
of Austria, brother of Charles V, in
order to strengthen their resistance
against the Turk. As an outpost of
European civilization against the
menace of the Asiatic intruder Hun-
gary, during the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, gained the admira-
tion and gratitude of Europe. But
in her present humiliation she shares
the fate of her old enemy, with whom
she was joined in the mad attack
upon Western civilization.
Still, it can not be said that the
Supreme Council has been a vindic-
tive tribunal in drafting Hungary's
verdict. The territory that she loses
is not taken from her as a punish-
ment for her part in the war, but in
conformity with the principle of na-
tional self-determination which her
ill-fated complicity made it possible
to put into practice. If the old Hun-
gary had been a country of Hun-
garians, the new Hungary would not
differ from it in size. But as a matter
of fact only 55 per cent, of its in-
habitants were Hungarians, and ruled
the country, before the war, vdth
utter disregard of the rights of other
nationalities as guaranteed them by
the Hungarian Nationality Law of
1868. By means of later additions,
by the partiality of the Magyar law
courts, by everyday practice, the
spirit of this liberal law evanesced,
leaving nothing but the dead letter.
Ferdinand of Austria, when taking
the Hungarian crown in 1527, had to
pledge himself not to destroy the
native language: "Nationem et lin-
guam vestram servare non perdere
intendimus." For refusing to Ru-
manians, Slovaks, and Slovenes, that
respect for their languages which
they claimed from their Hapsburg
kings for their own, the Hungarians
have now to pay the penalty. By re-
sorting to forcible means in attempt-
ing to Magyarize those foreign
minorities, they created the very ele-
ments of hostility which made for the
dissolution of the kingdom.
In tracing the frontiers of the new
Hungary the Supreme Council has
found it impossible to make the politi-
cal boundaries coincide everywhere
with the ethnic divisions. Islets and
peninsulas of Hungarian nationality
were thus severed from the compact
mass of the nation now forming the
population of Hungary. The dele-
gates in Paris protested against this
inclusion of Hungarian nationals
within neighboring territories in the
name of the same principle which
released alien minorities from Mag-
yar rule. The Council's reply was not
an absolute non possumus. It ad-
mitted the possibility of injustices
committed, and pointed the way to
their rectification by a peaceable pro-
cedure of international law. It is
this conciliatory attitude that gives
the Peace Treaty with Hungary a
special significance.
The "lettre d'envoi," which, to-
gether with the text of the treaty,
M. Millerand, in the jiame of the
Allies, addressed to the Hungarian
delegation, referred to the problem of
the frontiers in the following terms :
If the delimitation commissions, in the course
of their work, should come to the conclusion
that the provisions of the treaty create any-
where an injustice which it is of general inter-
est to eliminate, they have the right to address
a report on the subject to the Council of the
League of Nations, which, if one of the par-
ties concerned requests it, can offer its ser-
vices for an amicable rectification of the orig-
inal frontier line.
But the reduction to a minimum of
the friction between Hungary and
her former subject races over the
tracing of the lines of division is sub-
sidiary to the question how to restrict
that division to the political life of
the nations, so that economically they
may recover part at least of their
former unity. In order to promote the
resumption of the pre-war exchange
of products between the new created,
aggrandized, and diminished states,
the Council has added a new para-
graph to Article 207 of the treaty :
"In order to enable Poland, Ru-
mania, Jugoslavia, Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, and Austria to supply one
another with the products which, un-
til now, were exchanged between the
territories of these States, and which
would be indispensable to the produc-
tion or the commerce of those terri-
tories, one or other of these States
shall, within six months from the com-
ing into force of the present treaty,
open negotiations with a view to con-
cluding separate conventions with one
or other of its neighbors." ... If
the negotiations, within six months,
have not led to tangible results, the
State which has taken the initiative
"may address itself to the reparations
committee and request it to expedite
their conclusion."
In one instance the Supreme Coun-
cil has not left it to the initiative of
the States themselves to create a be-
ginning, or rather a resumption, of co-
operation for their common interest :
Considering the vital importance, for the
basin of the middle Danube, of the mainte-
nance, in general outline, of the existing regime
of the river, the Allied and Associated Powers
have inserted a new Article 293 in the treaty,
under which a Commission for the middle
Danube is instituted, composed of a represen-
tative of each of the States concerned and of
a president appointed by the Council of the
League of Nations.
Thus the treaty which codifies the
division of the old Hungary supplies,
at the same time, the means of obviat-
ing the evil effects which that divi-
sion would otherwise have on the
international situation of Southeast
Europe. Self-interest may induce the
nations which it concerns to make use
of those means, though racial ani-
mosities should throw obstacles in the
way towards a rapprochement. The
Great Powers can do no more than
help and advise them in clearing the
road. Whether they shall follow it to
their common goal rests with the na-
tions themselves.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Weekly Cobporatiom
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price> five dollars a ^ear in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London. W. C. 2, England.
Copyright, J920, in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Avres O. W. Firkins
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson
Jerome Landfielo
564]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, Xo. 55
The Problem of Palestine
'T'HE Supreme Council at San Remo
■'■ has made Great Britain the man-
datory over the Holy Land, writing
into its mandate the Balfour declara-
tion that in Palestine shall be estab-
lished a national home for the Jewish
peoples without prejudicing the civil
or religious rights of non-Jewish
communities, that is, of nine-tenths
of the present population. The Zion-
ists announce that Great Britain has
given them every assurance that
within a few weeks army rule, "which
has been far from satisfactory to the
Jews, will be changed to a sympa-
thetic civil rule." From now on, to
quote the Zionist propaganda, the
work of Zionism is to prepare Pales-
tine for the vast migration that will
ensue of the hundreds of thousands
of Jews now waiting at Odessa, Con-
stantinople, Constanza, and Vladivos-
tok for passage to their new home,
and for the much greater number
that will come eventually.
The signing of the peace treaty at
Versailles did not put an end to the
censorship, for it did not put an end
to war. Little or no news comes from
the Near East, yet brief cables from
Palestine have hinted at a strange
prelude to the establishment of the
Jewish national home which, in the
words of Rabbi Wise, is to translate
into life the Jewish dream of brother-
hood. Evidently the non-Jewish in-
habitants of Palestine fear that they
are to be the younger brother to
whom falls but a slender portion of
the inheritance — or none at all. On
February 27, Moslems and Christians
marched through the streets of Jeru-
salem in formal protest against the
Zionist demands and handed their
remonstrance to the British authori-
ties and to the consuls of other na-
tions represented at the Holy City.
To one at all familiar with the Near
East, the united action of members
of these two faiths is of extraordi-
nary significance. On the same day
there was an anti-Zionist demonstra-
tion at Bethlehem. On March 8 Jeru-
salem saw a much more impor-
tant demonstration, representing not
merely the capital of Palestine, but
the surrounding communities and
towns. Led by the Mayor of Jerusa-
lem, accompanied by Arif Pasha,
President of the Islamo-Christian As-
sociation, by ex-deputy Said Effendi
al Husseini and many other notables,
the procession marched to the Mili-
tary Governate, the consulates of
Italy, France, and America, and re-
newed the protests of Palestine, for
which they claimed to speak, against
the Zionist plan to dominate the coun-
try. When the procession broke up
at the Joppa Gate, many of the Chris-
tians proceeded to the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre and there took oath to
defend their country against the Zion-
ists. This same day, at Haifa, the
future port of Palestine, there was a
similar anti-Zionist demonstration.
On Easter Sunday came the first
bloodshed ; fighting between Jews and
Arabs was carried on for nearly three
days, and, if newspaper accounts are
to be trusted, five Jews and four
Arabs were killed, while twenty-four
Arabs and more than two hundred
Jews were wounded. Martial law,
with machine guns and aeroplanes,
finally restored order. Not for many
years have there been anti-Jewish
outbreaks in Palestine.
The cause of demonstration and
rioting can be understood only when
the plans and actions of the Zionists
are comprehended. It is unfortunate
in the highest degree that so many
Americans know little or nothing con-
cerning them. Only a year ago, Mr.
Norman Hapgood wrote in a Zionist
monthly, "I have seen no request to
the Powers for special favors to the
Jewish population," and the general
public is similarly ill informed. In
the first place, it is of the utmost im-
portance to understand that Zionism
desires in Palestine more than a place
of refuge for oppressed Jews. The
Jews that emigrate there will not go
in the same spirit in which thou-
sands of Europeans have sought our
shores. They do not wish merely to
aid in the development of Palestine;
they desire to control its develop-
ment, to change an Arab country into
a Jewish State. Feisal, the foremost
Arab leader, proposed last fall a regu-
lated Jewish immigration to Palestine
where Jews should have equal rights
with Arabs, taking part in the gov-
ernment in proportion to their popu-
lation, and where they should have
full control of Jewish schools and the
means to establish a Jewish cultural
centre. To quote his own sensible
words, "We naturally should prefer
an immigration of Jews to that of any
other people, not only because Jews
have vast resources by which the land
can be developed, but because they
are Semites like ourselves." In an
Arab country he would have Zionists
assured of "equal rights, equal op-
portunities, and an absolute non-dif-
ferentiation between Arab and Jew."
But Zionists do not wish equality of
privilege for Christian, Arab, and
Jew such as we should offer in Amer-
ica. They wish to establish not a
Palestinian, but a Jewish State, that
is, a government dominated by mem-
bers of but one faith. In his "Zion-
ism and the Future of Palestine," a
book which deserves the widest cir-
culation, Professor Morris Jastrow,
Jr., has given a clear and convincing
study of the fallacies and dangers of
political Zionism. He points out the
fact that a Jewish State inevitably
sets up a barrier, whether we express
it in terms of religion or of nation-
ality. "As a writer pithily puts it, 'if
it be Jewish, it can not be a State;
if it be a State, it can not be Jewish.' "
There is then a religious injustice in
the Zionist State which would never
be tolerated in our own land and
which stirs Palestine deeply.
To this idea of a State, in conflict
with modern liberal thought, there
must be added the economic injustice
of Zionism. Balfour's "National
Jewish Home" is an ambiguous
phrase, yet the Zionists have given
it a very exact interpretation. To
them it means but one thing — an au-
tonomous Jewish State. Palestine
is an important organ of English
Zionists. The longest article in its
issue for March 13 is a reprint from
the Manchester Guardian of a letter
from a Zionist in the Holy Land. No
exception is taken to any of its state-
ments and it may be considered as
representing Zionist opinion when it
,Mav 29. 1920]
THE ReViEW
[565
discusses the "minimum require-
ments" to be made of Great Britain.
To cite one of the first, for the next
few years the goal of a Jewish Pales-
tine and of an autonomous common-
wealth must be steadily before the
eyes of the mandatory and its serv-
ants and "direct their course." In
general it has been assumed that a
mandatory Power would govern a
country impartially; the "sympa-
thetic" British administration is to
work for one goal, the autonomous
Jewish State.
Among the first two or three world
leaders of Zionism is Dr. Weizmann,
the head of the English Zionists. At
the recent extraordinary convention
of the Zionist Organization of Amer-
ica, held in New York, Professor
Felix Frankfurter of Harvard, one
of the most prominent American
Zionists, presented a resolution of
gratitude to Dr. Weizmann for his
leadership. Endorsed by Americans,
he speaks with authority, and he has
recently declared that the autonomous
Jewish State is a possibility in ten
years. This is no hasty judgment,
for to quote a Zionist journal. Dr.
Weizmann "has been able to make
his calculations with the aid of ex-
I parts on the spot, after paying full
consideration to all the manifold fac-
tors involved."
Let us double Dr. Weizmann's es-
timate. For twenty years, under the
watchful eye of Zionism, Britain is
to prepare the coming of the Jewish
[State, and the Zionists themselves
Ihave indicated some of the practical
steps to that end which the manda-
tory should take. Through extortion
and robbery of the natives, a large
part of Palestine came into the pos-
session of the Turkish Crown. Among
Ithese Crown lands, for example, are
I part of the fertile plain of Esdrselon,
I large section of the Ghor, the broad
olain of the Jordan about Jericho,
md a wide region near Beersheba.
[f the mandatory is to throw open
;hese lands, as Indian lands in Amer-
j.ca were awarded to settlers, nat-
urally the non-Jewish Palestinians
.vish a large part of them ; yet to cite
igain the letter in Palestine, Zionism
•equires "a preference in the settle-
nent of the waste and dead lands
and of the State domains," that is,
these Turkish Crown lands. Pales-
tinians, then, may receive only what
the Zionists do not want. Similarly,
in the construction of all manner of
public works, greatly needed in Pales-
tine, "preference shall be given to a
public utility organization represent-
ing the Jewish people and the Jew-
ish Palestine."
One of the most important ques-
tions before the country is the proper
method of developing its natural
resources. Oil has been found in
the region of the Dead Sea, whose
very waters are rich in potas-
sium; systems of irrigation must be
installed throughout the country;
and the swift-rolling Jordan must be
made to furnish electricity to run
factories and illuminate the land.
Whether non-Zionists may direct any
of these projects must depend entirely
on the pleasure of Zionism, if its de-
mands, formally presented to the
Peace Conference, have been granted.
These demands, typical of others, re-
quired for Zionists "priority in any
concession for public works or the de-
velopment of the natural resources
of Palestine." "Preference" and
"priority" have a better sound than
"monopoly."
To sum up these "minimum re-
quirements," while Great Britain is
the mandatory, Zionists should have
priority on waste lands, on State
lands, in the construction of all pub-
lic works, in any concession for pub-
lic works, or the development of
natural resources. For a beginning,
this should help. Within a few years
it will be more simple, for when Great
Britain has finished its work of
preparation for the new State and
turned the country over to its new
rulers, Zionism has but to say,
"L'Etat, c'est moi."
If educated Palestinians who real-
ize the scope of these demands have
protested indignantly against them,
the ignorant, illiterate fellahin can
readily perceive that the Zionist State
will work them injustice. For ex-
ample, Zionists will naturally under-
take all manner of private and public
works, yet on these works organized
Jewish labor in Palestine has declared
that only Hebrews shall be employed.
In America, this would be called a
State boycott on Arab labor. On the
other hand, during the interim of the
British mandate, the letter reprinted
in Palestine would require in any pub-
lic works undertaken by the manda-
tory an "adequate employment of
Jews in constructing and operating
them."
Even before Great Britain ob-
tained the mandate, Palestinians of
all classes, educated and uneducated,
well-to-do or poor, have been irri-
tated at seeing the Zionists display
a flag they had made with the simple
'explanation that it is to be the
flag of their country. They hear
the "Hatikvoh" and are informed
that the Hebrew words and music
are to be their country's national
anthem. They hear a Palestinian
Zionist object to a "mixed" school
at Haifa, a public school in the
American sense of the word, where
Jews, Moslems, and Christians would
be on an equality, on the ground that
a school for Zionists must be Hebrew
in spirit as well as in language. They
see Professor Geddes brought from
Scotland by Zionists with a "commis-
sion" to draw plans for the recon-
struction of Jerusalem, a city in which
the Jews are in the minority, and they
learn that similar plans are being
prepared for the development of
Jaffa, Haifa, and other places. They
wonder whether they are to be heard
at all, whether they are even to be
consulted on the questions of recon-
struction and government of the land
they possess. They should not won-
der. Aliens, chiefly Russians, Poles,
and Rumanians, are to come in and
possess the land through "prefer-
ences" and "priorities" denied Pales-
tinians whose families have lived and
worked in the land for generations.
Comprehending this part of the Zion-
ist programme, Palestinians believe
they can see what will be their fate
when Great Britain withdraws en-
tirely and Zionism is in full control.
The military rule in Palestine is
to be replaced at once by a civil ad-
ministration. General Bols, Chief of
Staff in Allenby's Palestine campaign,
is at the present moment Chief Ad-
ministrator for Palestine. The Arab
newspaper, Meraat-Al-Shark, pub-
566]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 55
lished at Jerusalem, gives a careful
statement from General Bols repre-
senting the policy of the British mili-
tary authorities. In this, General
Bols states that the Entente Powers,
with America and France at their
head, had approved the Balfour dec-
laration. England will organize the
Zionist immigration within limits
and certain conditions in order that
this immigraton shall not injure the
economic stability of the country.
General Bols had been informed by
Dr. Weizmann that the Zionists
would not send any Jewish immi-_
grants unless they were workmen,
professional men, or persons of
means who would not be a burden
on the inhabitants of the country.
The British Government will protect
the ground of the fellahin, not allow-
ing any man to sell his land unless it
is necessary ; it will control the coun-
try justly and will guard the rights
of the weak. The Entente Powers
have no intention of founding a Jew-
ish Government in the country. Its
inhabitants will rule themselves,
statutes will be drawn up by an as-
sembly chosen by a majority vote of
the people, and guarantees will be
given for the rights of the inhabitants,
who will be prepared for self-govern-
ment. As for the Crown Lands, a
commission will examine the whole
question, especially the claims of the
fellahin from whom much of the land
had been taken unjustly. General
Bols concluded, "The inhabitants may
be assured that the Government is
well-intentioned towards them and
holds only the scales of justice in its
hands." From an American or Brit-
ish point of view, this would seem an
excellent statement ; the idea of even-
handed justice agrees with the best
traditions of both countries. To the
Zionists, however, this military ad-
ministration has been "far from sat-
isfactory."
"The Balfour declaration," said
Rabbi Wise, "is only a scrap of paper,
but it is written in English." Un-
fortunately its English must be very
ambiguous. Friends of Palestine may
be permitted to hope that its phrase
"the civil and religious rights of non-
. Jewish communities" is perfectly
clear and that it will be given its
natural interpretation of no discrimi-
nation in favor of any race or creed.
In that case, all "privileges" and
"priority" claims of the Zionists must
be disregarded ; yet even so, Palestine,
properly organized and developed,
can become a home land for scores of
thousands of Jewish immigrants who
will inevitably rise to leadership if
they prove to be the most capable
element in the country. On the other
hand, if a "sympathetic" civil admin-
istration follows even such "mini-
mum" requirements as I have cited,
the rights of the majority of Pales-
tinians will not merely be prejudiced
but trampled upon. America has a
great responsibility in this matter,
inasmuch as eight-tenths of the Zion-
ist funds raised last year came from
this country; and Zionists have
stated that America will have to sup-
ply most of the funds until the new
State is functioning, that is, for the
next decade at least. Public opinion
should support the enforcement of the
one clause in the Balfour declaration
that promises security to the great
majority of Palestinians who are not
Zionists ; otherwise, the riots in Jeru-
salem will prove to have been the few
scattered drops that foretell the ap-
proaching storm, a storm that may
possibly sweep more than the Near
East.
Edward Bliss Reed
The Social Revolution in France
THE increasing number of strikes in
France and the equally increasing
vociferousness of the radical movement
in the ranks both of the Socialist party
and of the General Confederation of
Labor, have naturally aroused serious ap-
prehension as to the permanence of the
French social order. In fact, this de-
structive devolution has been the out-
standing feature of French political life
since the armistice. During the war, the
Unified Socialist party gradually changed
from a loyal support of the Government
to an acrid denunciation of Allied "im-
perialism." In a national Congress held
at Easter, 1919, the party renounced
all participation in a "bourgeois" Min-
istry and refused to vote credits for the
support of any but a Labor Government.
For the time being, however, it decided
to maintain its membership in the old
or Second Internationale. The Novem-
ber elections came, and when the ballots
had been counted, it was found that the
Socialist representation in the Chamber
of Deputies had been reduced from 104
to 68. They were reconciled, however,
by the fact that they had polled a vote
of 1,700,000—300,000 more than in 1914.
The new electoral law, combining the bad
features of the old majority system and
of proportional representation, had neu-
tralized these additional votes. A signif-
icant result of this defeat was that it
intensified the efforts of French Labor to
secure their ends by "direct action" in-
stead of by political means. As they were
still in a hopeless minority and as the
electoral laws worked against them, they
believed that the ballot box offered but
little hope. Hence they redoubled their
strike activities.
The party took the next step towards
the left at the Strassburg Congress
(February, 1920), where it decided to
withdraw from the Second Interna-
tionale (to which it had proclaimed a
conditional adherence at its Easter con-
vention), and to enter negotiations for
membership in the Third Internationale,
created by the Bolsheviki at Moscow.
Thus the party completed the labored
process through which it had passed
from a patriotic support of the French
Government in its resistance to German
aggression to an almost complete asso-
ciation with Bolshevist programmes and
sympathies.
Within the ranks of the Confederation
Generale du Travail the same devolution
has been apparent. For this organiza-
tion had also rallied to the support of the
war. Leon Jouhaux, its secretary-gen-
eral, had served on various war commit-
tees, and was appointed as a labor
delegate to the French Peace Commis-
sion. But despite the patriotism of the
leaders of the C.G.T., a small group,
headed by Pierre Monatte, carried on an
insistent propaganda, until the revolu-
tionaries within the organization were on
the way to victory by the first of May,
1919. As a result of the tactics em-
ployed by the Government to suppress
the labor manifestations in Paris at that
time, M. Jouhaux, with an outburst of
invective against M. Clemenceau, re-
signed from the French Peace Delega-
tion. With his resignation the truce
between organized labor and the Govern-
ment was terminated and the old-time
warfare resumed.
The General Confederation of Labor
illustrated the complete desertion of its
past policy of restricting its activities to
economic purposes by the programme it
enunciated — before the labor demonstra-
tions of May 1, 1920. This programme
May 29, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[567
called for (1) the nationalization of pub-
lic services and mines, (2) the right to
organize for Government employees, (3)
disarmament, (4) withdrawal of troops
from the right bank of the Rhine, (5)
the discontinuance of colonial expedi-
tions, (6) the demobilization of the Class
of 1918.
. May Day, 1920, began an attempt to
institute another general strike in an
effort to secure these ends. The railway
men did not return to work upon the
2nd of May. On the 5th the C.G.T.
ordered the miners to stop work; shortly
afterwards, the dockers, transport work-
. ers, the electricians, and gas workers
were also ordered out. Thus the C.G.T.
had embarked on a vast programme to
enforce its demands for nationalization
by direct action. It seemed that it was
upon the point of tying up the very
arteries of French industry and of even
placing Paris in utter darkness. Must
France fall into the hands of Labor?
Must it succumb to this "peaceful" yet
overpowering revolution, which threat-
ened the very fundamentals of existing
society? These questions the Millerand
Government was compelled to answer.
France is not afraid of the issue of
nationalization; in fact, it was the
first Clemenceau Government (1906-09)
which nationalized the Western line.
France is not afraid of collective owner-
ship, as the match, the tobacco, and the
munitions industries show. But the real
issue which is now being fought out is
whether or not an organization compris-
ing but a small minority of the popula-
tion shall depart from the ordinary
parliamentary means of securing political
reforms, and force its demands upon the
country by the strangle-hold of direct ac-
tion and the general strike. This is the
issue, and in' seriousness it consti-
tutes the very trial of parliamentary
government.
However, the misgivings as to the
stability of the French social order, be-
cause of the destructive aims and the
great strength of the French Labor
movement, are apt to be exaggerated by
public opinion. It is true that the So-
cialist party had an active membership
of 57,159 in 1919. But when one recalls
that in 1912 the party had 63,000 mem-
bers and that in 1870 the International
Workingmen's Association in Paris alone
had a membership of between 70,000 and
80,000, the present strength of the So-
cialist party is by no means appalling.
And who is there who will say that the
present situation equals in seriousness
the Wine Revolt of 1907?
Secondly, the apparent growth in
strength of the Socialist party, as meas-
ured in votes — an increase from 1,000,-
000 in 1906 to 1,700,000 in 1919— can be
explained by the comparatively recent
rapprochement of Socialism and Syndi-
calism. Although both of these move-
ments have the same ultimate end, they
differ radically as to the means by which
the Marxian order is to be ushered in.
The Socialist party looks upon the po-
litical conquest of Parliament as the
natural means of inaugurating a Social-
ist state; and it considers a parliament
an essential component of its conception
of the new order. The Syndicalists (rep-
resented by the C.G.T.), on the other
hand, insist on direct action as the
only means strong enough to win the de-
mands of Labor. The leaders in control
of the C.G.T., just before the war, also
limited their activities to improving the
lot of Labor, and paid little attention to
the political reforms the Socialist party
in Parliament was endeavoring to insti-
tute. But as a result of the growth of
radicalism within the ranks of the C.G.T.
during the armistice, thousands of lab-
oring men awakened to the political de-
mands which the Socialist party was
making. And when the November elec-
tions came, these men cast their votes
almost solidly for Socialist candidates.
Thus the increase in Socialist votes is
not absolute — it does not necessarily rep-
resent the growth of radical sentiment
in France; it merely means that the
C.G.T., composed of thousands of work-
ingmen who hitherto remained aloof
from elections, is now combining forces
with the Socialist party. The efforts of
the latter party to secure the Eight-
Hour Day law has increased its standing
with the C.G.T.; and the Socialist fail-
ure at the November elections has also
increased the reasons for them to adopt
the C.G.T.'s "strike theory."
Thirdly, the very size of the C.G.T.
is diminishing the imminence of a social
revolution. During the spring of 1919
a great "syndicalist" movement swept
over France, engulfing every social class
(except the peasants) from college pro-
fessor to choir singer. This movement
was caused largely by the problem of la
vie chere. Violating the terms of the
Organization law of 1884, which pre-
vented the organization of labor unions
by Government employees, the National
Association of Functionaries, as well as
nearly every subordinate "amicale" of
Government employees, joined the C.G.T.,
in order to give strength to the demand
for increased salaries. Even the jour-
nalists and the dramatic artists followed
suit. This astonishing movement among
typically bourgeois classes increased the
membership of the General Confedera-
tion of Labor from 600,000 to the
tremendous figure (according to some
estimates) of 2,000,000. The presence
of these moderate elements in the C.G.T.
has prevented the success of the "po-
litical" strikes. The bourgeois member-
ship of the C.G.T. is wholly out of
sympathy with the principles of "pro-
letariat dictatorship." It has nothing
but disgust and horror for the experi-
ences of Bolshevism. It looks upon any
movement to enact such a regime in
France with the greatest apprehension.
Consequently, its participation in the
C.G.T. will only be for "corporative"
purposes.
Fourthly, the very character of the
workingman is bringing about the failure
of the general strike.
This is shown by the fact that only
a fraction (from 20 per cent, to 50 per
cent.) of the men obeyed the strike
order, that many soon returned to work,
and that the industries continued to
function. Labor does not intend to suffer
the losses inevitably attendant upon
strikes for the mere conquest of certain
political ideas. The cost is too much.
During the strike period which started
in June, 1919, the metal workers lost 125
million francs in wages, the transport
workers, 58,500,000, the miners 58,500,-
000, and the chemical workers 29,000,000.
To justify such a sacrifice, some definite
economic gain from a strike must accrue.
In fact, the very materialism of Marxian
doctrines precludes martyrdom for vague
ideals. The efforts of the C.G.T. have
proved that direct action has its obvious
limits — namely, to secure strictly eco-
nomic and corporative ends — and that
parliamentary and constitutional pro-
cesses must be relied upon for the
achievement of purely political reforms.
Finally, the Government is approach-
ing the situation with a highminded con-
ception of its duty towards the nation.
A National Labor Council has been es-
tablished, with equal representations
upon it of Capital and Labor. A bill has
been introduced to compel profit sharing.
A still more important measure is the
Bill for the Settlement of Labor Disputes,
which M. Jourdain, Minister of Labor,
introduced into the Chamber in March,
1920. It provides not only for voluntary
conciliation in all industries, but for
compulsory arbitration and the prohibi-
tion of all strikes, before the arbitral de-
cision is arrived at, in the following in-
dustries upon which the life and health
of the nation depend: (1) means of
transportation, (2) gas and electricity
works, (3) coal mines, water and power
plants, (4) hospitals, (5)' in towns over
25,000 inhabitants, funeral establish-
ments and industries involving the pub-
lic health. In the event that a strike
illegally occurs in any of these industries,
the Government may requisition the
plant and personnel, and impose severe
penalties.
Although it may be impossible to
enforce compulsory arbitration upon
French Labor now, especially as long as
employers persist in violating the Eight-
Hour Day and other labor laws, the
Millerand Government seems to be on the
way to a solution of the country's press-
ing industrial problems.
Raymond Buell
568]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 55
A Composing Room
Colloquy
" /^ERALD!" she cried, suddenly
^^ freeing herself from his embrace.
"It's my husband — Heaven help you!
Quickly — over the garden wall, before
he sees! Oh—"
A shot rang out in the darkness. He
felt a screaming pain tinder his arm os
Ac sank to the ground. Vaguely he could
see forms above him swaying like weeds
under tcater. He felt tired . . .
very tired. What did it matter? What
did anything matter, for that matter?
He had lived . . . He had loved . . .
FINIS
"You notice I always get in whenever
there's any excitement going on," re-
marked Em Dash complacently.
"Yes," replied Dottie, "but I usually
get the ultimate word ..."
"You have spread yourself considerably
in the last few years," Em admitted.
"Don't you think there's danger of your
being overdone?"
"By the vers libre crowd, you mean?"
"Yes, and by the British novelists,
too; especially those realists."
"Well, why not? You were all the
rage once, Dash, old dear. Remember
'Tristram Shandy,' for instance. And
as for poetry. Browning gave you a
stiffer work-out than Amy Lowell has
ever given me ... so far. Think
of the famous dashes in history : Peary's
dash to the North Pole, Cook's hyphen in
the same direction, Bryan's dash for — "
"Pardon me," Em interrupted, "but
Brj'an is yours; he belongs in the Prov-
ince of Three Stops. The trouble with
you is this: you're too — indefinite.
Punctuation should be obvious, open, and
aboveboard. Now, I can tell you just
what I stand for, whether it's a sob, a
gasp, a sudden change in thought, or
just an ordinary interruption."
"So can I. I stand for ... I
stand for ..." Dottie hesitated.
"See!" cried Em triumphantly. "You
don't know — ^you can't tell me."
"That's just it," Dottie explained. "I
define myself by my inability to define
myself. I'm a caesura, a void, a sus-
pended utterance, an adjournment of
ideas. I'm the three walnut shells
. . . and I defy you to find the pea.
I'm the original little je ne sais quoi."
"Humph! come to think of it, you are
French. You used to be a gay young
thing in your buff-cover days, too. But
as soon as you crossed the Channel you
began to act like a regular prude. You
eternally butted in at the most interest-
ing moments, you covered a multitude of
sins with the same old pattern, until
people knew just what was going to hap-
pen as soon as they saw you coming. And
gradually they lost interest in you."
"Ah," Dottie murmured fondly, "the
daj^ of the asterisqui! . . . but I
had to concede to Mudie's sooner or later.
And don't forget George Moore. He
goes on using me as if I were quite as
devilish as ever, and look at the prices
he gets for his books."
"You simple little constellation," said
Em with contempt, "you don't imagine
that George uses you for your devilish-
ness, do you? He three-dots simply to
give a moral tone to his work. Besides,
you are not only restful to the eye, but
to the mind — particularly the mind of
the writer. In the last twenty years
your character has changed completely,
and I believe you don't realize it. Why,
do you know where I saw you the other
day?"
"Where?" asked Dottie.
"You'd never guess." Em looked at
her scornfully. "I saw you in the Con-
gressional Record! I think you were
supposed to indicate applause."
Weare Holbrook
A Canadian Ambas-
sador at Washington
SIR ROBERT BORDEN has at last
returned to Ottawa, has appeared in
the House of Commons, and, what is more
important, has delivered a speech. Some
people were unkind enough to suggest
that he had been simply suffering from
a "diplomatic indisposition"; but his ap-
pearance in the House, and especially his
delivery, would indicate to even the least
observant that Sir Robert had been over-
taxed. The occasion, however, was not a
propitious one. The question was regard-
ing the course taken by the Government
in connection with the appointmeilt of a
Canadian representative at Washington.
Sir Robert's defense of the Govern-
ment's course in the matter amounts to
this : "I have seen the oflScial correspond-
ence, the proposals and the decisions of
the British and the American representa-
tives regarding Canada's future relations
with the United States; it is indelicate
and undiplomatic on the part of the rep-
resentatives of the Canadian people to
ask for any further information." When
the vote was taken, the Government,
which has a normal majority of between
thirty-five and forty, escaped defeat by
the small majority of five. The attitude
of the Opposition reflected the disinclina-
tion of the Canadians to become "deli-
cate" and "diplomatic."
Canada's relations, commercial and
other, with the United States are so inti-
mate that it is high time that communica-
tions between the Governments at Ottawa
and at Washington should be direct. The
roundabout way of having all matters
of interest to the two countries pass
through the channel of the British Em-
bassy at the American capital savors too
much of old-time colonialism to suit the
spirit and the needs of the twentieth
century. Moreover, Canada's experience
of British paternalism in the case of ne-
gotiations between the Dominion and the
American Republic have not been of the
happiest. Hence the members of the
Canadian House of Commons felt that
they should be taken more fully into the
confidence of the Government and given
some slight inkling of the proposed status
of the intended Canadian Ambassador to
Washington. The debate closed without
the people of Canada being a whit the
wiser on the subject.
It does appear, however, that this new
official of the Canadian Government will
be endowed with special and extraordi-
nary prerogatives. For example, while
he is to have charge of all matters that
affect Canada alone (in the Dominion's
relations with the United States) , he will
also replace the British Ambassador at
Washington, should the latter be ill, or
absent, or in any way unable to perform
the duties of his high office. At first
blush this would seem to be a promotion
for the Canadian representative and a
mark of British confidence in Canada.
But it may prove to be a very question-
able distinction, and one fraught with
incalculable complications and dangers.
Suppose, for example, that during the
absence of the British Ambassador a
question arises in which the interests of
England and those of Canada are in con-
flict ; will the Canadian representative be
expected to face the matter from the
British or from the Canadian point of
view? Let us suppose the case of the
British Ambassador being recalled by his
home Government; will the Canadian
representative, who takes up his duties
for him, be supposed to' continue his
policy, or to inaugurate another more in
accord with the views of the British
Government? If so, what becomes of
Canada and her special interests?
In a word, there is absolutely no ob-
jection on the part of Canadian people to
the appointment of a representative, with
plenipotentiary powers, at Washington;
quite the contrary, the closer the rela-
tions between the Dominion and the
American Republic the better for both
countries. But the possibility of British
responsibility falling, even temporarily,
on the shoulders of a purely Canadian of-
ficial arouses a question in many minds; a
question complicated by the danger of
Cabinet authority (through secret diplo-
macy) challenging the supremacy of
Parliament and heedless of the voice of
the people. There is ground for hope,
however, that in practice these difl^icul-
ties will not arise to block the forward
movement along the highway of Cana-
dian national developments.
J. K. F.
Ottawa, Canada, May 18
May 29, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[569
Correspondence
The Lodge Reservations
To the Editors of The Review:
In your number of May 15 I find this
statement: "Mr. Taft, in his usual quiet
manner, states the cardinal facts about
the treaty as they stand":
The Lodge reservations leave the treaty
nearly as effective as without them. The reser-
vations affect only Article X. . . .
The Lodge reservations preserve the three
great things in the treaty : first the limitation
of armaments .... Article X is not
destroyed but only limited by the reservations.
The obligation of the United States to partici-
pate in international crises is left to the discre-
tion of Congress.
All the other countries in the League are
bound by Article X.
This statement may be lucid, but is it
not misleading?
The Peace Commissioners went to
Paris in order to make a lasting peace,
which should make future war as nearly
impossible as the weakness of human
nature permits, and should at least pro-
tect the world against further attacks
by Germany.
These objects could only be accom-
plished by an agreement between all na-
tions to combine against any one which
should commence war, and to use both
military force (Art. 10) and economic
pressure (Art. 16) to control the of-
fender. France gave up terms which
she thought essential to her protection
because she felt that the League of Na-
tions and the separate treaties with Eng-
land and the United States by which they
promised to defend her were protection
enough.
Now the United States refuses to sign
the separate treaty, and also refuses to
join the other nations in the agreement
to use any force against a nation which
breaks the peace, and insists on being
left entirely free to do as it pleases in
any emergency, precisely the position
which it would occupy if there were no
treaty. If I agree, in writing, to sell you
a horse on condition that you agree to
pay me the price, and you modify it by
reserving the right to pay or not as you
please, is such a reservation properly de-
scribed by saying that the contract "is
not destroyed but only limited by the
reservation?"
Is it not true that the reservations
also destroy any obligation under Arti-
cle 16?
Does any one suppose that France will
disband her army in the face of Ger-
many's present attitude, or that England
will do the same with her navy, while the
Senate of the United States uses its influ-
ence in favor of Irish secession? Will
either nation feel disposed to rely on our
help instead of its own arms, trusting
that Congress may disregard the votes
of Sinn Feiners, German sympathizers,
and all the other opponents of war espe-
cially in aid of England or France, which
this country contains?
Mr. Taft may say very lucidly that the
Lodge reservations preserve "the limi-
tations of armaments," but is it not clear
that, without a binding league, disarma-
ment is impossible? If we will put our-
selves in the place of the French, we
should never dream of leaving our coun-
try at the mercy of Germany, and if
France does not disarm, no country will.
MooRFiELD Storey
Boston, Mass., May 18
Party Membership and the
Vote
To the Editors of The Review:
The practice of associating in its or-
ganization those unqualified to vote is
not confined to the Socialist Party. In
every Southern State the qualifications
for voting in the general elections are
quite distinct from the qualifications for
voting in the primaries. For example,
my native State, South Carolina, under
its present Constitution (1895), re-
quires that the voter shall be able to read
and write, or that he pay taxes on three
hundred dollars' worth of property; the
Democratic Party — the only party active
— requires nothing more than a very
rigid oath to support the nominees of the
party. The result is that in the Demo-
cratic Primary 140,000 men vote; where-
as in the general election the combined
vote of all parties never exceeds 60,000.
I suggest that our legislators consult that
section of the country least subject to
the extremes of the passing hour before
passing legislation restricting party
membership.
F. B. SIMKI^fs
Neiv York, May 25
"Two Plans For a National
Budget"
To the Editors of The Review :
While, in the main, I agree with the
excellent article "Two Plans for a Na-
tional Budget" in your issue of May 15,
by Mr. Ralston Hayden, I w^ant to call
your attention to what seems to me a
serious defect in his reasoning in respect
to the advantage of making "the Secre-
tary of the Treasury the initial point of
administrative articulation," by put-
ting the budget bureau in the Depart-
ment of the Treasury. He himself gives
the best reason why this should not be
done. The budget officer would be "aut
Csesar aut nihil," and it is because the
Constitution has already established a
Caesar in Washington and that Caesar
the President, that I approve of the plan
of the Good bill. "Render unto Caesar
the things that are Csesar's" is a rule
which Mr. Hayden himself can not es-
cape, since he says that, so far as the
formulation of the budget is concerned,
"it is the President who is ultimately
responsible." The weakness of the Mc-
Cormick bill is that it makes the Presi-
dent responsible without giving him the
means to carry that responsibility. For
if he is to decide wisely between the
conflicting claims of his ovm Cabinet offi-
cers, he must have some means of ascer-
taining for himself the facts upon which
he is to decide. According to the Mc-
Cormick plan, however, to settle a dispute
between the Secretary of the Treasury as
budget officer and the Secretary of War
the President must depend on informa-
tion gathered by one of the parties to
the contest — the Secretary of the Treas-
ury— and has no means of instituting an
independent investigation.
Under the McCormick bill the budget
comes into the Cabinet as the proposal
of one of the Cabinet officers; under
the Good bill it comes before the Cabinet
as the proposal of the President; and the
jealousy which is certain to arise among
other members of the President's official
family by the interference by one mem-
ber of that family in the affairs of the
other, will be avoided.
Ex-President Taft agrees with Mr.
Hayden that in the preparation of the
budget it is "aut Caesar aut nihil":
... If you intend to have exercised the
power of pruning down the estimates of the
various departments, so as to create a budget
that will be economical, you have got to give
the necessary power to the person who does
it or put that function into the hands of the
man who has as much prestige and power as
there is in the Government, and that is the
President of the United States." [Hearings
before the Select Committee on the Budget of
the House of Representatives on the Establish-
ment of a National Budget System, 66th Cong.,
1st sess., Sept.-Oct., 1919.— Statement of Hon.
William H. Taft, pp. 464-470, on p. 468.]
The suggestion that the McCormick
bill "conforms to the practice of almost
every other nation" in this respect is
met by the author's own answer to the
proposal that the Congress, like the Brit-
ish Parliament, should not be permitted
to increase estimates. In one instance,
as in the other, such a system "is work-
able only as part of the parliamentary
system," and the precedent of the British
parliamentary system is no more applica-
ble in one case than in the other. I
agree entirely with Mr. Hayden in his
opinion in respect to limiting the power
of the Legislature to increase or add
items.
Another objection, however, to putting
in the hands of the Secretary the power
to prepare the budget, which includes
the power of supervision over the Ad-
ministration, is the fact that he is now
the head of the largest civil executive
department of the Government. The War
Risk Insurance and the Internal Revenue
are two of the largest bureaus in Wash-
570]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 55
ingrton, and they only form a part of
the Department of the Treasury ; so that,
from this point of view, the Department
differs from the Treasury in Great
Britain, which has not even control of
the Inland Revenue. The secretary will
not have the time, any more than the
President, to scrutinize and carefully
study the estimates submitted to him,
nor will other heads of Departments be-
lieve that he has scrutinized the esti-
mates rdating to his own Department,
among the largest in the Government
service, as closely as he has scrutinized
those in the other departments. Practi-
cally, the Secretary of the Treasury is
merely another wheel introduced into the
machine between the commissioner of the
budget and the ultimate authority, the
President. His present duties are mani-
fold and important. They have to do
with the financial and fiscal affairs of
the Government, as well as with the
manifold other operations of the Depart-
ment, not with the efficiency of the gov-
ernmental organization, and it is impos-
sible that he should give due attention
to the preparation of the revision of the
estimates which, to be effective, means
the reorganization of the whole govern-
mental machine, to prevent overlapping
and waste, and to keep it tuned up to
efficient operation.
J. P. Chamberlain
Legislative Drafting Research Fund
New York, May 17
Salvaging the Facts of
Business
To the Editors of The Review:
On the occasion of the tenth annual
meeting of the Special Libraries Asso-
ciation, held recently in this city, several
hundred librarians and research workers
connected with the country's leading
financial, industrial, and business firms
gathered together to discuss professional
problems and to consider plans for the
further extension of library and research
service to commerce and industry.
The Special Libraries Association is
affiliated with the American Library As-
sociation and its members have cooper-
ated with the public librarians of the
country in drawing up the recently pro-
posed Enlarged Programme of Library
Service. Mr. Carl H. Milam, Director of
the A. L. A. Enlarged Programme, ad-
dressed the convention, describing recent
progress, and a joint committee of the
two associations was authorized for the
furtherance of this important work.
Since the signing of the armistice
American firms have given increasing at-
tention to the study of business problems,
and it is now generally maintained that
the decisions of the business executive
should be based upon a knowledge of the
underlying facts. The importance of ac-
curate record keeping has been greatly
underestimated by many business firms
in the past. Important documents are
mislaid or lost and little or no effort
has been made to collect and classify the
facts and data bearing upon special busi-
ness problems. Lacking such informa-
tion, many firms have found it necessary
to call upon experts and special in-
vestigators to help them discover "weak
spots" and inefficiency.
The Special Libraries have demon-
strated their ability to salvage important
information and so to classify and ar-
range such data as to be immediately
available to aid in the solution of current
administrative problems. It is estimated
that there are more than 2,000 American
firms that have felt the need of this kind
of service to aid in the development of
their business.
The Special Librarian brings a new
point of view into the business world.
He feels the romance of business life in
the fabrication of new products, the
articulation of transportation facilities,
the, vagaries of credit, and the financing
and management of business enterprise.
All these activities he views in their rela-
tion to the community and to the nation,
and he has a keen appreciation of the
need to understand and to interpret, not
only for the enlightenment of the pres-
ent generation, but for those that are to
come.
War-time conditions drew American
men and women into closer contact with
the processes and the fabric of industrial
and business life. This relationship has
resulted in a more intelligent interest in
commercial undertakings and an increas-
ing demand for business information.
That American business firms are re-
sponding to this demand is demonstrated
every day by the creation of new busi-
ness libraries and bureaus of research
and information. A considerable litera-
ture of business is rapidly springing into
existence whose benefit is evident in the
enthusiasm and increased efficiency of
employees, as well as of executives. That
the business library has come to stay
there can be little doubt, and much cer-
tainly is to be hoped from the further
extension of constructive services of this
kind.
DoRSEY W. Hyde, Jr.
President, Special Libraries Association
Detroit, Mich., April 21
The Sixth Dante Centen-
nial
[The author of this letter is the son of the
late Augustin Cochin, the Paris friend of
Longfellow, Garrison, and several other well-
known Americans of the Civil War period,
and the brother of M. Denys Cochin, of the
French Academy. He was for many years a
member of the Chamber of Deputies and is
an authority in France on Petrarch and Dante.]
To the Editors of The Review:
Italian historical studies are very pop-
ular in the United States. The finest
Dante collection in the world is that of
Willard Fiske, at Cornell University, of
which an excellent catalogue appeared
not long ago. So I feel sure that Ameri-
can academic circles will learn with inter-
est of the movement now on foot in Eu-
rope to celebrate in 1921 the sixth centen-
nial of the death of Dante Alighieri.
The great poet died on September 14,
1321, and all Italy is preparing to com-
memorate the date. The Italian uni-
versities have already announced som(
handsome publications, particularly the
final edition of the "Divine Comedy," the
fruit of the long labors of the learned
Vandelli; and the universities of France
and Belgium are not deaf to the cele-
bration.
It is remarkable, also, to note that the
first steps for the jubilee were taken by
the Catholic Church. In October, 1914,
a memorable communication was ad-
dressed by Pope Benedict XV to the
Archbishop of Ravenna which dwells on
"the irreproachable faith of Dante," de-
spite the impassioned attacks which he
directed against certain heads of the Holy
See, and which vindicates the great poet
in the eyes of the Roman Church by
referring to him as "Noster Dantes."
As Dante died at Ravenna, that city
will be the centre of the religious cere-
mony. The Holy See has also expressed
the desire that the jubilee should be
honored by Catholics throughout the
world, and, to this end, committees have
already been formed in France, through
the initiative of the Cardinal Arch-
bishop of Paris, and in Belgium under
the auspices of Cardinal Mercier, who
has just published in the Revue Univer-
selle a scholarly study of Dante and St.
Thomas of Aquino. Other publications
have also been announced, especially a
new translation of the "Divine Comedy,"
by the scholar and poet Andre Perate,
which is very faithful to the original,
and in rythmic prose. It will appear first
in a de luxe edition, with wood engrav-
ings by Jacques Beltrand after Botti-
celli, and later a popular edition will be
brought out. There will also be pub-
lished here in the near future a Bulletin
which will present the unpublished works
of several noteworthy writers concerning
Dante, his writings, and his period. This
Bulletin will be published, with appro-
priate illustrations, by the Librairie de
I'Art Catholique, Paris.
I trust that this information may be of
some interest to the literary readers of
your periodical and that we may soon
have the satisfaction of learning that
the universities of the United States
are also preparing to celebrate the
jubilee of the greatest poet of the world.
Henry Cochin
23 Quai d'Orsay, Paris, May 1
1
i
May 29, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[571
Book Reviews
What to Do About News
Juggling
Liberty akd the News. By Walter Lipp-
mann. New York: Harcourt, Brace and
Howe.
MR. LIPPMANN believes that as long
as we are content "to argue about
the privileges and immunities of opinion"
we are wasting time. We shall neyer
succeed in fixing a standard of tolerance
for opinions. "In going behind opinion
to the information which it exploits, and
in making the validity of the news our
ideal, we shall be fighting the battle
where it is really being fought." Liberty
is not so much a condition as a mechan-
ism. "In this view liberty is the name
we give to measures by which we protect
and increase the veracity of the informa-
tion upon which we act." Our aims
should be the protection of the sources of
the news, the organization of the news
so as to make it comprehensible, and the
education of human response so that
mankind will act intelligently in the light
of the information it receives.
Few persons will agree with the au-
thor that the argument about the privi-
leges and immunities of opinion is a
waste of time. It is an argument in which
most persons have indulged since the
tribal days of the race and which seems
to wax stronger as society becomes more
complex. The fact that no enduring
standard of tolerance can be found has
small influence on the disputants, for
the argument continues. It may be tem-
porarily stifled, as in Soviet Russia, or
it may be loftily ignored by an individual
here and there in freer climes; but
wherever it is permitted it is heard,
and though its finer technicalities are of
course reserved for the few, its more
obvious phases are the subject-matter of
the many.
Drawing the line on expressions of
opinion is a fundamental need of social
organization, and argument as to the lo-
cation of the line is an inevitable conse-
quence. No state, political party, church,
guild, cooperative society, or trade-union
can avoid the necessity. Each of these
societies knows that, for its own preser-
vation, it must prohibit among its mem-
bers expressions deemed harmful to
itself, and within the limits of its power
penalize the seditious. There are per-
sons who, while granting this right to
the trade-union or the church, deny it
to the nation; and there are other per-
sons who, while granting it to the Lenin-
Trotsky duumvirate, deny it to the demo-
cratic republic of the United States. But
none denies it absolutely, and so long
as men band themselves together for
any purpose, from the organization of a
state to the organization of a hunting
party, they will set metes and bounds to
the conduct of the membership ; and they
will consider the expression of non-con-
formist opinion as a vital phase of con-
duct. It is here that a large part of the
battle is really being fought and always
will be.
Still, the protection of the sources of
the news, though but a part of the battle,
is a most important part, and one listens
eagerly for a hint of practical method.
The evil of coloring, distorting, and sup-
pressing news is widespread and glaring.
It is impossible to say, from a close read-
ing of this book, how general the author
conceives this evil to be. He seems to
think the capitalist news journals the
chief offenders. "The current theory,"
he writes, "of American newspaperdom
is that an abstraction like the truth and
a grace like fairness must be sacrificed
whenever anyone thinks the necessities of
civilization require the sacrifice." I take
it that he means capitalist newspaper-
dom; and this view is confirmed by his
statement that "change will come
". . . only if organized labor and mili-
tant liberalism set a pace which can not
be ignored." An astigmatism so pro-
nounced as to prevent one from seeing
the persistent juggling of news by the
critical and pretentiously ethical jour-
nals, does not promise much aid in the
difficult task of safeguarding the news
supply.
Yet the programme which the author
proffers is a worthy one. Would that it
could be attained! Progress toward its
attainment will, however, require consid-
erable soul-searching and inner reforma-
tion on the part of responsible persons
connected with the handling of the news ;
and this is likely to require rather large
drafts on the bank of time. A con-
sideration of the specific details makes
the attainment seem even more remote.
Reporters must be supermen, rigorously
trained in all the social sciences, in the
use of words and in the technique of
observation. They must set down im-
partially the objective fact. The news
must be signed or documented, so that
we may know where it comes from and
who is responsible for it.
We want all this if it can be had. But
we want something more. We want
some assurance that after the news has
come from an expert and an honest
source it will be honestly used; that it
will not be suppressed to make room for
news from an inexpert source. It hap-
pens, for instance, that one of the favor-
ite witnesses of the New Republic and
other insurgent journals regarding
Soviet Russia has been Arthur Ransome,
a gentleman who, according to Professor
Samuel N. Harper, rather prided him-
self (at least up to November, 1917) on
his inability to understand politics. In
other cases these journals have shown
their preference for the hand-picked
and pap-fed correspondent over the
trained and informed observer. Under
present circumstances, therefore, it can
hardly be said that this proposed remedy
offers a speedy cure for a confessedly
bad situation.
"A rigorous discipline in the use of
words" would no doubt help enormously.
It is quite true that "education that shall
make men masters of their vocabulary
is one of the central interests of lib-
erty" ; and no doubt this truth has often
occurred to the baffled reader of impos-
ing arguments in the critical journals.
But reform in this matter, so far as
the radical reformers are concerned,
seems a long way ahead ; and the present
tendencies in this field toward a more
copious and cloudy verbiage give the
observant reader only the sick heart of
a deferred hope.
Finally, there is the "education of
human response." This is a task upon
which the best and the wisest of man-
kind have been assiduously working for
"several thousand years. As a proposal
it has thus small measure of novelty.
But it remains, after all, about the most
promising proposal made. Its results so
far have generated in some souls noth-
ing but pessimism; in others, indiffer-
ence; in most, only a chastened and sub-
dued hope. Yet, to keep going, we must
believe in it; we must believe that with
the process of the suns men in the mass
are rendered more intelligently respon-
sive to truth and fact. Even the most
optimistic person will at times doubt
this evolution; but he will, if wise, con-
tinue, even in his times of gravest
dubiety, to act as though it were true.
Something can always be won by an ap-
peal to the innate love of truth, to the
instinct of fairness, to a sense of the
dignity of sober reason and calm judg-
ment. This appeal, made in behalf of a
single standard of probity in furnishing
the news — a standard as obligatory upon
the harbingers of a "new world" as upon
the defenders of things as they are —
may in time work some part of the
miracle that is expected of it.
"Our sanity," writes the author, "and
therefore our safety, depend upon fear-
less and relentless exposure conducted
by self-conscious groups that are now in
a minority." True enough ; but why the
restriction to the minority? It is equally
important — indeed, far more important —
to the interests of social organization
that the self-conscious majority should
expose the falsifications and distortions
of the insurgent groups. An increasing
demand for a single standard of veracity
in the news will start us well on the way
to the desired goal.
W. J. Ghent
572]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 55
Is There a Religious Revival
in France?
GuEKRE ET Religion. By Alfred Loisy. Paris:
Emile Xourry.
Mors et \"ita. By Alfred Loisy. Paris : Emile
Nourrj'.
La Paix des Xatioxs et la Religion' de
l'A\-es-ir. By Alfred Loisy. Paris: Emile
Nourr>-.
En Licne. By Frederic Rouvier. Paris:
Perrin.
Lk Clerce et la Guerre de 1914. By Lucien
Lacroix. Paris : Bloud and Gay.
IS there a religious revival in France?
Abbe Loisy in his three pamphlets an-
swers in substance, No, while M. Rouvier,
in his large volume of over 550 pages,
sa>'s Yes, and Bishop Lacroix is rather
less positive in both directions. All three
speak with authority : Abbe Loisy is the
author of a score of books and pamphlets
on religious questions and is to-day Pro-
fessor of the History of Religions at the
College of France; M. Fr6d6ric Rouvier
has published half a dozen books and
pamphlets on Catholic subjects which
have gone through many editions; and
Mgr. Lacroix, Professor at the Sorbonne,
is not surpassed by either of the forego-
ing in the number and variety of his
writings on ecclesiastical subjects, be-
sides which he printed "Yankees et Cana-
diens," a volume of impressions of a
voyage which he made to America in
1895.
After the war of 1870, the churches —
Catholic as well as Protestant — acclaimed
a religious revival in France; but the
years that followed showed that they
were mistaken. In the last half of his
pamphlet, "Mors et Vita," whose purpose
is to combat the idea advanced in Paul
Bourget's "Le Sens de la Mort" and
Ernest Psichari's "Le Voyage du Centu-
rion" that only the faithful Roman Cath-
olic can live morally and die bravely,
Abbe Loisy examines the movement
which started before the outburst of the
war and which pretended to be a "return
to the Church," but which he describes
as "a current, neither wide nor deep, of
mysticism," a sort of "nationalistic Ca-
tholicism quite different from the old
traditional Catholicism which is still of-
ficially the religion of the Church of
Rome." He speaks of "the transforma-
tion, not of Catholicism, which changes
slowly, tardily, and in spite of itself, but
of our society which more and more tends
rather to disengage itself from Catholi-
cism," and he holds that what was before
and during the war will survive the war
— "a religion of devotion to one's country
will be our common duty."
In "Guerre et Religion," Abbe Loisy
declared as early as 1915 that "the war
will not change the respective positions
of the religious parties in France," and
he then returns repeatedly to this idea
of religion being swallowed up in patriot-
ism. "The religion which rules at the
front and which for a very great number
is the only dominant one is not the Cath-
olic faith, but the worship of country."
In answer to the question as to "what
will be the foundation of this religion
and its essential idea," Abbe Loisy
replies that "all domestic religious differ-
ences sink into insignificance in compari-
son with the question of the future
religion — the religion of humanity, which
is now beginning to make its way into
the world;" which he defines as "a re-
ligion which will have humanity as the
object of its faith and its service; not
only the existing humanity but that
superior ideal in which we delight to
contemplate it and to which we could ele-
vate it."
Bishop Lacroix is less speculative and
less emotional in his examination of the
problem but arrives at about the same
conclusions as those of Abbe Loisy.
It is a truth taught by experience that the
religious sentiment, which too often in times
of prosperity slumbers in the depths of our
souls, awakens and becomes especially fervent
in moments of trial. . . . Men pray better. It
can not be denied that, particularly at the
beginning of hostilities, all the belligerents
showed an increased propensity to resort to
prayer, the like of which finds few similar
examples in the history of humanity. . . . This
unexpected fervor, this unhoped-for sympathy
for religion, showed itself still more strikingly
at the front.
But Bishop Lacroix has to admit that
the religious ardor which characterized
the first days of the war gradually cooled.
He gives the causes for the change, chief
among them the long duration of the
struggle. The soldiers grew accustomed
to the ever-present danger and were less
prone to look to the supernatural for pro-
tection; and as the months rolled into
years, the poilus and officers, who were
piously inclined in August, 1914, were
gradually replaced by those who had not
felt the effects of that initial wave of
deep sentiment. "The commanding gen-
erals began to take less and less interest
in the chaplains." And when the soldier
returned home for a few days' furlough,
"he found that the religious fervor be-
hind the lines did not equal that in the
trenches." Of the energy and heroism
of the priest at the front one may read
at length in Frederic Rouvier's "En
Ligne."
Mgr. Lacroix devotes the closing sec-
tion of his study to a consideration of
"what will survive the war." He thinks
that "there will be a renewal of good
feeling among the people for the clergy
as a body and especially for those of them
who were at the front," but he does not
predict any real revival of religious
sentiment.
What has really happened in the
churches of France since the armistice is
not a revival of interest in religion per
se, but a renewal of the old politico-the-
ological struggle between the Vatican and
the Republic. The renewal of diplomatic
relations may be interpreted as a victorj'
for the former; but the end is not yet.
Theodore Stanton
Germany on the Eve of the
War
The Evolution of Modern Germany. By
William Harbutt Dawson. New and Re-
vised Edition. New York: Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons.
THE publication of a new edition of
Mr. Dawson's admirable book, which
has been a standard authority since its
first appearance in the year 1908, is im-
portant at the present time in that it
calls attention to the social and eco-
nomic forces that were dominant in Ger-
many before the war and gives occasion
for the revision of judgment concerning
German life and character. This book,
like many others by the same author, was
orginally intended to contribute toward a
better understanding between Germany
and the United Kingdom, and although
the author's views have been greatly
changed in recent years, he scrupulously
refrains from criticism of German be-
havior and makes no forecast of future
reconstruction. Prophecy is discredited
in these days, but intimate description
of social conditions and tendencies is of
perennial interest and value.
Mr. Dawson does not indulge in anal-
ogy, yet his picture of German progress
and prosperity before the war reminds
one of the Niagara River above the falls,
moving on between its banks, proud and
confident, until the moment when it
plunges into the abyss. Again, his ac-
count of the growth of Germany's popu-
lation suggests the pressure exerted on
all sides by the accumulation of a great
body of water impounded in a reservoir
and the disastrous effects of inundation
when it breaks its bounds. In 1871 the
population of the newly formed German
Empire was, in round numbers, 41,000,-
000; in 1910 it was 65,000,000; and the
annual increase of over 800,000 per an-
num must have brought the total up to
68,000,000 before the war began. The
birth-rate, it is true, had declined from
38 per thousand in 1871 to 28 per thou-
sand in 1913, but in the same time the
general death-rate had fallen from 27 to
15 per thousand, so that the excess of
births over deaths was greater in 1913
than in 1871, though less than in the
decade 1901 to 1910. These simple facts
measure the tremendous growth of Ger-
many in almost every respect, and partly
explain the feeling of Germans that they
were ringed about with enemies, and the
fear among the surrounding nations of
an impending German invasion.
At first glance one might think Mr.
Dawson's book a panegyric on modern
Germany, but reading between the lines
May 29, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[573
and in the light of recent events, one
finds a shady side to most of their
achievements, even as all things human
have the defects of their qualities. The
population of Germany after the war
with France increased by leaps and
bounds, until she could no longer raise
all her food supplies, and the time was
approaching when, as Dr. Paul Rohrbach
said, it would be necessary to import
one-half of her bread, and the only alter-
native to the dreaded "industrial state"
would be immigration on a colossal scale.
The Raiffeisen cooperative associations,
the protective tariffs, and state assistance
had done much for agriculture, but the
"land-flight" of agricultural laborers was
increasing until both large and small
landowners were threatened with disas-
ter. Manufacturing had grown enor-
mously, but hardly any of the raw ma-
terials were produced in sufficient quan-
tities at home. Germany's shipping and
foreign trade had grown until she was
second to England alone, but her great
rival was her best customer and her
trade was more or less menaced by pref-
erential tariffs. Much attention had been
given to colonies and colonial policy, but
most of the German colonies, being tropi-
cal, were unfit for European settlers,
while Germany's colonial administration
with all its Kameralwissenschaft was an
egregious failure.
Much has been said, and justly, in
praise of Germany's domestic adminis-
tration, with its system, its discipline,
and its general efficiency, as shown not-
ably in the well-managed Prussian rail-
ways; but it tended to suppress individ-
uality and initiative, and it was a per-
petual complaint that the best business
men were found, not in the service of the
state, but at the head of industrial, com-
mercial, and financial undertakings, of-
fering emoluments beyond the means of
the national treasury. Even the cartels
and syndicates, which dominated the
staple manufacturing industries, were
not without their bad features, for, while
they gave Germany great power in for-
eign markets, through price control and
systematic dumping, they did it at the
expense of the domestic consumer and
the manufacturer of finished products.
German labor legislation, especially
the laws providing for industrial insur-
ance, had many admirable features, yet
it did not serve to allay the deep-rooted
hostility between capital and labor.
Moreover, certain vestiges of serfdom
still remain, as the Prussian "Servants'
Ordinance," by which domestic servants
and agricultural laborers, unlike the in-
dustrial workpeople, were legally dis-
qualified from combining for economic
ends. Then, too, the general attitude of
workmen toward the plans of benevo-
lent employers, such as special pension
and benefit funds, holiday festivities, as-
sisted savings banks, woi-kmen's dwell-
ings, workmen's colonies, premiums, and
gratuities of all kinds, is unappreciative
if not absolutely thankless. Employers
complain loudly of the "ingratitude" of
their workpeople, who dislike accepting
as a gift what they hold is theirs by
right, and prefer to secure advancement
through their own unions, especially the
Socialist organizations, which, in 1912,
embraced more than half of the organized
workers of the country. On the other
hand, many employers, like Herr Kirdorf,
former head of the Coal and Steel Syn-
dicate, the Judge Gary of Germany, re-
fused to deal with labor organizations
of any kind, and even advised measures
that should do away with the excessive
turnover of labor by providing for every
industry, in so far as possible, a sta-
tionary band of workers.
In other respects, also, German social
conditions before the war were far from
ideal. The Polish question, for exam-
ple, was a continual aggravation, and the
efforts of the Prussian Government to
Germanize the Polish provinces through
compulsory purchase of land, settlements,
interference with schools, and other
harsh measures had effects the very oppo-
site of those intended. The Poles were en-
riched at the expense of the German
taxpayers; a Polish artisan and mer-
chant class was built up; Polish agri-
cultural laborers migrated to the indus-
trial centres of West Prussia and other
districts formerly exclusively German;
and, in general, the whole policy tended
to make bad Germans out of good Poles.
So many and varied were the internal
troubles and perplexities of Germany,
largely due to her rapid increase in
wealth and population, coupled with pop-
ular education and the growth of democ-
racy, that Mr. Dawson, like many other
writers, deplores the passing of the good
old times when Germany was nothing
but a geographical expression ; when Ger-
mans were poor in the world's goods but
rich in faith, with ideals and illusions,
humility, sentimentality, hospitality, and
gemiltlichkeit; when baron and pastor re-
ceived due meed of reverence; when the
employer was a benefactor and the for-
eign traveler a friend; when Kant and
Fichte ruled in philosophy and Goethe
and Schiller in literature; when, in brief,
there was universal plain living and high
thinking and the demon of ambition had
not yet entered the German soul. Doubt-
less, the primitive Teuton was asleep in
those days, but latterly a change has
come over the spirit of his dream. In
the words of the late Professor Paulsen:
"Two souls dwell in the German nation.
The German nation has been called a
nation of poets and thinkers, and it may
be proud of the name. To-day it may
again be called the nation of masterful
combatants, as when it originally ap-
peared in history."
Apologists for Germany have fre-
quently called attention to some such
dual personality among the Germans, as
though the mass of the people, by nature
peaceful and gemiltlich, had been over-
ruled by a few junkers and industrialists,
and thus misled along the path of mili-
tarism, navalism, and Weltpolitik. Mr.
Dawson does not say exactly this, al-
though he recognizes the differences
which exist among Germans of various
regions and social classes. He rather
takes the view that the logic of the situa-
tion pointed toward foreign conquest as
the most promising remedy for internal
ills, and he clearly shows that not merely
the Navy League and the Pan Germans,
but university professors, churchmen,
journalists, and even the leading Social-
ists were united in the opinion that Ger-
many must secure her "future on the
ocean" and her "place in the sun," even
though the new policy should involve the
downfall of her chief rival — the British
Empire.
J. E. Le ROSSIGNOL
Yeast and Phosphorus
Passion: A Human Story. By Shaw Des-
mond. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons.
Responsibility: A Novel. By James E.
Agate. New York : George H. Doran
Company.
Peter Jameson : A Modern Romance. By
Gilbert Frankau. New York: Alfred A.
Knop f .
IN his latest volume of "Shelburne
Essays," Mr. More has a paper on
"Decadent Wit," which was occasioned
by a book, rather worshipful, on "The
Eighteen Nineties." Mr. More has
small patience with the sickliness of that
period; nor does he hesitate to assert
that its false theory of the relation be-
tween filth and spirituality is still active:
"In subdued form, befitting what remains
of the reticence of the English tempera-
ment, it lurks among the present-day
inheritors in London of the Yellow Nine-
ties." If this was written some years
ago with Shaw and Galsworthy especially
in mind, what does the scholarly censor
make of Messrs. W. L. George and James
Stephens, and all the younger fruitage of
the medlar school? In most of them, he
might note, the English temperament is
less in question than the Scotch or Irish.
Shaw Desmond's "Democracy" was a
fiery study of a social and industrial Eng-
land trying vainly to escape the tyranny
of the past. It was noteworthy as the
book of a radical who does not pretend
omniscience — is sure of no solid ground
ahead even for the next step. "Passion"
is inscribed to "The Children of the New
Age": a book of yeasty turmoil lighted
by a kind of desperate idealism. The
young Irishman in London who is its
central figure and narrator is a-quiver
from the cradle with consciousness of
his strange position in a world which
574]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 55
has been made without his advice or even
his permission. Clearly there is much
to be done: but what? The arrange-
ment of his nurser>' is not what it might
be, the servants who care for him are im-
perfect, and his parents leave much to
be desired. An English public school is
conducted according to principles fatally
different from his own. Sex is a rather
nasty fact made nastier by the prudery
of the Late Queen and her minions. Big
Business, as he comes to know it pres-
ently in London, is not good enough for
him. Despite its title, the theme of the
book is Big Business rather than sex.
In Golgotha House and in Fear Street
our Anglo-Irish youth serves his time
as "a fighting competitive animal" and
as an amateur fellow-citizen. Presently
he turns for safety to love and its mysti-
cal enlightenment: "And as I listened
to the Passion of the Hours and to
the mighty congregation that hurried
towards it, I knew that there was no
death, and that this passion-play was the
passion-play eternal — knew that the age,
this nervous, passionate age, held
leashed in its heart unknown potentiali-
ties—that this rotten, imaginative, won-
derful age was the age of the Big Idea
as well as of Big Business — an age of
struggle and despair, of defeats and vic-
tories . . . but an age reaching for-
ward through the passion of men like
myself, through that passion of love ful-
filled, to splendors yet unborn ; to human
beings who shall be as gods . . .
And through it all the face of the woman
and the cry of the child came to me —
that insistent, pulsating, whelming cry —
the cry of passion, and of life." The
book is full of that eager, hectic, well-
wishing for mankind which now so fre-
quently passes for idealism. We can but
note how words like "rotten" and "imag-
inative" come together in the visionary's
mind.
The author of "Responsibility" appears
to be the very latest article in British
novelists. England's reviewers have
hailed him with their customary enthu-
siasm. The Saturday Review calls him
"a star of the first magnitude — Alde-
baran among our pasty twinklers — " alas,
poor twinklers, each of whom has been
greeted as a star in his brief day,
namely, on the day of his first appear-
ance. The book is a hodge-podge. Dedi-
cated to Arnold Bennett, it strives to
be worthy of a Clayhanger age and is
busy enough at times with Wellsian
topics, including socialism, suffrage, big
business, and the war. Like "Passion,"
this is an autobiographical tale, in the
sense that the central person tells the
story. He provides also a long and
labored "Introduction" which, like much
of the text, is strikingly in the vein, or
style, of the Yellow Nineties : a mincing,
smirking style which invites us to make
much of the stylist and to listen to the
tale for his sake. Paradox and non-
conformity in the matter, preciosity in
the manner, make up the compound.
Samuel Butler haunts the backscene,
arm in arm with Oscar Wilde. The per-
sons of. the story, above a certain social
level, ail talk alike — that is to say, like
the author — witty to a man, after the
gentry of Shaw's plays. In the fore-
ground, "realism," exulting in the beauty
of squalor. After a revolting descrip-
tion of a prize-fighting scene, comes the
inevitable bounce: "And the inherent
beauty ? Oh, convincingly, imperishably,
the beauty is there." And of the music
hall:
"Lovely, beyond all imagination lovely
in sheer incredibility these palaces of
the people, . . . There is enchant-
ment in the place . . . Enchantment
in the quintessential commonness. To it,
mediocrity, and pell-mell! Sentimental
obscenity telling the beads of passion
flagrantly factitious, you on the stage
are an amusing sister to the high-born
marketry zealously trumpeting her wares
in the half-penny press. Enchantment
everywhere, in vice so decently veiled
that we need not pretend to turn our
heads, in the stolid unobservant police-
man, in the doorkeepers into whose soul
the pitiful buffoonery has so pitilessly
entered."
"Peter Jameson" has, for me a queerly
belated, almost antiquated quality. It is
the latest if not the last of the Britlings.
Peter Jameson is a well-bred middle-
class Englishman, comfortably married,
otherwise comfortably "off," and greatly
interested in business as a sport. The
war breaks and makes him: quite two-
thirds of the book is given to his ex-
periences at the front, which read very
much like other experiences we have been
hearing of. Once again the filth and
squalor of war are set forth without
mitigation or remorse of print. And
dovetailed with all this methodical
naturalism is the laboriously romantic
love-tale of Peter and the spouse who is
to become his mistress and his mate.
"Oh, boy, boy, I believe you . . .
You're such a rotten lover, boy," is her
song of surrender. Peter has returned
from the war a sufferer from an obscure
form of shell-shock, and it is his wife's
father who urges her, for Peter's sake,
to "make love to him as if she were his
mistress." "The words themselves con-
veyed nothing whatever to a woman
utterly unversed in the wiles of sex; but
they filled her with a delicious feeling
of fright." . . . Peter's Patricia is
about as real a woman as Mr. Wells's
Ann Veronica — a tailor-made she . . .
The book is clever, veracious in spots;
oh, so anxious to get at the truth about
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi-
ness; and quite without creative vitality
as a whole.
H. W. BOYNTON
Minor Dutch Painters
Kunstler-Inventare. Urkunden zur Ge-
schichte der Hollandischen Kunst des
XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahr-
hunderts, von Dr. A. Bredius. Haag:
Martinus Nijhoff.
IN 1915 Dr. Bredius brought out the
first volume of his "Kiinstler-Inven-
tare." Since then four other volumes
have seen the light, and the author, who
found his material growing under his
hands, promises the issue of yet another.
In these six volumes, numbering together
over 2,000 pages, are contained the re-
sults of nearly forty years of indefat-
igable research in the State and Munic-
ipal archives of Holland. A fascinating
story can be gleaned from these dry and
dusty documents. Dr. Bredius prints
them with scarcely any comment, leav-
ing to the reader the full enjoyment of
calling up, with the help of his own
imagination, the intimate picture of the
past which these pages reveal in spare
outline and faint, though suggestive,
little touches.
Many a painter's life story is laid bare
from the cradle to the grave, the goose-
quill having recorded, with equal exacti-
tude, both the tearful moments of bap-
tism and burial and the minor incidents
of the intervening span of life which re-
quired a notary's official interference.
The artist's career began on the day
when his parents signed the contract
which bound him apprentice for a num-
ber of years to his first master. He en-
tered upon it at an early age. Abraham
Furnerius, who died in his twenty-sev-
enth year and who is only known for
his exquisite landscape drawings, was
scarcely thirteen years old when he be-
came Rembrandt's pupil. Uneventful
lives most of them led of hard work for
small remuneration. They often ended,
as Rembrandt's did, in the bankruptcy
court, and many a painter's furniture
and pictures, left by him at his death,
were seized upon by relentless creditors.
But now and then we get a glimpse of a
more romantic career. Michiel van de
Sande, on record in a document of 1610
as a citizen of Rotterdam, appears in
1625 as "Lieutenant in the service of the
Signoria of Venice," and again, four
years later, as a recruiting officer in the
service of the King of Sweden. Either
the attraction of Italian art, or the love
of adventure, or the hope of a better live-
lihood elsewhere, drove him, and many
of his fellows, abroad.
The difficulty for a minor painter of
making both ends meet by exclusive ap-
plication to his art explains why so many
combined the art dealer's business with
the painter's profession. An illustrative
case is that of Maerten Adriaensz Bal-
keneynde, of Rotterdam, who at his death
in 1631 left a collection of a hundred
pictures, which, in business-like fashion,
were inventoried with special mention of
May 29, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[575
their proportions, in terms, unfortu-
nately, to whose meaning we have lost
the clue. Sometimes it was the artist's
wife who owned and ran the business,
while her husband plied the brush.
Cathalijntie van den Dorp, wife of
Anthony Waterloo, the landscape painter,
willed to the latter, in 1641, all the furni-
ture and silver, besides a picture by Jan
Martsen, "that being a piece not included
in the business stock." From a curious
document of 1636 we gather that the
dealer's stock was not only for sale, but
could also be rented for special occasions.
A certain Gerrit Luycken declared, in
that year, before a notary in Amsterdam
that he had received on loan from Elias
Homis, painter and dealer, four pictures
with which to decorate his house on the
occasion of his wedding and which he
promised duly to return when the festiv-
ities were over. The painter Gerard
Uylenburgh, a relative of Rembrandt's
Saskia, was for a time so successful as a
dealer that contemporary poets cele-
brated him in verse not for his art but
for his enterprise in business, especially
in importing Italian masters, whose
works he went personally to Italy to pur-
chase. The eulogy of the poets is
strangely contrasted with what we learn
from the documents about a transaction
of his with the Elector of Brandenburg,
who called either his honesty as a dealer
or his knowledge as a connoisseur in
question. Of thirteen Italian masters
which he sold to that prince in 1671,
twelve were returned as worthless fakes.
The experts called by Uylenburgh in his
defense were of a different opinion. They
found some good Italian works among
them and also a few which were subject
to doubt but, though not perhaps by the
artists to whom Uylenburgh ascribed
them, yet valuable pictures of good qual-
ity. When, nevertheless, the Elector re-
fused to take them back, the collection
was sold by public auction in 1673, and
it may well be that Uylenburgh paid the
poets to write their rhymed eulogies as
an advertisement for the occasion. Either
the notoriety of this case or a slump in
the trade caused by the war with France
brought on Uylenburgh's financial ruin.
In 1675 he appeared in the bankruptcy
court and, after the sale of all his
possessions, emigrated to London, where
he is said by Houbraken to have earned
a scanty livelihood as an assistant of Sir
Peter Lely. The catalogue of his stock
drawn up on that occasion contains a
list of 153 paintings and 52 pieces of
sculpture. The notary's clerk has played
sad havoc with the Italian names, some
of which are hardly recognizable in the
forms he put down, apparently, from
dictation. Parmiggianino appears as
Perments, Giorgione as Schorson, Paolo
Veronese as Paulus Fernijs, Guido Reni
as Gridorin, Caracci as Caras. No prices
were added, but from the evidence given
by the experts we gather that the Italian
masters were highly valued in Holland
at that time. "If the pictures," they said,
"had been undamaged and exquisite
samples of the art of these same mas-
ters, their price would have been reck-
oned not in hundreds but in thousands of
guilders."
That is more than even Rembrandt
ever got for his portraits, 500 guilders
being the highest price that he, and he
alone, could charge. In the early eigh-
teenth century better fees were paid, as
we gather from the documents relating
to the flower painter Jan van Huysum
(tl749), who received as an average one
thousand guilders apiece. This vogue of
van Huysum's painstaking art is char-
acteristic of the declining taste of that
period. On the same day that an "extra
fine flower vase" by Van Huysum was
knocked down for 1,245 guilders, a pic-
ture by Albert Cuyp went for thirteen,
two by Jan Steen for thirty, and a por-
trait by Rembrandt for twenty-five! In
England Van Huysum's art was just as
popular. A younger brother of his set-
tled in London, where he painted copies
of Jan's pictures which sold as genuine
Jan van Huysums at £50 a pair.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flat-
tery. A fair gauge of an artist's fame
among his contemporaries is the fre-
quency with which his work was copied.
Among the pictures which the Leiden
painter, Abraham de Pape, at the time of
his wedding, declared he possessed were
eight copies after Gerard Dou. A skill-
ful copyist like De Pape could acquire
the manner of the master he imitated
sufficiently well to palm off his own orig-
inal work as woi-k of the greater master,
or if he did not do so, it would soon be
fathered on the latter by an unscrupu-
lous dealer or an ignorant collector. In
the Art Institute at Chicago the writer
of this article saw, not long ago, a beauti-
ful picture purchased from the Demidoff
collection, a scene in a cavalry stable,
signed D. Teniers. But both the com-
position and the color betrayed so un-
mistakably the hand of Jacob Duck that
he felt little hesitation in discrediting
that signature as a forgery of this kind.
Such practices may account for the
mysterious disappearance of the entire
(Buvre of minor artists whose names alone
have survived in the old histories of paint-
ing or are revealed to us by the docu-
ments from the archives. In a private
collection at The Hague, now dispersed,
hung formerly a rare painting by Lucas
Luce, clearly signed L. Luce f. In 1914
Dr. Bredius came upon this very same
picture in the gallery of Count von
Hallwyl, in Stockholm, but it no longer
bore the signatui'e of L. Luce and was
catalogued as a work by Simon Kick!
In this way many a deserving talent,
not strong enough, however, to impress
an individual stamp on his paintings, has
been robbed of both his work and his
name by the fame of more original mas-
ters, from whom they drew their inspira-
tion. Since Dr. Bredius has rescued their
names and, in many a case, particulars of
their obscure lives from utter oblivion,
we possess some data by the help of
which it may be possible to restore to
them part of their oeuvre as well.
A. J. Baenouw
The Run of the Shelves
SOMEHOW one never thought of Keats
as having a house ; one thought of him
as passing uninterruptedly back and
forth from stables and hospitals to the
realms of gold. For the last three years
of his life, before he went to Italy, he
had rooms in a house at Hampstead, in
the other half of which dwelt Fanny
Brawne and her mother. It was at its
best not a very attractive house, but it
was surrounded by a garden which was
sufficient to give — to Keats — inspiration
for the "Ode to a Nightingale." The
garden is still there, and within doors
a sitting-room and a bed-room retain
many of the features they possessed
when the poet moved about them. As an
alternative to the impending destruction
of the house it is proposed to raise £10,-
000 by subscription, which will serve to
make of the place a permanent and suit-
able memorial. It is as easy to be cynical
as sentimental about such a project, but
it does seem a pity to pull the house down
as if it had been occupied by one whose
name had indeed been writ in water.
Anima mundi, sis memor! Subscriptions
may be sent to the Hon. Treasurer, Sir
Sidney Colvin, Town Hall, Hampstead,
N. W. 3.
Is a revival of John Addington
Symonds under way? Not long since we
received a little book, "Last and First,"
containing a notable study of Clough and
a characteristic essay on the spirit of the
Renaissance; and now, from the Mac-
millan Company, there comes another vol-
ume of hitherto uncollected, and in part
unprinted, essays called from the first of
the series "In the Key of Blue." Some
of the essays in this second collection,
those particularly which record certain
personal experiences of the author in
rather a sentimental, if not a sickly, vein,
seem to us scarcely worth resuscitating.
But others, of a more scholarly sort, rank
with Symonds's best work and deserve
to take a place in the not too large body
of permanent English criticism. Such is
the excellent study of Fletcher's "Valen-
tine," which, while admitting the verbal
excellence of the English romantic drama,
shows how completely it falls down in
the delineation of character. Equally
notable is the distinction drawn in the
essay on "The Dantesque and Platonic
576]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 55
Ideals of Love," in which the author's
largre acquaintance with both Greek and
Italian literature leads him to make dis-
criminations often missed by critics of a
more one-sided culture. Perhaps, best of
all the chapters, because dealing with the
least familiar subject, is the eulogy of
the forgotten poet, Edward Cracroft
Lef roy, if that can be said to be forgotten
which was really never known. It would
be difficult to-day, we presume, to find a
copy of Lefroy's Sonnets. Symonds
quotes from them so freely that the
owner of this book of essays may con-
gratulate himself on possessing the
best of a poet well worth treasuring in
memory.
"Essays on Art," by A. Clutton-Brock
(Scribners) are a dozen papers collected
from the London Times Literary Supple-
ment. Though the author treats with
insight such personalities as Leonardo
da Vinci, Poussin, and Mozart, the essays
generally bear on the relation of the
artist to society and to morals. Thus he
takes sharp issue with Whistler's famous
dictum that art occurs through the mere
accident that an artist gets born. "I
believe," writes Mr. Brock, "that the
quality of art in any age depends, not
upon the presence or absence of indi-
viduals of genius, but upon the attitude
of the public towards art." Similar is
the comment on Croce's view that art is
merely expression — the artist's explana-
tion to himself. "If the artist knew that
the beauty he perceives was a product
of his own mind, he could not value it
so ... in the beauty of art there
is always value and wonder, always a
reference to another beauty different in
kind from itself; and we, too, if we are
to see the beauty of art, must share the
same value and wonder." We are denied
this experience by the general feminiza-
tion of taste (Essay, The Pompadour),
and by an immoral exaltation of processes
over persons. Here we reach the Ger-
mans and the war. Of humanity reduced
to foolish and destructive process, Mr.
Nevinson's cubistic war sketches seem
to the author a very proper symbol. The
same delusion of process works havoc in
art, reducing it to an ostentatious pro-
fessionalism. Apropos of the William
Morris celebration, the final essay dis-
cusses Waste or Creation. The real
quarrel of labor, he thinks, is less with
poverty than with a toil which the laborer
dimly divines to be unreasonably con-
ducted and futile. "He may think he is
angry with the rich because they are
rich; but the real source of his anger is
the work they have set him to do with
their riches." Enough to show the grav-
ity— real gravity — of Mr. Brock's view.
In compensation the publishers have
made the book small enough to sit com-
fortably in any pocket. With the strong
ethical perceptions, Mr. Brock combines
sensitiveness. He seeks a humanistic
interpretation of art. If we still need a
remedy for the individualistic green sick-
ness of the "naughty nineties," we have
it here.
The prize of $500 for the best volume
of poems written by an American citizen,
which the Poetry Society of America has
for the past two seasons given through
Columbia University, will this year be
awarded directly by the Society. As the
prize is not competitive but in the nature
of an award, books need not be entered
for it as in the ordinary prize competi-
tion. The judges for the present sea-
son are Professor John Livingston Lowes
of Harvard University, author of "Con-
vention and Revolt in Poetry"; Edwin
Arlington Robinson, and Alice Corbin
Henderson, Associate-Editor of Poetry:
A Magazine of Verse.
The Poetry Society of America offers
the William Lindsey Prize of $500 for
the best unproduced and unpublished full
length poetic play written by an Ameri-
can citizen. By "full length" is meant a
play that will occupy an evening. No
restrictions are placed upon the number
of acts or scenes, or on the nature of the
subject matter. The judges of the con-
test will be George Arliss, Professor
George Pierce Baker, of Harvard, Clay-
ton Hamilton, Jessie B. Rittenhouse, and
Stuart Walker. Manuscripts should be
sent by registered mail, the author's
registry receipt to be considered suffi-
cient acknowledgment. They must be
submitted in typewritten form, fastened
along the left edge of the page in one
volume, and signed with a pen name.
An enclosed sealed envelope should be
inscribed with the title of the play and
the pen name, and contain a card with the
correct name and address of the author,
as well as the title of the play. This
sealed envelope should also contain one
self-addressed bearing the full amount
of return postage, including registry.
The contest closes July 1, 1921, and the
successful play will be announced at the
October meeting of the Poetry Society.
Manuscripts should be addressed to the
Drama Committee of the Poetry Society
of America, care of Stuart Walker,
Chairman, Carnegie Hall, New York
City.
Mr. Coulson Kernahan's "Swinburne
As I Knew Him" (John Lane) is more
agreeable than most books of its class.
It is more organic; it is less fragmen-
tary. The trouble with books of reminis-
cence is that memory is not only a sieve,
as we all know to our cost, but a grater:
it loses much, and what it keeps, it keeps
in a granular — not to say a powdery
— form. It is the peculiarity of Mr.
Kernahan's mind that his recollections
band themselves together, that they ac-
quire— in the measure permitted by the
form — body, breadth, and contour. His
is not what we may call the pincushion
type of reminiscence — the mealy, life-
less mass, prettily encased, into which
anecdotes are thrust like pins.
There is possibly a danger for Mr.
Kernahan in this very superiority. The
fullness and balance of his narrative may
excite ungenerous suspicion even in those
who are friends to generosity. Truth
is so constitutionally slipshod that, when
the tie of her cravat or her shoestrings
is geometric in its regularity, it is hard
not to suspect that she has engaged a
valet. Here, for example, in Chapter IV
are four pages of fashioned and finished
English, which are supposed to have fallen
in their perfection from Philip Marston's
extemporizing lips and to have been re-
ceived and recorded in this intact per-
fection by Mr. Philip Kernahan's super-
human memory. Be this suspicion true
or not, Mr. Kernahan has done that rare
thing — written reminiscences which the
reader can recall. The style is good for
its purpose — broad, roomy, outreaching
with a certain informal dignity which
never hardens into pomp. There are
four letters of Swinburne to his cousin.
Lady Henniker Heaton, one of which is
an affectionate refusal to act as god-
father to his cousin's child from the
hatred of a ceremony which views a
little angel as a "child of wrath."
In the early part of 1873, M. Vic-
torien Sardou offered to the Vaudeville
Theatre of Paris a play entitled "Uncle
Sam." The rehearsals began, but the
French authorities learned that the piece
contained passages which would offend
the American colony. So the manager
was informed that unless he got the ap-
proval of the American Legation the play
could not be given. But when our Min-
ister at Paris, Elihu B. Washburne, was
applied to in the matter, he gave the very
diplomatic reply that "this was not one
of his functions." Thereupon, M. Jules
Simon, Minister of Public Instruction, in
whose department was lodged the power
of censorship, prohibited the production
of the play in France.
Then that very enterprising New York
manager, Augustin Daly, decided to bring
out "Uncle Sam" in the United States,
and early in March the city dailies con-
tained this advertisement:
Grand Opera House, corner of 23rd Street
and 8th Avenue, Monday. March 17th, first
time on any stage of Sardou's prohibited
comedy of "Uncle Sam," which will be given
with extraordinary realistic scenery, magnifi-
cent appointments and with a cast that can not
be excelled.
And on March 18 William Winter had
this to say in the Tribune:
The public knew before that "Uncle Sam"
was abusive ; they know now that it is dull. . . .
A piece of blackguardism . . . The Grub Street
allegation that American women arc unchaste
May 29, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[577
and that every one of them has her price, — this
is substantially the allegation of "Uncle Sam"
... A satire on American society as might
suit the mental calibre of stable boys. ... As
a whole, "Uncle Sam" was a fizzle.
Mr. Winter's final statement proved to
be correct, for the play was given for
the last time on April 13. It did not
hold the boards a month.
At the beginning of the present year
M. Brieux, also of the French Academy,
tried his hand at putting Americans on
the stage, and "Les Americains chez
nous" was not only not censored but it is
still appearing at the Paris Odeon.
M. Brieux has been good enough to send
us a copy of his play and, after reading
it, we can well understand why it has
not met the fate of the production of his
fellow academician. After the part
which our soldiers took in saving France
on French soil, and with over 60,000
buried in French cemeteries, the Sardou
method of treating us was of course im-
possible. But M. Brieux rises above all
such considerations; the dedication shows
what is in his heart:
Cette piece est dediee aux femmes des Etats-
Unis qui se pencherent sur nos douleurs.
Humble et respectueux hommage de recon-
naissance d'un Frangais.
M. Brieux takes an international and
psychological view of the question and
distributes his praise and criticism
equally between both countries. His play
closes with two international marriages
confined to Americans and French, and
where both sexes are impartially treated,
there being a French bride and a French
groom, and an American bride and an
American groom. In a word, just as M.
Sardou's comedy tended to push the two
nations apart, M. Brieux's drama con-
duces to draw them more closely to-
gether.
Alexandre Dumas had a modest col-
laborator in his friend Auguste Maquet;
though Maquet had a share in the com-
position of Dumas's most popular pro-
ductions, he did not insist on his name
being coupled with that of Dumas on
the title page. Only the plays which he
drew from the novels were proclaimed
as the joint work of the two. The heirs
of Maquet, however, are prouder of his
authorship than he was himself. They
demand the publication of his name on
the title page of "Le Comte de Monte-
Cristo" and other novels, and among the
heirs of Dumas there are said to be some
who are not averse to this official recog-
nition of the dead partnership. Maquet
died eighteen years after Dumas. The
latter's ccuvre becomes public property
in 1924. By rendering to Maquet the
honor which the Maquetists claim as his
due, the Dumasists retain for eighteen
years more a claim to part of the roy-
alties which, otherwise, they will cease
to draw altogether. "La vie chere" will
make it hard for them to choose between
their ancestor's fame and their own
purse.
The Venus of Milo, whose beauty
launched so many thousand ships from
these shores, has never been seen by
her American admirers in the lighting
that could reveal her full glory. A head-
line quotes Mr. Robert Aitken as having
said that the "Venus de Milo in the
Louvre is worst placed of all." We could
not discover the superlative in his speech
as it was printed. If he did use it, he
did injustice to the famous Ariadne of
Dannecker in Frankfurt, which has the
distinction of being the worst exhibited
statue in Europe. She is made to revolve
on her pedestal while a rainbow of light
is thrown on her marble whiteness. To
change the repose of the sculpture into
a gaudy movie show is the worst in-
dignity one can offer to the artist's crea-
tion.
Since neither the Paris Peace Con-
ference nor the Secretariat of the League
of Nations published an official collec-
tion of documents relating to the birth
of the League, the International Inter-
mediary Institute at The Hague has
undertaken to do this unofficially. The
success of the League depends on the
confidence of the members in the im-
partiality of its working and in the re-
liability of the Covenant itself. Mrs. C.
A. Kluyver, who performed the task of
compiling these "Documents on the
League of Nations" (Leiden: A. W.
Sijthoff's Uitgeversmaatschappij), has
supplied the means wherewith the real
sense of the provisions of the Covenant
and of their bearing on future possi-
bilities of the League may be better
understood, an understanding which is
the necessary basis for the mutual confi-
dence of all its participants. Mr. C. van
Vollenhoven, of Leiden University, has
written a preface to the volume in which
he summarizes the chief uncertainties
and ambiguities proffered by the twenty-
six articles of the Covenant. The mate-
rial published by Mrs. Kluyver does not
throw much light on these. They will
have to be cleared, not by the statements
of diplomats and politicians, but by the
practice of future days. In the collec-
tion are not included any documents re-
lating to Part XIII of the Peace Treaty,
which deals with the problem of Labor,
nor does it contain any material reflect-
ing the growth and gradual development
during the war of the conception of such
a League. Otherwise the material con-
tained in this volume provides a compre-
hensive and impartial survey of the
various contributions from all parts of
the globe towards the establishment of
the League.
"Ships Across the Sea," by Ralph D.
Paine (Houghton Mifflin), deals with
both the regular and the "trick" navy.
Adventure is the ruling note — quest of
subs and quest of spies, but Mr. Paine
hits off well the odd mixes that the war
brought about in fo'c's'l and ward room.
These are tall tales and of a high sea-
going quality, yet they keep close enough
to the facts of the armed guard, the fly-
ing boat service, and the interminable
chase of the destroyers. From a literary
point of view "punch" is more in evi-
dence than finish or fine shades of any
sort. Perhaps a yarn shouldn't be very
literary. These are good yarns, with a
sufficient backing of experience and fact.
Dramatic Art in
Holland
DRAMATIC art is in less esteem in
Holland than poetry and music. The
strong Calvinistic element in the nation
accounts for the difference. To the
puritanic followers of Dr. Abraham
Kuyper the theatre is an invention of
Satan, which one had better not mention
at all. The history of the Dutch stage
during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries is a long concatenation of
wrangles between its upholders and
the zealous orthodox "dominees," who
always tried to persuade the municipal
authorities to suppress this suggestive
and influential form of art. The result
was that at the beginning of the last
century the drama as an artistic mode
of expression was practically non-exist-
ent in Holland.
Another cause, whose working, it is
true, is not confined to Holland, joined
with this puritanic prejudice to keep
the stage in disrepute: the difficulty of
distinguishing between real art and its
counterfeit, which in the dramatic field
is infinitely greater than in music,
poetry, and painting. The public, though
it may buy gaudy oleographs and the
lastest music-hall song, is not unconscious
of the fact that all these productions
have little to do with art. But in its
appreciation of the drama it does not
make such a distinction. It would find
it difficult to imagine that Mengelberg,
the great conductor of the Amsterdam
orchestra, should include jazz music and
ragtimes in his repertoire of classical
compositions, but that same public sees
nothing astonishing in the alternating
production by one and the same company
of Shakespearean drama and the lowest
German farce.
The true lovers of the drama, however,
did not despair. They remembered how,
about 1890, Dutch music was at almost
as low an ebb, and that, thanks to the
initiative of a few wealthy and enter-
prising Amsterdammers, Willem Kes,
and after him Willem Mengelberg, were
enabled to build up a purely artistic
orchestra, whose fame has spread far be-
578]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 55
yond the Dutch frontiers. Mengelberg's
genius and enthusiasm raised the stand-
ard of musical performance all over the
country; and the lovers of the drama
thought that, in the same way, the stage
could be brought to mend its ways.
The task which they undertook, how-
ever, was infinitely more difficult, as they
could rely on the support of only a small
part of the nation: The Calvinists kept
aloof, and the Roman Catholics would only
hesitatingly lend their aid under strict
reservations and conditions. But in spite
of these drawbacks, the stage has been
brought nearer to the ideal. September
1, 1908, will be remembered as a red-
letter day in the records of the Dutch
theatre: on that date the Netherland So-
ciety, Het Tooneel (The Stage), gave its
opening performance under the direc-
tion of Willem Royaards, the man who
did for dramatic art what Kes and Men-
gelberg had achieved in music. Some
good pioneer work had, indeed, been done
by a few predecessors, but none possessed
his unfailing instinct for true literary
value and his insight in the secrets of
an all-controlling stage management.
Descending from an old, patrician fam-
ily, he brought his native distinction into
both the scenery and the action of his
plays, which won him the interest and
the support of aristocratic circles where,
until then, all theatrical enterprise, un-
less it came from Paris, had been
ignored.
From other quarters Royaards re-
ceived encouragement when he began to
revive the seventeenth century drama of
Joost van den Vondel, Holland's great-
est poetic genius, of whose "Lucifer" Mr.
Leonard van Noppen produced an excel-
lent English translation some years ago.
Patriotic feeling was gratified by this
demonstration of the high artistic value
of these early dramas, and saw in their
revival a national movement worthy of
financial and moral support, and the
Catholics especially, who love to call the
poet theirs because of his conversion,
late in life, to the Mother Church, re-
garded Royaards' Vondel performances
as an honor to themselves and flocked to
the theatre to attend them.
In this way Royaards succeeded in
transforming the theatre from a place of
mere amusement into a temple of art, an
achievement which, last year, was duly,
though not very appropriately, recog-
nized by the conferring, honoris causa,
of the degree of doctor of Dutch Phil-
ology, by the University of Utrecht.
The Government, shortly after this
academic recognition of the nation's in-
debtedness to the stage manager, gave
evidence of an incipient interest in the
stage : The Minister of Education, Art,
and Sciences instituted a commission to
advise him on the question of subsidiz-
ing dramatic art. This official admission
of the importance of the stage as a na-
tional institution was highly gratifying
to all who take • its welfare to heart.
Their satisfaction, however, was greatly
diminished by the report which this
commission submitted to the Minister.
Those members who belonged to the
Right, the Clerical block which does not
care for the theatre or is even hostile
to it, carried in the committee meetings
a complete victory over their politically
less experienced colleagues of the Left
by making their standpoint prevail that
the grant of a subsidy should be made
conditional on requirements of a re-
ligious, political, and moral nature. If
the Minister accepts the advice, which is
but all too probable, the Government be-
ing a Clerical one, there is great danger
of the subsidy being refused to a com-
pany because of the occurrence, in one
single play, of a statement which is
aimed at the established form of gov-
ernment, or which might be deemed to
hurt the political or moral feelings of
certain people. Every year, during the
debate on the budget, the Calvinist mem-
bers of the Chamber will not fail to bring
their pressure upon the Minister to re-
trench the subsidies on account of all
sorts of complaints, and though there
may be some among them of a more lib-
eral disposition, party discipline will pre-
vent them from voting against the anti-
stage majority of the Clerical block.
The decision of the committee does
not, it is true, establish a censorship of
the stage. The companies which forfeit
the subsidy retain perfect freedom to
produce the incriminated play, although
the burgomasters, who have the power
of prohibition, will feel encouraged by
this evidence of Governmental displeas-
ure to make use of that power with less
scruple than formerly, especially when
plays are performed that clash with
their own political convictions. But the
loss of the subsidy will make it hard for
such companies to keep up the competi-
tion with their officially approved of
rivals.
The advisory commission would have
placed itself on higher ground if it had
declared the artistic value of a play to
be the only reliable test. Pure art is in-
compatible with what is ugly from a
moral or a religious point of view. And
if it had adopted the principle of sub-
sidizing only such companies as produce,
exclusively, artistically important drama,
this unique opportunity of enhancing
the assthetic and social prestige of the
stage would have been made the most
of. Instead, conditions have been cre-
ated for a new political conflict over the
theatre, as bitter and barren of result as
the recently ended conflict over the free
school, which has vitiated domestic poli-
tics in Holland for the past two dec-
ades.
J. L. Walch
The Hague
Books and the News
Motor Trips
THE blue book is the most practical
book to take with you on a motor
trip, and it is the only one you will take,
unless you are unusually fond of read-
ing. But in the early days of summer,
before you have decided on your route,
or while you still wish to refresh your
memory of some place which you intend
to visit, it is possible to get information
and enjoyment from books which other
explorers — in motors and on foot — have
written of their trips. These books cover
all parts of the country.
Sarah Comstock's "Old Roads from the
Heart of New York" (Putnam, 1915)
and John T. Faris's "Old Roads Out of
Philadelphia" (Lippincott, 1917) start
the city dweller on short trips. To go
farther, and into New England, there is
Louise Closser Hale's motor-trip: "We
Discover New England" (Dodd, 1915),
"The Lightning Conductor Discovers
America," by C. N. and A. M. William-
son (Doubleday, 1916), and Katharine
M. Abbott's "Old Paths and Legends of
New' England" (Putnam, 1904). The
same author describes the nearer
regions of New England, chiefly Connec-
ticut, in "Old Paths and Legends of the
New England Border" (Putnam, 1907).
Edwin M. Bacon is the writer of two
books: "Literary Pilgrimages in New
England" (Silver, 1902) and "Rambles
Around Old Boston" (Little, 1914). One
of Mary C. Crawford's interesting books
is "Little Pilgrimages Among Old New
England Inns" (Page, 1907), while
Walter Emerson's "The Latchstring to
Maine Woods and Waters" (Houghton,
1916) is readable and pleasing. Two of
the older writers may be represented by
Thoreau's "Cape Cod" (Houghton) and
Celia Thaxter's "Among the Isles of
Shoals" (Houghton, 1873), although I
forget whether motorists — as such — go
any nearer to the Shoals than the road
through the Hamptons.
David M. Steele's "Vacation Journeys
East and West" (Putnam, 1918) is
mostly about the mountains and seaside
of New England and New York, but
there are chapters on the far West.
"Chauffeur's" (A. J. Eddy's) "Two
Thousand Miles in an Automobile" (Lip-
pincott, 1902) is about New York, New
England, and Canada. One of Mr. Clif-
ton Johnson's admirable volumes, "High-
ways and Byways from the St. Lawrence
to Virginia" (Macmillan, 1913), de-
scribes, as in his other books, rural life i
and wayside conversation. Pennsylvania
and Maryland are also included in "We
Discover the Old Dominion" (Dodd,
1916), by Louise Closser Hale. New i
York, New England, and the South fur-
nish chapters for Walter Pritchard '
I
May 29, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[579
Eaton's "Barn Doors and Byways"
(Small, 1913), perhaps the most charm-
ing of them all. S. D. Kirkham's "East
and West" (Putnam, 1911), speaks of
Cape Ann and Long Island, and also of
Arizona and the far West. Another com-
prehensive book, with line pictures, is
Robert H. Schauffler's "Romantic Amer-
ica" (Century, 1913). Julian Street goes
West in "Abroad at Home" (Century,
1914) and South in "American Adven-
tures" (Century, 1917).
For the South, Margaret W. Morley's
"The Carolina Mountains" (Houghton,
1913) and Mildred Cram's "Old Seaport
Towns of the South" (Dodd, 1917). A
houseboat, not a motor trip, from Chi-
cago to New Orleans, is in John L.
Matthews's "The Log of the 'Easy Way' "
(Small, 1911). For the West: Agnes
Laut's "Through Our Unknown South-
west (McBride, 1913), Enos A. Mills's
"The Rocky Mountain Wonderland"
(Houghton, 1915), and John Muir's
"The Yosemite" (Century, 1912). Three
more general books are H. G. Rhodes's
"In Vacation America" (Harper, 1915),
John T. Faris's "Historic Shrines of
America" (Doran, 1918), and Clifton
Johnson's "What to See in America"
(Macmillan, 1919), which has a chapter
for every State in the Union. Emily
Posts's "By Motor to the Golden Gate"
(Appleton, 1916) is an account of a trip
from New York to San Francisco.
Edmund Lester Pearson
EDUCATIONAL SECTION
WE remember reading, a few years
ago, an indictment of democratic
education in Denmark, "Lighedens
Land," the land of equality. The writer.
Dr. E. Lehman, raised a warning voice
against the levelling tendencies of the
modern educational system. Denmark,
he complained, has now grammar schools
without Latin and people's schools with
a smattering of languages and mathe-
matics. For to level means to lower the
standard of the eminent few to the scale
of the many. The greatest possible num-
ber of students is made happy with the
smallest possible education. But a na-
tion's worth should be gauged by the
height of its greatest men, rather than
by the average height of the masses. Our
sentimental nursing of the average has
made the nation like to a dense under-
wood choking the noble stems that try
to shoot upward in their growth. Dr.
Lehman based on these facts a sweep-
ing condemnation of the democratic sys-
tem.
Professor Irving Babbitt, writing in
the English Journal of February on
"English and the Discipline of Ideas,"
does not blame democracy for the same
faults which he deplores in the educa-
tional system of this country. "True
democracy," he claims, "consists not in
lowering the standard but in giving
everybody, so far as possible, a chance
of measuring up to the standard." The
case, therefore, is not one between
democracy and aristocracy, but between
true and false democracy. It is not
democracy that is at fault, but the faults
of that democracy which is now blatant.
Democracy stands or falls with its true
or false conception of liberty, and ours
preaches one that is "purely centrifugal,
that would get rid of all outer control
and then evade or deny openly the need
of achieving inner control." "Those who
stand for this conception of liberty call
themselves idealists; they not only spurn
the past but barely tolerate the present;
the true home of their spirit is that
vast, windy abode, the future." Educa-
tion entrusted to teachers of this bent of
mind fails to build up background in the
students. The contact with the past will
be lost, unless a reaction sets in "to pre-
serve in a positive and critical form the
soul of truth in the two great traditions,
classical and Christian, that are crum-
bling as mere dogma. To study English
literature with reference to its intellec-
tual content will do more than anything
to make it a serious cultural discipline.
Teachers of English have a choice to
make between a humanistic conception
of their subject and the current natural-
istic and humanitarian conceptions."
The Beginning of Education
ALL sentimental journeys, however
different the fields they traverse, end
alike. Intoxication is their common
origin. A fancied summum bonum is
their common aim. Their common
destiny is to arrive, if anywhere, at self-
pity, confusion, despair, and unavailing
sorrow. There is the sentimental jour-
ney amatorious, with which, perhaps, we
are most familiar, since it has been elab-
orated in fiction ad infinitum if not ad
nauseam. This is the sweetest variety,
being generally incomplete, poised in a
pink dawn of surrender before realiza-
tion. But there is also the sentimental
journey revolutionary with several varia-
tions. There is the Rousseau sort, mis-
ery intoxicate but still in love with itself.
There is the Wordsworthian sort of the
Waterloo period, stubbornly shutting its
eyes and turning respectable. There is
the portentous Byronic sort of the
Regency, strutting, glooming, scoffing,
complete bud, flower, and fruit. "Get
very drunk," says Byron,
Get very drunk, and when
You wake with headache, you shall see what
then.
But among all the nuances of intoxica-
tion none is more alluring than that
which meanders after the heavenly maid
education, and among all the sentimental
journeys after education none latterly
has been more piquant than that which
moves with all the Bostonian elegance of
Henry Adams.
Whatever the lengths to which the sen-
timental journey is made to go, the es-
sential characteristics of the sentimental
soul remain the same. It is forever like
a child running down hill. A mysteri-
ous power lends it wings, and then when
its head gets to going faster than its
feet, trips its heels, and bumps its nose
in the dirt. The child picks itself up,
so hurt, so balked by the mystery of its
flight and fall that it weeps and could
die for vexation and shame, but con-
tinuing incorrigibly to live, endures by
laughing angrily and bitterly at itself,
and at the universe.
Superficially, of course, there are many
differences between the sentimental
Byron and the sentimental Henry
Adams, but in the case of each the truth
that hovered about him without ever
alighting turned what was once romantic
to burlesque. Byron had imbibed with
the children of his generation the notion
that happiness consisted in doing what
you liked. Nature having saved you the
trouble of deciding what that might be,
and that freedom or the habit of emo-
tional abandon was the certain means to
happiness. Adams had inherited the
notion that personal satisfaction was to
be found in personal control over the cur-
rent of human affairs, the direction of
the flow being called progress, and de-
termined, it would seem, by the direc-
tion in which you happened yourself to
be going. The means of securing such
control was education or the acquisition
of knowledge. Now social circumstances
gave to each man singularly ample op-
portunity for testing his particular open
sesame with the result that each found
himself impaled upon a dilemma from
which he could not escape. The more
Byron did what he liked the less other
people liked what he did; the less other
people liked what he did the less he
could do as he liked or the less he liked
it when he had done it, the less certain,
in other words, of freedom as an in-
fallible means to happiness. As for
Adams, the search for knowledge led him
to similar confusion. The more he
580]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 55
learned the less he discovered himself to
know, the more he found to be still un-
known, and the less certain he became
that what he knew or could know was of
any use for the control of progress, the
less certain that progress could be con-
trolled or indeed existed at all. What
both Byron and Henry Adams thus dis-
covered was not new and need not have
been discouraging, but it led neither of
them to happiness nor to power but only
to a mixture of disconsolate moods.
Adams, for instance, had his moments
of mysticism when, like Byron, he could
drop an Ave Mary after and before, had
too big lapses into the old yearning when
he could play with the illusion that some
unattained knowledge such as French or
mathematics might have given him what
he had missed. Mostly, however, he
despaired, and when not mourning,
laughed the sardonic laughter of a dis-
illusion which he took pains to make at-
tractive in the perfect idiom of the best
New England culture touched with the
acridity of an Adams.
Such was the only lesson which this
sentimental pilgrim learned in his quest
for education. His experience was not
unique; indeed, his book's best claim to
permanence in literature is probably due
to the faithfulness with which it repre-
sents the experience of many men, his
countrymen not least of all, with that
enterprise of which they have made so
much and by which they have learned so
little. At least two matters at the pres-
ent moment give striking evidence of
this faithfulness. On the one hand, in
order to persuade the American public
to pay more adequately for such educa-
tion as it receives from professors, many
of us find it necessary to keep up the
delusion that education, whatever at the
time being we may call by that name, is
the universal solvent for all the several
and particular ills from which the pub-
lic in its various parts may suppose the
body politic to be suffering. On the
other hand, professors, instead of shar-
ing that delusion, are in many cases leav-
ing or wishing to leave their profession
in order to escape, poverty perhaps, but
more often the sense of failure and be-
wildered doubt which our romantic hopes
of education necessarily entail. Thus
even the Atlantic Monthly, itself no in-
considerable part of our educational sys-
tem, has just published to all the world
the confession of a professor who fears
that he is not as important sitting in an
academic chair as he might be if en-
gaged in some more dramatic form of
human vanity.
Now the experience of Henry Adams
as professor is in this connection par-
ticularly illuminating. When he began
teaching. Harvard had for some time
ceased operating upon the simple prin-
ciple that religious salvation was the
purpose of higher learning, but was by
no means certain as to what should take
salvation's place. Culture might be the
proper substitute, but possibly culture
amounted to little more than a slight
spreading out of the provincial dilettant-
ism which may indeed be the best culture
we can even yet attain. Culture, more-
over, was at an early point unsettled by
the intrusion of science purporting to
be the unfailing Midas touch that was to
turn all thought to truth. Apostles of
science would at any time have admitted,
to be sure, that we might feel strange to
be without culture or, for that matter,
religion as well, but science and hence
education in science were what chiefly
mattered if the world was to progress —
progress, and here we are in an age of
iron, coal, and petrol, of slums, famine,
and pestilence, of self-determination and
mutual extermination, from all of which,
of course, a good education is at last to
deliver us. Such being the current of
ideas in the colleges, Henry Adams was
supposed to teach at Harvard something
called the science of history, and when
we consider what his own education had
been, we need not wonder that Harvard
gave him a particularly acute fit of pessi-
mism. Not that Harvard was particu-
larly at fault, but Adams, though he con-
fesses after the fact to many misgivings,
probably began like most professors of
our time by wishing at the bottom of his
heart to think of himself as a kind of
hierophant inducing contact between the
mind of youth and the prime motor of
the universe. What he experienced in-
stead every honest professor not alto-
gether new to his job knows but too well :
vague, preoccupied youths ; faculty meet-
ings often dropping to the nadir of futil-
ity; an increasing sense of his own
ignorance, a haunting fear that he was
himself, if not a dry-as-dust, then a do-
nothing in a world where there was much
doing, that science and progress and
education were probably nothing but a
wild-goose chase.
What can a professor say in his own
soul to defeat such moods as these, for
from such moods no teacher altogether
escapes? What, now that the public is
endowing him, with a higher salary, can
he do to endow himself with greater
faith ? Well, it seems to me that he may
begin by admitting without necessarily
believing all that the Henry Adamses as-
sert, and then without straining a single
point of logic say something like this:
Despair is not the end of education or of
the business of being a professor or of
the hope of human progress. Despair is
nothing but the end of a sentimental
journey, and at the end of a sentimental
journey education and progress, if ever,
begin. Suppose that Adams had learned
to build the steam engine he so much re-
gretted his inability to make. He would
have learned chiefly how poor a thing
it was, how little he knew about engines.
how little it availed to build them, and
how little of anything else he had learned
in the process. Thus might it have been
if he had learned to build anything else
under the sun — one hundred per cent.
Americans, for instance, or any of the
myriad other things that educators are
from time to time exhorted to make out
of children. "But," says the author of
one of the few wise books in the world
on education, "methinks I hear the phil-
osophers saying 'tis a miserable thing
for a man to be foolish, to err, to mis-
take, and to know nothing truly. Nay
rather, this is to be a man." In other
words, human knowledge consists pri-
marily in the discovery of human igno-
rance and weakness, and unless we can
make that discovery with equanimity we
can not begin education. For education,
though it may not be a cure, is never-
theless a risk like any other enterprise,
a risk of our lives, our dreams, our con-
victions, and all our goods. It may, on
the other hand, be a cure as well as a
risk, but whether it be so, whether we
can learn what we need to know in order
truly to progress, this we can not know
except by trying, and may never know
even thus until all trying is at an end.
One thing, however, and perhaps one
thing only we can assert with some con-
fidence, and that is that despite despair
we do as a matter of fact try and are
not satisfied without trying. To try, and
then to whine or to scoff at the little we
have gained, the much lost, to complain
because we can not eat our cake and
have it, too, is to be a sentimental child.
To try, accepting the risk, is to begin
one's education. To try willingly is to be
free; to try cheerfully is to be happy.
Admit the worst, that it is all a gamble
whether with all our trying we can ever
know anything truly, and we must admit,
too, that this gamble is as good as any
other a man may stake his life upon, that
one may as well risk his life on being
a professor or on getting education as
on being a maker of steam engines or of
war or of money or of what you will,
even though playing the one game rather
than any of the others convict one of the
kind of folly which Erasmus praises.
"For there are two obstacles to the
knowledge of things. Modesty that casts
a mist before the understanding, and
Fear that, having fanci'd a danger, dis-
swades us from the attempt. But from
these Folly sufficiently frees us, and few
there are that rightly understand of
what great advantage it is to blush at
nothing and attempt everything."
William Haller
THE question of teachers' salaries has
now received considerable attention,
even if the obvious steps have not always
been taken. Among the many charts and
tables in Dr. Evenden's thorough report
(Continued on page 582)
May 29, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[581
H0Mi&Rt^^
Niag"ara's RWal ybr
Dependable Po*
The Largest
Wireless
Station
The largest wireless station
in the world, situated at
Honolulu, H.I., is equipped
with a 300 K.W. Crocker-
Wheeler Radio Generator.
The C-W Company manu-
factures generators for land
stations, aeroplanes, dirigi-
bles, submarine chasers and
a wide variety of special
purposes.
PresidenI
Crocker- Wheeler Co.
Ampere, N. J.
New York
Boston
Syracuse
Chicago
Cleveland
Birmingham
Pittsburgh
Newark
New Haven
Philadelphia
Baltimore
San Francisco
Guy Emerson, Vice-President, Na-
tional Bank of Commerce, New York,
says:
"The steady growth of the Rcviezv
during the past year has been a fact
of distinct importance to the intel-
lectual life of America. Liberal
thinking has not had its proper
medium of expression. Radical
propaganda has been accorded more
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viezv is doing much to make the
balance true. Its success must be on
its merits, but beyond the increasing
literary merit and readability of the
paper, there is a vital consideration
in which all men of liberal tendencies
should be interested, namely, the vig-
orous and at the same time orderly
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582]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, Xo. 55
(Continued from page 580)
(Commission Series, No. 6, N. E. A.,
1919) none is more convincing than that
which shows, p. 110, that in five populous
States even high-school teachers receive
less average pay than machinists, lathers,
bricklayers, inside wiremen, workers in
structural iron, blacksmiths, machine
tenders (printing), compositors, glaziers,
plumbers, carpenters, hod-carriers, and
bakers. It is an imposing list — from the
point of view of the underpaid working-
man! It is in fact an arraignment of
our national judgment of what is worth
paying for, when on close examination
it reveals that the average for all these
workers is more than double the average
salary for teachers of the United States.
It is no longer worth saying gently that,
in all fairness to the teachers and our
self-respect, salaries should be raised.
The case is one of dire necessity ; some-
thing must be done at once if our chil-
dren are to find any teachers behind
the desks. For who would fardels bear,
who would grunt and sweat under a
weary life of class-room toil when he
could carry bricks for twice the pay!
AMONG all the pleas for increased pay
of teachers one rarely hears a call
for a few much larger salaries at the
very top. Those pay-rolls which we are
constantly told should be increased from
fifty to eighty per cent., in some instances
from eighty to over one hundred per
cent., are nearly always at the bottom of
the scale. Teachers in the middle dis-
tance may be happy if their salaries are
advanced thirty to forty per cent., while
those at the top are to be contented with
a ten to thirty per cent, increase. There
is no doubt some justice in the em-
phasis. The teacher at the minimum
wage simply can not live in comfort with-
out a substantial increase, while the
teacher at the top is past the starvation
line; a large increase for him means not
merely all the bread he needs, but a
flivver or a trip abroad or domestic
felicity. Yet is not such a condition, and
o little more, just what should be held
before the successful teacher? As things
are it takes something akin to the dedi-
cation of a martyr to induce a man to
work at any profession when $4,000 or
$5,000 is all he will make even if he
achieves phenomenal success. Careful
distribution would save the total budget
from increase beyond the figures sug-
gested by Dr. Evenden and other ex-
perts. Fewer teachers, to be sure, would
receive the $4,000 or $5,000 held out by
the new rates, but if the revision of
rates were carried out all along the line,
no one salary group could be greatly re-
duced in number, while many would work
eagerly for $3,000 or even $2,000 if they
knew that a teacher or two somewhere
short of heaven was receiving $10,000 or
$15,000.
The Collapse of Japan's
After-War Boom
THE collapse of Japan's after-war
boom has been impending for
months ; a glance back over the last quar-
ter-century of her growth explains it.
There is a belief current in Japan that
every ten years international complica-
tions bring the Japanese Empire into
collision with some Power standing in
the way. Little, however, is said about
this producing national dividends in its
resulting economic expansion. Yet this
is borne out by the Chino-Japanese War
in 1894, the Russo-Japanese War in
1904-05, and the entrance of Japan into
the European struggle in 1914. One part
of the picture may be got by the rise
of the per capita of Japan's whole for-
eign trade from a little over yen 5 a
person in 1894 to yen 14 at the time of
the Russian struggle, yen 22 at the open-
ing of the Great War, and yen 62 in
1919. The actual figures are worthy of
note:
Japan's Foreign Trade
(In lOOO's of yen)
Year Exports Imports Total
1894 113,246 117,481 230,728
1904 319,260 371,360 690,621
1914 591,101 595,735 1,186,837
1919 2,098,872 2,173,313 4,272,185
Another angle on this acceleration of
Japan's economic development after a
war appears in the rise of joint stock
enterprises. When one remembers that
the first modern corporate undertaking
dates from 1873, the growth in the paid-
up capital of Japanese business from yen
249,762,000 at the time of the Chinese
War to yen 1,114,227,000 in 1904, yen
2,068,786,000 in 1914, and approximately
yen 5,720,000,000 to-day seems extraor-
dinary. But the other side of the picture
must not be forgotten. That is, the
boom days which have always followed
Japan's victorious peace bring in their
train the economic consequences of over-
expansion, the speculative mania, and na-
tional mal-adjustment.
The more immediate background re-
veals 1919 as a turning point of major
importance in Japan's development. The
balance of trade during the four years
succeeding 1914 was heavy on the side
of exports from Japan to markets which
the war situation made more than invit-
ing— China, the Middle East, the British
Empire, Russia, and the United States.
This accumulated favorable balance of
trade reached the sum of yen 1,408,000,-
000, but conditions operating towards
the end of 1919 produced a drastic
change in the trend of commerce with
an excess of imports amounting to yen
74,441,000.
Had it not been for the fact that Japan
was realizing the fruits of her partici-
pation in the Great War from the end of
1914, no such tremendous changes in her
trade could have occurred. During this
period — as after every war — the Japa-
nese business world extended itself in
every direction. In its outstanding de-
velopments, it was a carefully controlled
expansion not directed by captains of
Japanese industry, but finding its in-
spiration in the nexus existing between
Japan's Big Business and the inner Gov-
ernment, which really guides the Mika-
do's land.
This must be clearly appreciated in the
light of what has happened. With Japan,
unlike the United States, her economic
life is a means to an end. Japan's com-
petitive strength lies neither in her
natural resources nor in her business
capacity; it is this highly coordinated
Government-backed business, giving by
political manipulation marginal advan-
tages to the Japanese vested interests at
every turn. Economic centralization has
made Big Business truly the partner of
the Japanese Government in its schemes
of state, and nowhere is the business
world so responsive to governmental opin-
ion. Ill-founded though it may seem, when
the flow of business in 1919 is analyzed,
the dominant note in official circles was
one of encouragement in every line of
enterprise. Stock flotations during the
war period, according to official sources,
present the following figures :
Japan's Stock Flotations
(In lOOO's of yen)
Year Total
1915 197,091
1916 566.511
1917 ....: 1,132.912
1918 1,147.395
1919 1,914,008
While a considerable portion of these
sums are nothing more than yen on
paper, it is well to remember the bona
fide operations are great enough to re-
quire most of the funds available in
1920 and 1921 to complete the payment
of stock subscriptions unless the enter-
prises are to fail. Much of this repre-
sents the expansion of old concerns,
though the trend through last year was
highly speculative on the whole. More
light on the promotions, from the stand-
point of the extensions of credit, appears
in the data prepared by the Mitsui Bank.
Relation of Stock Promotions to Loans
Year Total in iOOO's of yen
Capital Stock Loans Total
1917 .... 2.003,601 73,775 2,077,376
1918 .... 2,955,062 224,945 3.180,007
1919 .... 4,137,169 164,370 4,301,539
Although the divergence in the esti-
mates of the total stock flotations may
May 29, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[583
be taken as the maximum and minimum,
the contraction of loans is a striking in-
dication of what was expected in 1920.
As a matter of fact, the Bank of Japan
advanced its discount rate several times
towards the close of 1920. On the other
hand, the steps that were taken by the
Government to check the pyramiding
prices, declining export balance, and
speculative wave generally, carried with
them the reassurance that it would not
"interfere with prevailing tendencies
and would rather encourage them." The
tightening of the money market, how-
ever, was off-set by a calculated resort
to the further inflation of the currency;
the total for 1919 was in the neighbor-
hood of 33 per cent., mostly in the last
part of the year, and increasing the
Bank of Japan's notes, as compared with
the pre-war situation, about 7,700,000,-
000 yen.
Men in a position to know what was
occurring raised lone voices here and
there manifesting full appreciation of the
impending crisis. But the Government
optimism set the prevailing tone. A de-
cisive factor in the situation is to be
found in the raw silk market — account-
ing for one-fifth of Japan's exports, and
as high as six-sevenths of the total raw
silk production finding its way to the
United States. For the past twelve
months Japanese interests have been
speculating heavily, pools manipulating
the market to sky-rocket prices which
had already advanced from a pre-war
average of yen 800-900 a bale to yen
1,670 in 1919. By the middle of the year
this had risen 40 per cent., capped with
a spectacular jump after the July re-
lapse, bringing the price to yen 3,520.
Speculating interests began to find them-
selves saddled with over-stocks after the
New Year, the price having outrun the
foreign demand, and many were carry-
ing their 1919 hoarding into 1920 in
self-protection. The break began in the
last of January ; prices had climbed about
350 per cent, in twelve months to yen
4,500, doubling between October and
January.
This strain on the market came at a
critical time. Premier Hara had just
warned Japan that retrenchment was in
order, observing : "The large number of
joint stock concerns of all sorts, which
are now being promoted, can hardly be
regarded as a healthy economic sign, and
judging from what occurred after the
conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War, it
is not improbable that the crash may
come at any moment." A dissection of
the months antecedent to the April crisis
reveals seven conditions at work to show
that the Government and those on the
inside were thoroughly cognizant of the
situation impending. (1) The balance of
trade swung sharply against Japan be-
tween January and March, total excess of
{Continued on page 584)
THE HUDSON COAL CO.
CELEBRATED
LACKAWANNA
THE ARISTOCRAT OF ANTHRACITE
1823
1920
HAS NATURAL QUALITIES AND MAN-MADE REFINEMENT
D. F. WILLIAMS
Vice-President and General Sales Agent
W. F. SHURTLEFF
Assistant General Sales Agent
SCRANTON, PA.
584]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 55
Long leisufC hours on shipboard afford
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taining as well as serious reading. Let
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and days lo the travelers by sending
them the latest and best Book* and
Magazine*, or, if you are making the
voyage, provide yourself with this pleas-
ant relaxation.
If you are prevented from personally mak-
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Orders plactd by mail, UUphone or tele-
graph will have moat prompt and care-
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icill he delivered for you at the steamer.
SI Brentano's
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a6 Broad Street Fifth Ave. and 57th St.
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and Trust Funds
OTTO T. BANNARD. Chairman of the Board
MORTIMER N. BUCKNER. President
F. J. Home, Vice-Pre*. H. W. Shaw
Jaroe* Dodd, Vice-Pre*. J.- ^ ^J""" .
u ur vf \t T, -"• C. Downing, Jr.
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FIFTH AVENUE OFFICE
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TRUSTEES
Otto T. Bannard
S. Reading Brrtron
Jaine* A. Blair
Mortimer N. Buckner
James C. Colgate
Alfred A. Cook
Arthur J. Cumnock
Robert W. de Forect
John B. Denni*
nilip T. Dodge
George Doubleday
Samuel H. Fisher
John A. Carver
Benjamin S. Guinne**'
F. N. Hoffstot
Buchanan Houston
Frederic B. Jennings
Walter Jennings
Darwin P. Kingslcy
John C. McCall
Ogden L. MiUs
lohn J. Mitchell
James Parmclee
Henry C. Phipp*
Norman P. Ream
Dean Sage
Joseph J. Slocum
Mylcs Tierney
Clarence M. Woolley
Members of the New York Clearing House Asso-
ciation and of the Federal Reserve System
{Continued from page 583)
imports being yen 260,000,000, or nearly
equal to 50 per cent, of Japan's — for the
first quarter of 1920. The month of
March, with its 135 million yen excess
of imports, constituted a record-breaker
with the promise of a billion yen on the
debit side of the national balance sheet
if prevailing tendencies were maintained.
(2) The shipping slump has aggra-
vated the problem of Japan's foreign re-
mittances by the decline in freight
charges due her from abroad, and has
reduced profits, many of the smaller
operators being in difficulties, while the
general reaction on the basic industries
through the cessation of construction is
serious.
(3) Rampant speculation developed in
the face of a tightening money market
as promoters rushed flotations to get
capital pledged before the crash came;
thus the funds available through 1920
and 1921 are already hypothecated un-
less wholesale losses are to be entailed
through the failure of partially consum-
mated deals, and there is little likelihood
that Japan's billion yen gold reserves
held ^abroad — now liquidating the un-
favorable balances — will come to Japan
as specie instead of being defrayed in
goods.
(4) Investment has been reduced by
the inflation of prices and the tendency
towards reduced dividends, with the ces-
sation of abnormal war earnings.
(5) Foreign competition, since the
armistice, has been increasing in Japan's
domestic markets due to the high level
of prices and the need of replenishing
equipment quickly.
(6) At the same time, the position of
Japanese manufacturers in overseas mar-
kets is not encouraging, as exchange has
turned against them in countries of the
East, hitherto a war monopoly virtually
of Japan, and prices of production are
too high in Japanese industry under ex-
isting conditions.
(7) Political complications have hit
Japanese business heavily; this is espe-
cially true of the economic reaction
against Japan's foreign policy in China,
expressed in a more effective boycotting
of Japanese manufactures than is ap-
parent, and now being duplicated in
Asiatic Russia as an outcome of the for-
ward policy pursued by the Japanese
War Office diplomacy.
The end of this pyramiding business
was definitely in sight when March settle-
ments were made with serious difficulty.
The test was the failure of the markets
to rally in April from the strain of the
previous month's closing. The clapping
down of the Government censorship on
what is actually taking place shows that
Japan is by no means through with her
crisis. If deflation can be carried out
with no further breaks symptomatic of
panic, Japan will have rounded the most
critical year in her swing over to an in-
dustrialized country. We shall not know
what to expect until the mid-year, as a
great deal depends on the raw silk situa-
tion and foreign purchases — which means
the price the United States will pay for
the bulk of Japan's production.
Shrewd as are Japanese statesmen and
their financiers, the game is out of their
hands. During the Great War they kept
Japan's export trade financed by the Gov-
ernment backing the assumption of the
accumulating foreign credits when the
limit of the exchange banks was soon
reached. When the deposits to Japan's
account in New York and London were
used up, the Government resorted to the
issuance of paper money secured by the
identical credits it was moving to pro-
tect. The measures were taken in 1918,
manifested themselves in 1919, and must
be solved to-day. That depends, how-
ever, on the share of trade Japan can
secure in a normalizing world. A great
deal of the answer rests in American
hands, and it is not without irony that
Japan's economic difficulties came at the
moment when she threatened the "inde-
pendent financing" of the Chinese Re-
public.
Charles Hodges
Books Received
FICTION
Cabell, James B. The Cream of the Jest.
McBride.
Cannan, Gilbert. Time and Eternity. Doran
Ibaiiez, V. Blasco. Woman Triumphant.
Dutton.
Irwin, Wallace. Trimmed with Red. Doran.
Maugham, W. Somerset. The Explorer.
Doran.
Merwin, Samuel. Hills of Han. Bobbs-
Merrill.
Pryde, Anthony. Marqueray's Duel. Mc-
Bride.
Thurston, E. Temple. Sheepskins and Grey
Russet. Putnam. $2.50.
Waugh, Alec. The Loom of Youth. Doran.
Wells, H. G. Love and Mr. Lewisham.
Doran.
ART
Villiers, Frederic. Days of Glory. Intro-
duction by Philip Gibbs. Doran.
BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
Benedict, Bertram. A History of the Great
War. Vol. II. New York: Bureau of Na-
tional Literature.
Cantacuzene, Princess. Russian People.
Scribner. $3 net.
Czernin, Count Ottokar. In the World
War. Harper.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. A History of the
Great War : Vol. VI — The British Campaign
in France and Flanders. Doran.
Fisher, Lord. Memories and Records. 2
volumes. Doran.
Gibbs, Philip. Now It Can Be Told.
Harpers.
Holme, John G. The Life of Leonard
Wood. Doubleday, Page.
O'Shaughnessy, Edith. Alsace, in Rust and
Gold. Harper.
K^'i^^
THE REVIEW
Vol. 2, No. 56
New York, Saturday, June 5, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment
Editorial Articles:
The Problem at Chicago
American Isolation
The German Elections
From Cow to Consumer
The Political Parties in Germany. By
Dr. Paul Rohrbach
The House of Piotr Ivanovitch. By
J. E. Conner
Anatole France as Preacher. By Her-
bert L. Stewart
Correspondence
The Goncourt Prize. By A. G. H.
Spiers
Book Reviews:
Indictments Against' Two Nations
One of the Ablest Members of the
Supreme Court
Something Different
Free International Waterways
The Run of the Shelves
Impressions de Voyage — III. By Cas-
par F. Goodrich
The Atavus. By Weare Holbrook
Drama :
Dramas for the Reader. By O. W.
Firkins
Problems of Labor and Capital — IV.
By Morris L. Ernst
The Whitley System in the British
Civil Service. By E. S. Roscoe
585
588
589
590
591
592
593
595
597
599
600
601
602
603
604
606
606
607
610
611
T^REDERIC HARRISON'S article
■*- in the Fortnightly Review, long
extracts from which are given in a
cable dispatch to the Sun and New
York Herald, brings to the front an
aspect of the League of Nations dead-
lock to which Americans would do
well to give more attention than they
have done. Especially is this passage -
in the veteran publicist's article
worth pondering:
It is plain that the league covenant and the
President's fourteen points were the American
conditions which the republic brought, with the
enormous weight of her wealth, her inex-
haustible armies and her natural resources,
into the war. But for that covenant, Great
Britain, France and Italy would have made a
quick, plain, direct peace in some form with
their enemies.
But the terms of American . intervention
entirely transformed the whole situation. Civ-
ilized nations had been banded into a moral
alliance. Peace had been bound up with the
American Utopia and fifty nations of Europe
and Asia had been fired with a passion for
self-assertion at the call of the biggest of the
Entente Powers.
Then the domestic quarrel in the American
Republic broke out. She withdrew from action
in the council, but she did not withdraw from
words. Refusing to meet the council, refusing
men, money and goods and her own creation,
the League of Nations, she does not cease to
complain and to interfere, both officially and
unofficially, in the doings of her own allies and
the execution of her own treaty.
Mr. Wilson of course expected the
Covenant to be ratified, but when he
found that it could not be ratified, in
any reasonable time, unless he made
certain concessions, he was in the
position of a man who had advised
his associates to make profound
alterations in their plans, under an
engagement on his part to effect cer-
tain essential arrangements. Has he
ever considered whether it was not
his absolute duty to come as near ef-
fecting these arrangements as possi-
ble? Has he considered that long
delay might impose upon the nations
that had trusted him evils of un-
speakable magnitude and gravity?
Has he asked himself whether he had
a right to proceed upon his own in-
dividual notions of what is best, with-
out consulting the wishes or opinions
of those who had placed their trust
in his promise?
'T'HE Presidential primary, at its
present stage of development,
is an ugly, clumsy, expensive, and
almost futile piece of political ma-
chinery. The feature of it that has
been most conspicuous in the public
mind during the closing stages of the
Republican pre-convention campaign
is the expenditure of large sums
of money. In the case of General
Wood's campaign, the adverse im-
pression is produced not so much by
the total — which, considering the ex-
tent of his operations, is not greatly
out of proportion with others — as the
circumstance that so large a part
came from, or was guaranteed by, a
single wealthy man. The newspapers,
as a rule — and the people, too, we be-
lieve— are showing a good deal of
quiet good sense in recognizing
that a primary campaign can not
be carried on without spending
much money. They are not being
stampeded into any hysterical outcry
of corruption; and, while General
Wood's chances have been injured
by the campaign-fund developments,
they have by no means been de-
stroyed.
CENATOR JOHNSON'S decision
^ not to bolt may be variously inter-
preted. His devoted followers have,
of course, set him down as a good fel-
low. Americans with alien hearts
are doubtless already casting about
for another candidate who will ad-
vance their special interests. Mean-
while Republican managers, whose
forte is figures, have probably come
to the conclusion that Johnson has a
feeling for figures, too. This is not
to say that the California Senator is
no longer to be thought of as a power
at the Chicago Convention. But if
the point has been reached at which
he thinks it indiscreet to adopt the
old ruse of expressing supreme con-
fidence now, with the chance of cry-
ing fraud later, forecasting the out-
come of the Chicago Convention is,
by so much at least, simplified.
HTHE New York Times may be all
-*- right editorially, but in its hand-
ling of news it shows shocking in-
efficiency. A paper like that ought
to know that when Debs was notified
of his nomination for the Presidency,
the scene that was enacted, and the
words that were spoken, should have
received as little prominence as possi-
ble, and that the story, even on an
inside page, should have been skill-
fully colored so as to make a damag-
ing impression. Instead of that, we
find it presented with large and allur-
ing headlines on the first page, filling
a whole column there, and continued
586]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 56
on the third. And that is not the
worst of it. The scene is described
in simple and sympathetic language;
the reader gets the impression that
Debs is suffering imprisonment in the
spirit not of spectacular martyrdom,
but of calm and dignified suffering
for a great cause. Eloquent and mov-
ing passages are given from the
speech of notification and from Debs's
reply. What does the Times mean
by thus betraying the interests which
it professes to serve — which, as every
soap-box orator in the country knows,
all "capitalist" editors have sold their
souls to serve? If we can't get this
sort of news suppressed, or dis-
torted, or colored, in the Times, what
good is there in having a "capitalist
press" at all?
"A FREE man may stop work
-^ when he pleases, and the con-
sequences are no one's affair but his
own." So Mr. Gompers, in the Car-
negie Hall debate with Governor
Allen, of Kansas. Let us see. If the
right to strike is wholly without
limitation, except the pleasure of the
striker, it would be "no one's affair
but his own" in case it should
please him to abandon the wheel of a
steamer in the St. Lawrence rapids,
for example, with the possible loss of
life of most or all the passengers on
board. Mr. Gompers would have to
admit, if pressed, that there are con-
ceivable limits beyond which the
possible consequences of a strike are
very emphatically the affair of others
besides the striker himself. Society
has become very sure, and Mr. Gom-
pers is doubtless very sure, that cer-
tain practices which formerly pleased
many employers of labor could no
longer be regarded as no one's affair
but their own, and legal require-
ments are fast making these prac-
tices impossible. We may readily
grant to Mr. Gompers that the right
to strike, in general, rests on a sound
basis and can not be swept away,
consistently with the fundamental
tenets of freedom. It does not fol-
low, however, that there are no
possible cases or circumstances which
would justify a temporary or partial
modification of that right. Whether
Kansas has gone too far, in the legis-
lation which sprang from a desire to
make impossible a repetition of the
suffering caused by the coal strike,
is primarily a question of fact and
of expediency.
fyHERE is little more to be
-*■ said about the two-billion-dollar
bonus ; the scheme has long appeared
moribund, and the House in passing
it showed it up for the thing it is. A
good deal might be said about the
high sense of responsibility, the far-
seeing statesmanship, exhibited by
the one hundred and seventy-four Re-
publicans and the one hundred and
twelve Democrats who with cynical
levity did what they could to make
representative government a laugh-
ing-stock. The time for saying it ef-
fectively, however, is next November.
In their opinion of the action of the
present House sincere advocates of a
bonus and its vastly more numerous
opponents will be pretty much of one
mind.
■WTHAT Gregory Krassin, by com-
^ ing to London, and what the
Soviet Government, by sending him,
hope to achieve is clear enough; the
mysterious part in this new act of the
Russian tragedy is played by Mr.
Lloyd George. Was Bonar Law's
denial of British material and moral
support of the Polish offensive not ex-
clusively made to dispel suspicions at
home, but also with a view to placat-
ing the Government at Moscow? If
so, why should Lloyd George and his
Cabinet Ministers be so anxious
to negotiate with a Soviet mission
which can not achieve success except
at the risk of a fresh ruptmre between
England and France? Besides, if the
Soviet regime is on the verge of a
collapse, as we are told it is, and can
only be saved by a speedy import of
rolling stock and machinery for Rus-
sia's ruined railroads and industries,
why should England go out of her
way to help prevent what, until Den-
ikin's defeat, she spent millions in
trying to bring about? The only re-
ply that seems to meet these questions
is that the Bolshevist activities in
Persia and Transcaucasia are caus-
ing greater alarm to the Government
in London than it would be safe to
confess, and, that being so, there is
reason to accept with some caution
the sanguine predictions of an im-
pending Bolshevist catastrophe. A
cessation of Soviet activities in Asia
will be demanded from Krassin as the
price for which Great Britain will
consent to a resumption of trade re-
lations with Russia. However, the
French Government will also have a
say in the matter, and it is not likely
that Paris will consent to this way
of safeguarding British interests in
Asia without securing the necessary
guarantees for the safety of her finan-
cial interests in Russia.
TN contrast to Lloyd George's am-
-■- biguous policy towards Russia,
the attitude of M. Millerand is abso-
lutely clear and consistent. He re-
fused the British Premier's invitation
to have M. Cambon be present at the
conversations between members of
the British CabineJ; and the Russian
envoy on the ground that France is
duly represented on the Allied Eco-
nomic Council. If it is trade transac-
tions that have to be discussed in
London, the French representative
on that Council is fully authorized to
speak on behalf of the French Gov-
ernment ; if political dealings are con-
templated, France remains unshaken
in her determination not to take part
in them. The economic revival of
Russia is not the end which Krassin,
any more than Lloyd George, has in
view. To the Russian it is only a
means to an end, the world revolution
which the Soviet Government, once
firmly established in power by the
improvement of economic conditions
in Russia, hopes to bring about under
the auspices of the Third Interna-
tionale. It is a wise and honorable
policy which refrains from any ac- I
tion implying recognition of a Gov-
ernment which confessedly aims at
the overthrow of that international
organization to whose maintenance
both France and England, as mem-
bers of the League of Nations, stand
solemnly pledged.
A LIEN minorities in the newly
i\
created States of Central Europe
have a claim to the protection of the
League of Nations, but the security
thus gained imposes on them the duty
to avoid all provocation in their deal-
June 5, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[587
ings with the ruling nationalities
of the countries they inhabit. The
Germans -in Czechoslovakia have not
yet learned to behave in accordance
with this maxim. At the opening
meeting of the first elected Parlia-
ment at Prague, the seventy German
members shouted fierce protests
against the use of the Czech language
by the Speaker, and when Masaryk,
after his election to the Presidency,
was presented to the Assembly, the
German leader sprang to his feet and
led his followers ostentatiously out.
This is not the way for the Germans
in Bohemia to secure respect either
for themselves, their rights, or their
nationality. Nor can they increase,
by assuming this attitude, the world's
confidence in the moral conversion of
the German nation as a whole.
nPHE Freeman, in commenting on
-'- the Interchurch World Move-
ment, alleges that "the masses" dis-
trust the church because, more than
for any other reason, it gave its ac-
tive support to the war. It may be
remarked that the masses, as such,
have no unified attitude towards the
church. In any hundred men taken
out of "the masses" at random will
be found a group of firm adherents
to the church, a group in opposition,
and others of various shades of in-
difference. But that the masses dis-
trust the church specifically because
of its support of the war is contrary
to plain facts within the vision of
anyone whose eyes are not wilfully
closed. For every man who took the
attitude of the Freeman, scores of
these same masses were with whole-
hearted loyalty upholding the cause
of the war by every means in their
power. For every woman who took
that attitude, the knitting-needles of
a hundred were cheerfully contribut-
ing to the comfort of willing repre-
sentatives of the masses on the field
of battle.
■]\|RS. HENRY FAWCETT, in her
-■■"-^ life of Molesworth, long ago
pointed out how necessary to the
pacifist is the war of words; how,
renouncing combat on the battlefield,
he must needs impart a tenfold viru-
lence to his arguments and denuncia-
tions. What persons of a certain sort
forswear they must compensate for
in some way; what they lack they
must make theirs through the imagi-
nation. The worship of Bolshevism
and other violent forms of social ad-
venture is nowhere so ardent as in the
circles of the futile dilettanti. The
helpless shut-in takes the wings of
morning to pierce Barcan deserts or
thread fearsome jungles; the utter
failure in the world as it is, exultantly
sees himself a Lenin or a Peters in
the world as it ought to be. Even
men of remarkable powers in one
direction, but in other ways hope-
lessly handicaped, see themselves
champions and victors in the fields
where they are impotent. Many of
the pre-war virilists, says the Man-
chester Guardian, were of this type.
There was Stevenson, the invalid,
who "figured himself in voluptuous
reveries as master of a privateer or
commanding a troop of irregular cav-
alry"; Henley, the lifelong cripple,
whose pages reek with physical com-
bat; Synge, the consumptive, "who
scorned everything but the life of
violence in the open," and even An-
drew Lang, frail and "the most don-
nish of bookmen," whose mind was
often, if not usually, running on raids
and slaughters. The list might be
greatly extended. And so, thinking
it all over, perhaps we ought to be
more charitable to the parlor Bolshe-
vists. They have high and plentiful
warrant for their exercise when they
rave and imagine vain things.
Though ridiculous, they serve a pur-
pose in reillustrating an old law.
HOW proletarian sabotage always
and everywhere, as one rapt
enthusiast has recently phrased it,
"moves progressively towards truth,
beauty, love," is well illustrated in an
episode from South Australia told by
the Adelaide correspondent of the
Chnstian Science Monitor. A cam-
paign of "ca' canny," followed by a
strike, in the Government Produce
Department, fizzled out after a time,
and a normal output was resumed.
Thereupon, an epidemic of a more
serious form of sabotage broke out in
the State Engineering Workshops for
the construction and repair of rolling
stock. Rivets were put in the reverse
way, and the tails were so slightly
burred that they would have worked
loose as soon as the cars began to run.
But before any of the cars were taken
out to collapse on the tracks and
thereby destroy human life, the plot
was discovered by the chief mechan-
ical engineer. The somewhat matter-
of-fact boilermakers' union, to which
these mechanics belonged, was un-
able to regard the affair transcen-
dentally and to see in it an expression
of truth, beauty, and love. On the con-
trary, the union formally denounced
the men, declared that the work "was
deliberately bad and dangerous to
the travelling public," that it "is a
wicked thing to do bad work on roll-
ing stock of any kind" and fined the
devotees of the new faith $25 each.
The penalty will no doubt be regarded
in the coteries of the illuminate as an
outrageous and a reactionary one.
Evidently the doctrine of the beati-
fication of proletarian sabotage is not
making its way withoiit occasional
reverses.
A N anonymous writer, using the
-^ initials S. E., editorially certi-
fied to be a "professor in an American
college," has been wrestling in the
columns of the Socialist Review with
the subject, "The 'Free Speech'
Fallacy." The keystone of the liberal-
ist edifice, it seems, is the liberal's
faith in "freedom of discussion." But
under capitalism, according to the
professor, there isn't any such thing.
Even where there is legal or formal
freedom (which at any time may be
restricted), there is no positive free-
dom in the sense of adequate means
or opportunity of discussion. For
positive freedom "equally large and
constant audiences must be available
to rival ideas and programmes."
When a small group, in the high and
holy name of the proletariat, over-
turns the capitalist regime, then and
not till then can we have "freedom
of discussion." That is, all those who
approve of the new regime may freely
express their approval. As for those
who do not approve — well, the thing
to do with them is to label them
"counter-revolutionaries," and then
silence them. The demand for
"freedom of discussion" by any one
labelled a "counter-revolutionary" is,
of course, the height of effrontery.
588]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. .)(>
The Problem at
Chicago
TT is not a happy situation that con-
•'• fronts the Republican National
Convention which meets at Chicago
next Tuesday. The difficulties with
which it is beset are of a wholly dif-
ferent character from thoae that one
associates with the history of past
Presidential struggles. The contests
in the primaries, so far from clarify-
ing, have only further clouded the
situation. Such rivalries as those be-
tween Conkling and Blaine, between
McKinley and Reed, brought out fac-
tional animosities more sharply de-
fined, but less difficult to handle, than
those with which the coming Conven-
tion will have to grapple. Even the
Convention of 1912, though con-
fronted with an ominous schism, and
one that in fact resulted in disaster,
had a comparatively simple question
to answer, and had to answer it with
a plain Yes or No. At Chicago next
week, there is an ill-defined conflict,
big with possibilities of harm to the
part}', which every man realizes, but
of which no man can define the exact
character.
The difficulty relates both to plat-
form and to candidates; and on the
very eve of the Convention no way out
of it presents itself clearly in any
direction. Of the three most notable
men that have been in the public
mind as possible nominees not one is
in the usual sense a commanding
political figure. Senator Johnson,
who is the most political figure of
the three, has shown himself capable
of rallying a big following, but it is
a following of nondescript character.
Furthermore his candidacy would so
obviously fail to be representative of
the party as a whole that his selection
by the Convention is almost unthink-
able; and neither his principles nor
his record have the stuff in them that
could bear the strain of the Presi-
dential canvass. The other two of
the three men we have in mind are,
of course, General Wood and Mr.
Hoover. Both of these men have be-
hind them a record of distinguished
achievement that has received high
national recognition; but neither of
them has been a political leader.
The hostility of the Johnson forces
is a great obstacle to the choice of
either Wood or Hoover ; and there is
not behind either of these men that
kind of intense political force that
makes for the ultimate overcoming of
any opposition, however powerful —
the kind of force, for example, which
caused Woodrow Wilson to triumph
over Champ Clark in the long-drawn-
out struggle at Baltimore in 1912.
As regards platform, it does not
look as though there would be any
great difficulty in drawing one up
that would be fairly satisfactory to
the party and the country, except so
far as regards the question of the
treaty and the League of Nations.
But on the other hand, there seems
to be little prospect of the platform
containing anj-thing that will awaken
enthusiasm or keen interest. The
Convention will have the benefit of
the careful and systematic work that
has been done by the Advisory Com-
mittee to the Republican National
Committee. This, if availed of, will
serve to make the platform rational
and respectable, which will be a thing
to be thankful for; but whether it
will afford a strong basis for effec-
tive public appeal is another ques-
tion. And as regards the treaty and
the League, the party is in a most
difficult situation. It looks as though
the best it could do, in view of the
utter disorganization within the
party, is to make a declaration that
will hold together everj'body who is
not in favor of accepting the treaty
without reservations. A master hand
could do better than that; but no
master hand is in sight.
A few months ago, it might well
have been thought that even with a
colorless platform and a commonplace
candidate the Republican party could
go into the campaign with a certainty
of victory. The chances are still
strongly in its favor, but the chance
of defeat is far from negligible. The
danger of widespread disaffection is
manifestly indicated in the story of
the Johnson movement. And on the
Democratic side a distinct possibility
of the injection of new life has re-
cently come to the fore. That party
has, in the person of Ambassador
John W. Davis, a resource which, if
availed of, may give to the forthcom-
ing campaign a character quite dif-
ferent from that which it would have
under the leadership of any other of
the men that have been named for
the candidacy. His exceptional fit-
ness, both in ability and character,
are recognized with singular unanim-
ity ; and he has been just sufficiently
identified with the present Adminis-
tration to commend him to supporters
of President Wilson without burden-
ing him with the odium which in so
many directions the Administration
has incurred. And, whether they nom-
inate Mr. Davis or not, the Democrats
have an advantage which, in a situa-
tion so plastic as that of to-day, is
of incalculable value, in that they
will not have to make their decision
until several weeks after the Repub-
licans have gone to the country with
theirs. It will not take any extraor-
dinary amount of political sagacity to
draw important conclusions from the
way in which the work of the Chicago
Convention will have been received
by the country.
The Republican Convention will
have before it two conspicuous can-
didates neither of whom has, like
Wood or Hoover, been identified with
affairs of national magnitude, but
both of whom have political records
that afford a substantial claim to the
nomination. Governor Lowden and
Governor Coolidge. Lowden's claim
rests on solid achievement in the fis-
cal affairs of the State of Illinois, and
especially on his introduction of a
budget system; and altogether it ap-
pears as though he were the kind of
a man who, in ordinary times, would
make an entirely satisfactory Presi-
dent. Governor Coolidge, without
having had, so far as we know, any
special fiscal problem to deal with,
makes a much more vivid appeal to
the imagination. It is not only his
conduct in relation to the police
strike, but the tone and character of
a number of his utterances that
make him an outstanding figure. One
has, in regard to him, something of
the kind of feeling that the country
had in regard to Cleveland in the be-
ginning of his career in New York.
One feels that with him the funda-
June 5, 1920]
THE KEVIEW
[589
mental principles of American gov-
ernment and American life are so in-
grained a part of his being that he
could be trusted to meet any situa-
tion with courage and with practical
wisdom. And a consideration that
is by no means of minor importance
is the character that a man like
Coolidge would be likely to impart to
the campaign. It is not only that his
speeches by their vigor and terseness
would be good "vote-getters"; some-
thing more than the question of the
chances of the campaign is involved.
His habit is to speak firmly and to
the point ; and from the present look
of things it seems that nothing will
be more needful to the country than
that its political thought should be
clarified — focused upon real issues,
instead of being dissipated into all
manner of vagueness.
There are other men upon whom
the choice of the Convention may fall ;
the chance of the nomination of a
"dark horse" is, in a situation like
the present, always considerable. Nor
is the mere fact of a man having
been a "dark horse" inconsistent with
the possibility of his being an inspir-
ing candidate. But the prospect of
such an eventuality is very slight.
The one man whose selection would
carry with it a thrill of high hope is
Herbert Hoover. With his name is
associated the thought of great things
done for the world in that agony
through which it passed so recently,
an agony in which our hearts were
engaged as nothing else could engage
them, an agony which, alas, is being
prolonged but which finds our coun-
try a paralyzed, and apparently
almost indifferent, onlooker. With his
name, too, is associated the thought
of administrative genius and execu-
tive eflSciency, which would arouse
high expectations of help in the eco-
nomic tangle in which our affairs are
involved. The nomination of Hoover
would arouse in millions of breasts
a kind of hopeful expectancy to which
the country has long been a stranger.
If the question were solely as to where
lay the greatest possibilities of im-
mediate constructive achievement,
there could be little doubt as to the
answer.
But even from the highest stand-
point of patriotic foresight, it can
not truthfully be said that this con-
sideration ought to be regarded as
conclusive. In a certain sense, and
that by no means a remote or unsub-
stantial one, the turning to Hoover is
a sign of political poverty. The Presi-
dency of the United States is an office
charged not only with colossal re-
sponsibilities and magnificent oppor-
tunities in the administrative field,
but with a political potency to which
there is not, anywhere in the world,
even a distant parallel. Whatever
crisis may arise in the clash of classes
or interests, in the struggle between
opposing political, economic, or social
ideals, the man who is invested with
the power of the Presidency retains
it undisturbed for four years. And
one may say without gross exaggera-
tion that in the case of a strong man
with a mighty hold on the public
imagination, that power is, for the
time being, almost anything that he
may be inclined to make it.
When we elect a President, we put
ourselves into his hands in a degree
unknown to the parliamentary sys-
tem that obtains in countries like
Great Britain or France. When this
is done in the case of a man with a
long or well-defined political record,
that record, together with his per-
sonal character and ability, usually
furnishes sufficient assurance of the
attitude and conduct which may be
expected of him in any new situation
that may arise. In the case of Mr.
Hoover, character and ability are all
that could possibly be desired; but
he has not been tested in the field of
politics or government. Splendid as
is his record, it does not furnish the
kind of assurance of safety that a
much more ordinary political record
would be quite capable of affording.
There is no scale by which one. can
measure the claims of safety on the
one hand, and those of high possibili-
ties of extraordinary service on the
other. But it is not a mean or pusil-
lanimous thing to attempt to weigh
them in the balance against each other.
If Hoover should be elected President,
we should have reason to look for-
ward to great things ; but we should
not have as much reason for absolute
confidence in the safety of the Re-
public as if Coolidge were elected.
And eight years of a President of
unusual gifts, who has pursued
high aims in his own extraordinary
fashion, has borne in upon many of
us a keen appreciation of what may
be said in behalf of a President of
less extraordinary quality, provided
he be known to be of sterling stuff.
American Isolation
'T'HE President could not do other-
-*■ wise than veto the Knox reso-
lution declaring a state of peace with
Germany. It was not a good way of
dealing with our relations either with
Germany or with our associates in
the war. It was not necessary as a
means of bringing to an end the oper-
ation in our domestic affairs of the
war-time laws. This could have been
accomplished by direct repeal. It was
merely a move in the game of "pass-
ing the buck" between President and
Senate. Both its passage by the Sen-
ate and its rejection by the President
were foregone conclusions — almost
matters of mechanical routine.
Of far greater interest than the
act of rejection is the character of
the veto message. Mr. Wilson rests
the veto neither on justice nor on
practical detail, but on broad grounds
of national honor and national policy.
And the large issue that he thus once
again brings to the front is a real
one. We shall have to keep it in
mind throughout the approaching
Presidential campaign — and after
that, until the nation has taken some
definite position. The veto message,
brief as it is, touches many points,
but the heart of it is in this passage :
The Treaty as signed at Versailles has been
rejected by the Senate of the United States,
though it has been ratified by Germany. By
that rejection and by its methods we had in
effect declared that we wish to draw apart and
pursue objects and interests of our own, un-
hampered by any connections of interest or
of purpose with other Governments and
peoples.
For the situation which he thus
describes, the President must himself
be held in a preponderant degree re-
sponsible. He has never recognizd
the duty of maintaining our "connec-
tions of interest or of purpose with
other Governments and peoples" by
gaining for a feasible and moderate
590]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 56
compromise the support of those who,
while not following him to the letter,
were sincerely desirous that the coun-
try should bear its rightful part in
the reestablishment of the world's
order, the securing of the world's
peace, the restoration of the world's
prosperity. Month by month, the
hopelessness of anything being ac-
complished has sapped the nation's
interest, until at last it almost seems
as though the nation itself were
ready to declare for that isolation
which, when the treaty was first pre-
sented to the Senate, was advocated
only by a few extremists. Whether
Lodge and his followers were right
or wrong, is not the question; what
has certainly been wrong is the
President's unvarying assumption
that he alone is entitled to form a
judgment, and that if that judgment
is not accepted everything must go
to smash.
In the recognition of this, in the
pondering of it at this moment, much
more is involved than the mere allo-
cation of blame. The nation has not,
in point of fact, taken its stand on
the issue. Between the nation and
the issue there has been interposed
the impassable obstacle of a political
deadlock. It is of the first importance
that the public should be keenly
aware of this fact ; because the surest
way to make our position, for good
and all, that which the President de-
scribes, is to spread abroad the notion
that that position has already been
actually taken by« the nation, or by
the majority party in the nation. It
has not. Even in their final form —
and they might almost certainly have
been put through many months ago
in much milder form — the reserva-
tions left a great deal of the League
Covenant effective. Above all, their
acceptance would have put us into the
League. To prevent us from cutting
loose from all connection with our as-
sociates in the war, and from all par-
ticipation in the work of world
restoration, that is still the one way,
and it is still open. To create the
impression that it is not, is to do the
greatest disservice that can, at this
juncture, be done to the cause of co-
operation between America and Eu-
rope.
The German Elections
'T'HE decision of the Conference
■■■ held at Hythe to postpone the
meeting at Spa until after the Ger-
man elections for the Reichstag,
should be taken by the German people
as a flattering recognition of its in-
creased importance. In the days be-
fore the war it mattered little to the
non-German world what party sent
the greatest number of representa-
tives to Berlin, as the Reichstag un-
der the Imperial regime had only a
shadow of control over Germany's
international relations. Only the
growth of German Social-Democracy
under Bebel's eminent leadership at-
tracted attention abroad. A more
and more industrialized Germany
under Junker rule, adding year after
year fresh thousands to her army of
wage workers and consequently to
the internationally organized army of
the Social-Democratic party, was a
spectacle worth watching in its de-
velopments. A clash between these
two forces became more and more im-
minent, and the lighthearted uncon-
cern with which the men in power at
Berlin rushed into the war was partly
due to their conviction that only by
calling up the danger from abroad
could they prevent the German inter-
nationalists from bringing the dis-
ruptive process within to a head.
It was only natural, then, that the
Emperor's defeat and overthrow
should bring the Socialists into power
who had been the only party to op-
pose his autocratic regime. But this
political success diminished, relatively
speaking, their importance as a party,
as the same revolution had freed the
bourgeois parties from the shackles
of "Kaisertreue" and given them a
more independent standing. To each
of them now falls the task of formu-
lating principles for the guidance of
the Government, and it is for the
voters to decide which of those prin-
ciples shall be adhered to. That gives
to the coming elections next week a
special importance, and we are glad
to print, in another column, an
illuminating article by Dr. Paul
Rohrbach, from which the readers of
the Review may gain an estimate of
the parties' strength and chances.
The chief interest of his survey h.
centres in the account he gives of the
German Democratic party and of its
tendencies to reorient itself in two
directions, nationally towards the •
right, socially towards the left, to de-
clare itself, in other words, for a pro-
gramme virtually identical with that
of the Majority Socialists while in-
sisting on the realization of national
ideals as against the dream of inter-
national brotherhood. Dr. Rohrbach
is careful to remind us, in a footnote,
of the intrinsic difference in German
between the terms "National" and
"Nationalistic"; the foreigner's ap-
preciation of the Democratic Party's
activity will, indeed, be dependent on
the meaning which it will give to its
name, not in profession, but in prac-
tice. That he describes this two-
sided reorientation as the old ideal of
Friedrich Naumann offers food for
reflection. Naumann was the prophet
of a mid-Europe under the German
aegis, which was to be the achieve-
ment of the war, and in the book in
which he developed that conception
he praised his friend Rohrbach for
being the eloquent preacher of "the
German idea in the world." Were
the eulogist and his friend, when
those words were written, five years
ago, the advocates of a "national" or
a "nationalistic" policy — were they
patriots or chauvinists ? The aggres-
sive policy of the Hohenzollem which
they supported with their pen sup-
plies a decisive answer to that ques-
tion. A nationalism which requires
for the realization of its ambitions
the subjection of .other peoples' na-
tionality makes chauvinists of pa-
triots. The country's boundary marks
the dividing line between a na-
tional and a nationalistic policy.
"Am deutschen Wesen soil die Welt
genesen" is the slogan of an arrogant
chauvinism, of which the world,
averse to such a cure, will hear no
more.
The enthusiasm over the initial vic-
tories of the German arms created the
atmosphere in which the nationalistic
ambitions of Naumann and Rohrbach
could thrive. We should do injustice
to the former's memory and our con-
tributor's judgment if we did not
deem them capable of realizing their
June 5, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[591
«rror in the cruel light of subsequent
actualities. The present moment de-
mands, from a German patriot's point
of view, the cure, first of all, of a
<}ermany sick to death ; and the world
■will not deny her the right to be cured
of the disease "am deutschen wesen."
The Democratic party, in attempting
that German cure by the application
of far-reaching social reforms, may
justly claim to stand for a national
policy, and if it lives up to its claim,
forswearing in practice past chauvin-
istic ambitions, there is some hope of
Germany's recovery, both physical
and moral, and of her reconciliation
with the world.
From Cow to Con-
sumer
XpROM the cow to the ultimate con-
-'- sumer was the shortest possible
distance for the infant Jupiter, hid-
ing in a cavern from his father
Kronos, according to the Cretan
legend, and drawing his nourishment
from the udders of the goat Amal-
thea with his own lips. Nor had
Romulus and Remus any further to
go, though the "cow" in their case
was not even a goat, but a motherly-
hearted wolf.
In addition to these instances of a
milk supply absolutely direct, Medi-
terranean legend gives us also an ex-
ample in which the help of the middle-
man is reduced to the very minimum
of cost-increasing interference. When
Metabus, the Volscian, as Virgil tells
us, fled from his rebellious people into
the mountains, carrying his infant
daughter Camilla in his arms, he fed
her by milking the warm fluid directly
into her mouth, from the udders of
the wild mares that roamed the for-
ests. There was no unnecessary cost
here, surely, unless Metabus had to
waste valuable time in persuading the
mare to submit.
Even yet, occasionally, the traveler
may see an urchin of Naples or
Palermo begging for a mouthful of
goat's milk alia Camilla; but the
milkman is apt to show a spirit of
jest, rather than a concern for the
child's nourishment, and neck, eyes,
hair and mouth share about equally
in the donation. In much of Italy
and Sicily, however, there is no great
loss between goat or cow and the cof-
fee cup. The American traveler in
Girgenti, for example, starting for a
sunrise ramble among the temple
ruins of the plain below, may ask the
keeper of some little ristorante for
caffe e latte before he has laid in his
morning supply. He goes to the door
with a little pitcher, looks up and
down the street until he spies a bunch
of goats, and is back in less than two
minutes with just the amount needed.
A lone American guest in a little
pensione among the ruins of ancient
Syracuse saw the goat that furnished
the milk for his breakfast driven up
in a donkey cart and milked before
the door. On some of the public
squares of Palermo one may see a
donkey cart standing for a large part
of the day, with two or three cows
attached to it, and a calf tied to the
tail of each cow, the owner at hand
to milk the required amount for any
customer who may appear. If the
traveler is curious to know why the
calves are brought along, he will be
told — or will see, if he watches long
enough — that the cow is sometimes
stubborn about giving down her milk,
and the calf has to be used as a
"starter."
The advantage of these more direct
modes of supply are evident, such as
they are. No ice is needed to keep
the milk from souring in your re-
frigerator, when you can call up a
goat and get it fresh from the original
package at almost any hour of the
day. And you can save materially in
the fuel required to boil it, when you
have a temperature of about 100 to
start from. You may know, also, that
it has not been watered ; and there is
some satisfaction in knowing just
where it comes from. If you do not
like the milk from Giulio's spotted
goat to-day, you can try a pint from
Giuseppe's white one to-morrow.
But whence comes the milk in the
bottle set down at the door of the
New Yorker, pasteurized, graded, and
sealed, according to the officially im-
posed formula? No man on earth
could tell you. The delivery man
knows at what distributing station
his wagon was loaded, but back of
that all certainty vanishes. No one
cow may have been responsible for
even a spoonful in the entire quart.
No one dairy farm may have supplied
any considerable fraction of it. The
grass that clothes the hills and valleys
of any one of many possible combina-
tions of counties and States may be
represented in it. No, the satisfac-
tion of knowing specifically where it
came from can never be yours.
You can have fair assurance, how-
ever, that it is clean. Doubtless
neither the goat Amalthea nor the
wolf of the Capitol had her udders
washed in any germ-destroying solu-
tion before the infant Jupiter, or
Romulus and Remus, took their
meals; and there is a very striking
contrast between the goats and cows
and their milkers, wandering un-
washed through the dirty streets of a
South Italian city, and the cleanliness
of milker, cow, and stall of a modern
New York dairy farm. Seventy
years ago the proposition of an en-
thusiast that the milk supply should
be protected by Government tests and
inspection was used by Herbert Spen-
cer as an instance of the absurd
length to which Government might
go in its encroachment on individual
liberty. But to-day the deadly peril
that may lurk in unclean milk is too
well known to leave any popular sup-
port for the liberty of a dairyman to
be clean or unclean, according to his
own will. In a more complicated
civilization, with a more accurate
knowledge of dangers heretofore un-
appreciated, even those of us who be-
lieve in as little government interfer-
ence as possible see more points at
which government curtailment of cer-
tain liberties seems imperative.
THE REVIEW
A weekly journal of political and
general discussion
Published by
The National Wikkly Corporatioh
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold db Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars a ^ear in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra.. Foreign subscriptioBs may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright, 1920. in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Ayrss O. W. Fisxims
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson
Jerome Landfield
592]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 56
The Political Parties in Germany
A SUBVERSION of the German party
system was the natural conse-
quence of the Revolution. The parties
themselves, however, though most of
them have changed their names, are not
sufficiently aware that the emergence of
new political problems necessitates a re-
orientation of their aims and a restate-
ment of the reasons for their existence.
Social-Democracy has sustained the
strongest shock in the upheaval. At the
outbreak of the war the party as a whole
went hand in hand with the bourgeois
parties, which until then had always
claimed to be the "National" parties. But
from the outset there was among the
Socialists an opposition to the war and
the war credits, and when, in the course
of time, this opposition took visible
shape by the secession of the "Independ-
ents" from the great Social-Democratic
party, the day had arrived on which the
German Revolution virtually began. It
broke out at a time not of economic pros-
perity, but of economic depression, which
from the German standpoint ended in a
catastrophe in consequence of the block-
ade against the import of foodstuffs and
raw materials not being raised after the
conclusion of the armistice. The so-
called Majority Socialists, the old party,
saw clearly that under these circum-
stances it would be impossible to realize
the theoretical ideal of the Marxian sys-
tem. They restricted themselves to
strong theoretical statements and a
few moderate attempts at practical na-
tionalization. Even that little proved
difficult to carry through. The Major-
ity Socialists, moreover, recognized the
democratic principle, that is, the right of
decision on matters of legislation. Con-
stitution, government, and administra-
tion by the majority of the people. As
this majority, at the elections early in
1919 for the National Assembly, voted a
bourgeois ticket, the compromise policy
appeared unavoidable from the Socialist
standpoint, and will remain unavoidable
so far as the Majority Socialists are con-
cerned, as a majority of the two So-
cialist parties over the total bourgeois
vote is very improbable for a long time
to come. In this way the Majority So-
cialists, from a revolutionary party, have
become a radical reform party, which
differs from a Socialism of bourgeois
conception chiefly in this, that it still
considers itself a Labor party, and in
that it subordinates its national aims to
the international principle. Its right
wing, however, seems to tend towards a
revision, in these two points also, of
the pre-war attitude of the old Social-
Democracy.
The "Independent" Social-Democratic
party is feebly represented in the Na-
tional Assembly, as compared with the
Majority Socialists, but it has, doubtless,
among the masses, at the present time,
a great many more supporters than at
the time of the elections early in 1919.
The extremists of the party, it is true,
have left it again, the most radical to
join orthodox Bolshevism, the others to
form the Communist party; but the
dividing lines between these three groups
are vague and fluctuating. The Inde-
pendents demand, according to the old
programme, immediate nationalization
and the actual dictatorship of the pro-
letariat through the system of the
Soviets, in conformity with the Russian
example. By the dictatorship the bour-
geois will everywhere be ousted from
power, and nationalization must be
realized at once and without mercy. The
democratic principle that the majority
shall decide is not recognized by the In-
dependents; they oppose to it the will
and the "superior" right of the labor
class to reorganize, according to their
demands, the state and the social struc-
ture, together with the process of pro-
duction and the division of the proceeds
of labor. The rapid growth of the In-
dependents' following is chiefly due to
the circumstance that, in spite of the
Revolution having extended the political
rights of the people and the actual power
of the labor class in particular, this in-
crease of right and power was not ac-
companied by an improvement of their
material existence. Foodstuffs, clothing,
and all commodities remain scarce and
expensive, and although strikes can en-
force increasingly higher wages, their
purchasing power will never equal that
of the much lower wages of pre-war
days. Hence the masses are easily per-
suaded that only the absolute dictator-
ship and the relentless destruction of all
the opposing capitalistic interests of the
bourgeoisie can bring them relief. This
is, so far as Germany is concerned, an
error, but the error is comprehensible,
and there are no popular arguments
against it. Distrust, unrest, and discon-
tent at the high cost of living are the
pacemakers of the Independents in their
race for a majority over the old Social-
ist party at the polls, and it is not
unlikely that the Majority Socialists will
soon lose their title to that name.
The counterpart of the Social Democ-
racy on the right is the German National
People's party (Deutschnationale Volks-
partei), formed by the old Conservatives
with militaristic, agrarian, and Pan-
German leanings, and the German
People's party (Deutsche Volkspartei) ,
which had its origin in the right wing
of the former National Liberals, and
which receives support, as the latter did,
from the industrial magnates and a large
body of men with university training.
The German People's party is the great
protagonist of the capitalistic inter-
ests and of the capitalistic organization
of society. It insists on the necessity of
leaving capital as much unimpaired as
possible. It sees itself compelled by the
force of circumstances to make conces-
sions with regard to economic legisla-
tion, the influence of the workers on the
management of the shop, etc., and many
of its leaders have come forward with
good suggestions on these subjects. But
they are firmly opposed to the principle
of nationalization. The party's internal
strength depends on the membership of
the bulk of the German intellectuals, and
on the use, for agitation purposes, of
the fundamentally false, but superficially
convincing argument that Germany was
great as a monarchy but, as a Republic
under the rule of Social-Democracy, has
come to grief. An interesting fact, which
may prove the beginning of an important
development, is the rise of social ideas
among the extreme right, in the bosom
of the German National People's party.
In the field of social progress there is a
better chance of an agreement between
the democratic Socialism of the Left and
the ethical Socialism within the German
National party, than of the former
with the capitalistic tendencies of the
People's party.
A curious organization, destined, per-
haps, to play the leading role in Ger-
many's political future, is the German
Democratic party (Deutsche Democrat-
ische Partei). It is true, however, that,
constituted as it is at present, it can
not exist very much longer. Its develop-
ment tends, obviously, in two opposite
directions : nationally* towards the right,
socially towards the left. This is the
old ideal of the greatest thinker whom
the party ever counted among its mem-
bers: the late Dr. Friedrich Naumann,
who, as long as twenty years ago, tried
to found a separate National Social party.
Such a development would eliminate
from the party, on the one side, the ele-
ments of the capitalistic class; on the
other, all such elements of lukewarm na-
tionalism as subordinate national to in-
ternational ideals. The attraction of this
movement, as against Social Democracy,
is in its appeal to national sentiment,
and, as against the right, in so far as
this is anti-Socialistic, in its freedom
from prejudice in social matters. If this
National-Social principle should be made
the corner-stone of the Democratic party,
the consequence would be, in the bosom
of the party, that internationalism and
capitalism would lose their hold on it
and that the socially minded elements of
the right and such Socialists as are sus-
ceptible to national sentiment would feel
attracted towards it; and for that rea-
son it is not improbable that the devel-
*There is a great difference in German between
"national" and "nationalistic," almost analogous to
that between "patriotic" and "chauvinistic."
June 5, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[593
opment of the German Democratic party
will bring about a more clear-cut division
in the German party system. Demo-
crats who are convinced adherents of the
Republic, and such as, from tradition
and sentiment, are in favor of monarch-
ism are fairly well balanced within the
party, but both groups are at one in
their loyal acceptance of the present
German Constitution.
Independent of any organization based
on political principles, the Christian
People's party (Christliche Volkspartei),
still better known by its old name as
the Centre, finds its chief strength in
the Roman-Catholicism uniting its mem-
bers and in the authority of the clergy.
But the tension within the party is
stronger than it ever was. Since the
Catholic labor masses saw what power
their class had gained, thanks to the
Social-Democratic Revolution, it was
only natural and unavoidable that class
feelings became more and more pro-
nounced among them. It would prove
impossible to keep them within the
Centre, if the party should turn unso-
cial and undemocratic. That is the
reason for the remarkable coalition of
the Centre with Social-Democracy and
the German Democrats. The right wing
of the Centre, however, has strong lean-
ings towards monarchism, and conserva-
tive tendencies. In proportion to the
growth of the influence on the party of
the social radicalism of its left wing,
the temptation will grow stronger for
the aristocracy and the intellectuals of
Catholic Germany to join the German
Nationals, the extreme right in Parlia-
ment, where also Protestant orthodoxy
has its seats.
All parties in Germany, therefore, are
passing through a crisis. None of them
has as yet readjusted itself to the new
conditions created by the Revolution.
The complete and surprisingly quick re-
pression of the counter-revolution has
shown, however, that strong reactionary
forces are non-existent. To return to
the old regime is the sentimental wish
of the entire right, but the determina-
tion and the will to bring it back are
nowhere apparent.
Dr. Paul Rohrbach
Berlin
The House of Piotr Ivanovitch
Do you see that half-burned house
over there on the knoll?" asked
Carson.
"Yes, the one with the red-tiled roof.
Looks as if it had been the best one in
the village."
"It was ; it is always the best one that
gets burned."
We were driving through a Russian
village not far from St. Petersburg in
the early summer of 1914. It might just
as well have been in any other part of
the country, for Carson knew what he
was talking about. He had lived in
Russia at least fifteen years, had busi-
ness interests that took him everywhere,
and had a more intimate knowledge of
rural Russia than any other American
I knew. His remark that it is always
the best house in the village that gets
burned made no impression, however,
for I at once set it down to an unsatis-
factory breakfast or the vile cigar he
was smoking, or to one of his occasional
caustic attitudes towards everything
Russian. Seeing this, he looked me
square in the face and said, "I see you
do not believe me, but I mean just what
I say. If a Russian peasant builds a
much finer house than those of his neigh-
bors they will burn it down for him."
Carson was well started now on his
favorite theme, namely, Russian peasant
characteristics, and I saw he was about
to give me some information gratis that
I should have been glad to pump him for.
I subsided and let him ramble.
"You see, when I first came to this
country in the life insurance business it
was a very new business for the Russian
peasant. Few of them had heard about
it and none of them knew anything about
it. I made several exploration trips to
Moscow, Kharkov, Kiev, Odessa, then
over to the lower Volga region at As-
trakhan and up that stream to Tsaritsin,
Samara, Kazan, Nijni Novgorod, and
then back to St. Petersburg. From each
of these cities I made short excursions by
droshky through the surrounding vil-
lages, prospecting for local agents. Busi-
ness? I never imagined we should get
much more than expenses out of it if
we were lucky, not when I first saw those
villages. Why man, just imagine it! No
fences, no roads, except mere cart tracks
that didn't seem to go anywhere in par-
ticular; no farmsteads, for the farmers
all lived in the villages; no welcoming
groves of beckoning trees to show where
somebody lived on the soil and loved it
and cared for it. And the villages were
laid out with but little attention to order
and no regard for the compass, the
houses were mere cabins of the same
color as the soil, with thatched roofs and
small cabbage gardens surrounded by a
brush fence. Not much prospect for
life insurance under such conditions, I
thought; for how can you persuade peo-
ple to take an interest in their estate,
their posterity, or even in their own later
days when they evidently have so little
in their immediate surroundings. The
houses or shanties were so much alike
that they worried me. I even tried to
show them how to build better ones, but
they looked at me with suspicion. I have
learned a lot about them in fifteen years,
and now that I understand their point of
view, let me say that I do not altogether
condemn it. Strange as it may seem to
you, I will even say that I respect it."
Carson glanced at me to enjoy my
look of incredulity, seemed satisfied, and
went on.
"I had with me an educated young
Russian as interpreter and adviser. He
is with me yet for that matter, is Ivan
Andreivitch Ephimoff, for there is no
more faithful and devoted helper any-
where than a Russian when he has be-
come attached to you. With his as-
sistance I selected our local agents from
among the most thrifty and ambitious
young men in the villages. These we
called together in conference in the
nearest city, and explained to them the
purpose and working of a life insurance
company. I was quite unprepared for the
interest they took in it, and the rising en-
thusiasm that seemed to seize upon them
as they consulted together, and quizzed
my interpreter Ivan Andreivitch for
more instructions from the 'barin.'
When we were alone I in turn quizzed
Ivan Andreivitch, and got very little re-
turn for my pains.
"Before long my business was grow-
ing astonishingly, and I remembered
those forlorn little villages with wonder.
Policies were issued, the premiums were
paid regularly, and the applicants seemed
to come without asking. One peculiar-
ity I noticed was that the payments uni-
formly came by postal money orde/ and
not by bank check. I asked Ivan Andrei-
vitch for an explanation. 'Perhaps,' he
replied, 'it is because the peasants have
no adequate banking facilities.' 'What,
none at all?' 'Generally not; and some-
times they do not trust those that they
have.' 'Ah! I think I begin to see.'
'Perhaps the barin sees also,' said Ivan
Andreivitch, smiling significantly, 'why
this life insurance business became popu-
lar immediately.' 'Possibly I do. You
mean that because the banking facili-
ties were inadequate the people turned
to life insurance as to a bank deposit.'
'Yes, but that is not all. Can you guess
the rest?' 'That is enough for my pur-
poses; but if there are other reasons, I
have not yet discovered them.' 'Wait
till you do. It will mean a great deal
more to you,' said Ivan.
"And still my business continued to
astonish me with its growth. You would
hardly believe it, but it is at this moment
larger than all the rest of our European
business put together. I often wondered
where the peasants got their money,
whether they hoarded it in unsuspected
places, and whether they were in fact,
as they certainly seemed, all equally
poor. A flood of light was thrown upon
these questions one summer while visit-
594]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 56
ing at the country home of a wealthy
landed proprietor, Sergei Alexeivitch
Baritzin, who lived in true baronial stylfe
minus the castle, but plus wide spread-
ing lawns, ample gardens, and an abun-
dance of buildings suggestive of old
plantation days in America. The respect
and deference shown him by his tenants
and immediate servants, and the genuine
human interest he took in all their small
concerns was beautiful to se«!, and I could
not refrain from remarking upon it.
" "Yes,' said he, 'I should think you
would notice it, and with approval, too,
in spite of your American notions of
equality. Don't tell me that you have
no trace of the feudal relation since
slavery was abolished, for you do have
it Outside of agriculture your whole
industrial system is built upon it, just
as in western and central Europe, and
the laborers are merely the retainers of
their lordly employers, dependent upon
them for their daily bread. You differ
not at all from the barons, knights, and
hinds of the Middle Ages, and I envy
you not your theoretical equality. What
you see on my estate is your own indus-
trial system applied to agriculture, but
applied with a conscience and human
sympathy, and not with the inhuman
claim that labor is just like any other
commodity, to be bought at the lowest
price. The difference between our feud-
alism and yours is that here we have not
lost the personal touch between the upper
and the lower classes, while in America
you have, hence their mutual antago-
nism. Then, too, your rule of the major-
ity-^call you that freedom? If I am to
be ruled by anybody, any kind of gov-
ernment, I prefer the rule of one intelli-
gent head with a brain in it, a Tsar if
you please, rather than the unintelligent,
many-headed monster you call the ma-
jority. On my estate I am respected,
beloved, and obeyed, as you have just
observed, and likewise is the Tsar
by all law-abiding and upright people.'
" 'Yes, Sergei Alexeivitch, I have been
much delighted with the cordial relations
I have witnessed between you and your
tenants, and I wonder if it is the same
elsewhere. Do you happen to be suffi-
ciently acquainted with other estates to
say that yours is typical, or is it ex-
ceptional? I do not ask if everybody is
satisfied, but if you please to admit a
majority opinion, is the majority rea-
sonably well satisfied, either with your
excellent management of your estate, or
with, for that matter, the Tsar's man-
agement of the Empire?'
"My friend halted for a reply, for as
we both knew, disregarding the political
issue raised, there were too many cases
to the contrary. There were the land-
lords who never lived on their estates,
who hired Jewish overseers, and thus
contributed to racial enmities. There
were the independent communes as in
ancient times, the villages owning their
own land and farming it as unintelli-
gently as in ancient times, no landlord
above them and but little ambition
among them. There were also the inde-
pendent farmers or peasants who had
detached themselves from the village and
moved out upon their own land — a rap-
idly increasing class. But not wishing
at that time to go to the end of so large
a subject, 'By the way,' I said, 'why was
yonder house ruined by fire? I am told
that such things are likely to occur to
the better houses but never to the poorer
ones?'
" 'Here comes the very owner,' said
Sergei Alexeivitch, 'You speak Russian,
ask him.'
"The old peasant doffed his cap as he
approached and said 'zdravstvuitsye,
barin' (health to you, master).
" 'Good morning, Piotr Ivanovitch,'
said the master, 'aren't you sorry now
that you undertook to build a finer house
than your neighbors have?' Piotr shook
his head slowly and mournfully — 'No,
barin, the old one leaked badly and was
not warm enough in the winter. My son
was to be married and we built a larger
house to accommodate us all. A thatched
roof bums quickly, barin, and so I
roofed it with tile. If it was my neigh-
bors that burned it, they surely did me
a great wrong; but I suppose they did
not understand.'
" 'Never mind, Piotr,' said Sergei
Alexeivitch, 'we will all turn in and help
you build a new one, and I promise that
you will never feel the loss. But mind
you, what is good enough for your neigh-
bors is good enough for you, and if you
go to putting on airs with a fine showy
house, why you can't expect it to last
long — you know that now.'
"Piotr Ivanovitch acquiesced with a
bow and moved away, apparently re-
signed to the force of the argument, even
if unconvinced of its justice.
"And there," said Carson, turning to
me again, "you have the whole case in
a nutshell. The Russian peasant's idea
of progress is that it must not be by
individuals but in mass. They accept
existing class distinctions without seek-
ing to justify them, but the class at
least must move forward together or
better not move at all. Injustices spring
from inequalities in condition, unless the
strong protect the weak. Russia has
taught me that much," said Carson with
conviction. "America in colonial times
was a country of practically uniform so-
cial conditions, in which wealth played
no conspicuous part, and the misfortunes
of individuals were alleviated by the
community as a matter of course. This
was notably the case under frontier con-
ditions. But now, let a man lose his
all in a ruined homestead, or worse still,
let him lose his job, the only means he
has of gaining a livelihood, even through
no fault of his own, and the rule is that
he will find no neighbors to steady him
from falling till he regains his feet.
There is nothing succeeds like success in
America, and conversely there is no sin ,
like unsuccess. Don't tell me 'No,' I
have been through it all in our own dear
country and I am not theorizing. I
speak from sad experience when I
say that progress by individuals means
standing as individuals without com-
munity support in the day of adversity.
That is the Anglo-Saxon way, but it is
not the Russian peasants' way, and let
us be fair enough to say that theirs has
its merits. To me it seems as the great-
est lesson of Russia's history that the
solidarity and equality of her peasantry
are the sheet-anchor of her hope as a
nation."
"But," I interposed, "how far have
your Russian peasantry advanced in the
same time that we have transformed a
wilderness into what America is to-day?
Are they not in practically the same con-
dition that they were in when we began?"
"Yes, and what is time to a Russian?"
replied Carson. "Besides, he might an-
swer you, 'Boast of your past if you like.
We look to the future which shall be
ours because we have not laid the founda-
tion of our society in inequality and its
resulting injustices!' Mind you this:
that when the American thinks of in-
equalities he thinks of political matters;
but the Russian means industrial in-
equalities also."
"Then a political revolution would in-
volve an industrial revolution?"
"Among the industrialized class, yes;
among the peasant farmers, no. Land
grabbing there would be, and the despoil-
ing of landed estates, but these, however
distressful and unjust, would be isolated
and not general phenomena, and in the
main not the result of peasant initiative."
"And the individual ownership of
land," I continued, "as it breaks up the
close community of the village, will it
not just as surely break up the com-
munity spirit?"
"That," sighed Carson, "is very much
to be feared. Still, Russian peasant
solidarity has been proof against harder
tests than that. It is the result of cen-
turies of pounding and hammering to-
gether and it will outlast any other that
I know."
"One point more, friend Carson : tell
me how industrial progress is at all
possible, either by individuals or in com-
munities, when progress is so limited
that there are no means of saving or in-
vesting— no adequate banking facilities,
and no houses or other tangible forms
of property safe from destruction by en-
vious neighbors." "Ah, that's where I
come in," said Carson, smiling ever so
sweetly, "life insurance."
J. E. Conner
U. S. Consul at Petrograd, 1909-1914
June 5, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[595
I
Anatole France as
Preacher
THE speech delivered some months ago
by Anatole France to the Congress
of Teachers' Institutes at Tours, and re-
ported apparently verbatim in I'Hu-
manite, must have been read with as-
tonished, though quite genuine, delight
by many of the old novelist's admirers.
We have long known that he could write
in different styles, but we must be for-
given if we did not before think it
possible he could preach. Yet it is preach-
ing of a high order that he has now
given us. On a somewhat similar oc-
casion, overwhelmed by a like incon-
gruity, certain men of Israel asked,
"What is this that is come unto the son
of Kish? Is Saul also among the
prophets?" His experience of the Eu-
ropean tragedy has wrought this change
in the gay, debonair Anatole France,
even as another — whose very tempera-
ment might by itself suggest the com-
parison— became a new man when Sam-
uel had roused him to a sense of na-
tional responsibility, and had poured the
oil of anointing upon his head.
It is hard to think of that impassioned
address to the teachers on the solemn
duties of their office as proceeding from
the author of "Penguin Island"or "The
Opinions of Jerome Coignard." For it is
as an entertainer, a satirist, a skeptic,
that Anatole France had so far been
chiefly known to us. He had entertained
us hugely, and his satire had spared none
of our cherished sanctities. But what
seemed to forbid still more strongly all
thought of him as a guide to progress
was the fact that he had been so uni-
formly skeptical about human advance,
and had poured such scorn upon the hopes
of world-mending by which others were
inspired. A glance at his past in the
light of his present may not be without
interest and value. It is here offered
in no spirit of reproach, for one must be
a poor trifler indeed to dwell upon "in-
consistencies" in an old man who has
seen his world turned upside down. It
is more fitting to express one's admira-
tion for those who can make a change
in themselves when a changing world de-
mands it.
It was in the year 1870, while the
Franco-Prussian war was at its height,
and the shells from German guns dropped
every few minutes hissing into the
Marne, that the writer whom all the
world has since come to know as "Ana-
tole France" was doing duty at the front
as a conscript. He has told us himself
that he carried Vergil's .S^neid in his
knapsack, and read it as often as he
found time. He had no enthusiasm for
the business of war, and, when peace
was concluded on those terms of des-
perate humiliation for the French which
mankind in general came so slowly to
appreciate, he rejoiced to be set free
from the burden of his irksome service.
The fortunes of Mneas and Dido inter-
ested him more than any change in the
Europe of his own day.
Forty-four years passed. The un-
known youth of twenty-six, who had to
attend, against his will, to the first Ger-
man menace, was a famous man of sev-
enty when that menace appeared again.
No one cared much whether he was
apathetic in 1869, but not a few were
very anxious indeed to know how his
immense influence would be exerted in
1914. Nor did his first letter on the
subject, counselling a moderation for
which his countrymen could see little
place, tend to reassure the public mind.
But within a few weeks he had wakened
up to the grim reality. It caused some-
thing like a thrill when we learned that
he had ignored the weight of his years,
presented himself at the War Office, and
requested to be furnished with a rifle.
Inconsistency is a poor reproach at best,
but it was not even inconsistent to look
upon fighting for the Republic in 1914
as quite another matter from fighting
for Napoleoji III in 1870. Needless to
say, the French Government did not
agree to enrolling this veteran in the
ranks, but declined his spectacular pro-
posal with adequate acknowledgment of
his zeal. It was felt that there was an-
other instrument which Anatole France
could make mightier than many swords,
and he was bidden to return to his pen.
His next book, "Sur la Voie Glorieuse,"
was unlike anything he had ever written
before, except in that vividness, pathos,
overwhelming power, which he now
turned to quite a new purpose. It was
a trumpet call to destroy German mili-
tarism from top to bottom, a bitter in-
dictment of those who dared to speak
of peace until the forces of oppression
should have been crushed, an argument
to neutral states all over the world that
no neutrality was possible in such a
crisis, and a moving appeal, such as he
knew better than any other man how to
write, that Frenchmen should, as of old,
be "the champions of their smiling, fer-
tile land, the tombs of their fathers, and
the cradles of their children."
Those of us who have long revelled in
his books can not help recalling some
things he used to say, and wondering to
what extent he would now modify them.
We knew, indeed, the fervor of his anti-
militarism, and were sometimes inclined
to suspect him of being a pacifist. Not
even "Tolstoi himself had been a more
mordant critic of the European trend
towards war. "Penguin Island" deserves
to stand beside "Gulliver's Travels" as
a satire upon the society in which its
author lived. We remember the statue
of "Trinco" in Penguinia, the warrior
who had conquered half the known
world, planting his flag amid the ice-
bergs of the Pole and on the burning
sands of Africa. "At the time of his
fall there were left in our country none
but the hunchbacks and cripples from
whom we are descended . . . But he
gave us glory . . . And glory never
costs too much." What a lifelike pic-
ture we had in "Professor Obnubile," the
brilliant economist who taught that wars
are no longer possible, because it is an
economic axiom that peace without and
peace within are essential to the prog-
ress of the industrial state! As the pro-
fessor visited democratic republics, and
found to his disgust that they were
all busy with armaments, which of us
could avoid thinking of Norman Angell,
and his book so appropriately named
"The Great Illusion"? American read-
ers may have been a little irritated, but
they were certainly amused, at the story
of New Atlantis, with its legislators sit-
ting on cane chairs and resting their
feet upon their desks, passing the ac-
counts for a war with "Third Zealand"
to kill two-thirds of the inhabitants that
the remaining one-third might be forced
to buy Atlantan umbrellas and braces,
or decreeing in a few seconds a pig war
with "the Emerald Republic which inso-
lently contends with our pigs for the
hegemony of hams and sauces in all the
markets of the universe." Poor Pro-
fessor Obnubile was driven to conclude
that a wise man would collect enough
dynamite to blow up this planet, thus
giving satisfaction to the universal con-
science. "Moreover," he added, "this uni-
versal conscience does not exist."
And, impartial scoffer that he was,
Anatole France was no less sarcastic
when he wrote of his own countrymen.
The "insane Europeans" were plotting to
cut one another's throats, though they
were united and enfolded by a single civ-
ilization. There was no country where
the freedom of the individual was less re-
spected than in France. She pretended to
be democratic, but was in reality the prey
of la haute finance. For the last hun-
dred years she had tried an incoherent
succession of insurrectionary govern-
ments. In the end all bonds had been
loosened, and she had become more cor-
rupt than in the worst days of monarchy.
Nor did our novelist build any hope upon
advancing education, upon the arousing
of the masses by the light of knowledge.
His attitude used to remind us of Dr.
Johnson's dictum that it was not worth
spending half a guinea to live under
one form of government rather than
under another, for it made no difference
to the happiness of the individual. It is
risky, of course, to attribute to an au-
thor the sentiments which he puts into
the mouth of characters in his fiction,
but in this case we can scarcely be wrong.
Just as Conrad, Lara, Harold, Juan were
596]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 56
so many spokesmen of the Byronic tem-
perament, so Bonnard, Coignard, Trub-
bet, Bergeret were lay figures through-
whom their creator expounded the Fran-
cian theory of life. And however fre-
quently he incarnated himself anew, we
meet with the same spirit of genial kind-
liness rooted in the same profound skepti-
cism about the ideals, the growth, the
destiny of the human species. His view
often suggested that of a literary Vol-
tairean noble under the ancien regime,
with many popular sympathies, but with
no delusions about intellectualizing the
herd.
Rather did the old Anatole France
delight to sketch some roui man of let-
ters, straitened in purse, dividing his
time between the cabarets of the Latin
Quarter and the book-shops of the Quai
Voltaire — someone like the Marquis
Trubbet in "Jean Servien," who had
often breakfasted on a page of Tacitus
and supped on a satire of Juvenal, but
for whom such artistic substitutes,
though they might take the place of
food, could in no wise do duty for drink.
In many of his books he makes one think
again of that sjmipathetic touch with
which Balzac used to depict revived aris-
tocracy in the Legitimist period of fif-
teen years between the fall of Napoleon
and the rise of Louis Philippe. They sug-
gest the unmistakable friendliness with
which the frail and fair successors of
Ninon de L'Enclos were painted, and the
far coarser workmanship that Balzac
gave us when he tried to present the
bourgeois semi-Puritanism prevalent at
the court of the Citizen King. For
Anatole France in other days was no
zealot for the Revolution.
How he loved to caricature the old
revolutionary enthusiasms ! What fun he
poked at the pseudo-history of empires
from Noah down to Charlemagne, at the
long procession of ambitious princes,
greedy prelates, virtuous citizens, philo-
sophic poets, "and other personages who
had no real existence outside the novels
of Marmontel" ! How he laughed at the
rhetorical tropes about Brutus and
Scaevola and Hannibal, or at the new de-
vices for a pack of playing cards that
would have no such undemocratic figures
as king, queen, knave, but would substi-
tute Liberty of clubs. Equality of spades.
Fraternity of diamonds, and Law of
hearts! Coignard's ideal for educating
mankind had for its first purpose a very
singular rule. Men were to be shown
that "their weak and silly nature has
never constructed nor imagined anything
worth the trouble of attacking or de-
fending very briskly." "If they knew
the crudity and weakness of their great-
est works, such as their laws and their
empires, they would only fight in fun
or in play, like children building sand-
castles by the sea." Coignard himself
would never have signed the Declaration
of the Rights of Man, "because of the
excessive and unfair separation it es-
tablishes between man and the gorilla."
Those who love to trace spiritual af-
finities in literature often insist that
Anatole France owes his deepest inspira-
tion to Ernest Renan, and we know that
this discipleship has been explicitly ac-
knowledged by himself. But if we are
in search less of the teaching which he
consciously followed than of the tem-
perament to which his own was uncon-
sciously akin, it is a different name that
will occur to us. We shall think of that
calm, reflective, half-sympathetic and
half-cynical grand seigneur who four
hundred and fifty years ago retired from
the world's bustle to spend "under the
care of the learned maidens" whatever
span of life might yet be allotted to him.
Constantly as we read the Bergeret
books that pensive figure seems to shine
through the page, and though the words
are the words of Anatole France, it is
the spirit of Montaigne that has em-
bodied itself afresh. We see again the
placid critic of all things human, heed-
less alike of the bloodshed in a St. Bar-
tholomew massacre and the cannonad-
ing of a Spanish Armada, shut up in the
tower of his chateau with the three bay
windows which every tourist knows so
well, that he might amass more and
more illustrations of the "wonderful,
vain, divers, and wavering subjects" pre-
sented to scrutiny in the life of man-
kind, that he might browse with impar-
tial interest among the treasures of lit-
erature both sacred and pagan, and that
he might amuse his later years by cov-
ering beam and rafter with the inscrip-
tions that appealed to his fancy — the
aphoristic wit of Martial, the cold skep-
ticism of Lucretius, the glowing poetry
of the Psalms, the elegant lyrics of Hor-
ace, and the doleful vaticination of Ec-
clesiastes.
Now if the veteran novelist still has "a
book in him," as Lord Morley would say,
how many of these old attitudes may we
expect him to reconsider, and how far
may we expect him to write differently?
Will he preserve the mood of "Les Opin-
ions de Jerome Coignard," or will he
further expand the message of "Sur la
Voie Glorieuse"? He can not well keep
to both, or much further experiment with
them in turn. For instance, will he show
himself as suspicious as ever that French
munition makers are raising a scare
about the country's peril for no higher
purpose than to get business for them-
selves? Will he still feel sure that there
is little to choose between democracies
and aristocracies, that the tyranny of
the former is on the whole more to be
feared, and that the chief merit in a gov-
ernment is to let people alone? Is he as
clear as ever that true knowledge can
not be widely diffused, that supersti-
tious adherence to custom is best for
the proletariat, and that only a select
few should be encouraged to try funda-
mental thinking? Does he continue to
think of the French Assembly of 1793
mainly in its ludicrous aspect of excite-
ment about Dumnorix and Vercingetorix
and the glories of regicide? When he
thinks of America, is his attention drawn
to new wars devised for the opening of
new markets? Or will he yet make the
amende honorable to those whom he
treated in the past with far less than
justice, to the bourgeois man of business
who has revealed a soul far above busi-
ness profits, to the idealists who meant
something now known to be very vital
indeed when they talked of liberty and
equality and fraternity, to the priests
who have shown that other-worldliness
at the altar can be united with an heroic
zeal upon their country's battlefields? Is
Montaigne still his pattern of an intelli-
gent human outlook, or does he per-
chance feel that a little "enthusiasm" is
needed, and that this world can not be
saved if we enter upon its work spiritu-
ally hamstrung?
Such questions as these had often oc-
curred to me before I chanced to read
the speech delivered by Anatole France
to the Congress of Teachers' Institutes.
Guesses at his present mood are no longer
necessary, for he has spoken out with
frankness and even with passion. The
spirit which inspired his address to the
soldiers five years ago is with him still
as he speaks to those who must recon-
struct his country at peace. He has told
the French educators that the future is
in their hands, that the old social system
has "sunk under the weight of its sins,"
that only in the awakening of a new
humanity can Europe place its hope. He
has warned us all against the facile as-
sumption that "man does not change,"
or that exerting oneself towards social
improvement is wasted labor. He has
bidden us realize that human nature can
still move backward and forward — as it
has moved continuously since the days
of the cave-dwellers — that it is environ-
ment which makes all the difference, that
as one sort of education led us to catas-
trophe another can secure us against the
like catastrophe again. His readers will
be quick to recognize here, not indeed
an absolutely new tone in Anatole France,
for he has had fitful impulses like this
before, but a new note of enduring reso-
luteness. Let the feeble folk who have
so long imitated his skepticism, though
they had no share in his power, take a
lesson from the example he has set. One
of the things that some of us hope from
the new era is that we shall hear a
little less about "conventional morality,"
Nietzschean transvaluations, and the hy-
pocrisy of the "smug middle class"! It
used to be all very amusing, but the hour
for seriousness has struck.
Herbert L. Stewart
June 5, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[597
Correspondence
Mr. Dreiser and the Broad-
way Magazine
To the Editors of THE Review:
In your issue of May 8, 1920, you
publish a letter from one Annie Nathan
Meyer, which you label in quotes "Mr.
Dreiser's Battle for Truth." Now be-
fore dealing with Mrs. Meyer it occurs
to me that a journal of the usual beauti-
ful, good, and true standard such as no
doubt yours professes to be might find
it advisable before giving space to libel-
ous assertions to submit the same to the
person accused or at least to make some
effort to confirm them. Take the state-
ment by Mrs. Meyer which reads : "It is
only a few years since a group of mem-
bers of the Authors' League asked for
contributions for the brave and hounded
author to enable him to continue his
'battle for truth.' " Now this is all very
well as malice but as a matter of fact I
have never heard of any such group.
Neither the Authors' League nor any
other league or group has ever asked for
contributions for anything in connec-
tion with me. At the time the New
York Society for the Suppression of Vice
undertook to suppress "The Genius" the
Authors' League did call a meeting of
some committee, which by the way I did
not request but before which, neverthe-
less, I was invited to appear, to consider
whether it would issue a protest against
the suppression of "The Genius." I did
so appear but, having done so much, the
League took no further action and did
not come to my defense in any shape.
Now the Authors' League has a tele-
phone and a secretary. Why could not
one of the editors of a paper pretending
to fairness have called him up and made
inquiry as to this before printing a lie?
"I worked with Mr. Dreiser sev-
eral months as associate editor of the
magazine of which he was editor-in-
chief."
The lady refers to the Broadway
Magazine, of which I was not editor-in-
chief but only the managing editor. Mr.
Ben B. Hampton was the publisher and
editor. (See Who's Who for 1907.) Mrs.
Meyer's claim to having been associated
with me in the management of that
magazine takes its rise from the follow-
ing circumstances: Either after having
been recommended to me or coming to me
of her own accord (I can not now recall)
Mrs. Meyer undertook to prepare or have
prepared for the magazine a series of
articles on art and artists. In order to
impress those with whom she desired to
deal she requested the privilege of sign-
ing herself as assistant or associate
editor, to which I agreed, but for that
work only. That she has or ever had any
letter conferring a general associate edi-
torship is not true. You might ask her
to produce the letter. The reason why
subsequently I severed this arrangement
with Mrs. Meyer was this : She had the
profound conviction that every word and
comma of her not ill-prepared text was
not only essential but sacred and that
neither she nor anyone else should be
called upon or permitted to alter it in
any way. As experts in the matter of
makeup and space difficulties in connec-
tion with a magazine of the illustrated
variety perhaps you will appreciate the
difficulty of such a stand. I found it
insurmountable and was compelled to
break with Mrs. Meyer.
Now it may be that subsequently some
writer with whom Mrs. Meyer made
some arrangement may have sued the
Broadway Magazine Corporation or Mr.
Ben B. Hampton for non-payment of
some bill. I do not remember. And in
behalf of the Corporation I may have
been compelled to appear. I do not even
recall the incident. If so, I must have
testified as I am testifying here, but as
for denying her any connection with the
magazine, I doubt it. I would like the
name of the case and the date of the
trial. She asserts that I so testified and
that on her producing a letter which
showed such associate editorship the
judge looked at me in disgust and
rendered a decision for the plaintiff.
Nothing more. But I doubt whether a
judge detecting a man in perjury would
deal with him so very leniently. And as
for my flushing, I think I might well
have if such were the case, but I have
a fairly retentive memory and I can not
recapture even so much as a thought in
connection with all this.
Speaking of your heading, "Mr.
Dreiser's Battle for Truth," I wish I
could persuade mine enemy and all others
to drop that overworked and misused
word "truth." I might be willing to
battle for a fact or many facts, but for
"truth," that wondrous, religious, mor-
alic thing, which like a mercenary can be
made to do service in any cause — well —
no — I do not fight for truth.
Theodore Dreiser
New York, May 16
To the Editors of The Review:
You were good enough to send me Mr.
Dreiser's statement to read before
publication. I can see no "malice" in
my statement concerning Mr. Dreiser's
friends, and their effort to help him
fight the censor. I never claimed that
it was an official movement on the part
of the Authors' League, but that I was
asked to help by some people who were
members of the League.
I am sorry I am unable at the moment
to look for the original letters, which I
hope later on to consult. My daughter
having just undergone a serious nose
operation, it is important not to stir up
dust in the room adjoining hers, where
my old letters are filed away. But I have
written to England to the writer who
sued the Broadway Magazine and for
whom I testified, asking him to send me
the exact date of the trial, the name of
the judge, etc. Unquestionably the sten-
ographic report of the trial will bear out
the entire accuracy of my statement. I
am told by my lawyer that even when a
judge who is trying a case has reason to
believe that a witness is not testifying
in accordance with the facts, he very
rarely bothers to order the prosecution
of the witness.
I understood that Mr. Hampton was
the owner of the Broadway Magazine,
and it was possible that he may have been
down as Editor-in-Chief, but I never saw
him, never had any dealing with him
whatever, and to all intents and purposes
Mr. Dreiser acted as Editor-in-Chief.
Mr. Hampton never appeared at the trial,
and Mr. Dreiser testified that he was
Editor of the magazine, and was the
only one who had authority to appoint
any Associate Editor, and that no one
else could have given me authority to
order articles. Mr. Dreiser, in his reply,
makes a point of not having conferred
upon me any "general associate editor-
ship." It does not matter what kind of
editor I was; his answer at the trial
was a general denial that I had any
power to order articles of any nature
whatever for the magazine.
Annie Nathan Meyeb
New York, May 27
[Solely on account of space those portions
of Mrs. Meyer's letter which set forth in de-
tail her personal relations with Mr. Dreiser
and the Broadway Magazine have been omitted.
It may be proper to add that Mrs. Meyer is a
writer and a public-spirited woman, well-
known for the leading part she took in the
founding of Barnard College. — Eds. The Re-
view.]
"America's Duty"
To the Editors of The Review :
Your article, "America's Duty," in the
Review of May 22, is refreshing, the
more so that one seldom hears of late
from press or pulpit a vigorous expres-
sion on what the United States ought to
do for the peoples in dire distress. The
contrast with what we saw and heard a
year or two ago is not only mortifying
but amazing.
Congress is blamed for heartlessness.
Well it may be, but does not Congress
reflect a mental attitude prevalent
through the country? Senators and
members of Congress are not usually
blind to what interests their constitu-
ents? If a particle of the extraordinary
zeal for the Constitutional amendments
had been manifested in behalf of wrecked
and starving nations. Congress would
not have been so lukewarm towards pro-
posed measures of relief.
598]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 56
Probably the past six months have
witnessed a greater outpouring of gifts
from the American people for ostensibly .
beneficent causes than ever before in
our history, but how trifling the part
of mitigating the miseries of those over-
whelmed by the calamities of the war!
Every one knows what the great "drives"
are for. So do our Congressmen. If
the vociferous appeals that stir the coun-
try are made for accumulating funds to
insure the ministry of coming ages, to
pile up big endowments for universities
and colleges such as never were dreamed
of before, and to finance on a vast scale
ecclesiastical schemes for visionary en-
terprises that tax credulity to the utmost,
while overlooking millions of people who
at this verj- hour are on the verge of
starvation, what is to be expected of
politicians in Washington?
May not these aspects of present con-
ditions be properly, commended to the
serious consideration of all who are en-
gineering the drafts on popular bene-
ficence which are to-day absorbing at-
tention and effort to the exclusion of the
actual sufferings of the world?
Altruist
New Haven, Conn., May 24
Survival After Death as
Related to Physics
To the Editors of The Review:
In your issue of March 6 Professor
Jastrow, discussing Sir Oliver Lodge,
says:
The peculiar aggravation of the "case" is
the trivial irrelevance of the evidence upon
which a professor of physics announces a sub-
verswe dispensation which, if true, would con-
tradict every principle of his science and rele-
gate ■ his laboratory to the scrap-heap of an
abandoned intellectual habitation.
The precise meaning of the phrase
which I have italicised is not clear to me.
The words seem to mean that if "sur-
vival after death" were proven to be a
fact it would be equivalent to a contra-
diction of the principles of physical
science. As this is manifestly not the
case — for physical science has no "prin-
ciples" which are concerned with the
"spirit" side of things — Professor Jas-
trow must mean something else, and
what this something else is is not clear
from his words.
Will he be so kind as to tell us what
he meant?
The reason why I am anxious to have
his meaning clearly stated is that many
ill-informed people suppose that the
metaphysical dogma which denies the
"spirit" side of things rests upon a foun-
dation of physical science, which, of
course, it does not. It is pure dogma.
Conceivably physical science may disprove
it some day, but it can never prove it.
T. F. W.
New York, May 9
[The reference is to the fact that, as
Sir Oliver is a physicist, he should be
peculiarly alert to any use of physical
data for an unscientific hypothesis.
Since he has included physical evidence
as part of his conviction, and thought
that if Palladino got over her temporary
moral decline (as people throw off a
cold) she would once again show that
spirit-agency can affect tables as hoist
and tackle would. If that is so, I fail
to see any use for a physical laboratory
in which one teaches and demonstrates
certain laws of behavior during the day,
while at evening in a seance room things
behave in a totally subversive manner.
I had no intention to imply that a be-
lief in survival after death as a matter
of faith or in association with any re-
ligious or cosmic position has any rela-
tion to physical data. It stands apart on
its own terms. So, also, there is nothing
in the general conclusions as to the na-
ture of existence which may be derived
from physical science that is freer from
metaphysical implications than a view
largely derived from other sources. I
find myself wholly in agreement with the
view stated by T. F. W. I should regard
it as vain to look for any confirmation
of any ultimate views I hold from the
revelations of a seance room, whether
the manifestations are physical or psy-
chical. The sum total of such revelation
is to my mind perfectly and necessarily
explicable upon naturalistic grounds
which leave science intact and consistent.
Beyond this field we are all aliks in our
limitations of knowledge and have open
the remaining sources of mental and
spiritual assurance. Joseph Jastrow]
Germany the Logical
Claimant
To the Editors of The Review:
"The presumptions are in favor of
Italy," you say in speaking of the Adri-
atic east coast, "because of her sacrifices
in the war, because of the necessity of
securing her active adherence to the
League, and because of her established
cultural position and prospects. When
disposing of an almost undeveloped re-
gion, statistics of the scanty population
have secondary meaning. What counts
greatly is the capacity of the claimants
for developing and eventually peopling
the territory."
Permit me to suggest that from all
these points of view which you so in-
geniously suggest, Germany is the logi-
cal claimant. Her sacrifices in the war
have been greater even than those of
Italy; Italy shared in the gestation of
the League and is parentally committed
to it, while Germany still stands out-
side the family circle; and as to her
cultural position, and to her need for
scantily populated territory may I refer
you to the works of Messrs. von Bern-
hardi and Treitschke?
Or was that little editorial paragraph
perhaps a slip on the part of the same
brilliant student of foreign affairs, who,
describing the Communist meeting at
Amsterdam, and compiling his informa-
tion from that expert and impeccable
source, the Amsterdam Handelsblad, con-
verted the Brooklyn Jew, S. J. Rutgers,.
Bertram W. Kelly
New York, May 5
[We are glad to print this telling testi-
mony to Mr. Kelly's brilliancy as a
student of foreign affairs, and humbly
admit our inferiority of intellect,
which made us blind to the fact that
Germany, which started the war and
ruthlessly sacrificed the world's peace
for the sake of her own aggrandizement,
has no less a claim to being rewarded
for this method of vindicating her cul-
tural position than Italy has for helping
in restoring peace. As to Mr. Rutgers,
a temporary residence in Brooklyn and
active participation in Communist propa-
ganda in the United States can not con-
vert a Dutch engineer into a Brooklyn
Jew. Eds. The Review.]
Gold as Commodity and as
Money
To the Editors of The Review:
In the current discussion of the high
cost of living does not Professor Laugh-
lin blink the fact that in both of its func-
tions, in the arts as well as in business,
gold is a commodity subject to the same
economic laws as any other commodity;
in other words, that the quantity theory
of money is implicit in the accepted eco-
nomic relation of supply and demand?
Let us consider what would happen if
the quantity of gold coin were suddenly
centupled when the antecedent quantity
just sufficed for the economic conduct of
business. The supposititious mintage,
constituting 99 per cent, of new mone-
tary medium, would have as money no
function whatever. It would not facili-
tate business at existing prices and, not
being needed in business, it could not
be safely put at interest except as it dis-
placed existing loans. Nine per cent., let
us say, would be absorbed by the arts but
90 per cent, would still remain in bank
vaults idle. Inevitably it would seek in-
vestment and, whether economist or not,
who can doubt that property values as
expressed in gold would soar and con-
tinue to soar until finally adjusted to the
value of gold in its double capacity of
commodity in the arts and in finance?
Whoever accepts the conclusion implied
by this question must accept also "a,"
if not 'the," quantity theory of money.
H. A. Briggs
Sacramento, Col., May 6
June 5, 1920]
THE REVIEW
The Goncourt Prize
AMONG recent literary discussions
none is more interesting than that
connected with the award of the Gon-
court prize for 1919 in France. In some
aspects this discussion is amusing; in
others it may turn out to be prophetic,
for one of the two volumes to which the
choice was iinally reduced is perhaps in-
dicative of a view upon human life which
will distinguish the serious novel of the
immediate future.
The winner of the prize was Marcel
Proust with his "A I'Ombre des jeunes
filles en fleurs" ; the "runner-up," Roland
Dorgeles with "Les Croix de Bois." The
same two books were also considered for
the Prix Vie Heureuse, awarded by a
women's committee; and this time the
result was reversed, Dorgeles getting the
prize. Commenting on these results and
playing on the titles, as also on the sub-
ject matter of the rival novels, the witty
critic Rachilde attributes the preference
of the women to nothing but the irresis-
tible attraction of "le coq." She may of
course be right; and she ought to know,
being a woman herself and, as it hap-
pened, chairman of the committee. But
I am inclined to think that this prefer-
ence was determined at least in part by
something else, a fact which all have ob-
served who have dealt with the mental
processes of both men and women, viz.,
the greater docility of the female mind
and its weaker appreciation of that which
is untried and original.
"Les Croix de Bois" is, to be sure, a
charming volume. Containing stories and
sketches of the war, it is as pleasing and
well-written as any collection of the kind
which I have read, especially to be recom-
mended being the story entitled "le
Fanion rouge." Dorgeles is alternately
amusing and serious. He has a better
control of his material, especially in the
matter of perspective, than many recent
writers on the same subject; and he is
less haunted by the tiring cult of the in-
conspicuous and the commonplace. Thus
his book appeals readily to the general
reader whose taste is formed by cele-
brated storytellers of the past and who
demand of a book merely the pleasure
afforded by an artistic diversion with
which they are already familiar. But
for this same reason, "Les Croix de
Bois" has little of interest for the in-
tellectually adventurous, for those who,
having watched the development of
French letters, are eagerly seeking signs
of something at the same time new and
bearing the ear-marks of at least com-
parative permanency.
Proust's "A I'Ombre des jeunes filles
en fleurs" will better satisfy the inquisi-
tive. It suggests the thought that the
novelist's view of man and the world
after bobbing up and down for over thirty
years under the pressure of the chang-
ing densities of the realistic, the rational,
the sensational, and the intuitive, is at
last coming to rest in a stable mixture
of them all. Distasteful to the older
generation of critics who, insisting on
condensation and artistic choice, very
properly object to it on stylistic grounds,
and no less uncongenial to certain
younger groups who, still convinced of
the supreme importance of the lyric urge
both in the individual and in society as
a whole, dislike it for its merciless in-
sistence upon the hidden principles of
human reactions, it has nevertheless
found much significant support in
France. "Proust," says a reliable ob-
server, "is one of the two authors whom
every one must have read"; and his re-
cent book is ardently praised by many
critics who, of varying ages, occupy a
middle ground and seem to be gaining
daily in numbers and influence.
"A I'Ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs"
is like Proust's preceding book, "du Cotd
de chez Swann," part of the series bear-
ing the general title "A la Recherche du
temps perdu." It describes events in the
life of a young man, presumably the au-
thor, during a short period of his adoles-
cence, stressing particularly the thoughts
and feelings of the hero (if so gentle a
lad may be given such a title) — thoughts
and feelings so arranged in the retro-
spect of the author as to produce a novel
and striking effect upon the reader.
To understand this effect, it must first
be noted that Proust is a keen observer of
his fellow men, with a subtle sense for
interpretation. Speaking, for instance,
of the fact that a young girl who had
refused to let the youth kiss her had
immediately afterwards presented him
with a gold pencil, Proust remarks upon
the perversity of those who seek to show
an appreciation of our attentions while
refusing to grant the particular favor
we ask: "the critic whose article would
flatter the novelist, invites him to din-
ner; and the duchess does not take the
social climber to the theatre with her,
but sends him tickets for her box on a
day when she is busy elsewhere."
"A I'Ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs"
is full of such observations and of others
on a more developed scale; certain pas-
sages, notably a delightful two pages
upon the young Mme. Swann, walking
among her admirers in the sunshine of a
spring afternoon, are remarkable por-
traits in which the physical and the
moral are blended to perfection. In them
all we detect the sharp eye and quick
sensitiveness of an unusually gifted psy-
chologist. But these observations are
only the material out of which Proust
has built his book, not its subject. His
aim is to reconstitute the past of his
youth with all the vitality of real life;
and this vitality he obtains by arrang-
ing his material in accordance with a
method of his own, one might almost
say with a certain particular philosophy.
It is in this that his essential originality
appears.
There is no such thing, once the daya
of extreme infancy are past, as a virgin
mind or virgin sensibilities; what is
more, no normal man is exclusively per-
ception, feeling, or mind. At any de-
termined moment, we are all compounds
of previously acquired ideas and senti-
ments, the which determine our approach
to this or that person or thing, each suc-
ceeding experience of life modifying in
its turn the predisposition of mind and
feeling with which we face the next ex-
perience. The man who has loved once
can never, even though he should later
meet another woman exactly like the
first, love in precisely the same manner
again; and he who goes to the theatre
to see a much-talked-of actress takes
with him to the play a prejudice which
that which he sees himself may greatly
change but can not obliterate; and it
may even happen that even this com-
pound judgment will be further modi-
fied, once the performance is over, by
the strikingly expressed comment of an-
other spectator.
Such is evidently the theory on which
Proust proceeds "k la recherche du temps
perdu" : he seeks to recapture, exactly as
they were at the moment, the states of
mind and feeling succeeding one another
in the development of his young hero.
Commenting on the letters of Mme. de
Sevigne, he observes, in one passage of
his book, that "she presents things in
the order of our perceptions instead of
beginning by an explanation of their
causes," and elsewhere he shows his
painter Elstir painting things "not
such as he knows them to be, but
in accordance with the optical illusions
presented to the eye." Proust has built
for himself a method along these lines;
only, and it is precisely this point that
saves him from the futilities of impres-
sionism, at the very moment of describ-
ing each impression, he recognizes the
illusion as being nothing but an illusion
and thus keeps the reader's mind open
with the expectation of new aspects or a
further development to come later on.
The result of this method is decidedly
pleasing. The world unfolds before us
as it does to the hero; we seem to dis-
cover it ourselves, advancing hand in
hand with the author, our consciousness
being constantly enriched by facts, ra-
tional, realistic, and emotional. A group^
of summer girls seem to us all alike when
first encountered on the beach: they are
all characterized by the same pride in
their youth and the same exclusive joy
in one another's society; "They had for
those who were not of their group no
affectation of disdain: their sincere dis-
dain itself satisfied them." But a further
acquaintance leads us to appreciate dif-
ferences between them; and in the case
600]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 56
of those we learn to know best, the per-
sonality of one, whose identity was
strongb" marked at the outset, grows
easily with the contribution of each
meeting, whereas it takes more effort to
reconcile and make into an harmonious
whole the different impressions and facts
picked up sporadically concerning an-
other whose identity was not so fixed
when we first saw her among her friends.
Similarly, to take an example of a dif-
ferent kind, Proust makes us experience
once more that sense of sudden enlighten-
ment which is familiar to all persons who
take pleasure in making and observing
new friends. Through the author we
make the acquaintance of certain aristo-
crats at the hotel ; we watch them move,
talk, and parade; we form an opinion of
their merits, their faults, and their char-
acteristics generally. Then a chance re-
mark shows them to be relatives and
intimates of persons we knew well years
before in the very different surround-
ings of provincial social life. This asso-
ciation is a revelation: it explains and
it modifies, and both our new acquaint-
ances and our old friends are henceforth
seen by us in a new light.
Thus Proust has found a secret for
making men and things real to his read-
ers; and it is this sensation of discover-
ing his world for ourselves, as though
with our own eyes, thought, and feelings,
that is the one great charm of his book.
Unfortunately, from the point of view of
style and composition, it is deplorable.
Proust belongs to that school which the
French call "dit-toutist." His book is
four times, and his sentences are half a
dozen times, too long. He can resist
neither a secondary detail nor a subor-
dinate clause, and it often takes an ex-
traordinary effort of the attention to
catch the bearing of either. Perhaps it
is this, quite as much as his originality
or the title of his book, that cost him
the favor of the ladies of the Vie
Heureuse. Nevertheless I am inclined
to agree with the decision of the Acad-
emie Goncourt. Proust is a novelist, no
longer young, who has patiently worked
out and applied with scrupulous fidelity
a method of his own; and it would fur-
ther seem, from the nature of his atti-
tude towards life and the reception given
to his book, that he foreshadows a liter-
ary philosophy towards which writers
have unconsciously been tending. We
have come, of late, to feel somewhat out
of sympathy with the older novelists,
with their exclusions and their over-
emphasis. Are we to have at last a new
synthesis based on a simultaneous recog-
nition of all or nearly all the forces
which the average man, in contrast to
the professional philosopher, recognizes
as potent in his life — his knowledge, his
reason, his imagination, and his intui-
tion?
A. G. H. Spiers
Book Reviews
Indictments Against Two
Nations
Before and Now. By Austin Harrison. New
York : John Lane Company.
Red Terror- .\nd Green, the Sinn Fein-Bol-
shevist Movement. By Richard Dawson.
New York : E. P. Button and Company.
IF Mr. Austin Harrison had not long
since won his own way to our regard
for his vivacious articles as editor of the
English Review, all lovers of brilliant
journalism would still look with eager
expectancy to the work of his father's
son. The venerable Frederic Harrison
is among those who throughout a long
lifetime have taught most to their con-
temporaries, so that one is tempted to
collect from the book called "Before and
Now" some trace of family likeness in
style or in message. These are quite con-
spicuous to even the most casual reader.
There is a touch of the same apostolic
spirit, the same resolve to make literature
a medium of instruction rather than
mere entertainment, the same caustic
criticism of conventions, and the same
daring challenge to prejudice. Some of
the papers in this collection appeared
during the three years immediately be-
fore the war, others between 1914 and
1918. They are re-printed now, with
footnotes calling attention to the points
in which their argument has been con-
firmed by experience. This is a cour-
ageous venture, in itself reminiscent of
Frederic Harrison's own literary prac-
tice, and the author must not complain
if his readers choose to supplement those
footnotes which indicate his sagacity
with others which draw attention to his
mistakes.
The subjects chiefly discussed are the
weak points of English life and custom.
There is much about the characteristic
insularity of British ideas, about the
school system which idolizes sport, stereo-
types class distinction, and imposes a
classical training to the neglect of science
and modern languages upon those who
have little aptitude for Horace or Homer.
Boys, according to Mr. Harrison, leave
Eton or Harrow with a certain social
prestige, but with almost a contempt
for serious thought, reverencing "good
form," but poorly equipped for the
strenuous tasks of the modern virorld.
"So the system endures, and it is the
most conservative, wooden, and anti-
quated business concern in the country."
It is urged upon us that the old motto
about Waterloo having been won on the
playing-grounds of Eton can not be ap-
plied in the changed conditions of our
own time, that it inspires "class priggish-
ness and class arrogance," that it is re-
sponsible for producing "mental dere-
licts," and that the thing needed first
and foremost is to bring the old tradi-
tional high-grade schools under state
management and discipline. Mr. Harri-
son sees the fruit of this obsolete educa-
tional heritage in John Bull's aversion
to taking his part in European move-
ments, in his sense of security while
"marooned upon our right-little, tight-
little island," in his scornful dislike of
Continental methods, in his adherence to
an ideal of personal freedom which
divorces itself from all concern with so-
cial necessities and projects. He finds in
the English temperament a strain of dis-
order, of rebelliousness against system
and control, a belief that it is always
possible to "muddle through" by a sort of
national rule of thumb against other na-
tions that have appreciated the need for
applied science, a willingness to trust
private initiative where community ef-
fort alone has a chance of success. Thus
the same spirit which left British hos-
pitals to be maintained by the charitable
made it necessary on the outbreak of
war to "advertise for an army." And
Mr. Harrison thinks that there might
have been no war at all if this mood of
aloofness had not prevented Englishmen
from realizing long ago the obvious men-
ace in Europe, and from boldly declaring
their resolve to take active part with
France in the struggle that was bound
to come.
There is much truth in all this, as the
war has abundantly shown, and it is a
chief purpose of Mr. Harrison's book to
enforce that changed policy in the era of
peace which such hardly learned lessons
should suggest. He thinks the party sys-
tem has become meaningless, and that the
men from both political camps whom he
calls "re-constructionists" should unite
to forget old watch-words of mutual
antagonism. Mr. Lloyd-George has been
saying the sams thing, but one realizes
how ambiguous such advice is when one
remembers that Mr. Harrison himself
contested Mr. Lloyd-George's seat and
bestowed very hearty invective upon this
typical "re-constructionist" during the
last general election. It seems as if there
were no escape from party of one sort or
another, and a chief complaint against
the teaching of "Before and Now" is that
old ideals, though they may be faulty be-
cause they are old, have a profound
value because they are ideals. "The Eng-
lishman's zeal for personal freedom may
have been over-pushed, but so was the
German's zeal for state-control, and Mr.
Harrison has not given us much help in
selecting the happy mean. Some of his
papers are very slight performances,
crisp, vivid journalese, sometimes de-
scending even to causerie, perhaps worth
publishing once, but scarcely deserving
to be republished. He has a journalist's
gift for the choice of an arresting title.
Thus he discusses the dethronement of
the landed aristocrat by the man of trade
June 5, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[601
and business under the heading "The
Coming of Smith"; he presents the case
about the idle, ostentatious rich in a
chapter on "The Duke's Buffalo"; he in-
troduces us to the spirit of feminism as
"The New Sesame and Lilies." What he
has given us is very suggestive, and one
is grateful to any man who can stir up
general interest in our social problems
by the use of such a facile pen. Eng-
lishmen will be provoked to see them-
selves depicted in an essay on "The
Country of the Blind." But being pro-
voked may well be a pre-requisite for be-
ing made to think, and Mr. Harrison
loves the country which he takes so much
trouble to satirise into an awakening to
its urgent needs. He has the same sort
of literary gift as Mr. H. G. Wells,
though in a slighter degree. But he has
not so far shown anything like the rich
literary nutritiousness that belongs to
the work of his distinguished father.
Mr. Richard Dawson is a far more
alarming writer than Mr. Harrison. The
main thesis of "Red Terror and Green" is
that we have all been utterly in the dark
about the real purpose of Sinn Fein. He
recognizes that that movement had in its
earliest and quite ineffective beginnings
a certain romantic side. But he urges
that its driving power has long been no
fanatical attachment to "nationhood," nor
a wistful sentimentalism about Ireland's
past, but rather a fierce. Bolshevistic
rage against property and the prop-
ertied classes, so that if we would un-
derstand the record of the last twenty
years we must give far less attention to
the politicians, and far more to the
stormy petrels of organized Labor. The
significant figures for Mr. Dawson are
thus not those whom the outside world
has learned to know best. The reader
will be astonished to find that, in a book
which deals with Irish development dur-
ing the last ten years, there is only the
most meagre reference to John Red-
mond, an incidental mention of Mr. De
Valera, almost nothing about Sir Edward
Carson, while great space is devoted to
James Connolly, James Larkin, and
Roger Casement.
Mr. Dawson defines with clearness that
traditional view which he means to re-
fute. He finds it generally taken for
granted (1) that the Irish insurrection-
ary movement developed out of constitu-
tional nationalism ; (2) that the physical
force party exploited the impatience of
those whose hope of Home Rule had been
persistently disappointed; (3) that the
example of Ulster was a potent influence
in making the irritated rank and file of
nationalism break away from pacific
leaders like Redmond, who had constantly
failed, and seek out a truculent leader
like Sir Edward Carson, who seemed
always to succeed. Against this reading
of the story it is pointed out to us that
it does not "square with the main facts."
It does not explain the sudden and enor-
mous access of strength and money to the
Sinn Fein cause during the war, the com-
plete overthrow of the parliamentary na-
tionalists, the Dublin rebellion, and the
German alliance. Mr. Dawson's own way
of accounting for these things is that
Sinn Fein was no passionate outgrowth
of the old movement, but differed from it
in kind. From the very first it was
anti-constitutional, with its real roots in
a hatred of the existing economic order,
and its association with the spirit of
nationality was never more than a dexter-
ous disguise by which those quite un-
sympathetic towards its real purpose
might be cajoled into reinforcing it. The
German alliance, the flood of money from
Bolshevist sources abroad, the touting
for help from the followers of Lenin and
Trotsky have thus made clear the ends
which were all along of Sinn Fein's
essence.
This is immensely interesting, and Mr.
Dawson is a most lively expounder. As
an Indian chief was seldom of much re-
pute until he could show the scalps of
some defeated rivals, so a clever jour-
nalist, aspiring to the honors of re-writ-
ing history, must vindicate his prowess
by disproving some traditional view
about the past. Nor can anyone deny
that there is an element of truth in what
Mr. Dawson has urged, though he is by
no means so original in its discovery as
he seems to suppose. Sinn Fein has
always hated the constitutional nation-
alists, as was well known before Mr.
Dawson set this forth, with a great show
of revealing to us a secret. He does well
to emphasize the Labor side of the rising
of 1916, although almost every newspaper
at the time was at pains to point out how
significant was the part then played by
Dublin Syndicalists. Perhaps the fresh-
est point he has to make is Connolly's
adroitness in connecting his own com-
munistic schemes with the spirit of the
old Irish tribal organization, so that he
might avail himself of that national
sentiment which better men had been
unable to conduct to success. The in-
trigues of Casement with the Germans
make excellent material for building up
a theory that Sinn Fein was part of a
German plot, and in a world torn by Bol-
shevism it is plausible to suggest that
Sinn Fein emissaries have been seeking
to combine the forces of disorder at home
with the agencies of disorder in other
countries. But Mr. Dawson will not
easily convince those who know rural
Ireland that its peasantry — now bitterly
Sinn Fein — are now or were ever Bol-
shevistic. Perhaps no other class that
could be named has so hated communism
as the Roman priesthood, and, unless the
Ulster folk whom Mr. Dawson admires
are all wrong, it is the Roman priest-
hood which controls the rest of Ireland.
Perhaps the drollest of Mr. Dawson's
arguments is that Sinn Fein is now
"thrown back perforce upon the urban
population," just because those in the
country districts are least susceptible to
the forces of anarchistic Labor! As Ire-
land is overwhelmingly agricultural, one
would like to think this view was right,
for the success of Sinn Fein would then
be short-lived. But as its strength is
clearly spread over those areas in which
his argument would prove it impotent,
one must forgo the comfort which he
has momentarily encouraged. And a
glance will show that those main facts
with which, he tells us, the traditional
theory can not be made to square, are
quite inexplicable on the theory he would
substitute. Mass changes in feeling are
not wrought in a day even by distribut-
ing German gold among leaders. But
they are wrought by the prolonged dis-
appointment of mass hopes. Subtracting,
however, the due subtrahend, as Carlyle
would have put it, one may learn from
Mr. Dawson to lay more emphasis upon
the passions of insurgent Labor in the
cities, and less upon a demoralizing of
the quiet rural folk, if one would explain
the shocking orgies of crime. Herein
lies the grain of hopefulness which the
writer has unwittingly sown in our
hearts.
Herbert L. Stewart
One of the Ablest Members
of the Supreme Court
John Archibald Campbell, Associate Justice
OF THE United States : Supreme Court,
1853-1861. By Henry G. Connor. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co.
TO some lawyers past middle life, and
to specialists in the history of this
country during the decade from 1855 to
1865, the name of John Archibald Camp-
bell is still familiar. To few others would
it now suggest anything. Many more
could recall somewhat of such politicians
as Lewis Cass, of such merchants as
A. T. Stewart, of such pugilists as John
C. Heenan, the "Benicia Boy," to say
nothing of such a showman as P. T.
Barnum, every one of whom was at some
period of his life among his contem-
poraries. Yet we like to think of the
Supreme Court as the greatest judicial
tribunal that the world has ever known,
and Campbell certainly ranked among
the ablest half dozen of the more than
three score men who have been members
of it. When his name is now mentioned
at all, it is usually in connection with
the very few occasions upon which he
had some hand in other than legal mat-
ters; as when, in the early spring of
1861, he was intermediary between the
Commissioners of South Carolina and
Secretary Seward; or when in Febru-
ary, 1865, with Stephens and Hunter,
he represented the Confederacy at the
conference in Hampton Roads; or when.
602]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 56
two months later, he obtained from
President Lincoln permission for the
Virginia Legislature to convene at Rich-
mond, then in possession of Grant's
army. AU the greater the debt to Judge
Connor for this readable book of
scarcely three hundred pages, in which
is told the story of Campbell's life, and
from which we learn how highly his
professional brethren in his own day
thought of him as counsellor, advocate,
and judge. That is usually the only
possible test of the worth of a lawyer.
There are no formal measuring rods by
which to gauge his true size, a fact which
the book before us strikingly illustrates.
Campbell was one of the six Justices
whose decision in the Dred Scott case
was recalled at the Presidential election
of 1860, at Appomattox, and by the Four-
teenth Amendment. He was of the dis-
senting minority in his opposition to the
extensions of the Admiralty jurisdic-
tion, since found so useful, and in his
objection to the legal fiction by which
the Federal Courts have secured for
themselves so considerable a part of the
litigation to which corporations are
parties. He was of counsel in the
Slaughter House cases, and there made
one of the greatest arguments of his
life. He lived to appreciate how unfor-
tunate would have been the consequences
had the majority of the Court accepted
the construction of the Fourteenth
Amendment for which he there con-
tended.
His efforts to postpone the outbreak
of the war by bringing about an informal
understanding as to Fort Sumter; to
end it by accepting the terms offered by
Lincoln at Hampton Roads; and to es-
cape from the perils of radical recon-
struction by calling together the Legis-
latures of the several States which had
made up the Confederacy, so that they
might themselves undertake the neces-
sary readjustments, all failed. Those
who did not know him, with such evi-
dence and none other before them, might
well question whether after all he was
really eminent. In such doubts, those
who had heard him at the Bar, or had
sat with him in the consultation room,
never shared. As Judge Connor shows,
they knew him for what he was. They
saw and felt the power that was in him.
In fact, if not in intention, there is
sometimes not a little irony in the con-
ventional "learned judge." It was not
so as to him. He was in the first rank
as a common law lawyer, and he was an
accomplished civilian as well, something
which few English lawyers of his day,
or for that matter of any other, were
or are. It is a wonder, though, that any
love of learning or capacity to acquire
it survived his early experiences. We
are told that he entered Franklin Col-
lege, now the University of Georgia, at
eleven, and graduated at the head of his
class at fourteen. It would profit little
now to inquire into what, at that time,
were the requirements of his alma mater.
Let us be thankful that he was at least
apparently none the worse. Then for
three years or thereabouts, he was a
cadet at West Point. At seventeen, he
took up the study of the law, and kept
at it for the sixty years he thereafter
lived. By grace of a special Act of Leg-
islature, he was admitted to the bar
when he was eighteen. Fifty-three years
later, in New Hampshire vs. Louisiana,
he made an argument before the Su-
preme Court which Waite, Miller, Field,
Grey, and Blatchford united in declaring
to be the greatest that anyone of them
had ever heard.
The reader of Judge Connor's interest-
ing little study must regret that Camp-
bell went out with his State. He lived in
undiminished mental vigor for nearly
twenty-eight years afterwards. The Su-
preme Court might have had him for all
that time. Wayne and Catron remained
on the Bench throughout the Civil War,
although Georgia and Tennessee seceded.
Campbell could not see his way clear to
do the like. He acted from a calm sense
of duty, for he was not carried away
by any enthusiasm for secession. He
firmly believed in the right of a State to
withdraw, whenever it saw fit, but he
was strongly opposed to its exercise at
that time. When, against his judg-
ment and advice, Alabama seceded, he
felt he was in honor bound to follow,
for to her, in his view, his allegiance was
due. How much water has since gone
over the dam!
John C. Rose
Something Diiferent
The Cream of the Jest. By James Branch
Cabell. New York : Robert M. McBride
and Company.
Invincible Minnie. By Elizabeth Sanxay
Holding. New York: George H. Doran
Company.
AT the booksellers they are used to a
certain type of customer who strolls
in at odd hours and asks, rather hope-
lessly, for "something different." He is
usually a confirmed novel-reader. If he
can not get his new thing he will go on
reading the old one: but there is always
the faint hope of change, of the fresh
theme or at least the fresh accent. To a
few such "The Cream of the Jest," by
James Branch Cabell, first printed in
1917, may have come as a boon. The
not altogether happy reception of
"Jurgen" very likely justifies the pub-
lisher in issuing a new edition of this
earlier fable. The book labors under the
disadvantage (for this period, at least,)
of a studied and bookish manner which
only in "Jurgen" has attained real free-
dom and beauty. Like its successor, it is
fantasy rather than novel. The hero,
Kennaston, in the flesh "an inadequate,
kickworthy creature" is, nevertheless,
"not merely human; he is humanity."
His gross and dull physical presence
shelters a prince of romantic dreaming.
As Horvendile, poet and lover, he
makes unearthly tryst with his mistress
Ettarre. A little study discovers the
author's commentary on his work in the
inscription upon the mystic "sigil of
Scoteia," symbol of the lovers' relation.
"James Branch Cabell made this book so
that he who wills may read the story
of man's eternally unsatisfied hunger in
search of beauty. Ettarre stays inac-
cessible always and her loveliness is his
to look on only in his dreams. All men
she must evade at the last and many are
the ways of her elusion." Ancient and
inexhaustible theme, which Mr. Cabell
has expounded more richly if less dis-
creetly in the unfortunately discussed
"Jurgen." . . . Here, I say, he is
less successful in making us forget his
literary masters: has less certainly be-
come master of his own medium. Here
also insurgency of the now quite con-
ventional anti-Victorian stamp almost
overbalances the basic idealism of the
book.
Contempt for yesterday is an un-
safe altar for the worship of to-day and
forever. Poor Kennaston makes himself
ridiculous by "dwindling into" family
man, vestryman, and "responsible citi-
zen." He is the potentially free spirit
enslaved by the flesh and ground to pat-
tern by the social machine. Conformity
stultifies him — and in him, humanity.
"All I advanced for or against him,
equally, was true of all men that have
ever lived. . . . For it is in this in-
adequate flesh that each of us must serve
his dream; and so, must fail in the
dream's service, and must parody that
which he holds dearest." And yet of this
Kennastonian humanity mockery is not
to have the last word. Dreams are more
real than the flesh that in some feeble
sense harbors them : "It is only by pre-
serving faith in human dreams," the fab-
ulist gravely concludes, "that we may,
after all, perhaps some day make them
come true." . . . Kennaston of Lich-
field, dilettante author, pampered hus-
band, stodgy citizen, sensitive dreamer,
is American enough. Mr. Cabell makes
skilful contrast between his inner ro-
mance and the dull realism of his every-
day: notably in the note to the little
scene where Ettarre looks at him out of
his wife Kathleen's eyes, and he signals
recognition — in vain: "So they dined
alone together, sharing a taciturn meal,
and duly witnessed the drolleries of 'The
Gutta-Percha Girl.' Kennaston's sleep
afterward was sound and dreamless."
"Invincible Minnie" is another Amer-
ican book of uncommon substance and
savor. Its author says in her word of
preface that it is "not intended to be a
romantic story, or a realistic story," but
I
June 5, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[608
only a tale of something which might
happen, given a person of the Minnie
type. Fairer to the book and its writer
would be its description as a reduction
to the extreme (if not, towards the end,
to the absurd) of what a Minnie would
do if invincible intention did not here
and there meet an impenetrable obstacle.
In conduct and detail, it is "real" enough.
Most of us, as the author surmises,
"know a Minnie." A Minnie is a single-
track egotist, a domestic "vamp," who
without verifiable charm or recognizable
authority or conscious system, somehow
gets what she wants when she wants it.
This particular Minnie, when we first
meet her, is "a rather short, full-bosomed
young woman of perhaps twenty, with a
dark, freckled face and an expression
very pleasant and friendly." She has
the air (it is hardly a pose) of the faith-
ful housewife, the self-effacing servitor.
She is anxiously busy always, avid of
duty; and covers her shiftlessness and
ineffectiveness even from herself, with
the camouflage of ceaseless activity. And
by sheer pressure of primitive force she
imposes her will, to their ruin, on all
who come too close to the centre of her
web. She is incapable of perceiving her
own outrageousness. She can deliber-
ately rob her sister of her lover, become
a bigamist in order to support him, and
introduce him as her brother into the
household of the good man to whom she
is about to bear a son: and all without
compunction in her heart or shame when
she is found out. Nor is this all. When
sister Frankie takes up with Minnie's
leavings in the person of the hoodwinked
Petersen and Minnie's deserted children,
she is capable of returning to snatch
them away; not because she has any
deep feeling for them but because they
are hers. And the curtain falls on the
bitter laughter of Frankie, who has
planned to rescue some sort of happiness
out of her love and care of Minnie's
children :
"She thought of the house in the
suburbs, with the nursery and playroom ;
even the new toys.
She thought of herself and Mr. Peter-
sen married, for the sake of her children.
She thought of Minnie, who had car-
ried off Lionel, and Lionel's child, and
Mr. Petersen's child, and was now se-
curing a supply of Mr. Petersen's money.
She began to laugh heartily."
The curtain lifts ironically for an in-
stant, once more, for a glimpse of Mr.
Petersen, years later, visiting the half-
grown children and finding them — what
Minnie was bound to have made them.
Only then does his old illusion about
her vanish altogether. A bitter book,
remorselessly written, and quite against
the current stream of tolerance for all
human creatures. Evidently this story-
teller does not believe (with Mr. Cabell)
that one person is about as good as an-
other. Perhaps it is wholesome for us
to turn now and then from the genial
process of admiring the best of us in the
worst of us, and to behold how a Minnie
looks, pinned fairly on the slide and set
under a ruthless lens.
H. W. BOYNTON
Free International
Waterways
International Wati;i<ways. By Paul Morgan
Ogilvie. New York: The Macmillan Co.
PROBLEMS of transportation, both at
home and abroad, with all their in-
volved factors, social and political as well
as commercial, were never more pressing
than they are to-day. Mr. Ogilvie's
thoughtful treatise is therefore very
timely. The treatise proper, which deals
with the evolution of the principle of the
freedom of international waterways, runs
to only some one hundred and seventy
pages, the rest of the book being devoted
to an elaborate and carefully-arranged
reference manual to the treaties^ conven-
tions, laws, and other fundamental acts
governing the international use of in-
land waterways. This, with a bibliogra-
phy and index, both sufficiently full to
serve the student as well as the casual
reader, fills two hundred and fifty addi-
tional pages.
Mr. Ogilvie sketches the history of
maritime enterprise in the Mediter-
ranean, and its gradual expansion
throughout the Seven Seas; the institu-
tion and development of maritime law,
from the ancient sea-code of the Rhodians
to the recognized usage of modern times ;
the sovereignty of the seas, as exercised
in succession by the Phoenicians, Greece,
Carthage, Rome, Venice, Portugal and
Spain, Holland, and England; the long
controversy as between Mare Clausum
and Mare Liberum, ending in the ac-
ceptance by all maritime nations of the
principle of the freedom of the seas ; and
the final extension of the same principle
to inland waterways. Freedom of navi-
gation on inland waterways thus appears
the logical extension of the older prin-
ciple of freedom of the seas.
To most of us the genesis of the prin-
ciple of unrestricted navigation of inland
waterways, however important as a mat-
ter of history, will have less real interest
than its application to present-day prob-
lems. In the recent treaties with Ger-
many, Austria, and Poland, the Allied
and Associated Powers at the Peace Con-
ference at Paris have provided for the
international navigation of certain Eu-
ropean waterways. These provisions,
taken in conjunction with the changed
boundaries of many of the old and new
states of Central Europe, will have a
far-reaching effect on the development of
international commerce. As Mr. Ogilvie
points out, the commerce of Austria,
Czecho-Slovakia, and Hungary, which
formerly passed through the Adriatic
ports of Fiume and Trieste, may now
be diverted down the Danube. Switzer-
land is engaged in extensive improve-
ments to the upper course of the Rhino
which, when completed, will give the
Republic access to the sea. The pro- ^
jected canal to connect the Rhine and
the Danube will give through-navigation
from the North Sea to the Black. Under
the Treaty of Versailles, special rights
are accorded Czecho-Slovakia in the navi-
gation of the Elbe and of the Oder.
Poland similarly has access to the Baltic
by way of the Vistula. The projected
Rhine-Meuse canal will give through-
navigation from points on the Rhine up
to Verdun on the Meuse. These and
other projected improvements will be-
fore long give to most of the principal
inland cities of Europe the practical
status of ocean ports. The resulting
movement of commerce in every direc-
tion across the continent, to and from
the North Sea, the Baltic, the Black Sea,
the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic,
must have a profound influence not
merely upon the economic but also upon
the social and political relations of the
various nations.
Obviously, most of the conditions of
inland navigation, and the advantages
of internationalization of inland water-
ways, apply as distinctly to North Amer-
ica as to Europe. This continent is
peculiarly rich in inland water communi-
cations. It is literally true that, start-
ing from such a great central reservoir
as Lake Winnipeg, a man could travel
by boat or canoe, with only a few port-
ages, eastward to the Gulf of St.
Lawrence or the harbor of New York,
westward to the mouth of the Colum-
bia, northward to the Arctic, north-east-
ward to Hudson Bay, or southward to the
Gulf of Mexico. In fact a hundred years
ago, in the palmy days of the fur trade,
men did actually follow these water
routes in canoes. To-day many of the
same waterways are traveled more ex-
peditiously and in greater comfort by
steamer. Something over sixteen thou-
sand miles of the Mississippi and its
greater tributaries are navigated by
steam craft. The Columbia is navigated,
although not continuously, for five hun-
dred miles. The Hudson Bay Company
maintains steamers on both the Atha-
basca and the Mackenzie rivers, in the
far northwest. It is possible, and even
probable, that within a generation steam
navigation will be opened from Lake
Winnipeg to Hudson Bay by way of the
Nelson river. But it is the eastern
route from the heart of the continent
that offers the points of greatest inter-
est. The unrivalled system of waterways
that extends from the head of Lake Su-
perior to the Atlantic forms also,
604]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 56
throughout the greater part of its course,
the international boundary between the
United States and Canada. It is there- "
fore one of the inland waterways cov-
ered by Mr. Ogilvie's survey. From
1794 to 1909, successive treaties between
Great Britain and the United States have
secured the free navigation of these
boundary waters. The treaty of 1909
' not only provides that the navigation of
all boundary waterways shall remain
perpetually free, but it also extends the
same right to canals connecting boun-
dary waters, now existing or which may
hereafter be constructed.
The International Joint Commission,
created by the Treaty of 1909, is now
engaged in an investigation, at the re-
quest of the Governments of the United
States and Canada, to determine the
practicability of a deep waterway be-
tween Lake Ontario and Montreal," and
incidentally, the practicability of a water
route for ocean-going vessels from the
head of the Great Lakes to the sea. It
is said, by those who are opposing this
project, that it is impracticable for the
same vessels to navigate both the open
sea and these inland waters. Mr. Ogilvie
throws some interesting light on this
problem.
Vessels equipped with the screw propeller
may be employed advantageously either on the
high seas or for inland navigation. Cargoes
may be embarked at the sea-ports or inland ports
of one country and transported by inland water-
ways and the high seas to interior points on
distant continents without the necessity of
transshipment A ship may take cargo at New
York, Chicago, Montreal, or Duluth and may
voyage continuously until arrival at the pro-
posed destination, whether three thousand
miles up the Amazon at the port of Iquitos,
Peru; or Matadi on the Congo; or Asuncion,
Paraguay, more than a thousand miles inland
on the Rio de la Plata; or Hankow on the
Vang-tse-kiang, six hundred miles from the
sea; or in Europe at one of the many river
ports of the Danube.
He points out that a serviceable type of
steamer has developed, capable of ply-
ing between various river ports on the
Rhine and the sea-ports of the Azores,
Portugal, Spain, and of the countries
bordering on the North Sea and the
Mediterranean. "Varying in tonnage
from 342-1770 tons, these skilfully de-
signed vessels carry an extensive com-
merce from inland ports without necessi-
tating the transference of cargo." This
service was instituted in 1888, and al-
though it declined after 1903, owing to
the shallow channel between Cologne and
Rotterdam, it still amounted in 1907 to
some 347,000 tons. If the "Rhine-Sea"
traffic could be successfully operated un-
der the unfavorable conditions of the
shallow Rhine, there can be little doubt
that a similar traffic would be economi-
cally practicable between the sea and the
Great Lakes. Mr. Ogilvie points out that
"on larger rivers such as the Amazon, the
Columbia, and the Rio de la Plata, sea-
going vessels suffer no serious limitation
when employed in inland navigation."
The probability is that the opening of
the St. Lawrence route will lead to the
evolution of a composite type of vessel,
built along somewhat similar lines to the
Rhine-Sea craft on a larger scale, and
combining the advantages of the ocean
tramps and the lake freighters.
L. J. B.
The Run of the Shelves
Three Books of the Week
[Selected by Edmund Lester Pearson,
Editor of Publications, New York Pub-
lic Library.]
Mrs. Warren's Daughter, by Sir Harry
Johnston. (Macmillan.)
The further adventures of
Vivie Warren, heroine of Shaw's
"Mrs. Warren's Profession." Like
the author's "The Gay-Dombeys,"
which it hardly surpasses in inter-
est, it is less a novel and more a
gallery of characters, real and
fictitious. Amusing comment upon
English life and politics, with a
sympathetic history of the militant
suffragettes, and of life in Brus-
sels during the German occupation,
1914-1918.
Talks with T. R., from the Diaries of
John J. Leary, Jr. (Houghton.)
A reporter's notes of Colonel
Roosevelt's conversations, especially
interesting for the frank com-
ments upon President Wilson, Mr.
Hughes, and the 1916 campaign.
An astonishingly correct prophecy
of the outcome of the President's
trips to Paris is the subject of one
of the conversations.
Labor's Challenge to the Social
Order, by John Graham Brooks.
(Macmillan.)
A survey of the industrial situa-
tion for the past thirty or forty
years, with frank criticism upon
the attitude and actions of both
sides of the controversy. Attract-
ive to the average reader because
it includes comment upon such
minor but universally appealing
topics as the servant question.
THE thorny path of martyrdom seems
to be the path of the "intent" reader
of Joseph Conrad. From the comments
and criticisms provoked by his new
book, "The Rescue," it appears that the
devout Conradian approaches his novels
in some agony of spirit. Mr. Wilson
Follett, writing in the New York Even-
ing Post, mentions the "tantalizing,
almost torturing, regrets" endured by
the faithful; no simple and shallow en-
joyment may be theirs, but on the con-
trary they must ponder upon every step
in the psychological development of their
author. Long nights of suffering are to
be filled with thoughts of what "The
Nigger of the Narcissus" would have
been had it been written after, instead
of before, "Chance"; they must writhe
under the efforts of imagining "pre-
cisely wherein 'Heart of Darkness' would
have undergone a subtle modification if
'Victory' had preceded it." Other com-
ment upon "The Rescue" recalls the old
gibe about Henry James: "What's his
new novel about?" asked one man. "He
hates to tell," said the one who was
struggling with it. One Conradian
read one or two hundred pages, and an-
nounced— his devotion clearly wavering
— that it contained a fine description of
a thunder-storm! Plainly, the time is
not far away when the Conrad Societies
will be listening to "papers" written to
fix the exact date when his "third
manner" imperceptibly melted into his
"fourth manner," and bitter debates will
occur as to the relative merits of both
manners compared with a fifth and per-
haps a sixth.
How did Chaucer's Knight come to
ride a-chivachieing with Guy de Lusig-
nan to Lyeys in Armenia "whan it was
wonne"? What brought the Armenians
from the mountains of Ararat to the
plains of Cilicia and tangled them up
with the crusading kingdoms of Jeru-
salem and Syria, thus to tie another knot
in the problems of their national fate?
Who was Gregory the Illuminator and
how does their ecclesiastical capital come
to be at Etzmiadzin in the Russia that
once was? Of what blood and kindred
are they and where does their language
call cousin? What has been their part in
the world of Islam, and what in that of
the Christian Church, national, Greek,
Roman, and now, in this last half cen-
tury, in certain dealings with de-
scendants of the Pilgrim Fathers?
What were the relations of the Russian
Armenians to the Russian Government
and thus to the future revolution and
the Bolshevist current in which they are
now caught and adrift?
All these questions precede and condi-
tion their present situation, with its
many and most complicated elements, of
past and present, of memory, of hope,
and of ambition. Old things live on in
Asia Minor, the Caucasus, and Syria, in
a fashion hardly thinkable to us with a
popular memory vivid only for a century
or two. For even the pan-Turanian
vision of the Young Turks which rises
so menacingly above these lands is in
essence an evocation of Mongols and Tar-
tars, the ghosts of Chingiz Khan, Hul-
agu, and Timurlang. And at the Konia of
to-day there still survives among the de-
scendants of the Seljuks the spirit of
revenge for their fourteenth century
June 5, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[605
overthrow by the Ottoman Turks. All
this the Armenians in their long history
have seen and suffered, and to the ques-
tions thus raised answers will fairly be
found in "Armenia and the Armenians
from the Earliest Times Until the Great
War," by Kevark Asian ; translated from
the French by Pierre Crabites (Mac-
millan). The answers might sometimes
be clearer; the latter part of the book
is much more lucid than the earlier; but
that is of the nature of the ease. There
are signs, too, in the names and phrasing,
of its Armeno-French origin, and there
is grievous need of a map and almost
equally of an index. But the book is
good and solid, sober with historical
sense and conscience, and can be recom-
mended to all but the historical special-
ist. He will, of course, turn to the same
author's' "Etudes historiques sur le
Peuple Armenien," for the earlier part
of this history. Of it the present book
is a condensation extended by three addi-
tional chapters to the present day.
Drama comes to us finally from the
pampas. DufReld and Company have
just published "Three Plays from the
Argentine," which Mr. Jacob S. Fassett
translates, and Mr. Edward Hale Bier-
stadt edits and skillfully introduces. The
three plays belong generally to the
dramas criollos, Creole or gaucho dramas,
which, centrally placed between earlier
imitations and later orthodoxies, in
Argentine dramatic history, became, for
a time, a conduit of the life-stream of an
animated people. The gaucho, the pro-
tagonist, is, according to Mr. Bierstadt,
a combination of Daniel Boone, Buffalo
Bill, and Robin Hood.
Of the three plays, the first, the "Juan
Moreira" of Silverio Manco and the
"Santos Vega" of Luis Bayon Herrera,
are valuable only as sidelights on the
national spirit or as documents in what
may be called the biology — or embry-
ology— of literature. "Juan Moreira,"
formless, in six brief scenes, tattered
and bloody like the remnant of a cloak
which the passage of a sword has torn
and reddened, with blunt, brief strokes
which have almost the effect of scratches,
does not lack interest of a rude kind.
"Santos Vega" is more showy and less
interesting. It is plotless, and its plot-
lessness has the weight of three acts to
carry. It must stand or fall as a pic-
ture of manners, and it is difficult to
believe that manners so decorative have
not been submitted to the hands of a
decorator. On the other hand, the third
play, the "Witches' Mountain" by Julio
Sanchez Gardel, is a strong play, a fam-
ily tragedy, at once deadly and vital, with
chasms between brother and brother, be-
tween father and son, which reach down-
ward into moral abysses. Strong pas-
sions are finely imagined — a fact still
notable in the dramatic world.
Mr. Floyd Dell in a playfully serious
article in the April Liberator, which he
calls a "Psycho-Analytic Confession,"
contends that our great mechanical dis-
coveries, our locomotives and subways
and telephones, are only mundane toys,
the great world's substitutes for kites
and marbles. He pleads, half in jest, for
a "moderately advanced savagery." The
word "savagery" may be taken as a wil-
ful defiance of the commonplace, but,
viewing the contention in its breadth and
pith, there is meat as well as salt in his
analogy. The inventions which dazzle
and deafen both our senses and our
minds are largely amusements in the
guise of utilities; they are goods, they
are necessities, only through their con-
tributions to an order which may itself
be an evil or a superfluity. The order
here referred to is mechanical, not
political or social; an individualist so-
ciety might discard this apparatus, and
a socialistic policy might retain them.
They are not, however, easy to discard.
A child may tear up its kite or throw its
rocking-horse into the pond, without
harm to its prospects of a good dinner
and a warm bed. The naughtiness of
the locomotive and the telegraph lies in
the craft with which they have inserted
themselves into the circuit of which the
good dinner and the warm bed are parts.
There follows a second question: just
what shall we renounce? Mr. Floyd Dell
would drop the telephone, but keep the
typewriter. His neighbor, indifferent to
typewriters, would keep the telephone at
all costs. It is to be feared that many
telephones and typewriters would be con-
sumed and thrown into the dust-heap in
the progress of the debate that settled
these contentions. Still, with every allow-
ance for difficulty, one can not but dwell
with pleasure on Mr. Dell's idea that
complexity may be the middle term be-
tween an early and an eventual sim-
plicity, that our apparatus may re-
semble the alloy in the ring in Brown-
ing's "Ring and the Book," which served
the workmanship no less by its removal
at the end than by its insertion in the
process. (One may wish, in a parenthe-
sis, that the "Book" had been as success-
ful as the "Ring" in the discharge of its
alloys before completion). In this hope
one is heartened not a little by the
analogy of language and of letters. Lan-
guages are simple at the outset. They
improve by the adoption of a complex
system of inflections, in which voice,
mood, tense, case, gender, and number
are laboriously discriminated. They im-
prove still further by the repudiation of
this system. Style, in the same way,
tends to pass from an enforced simplic-
ity in the immaturity of literature
through a voluntary elaboration to a
voluntary simplicity. Perhaps the mate-
rial complexities of what Carlyle long
since named the Mechanical Age may
be the epoch of Johnsonese interposed
between the primitive simplicity of
Chaucer and the ripened simplicity of
Kipling or Galsworthy.
In the text and translation of Marcus
Cornelius Fronto, the first volume of
which has just been added to the Loeb
Library (Putnam), Mr. C. R. Haines has
accomplished a task different in kind
from that ordinarily set before the con-
tributors to this series. In general the
text has been already established, and it
was only necessary to give an accurate
and fluent translation and to subjoin an
occasional note of explanation. That, in-
deed, is no light task, as any one knows
who has attempted to render a Greek or
Latin author into English; but in the
present case the editor has been obliged
to create his own text and to arrange
chronologically a series of letters which
have come to us in fragmentary shape
and haphazard order. We can not enter
into a discussion of details; enough to
say that Mr. Haines has come through
the ordeal in exemplary manner. For
the first time Fronto can be read with
ease, and belongs to literature. Much of
the correspondence between him and
Appian and Marcus Aurelius and others
is concerned with questions of rhetoric
which may seem anything but exhilarat-
ing to the modern reader; but not all.
The affairs of the empire are touched
on as well as the school exercises of the
emperors. And even where rhetoric is
the theme, the discussion often passes
from the small proprieties of diction to
the larger matters of literary criticism.
Two other volumes of the Loeb Library
need to be recorded. Professor A. T.
Murray publishes the second volume of
his Odyssey, and Professor Bemadotte
Perrin has progressed to the eighth vol-
ume in his masterly rendering of
Plutarch's Lives. The present issue of
the Plutarch contains the Life of Cato
the Younger, which has left so many
echoes in the literature of the world.
"Chill Hours" (Dufiield), by Mrs.
Helen Mackay, is the latest of this
author's books, all of which — "Houses of
Glass" (stories of Paris), "Half Loaves"
(a novel dealing indirectly with France),
and "Accidents" and "Journal of Small
Things" (both made up of little French
sketches written during the war) — have
to do with "the City of Light." Mrs.
Mackay has lived for many years in the
French capital, and during the war she
labored in the Hospital Saint Louis,
Paris, until her health broke down. The
present volume has to do chiefly with
her experiences in the wards among the
wounded French soldiers, where "cour-
age, sacrifice and glory are come to be
just the average, anonymous, like the
uncounted little wooden crosses in the
fields and at the road edges."
606]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 56
Impressions
de Voyage — III
THE air here is full of gossip about
individuals; of rumors diplomatic
and political. The place, therefore, apart
from its wonderful monuments of art and
its checkered history, is extraordinarily
interesting just now. Whether the situa-
tion is normal or no, I can not pretend
to saj', but I fancy such as I find it, such,
in a measure, it has always been. At
this moment the aggressive attitude of
the Japanese appears to hold first place
in everj- discussion. They are evidently
in deadly earnest; they mean to hold all
they have and to reach out for more.
Crossing Shantung by rail the other day
1 wondered why they should covet it. So
meticulously is the soil cultivated that it
seems incapable of supporting a larger
population; it is surely not wanted for
Japan's surplus millions. Inquiry reveals
the true cause of this land greed in
three facts; first, the existence of valu-
able coal deposits; second, the former
German railway, from Tsingtao to
Tsinanfu, giving access to this coal, and
being withal a trunk line from deep
water to Pekin; third, the port of Tsing-
tao itself, where heavy vessels may dis-
charge their cargoes direct into railway
cars which can reach all parts of China
adjacent to the capital, while Tientsin,
hard by Pekin, is only accessible to light
draught vessels, thence a double shift of
freight is required — from barge to small
steamers at the mouth of the Pai Ho
River, then again by lighters at Tientsin
to the railway. The Japanese have been
shrewd enough to realize that in indus-
try he who controls transportation is
king. Moreover, they have bought up
practically all the waterfront at Tsing-
tao, thus assuring to themselves a
monopoly of shipping facilities. No
wonder one American line of steamers
has abandoned it as a port of call, so
annoying were the unnecessary delays
to which the Japanese subjected it.
While this policy, repeated wherever
they have penetrated in China, may be
immediately profitable to the Japanese,
it is certainly costing them friendship
and good-will which would doubtless in
the end prove quite as valuable. Symp-
toms of this result were apparent even
to as casual a traveler as I am. The
notices in Canton — "Boycott the Japanese
goods"; those in shops in Shanghai:
"Japanese bank notes will not be ac-
cepted" ; the glee with which the natives
and others pointed out the emptiness of
Japanese steamers on the Yangtze as
contrasted with those of Chinese or Eu-
ropean nationality loaded to the guard;
the prompt negative invariably received
to the question, "Do you like the Japa-
nese?" all bespeak a frame of mind
which bodes ill for pleasant relations be-
tween China and Japan. It is a great
pity, for, pulling together, the former
might achieve her independence of the
foreign domination she experiences at
every turn. Can a nation denied the
right to frame its own tariff laws be
considered sovereign?
I refrain from repeating the many
stories which come to my ears illustrat-
ing the close resemblance, at least to
their teller's mind, between Japanese and
German methods. Let us hope that the
Japanese will realize how shortsighted
is this Hun policy and, realizing, aban-
don it.
The number of Chinese soldiers visi-
ble eve; y where is astonishing and — dis-
concerting. They are not needed against
foreigners, else would the Shantung
question be settled promptly by the ejec-
tion of the Japanese trespassers; can it
be that they are part of a great political
machine? Every province has its own
army under a "Military Governor." Are
these coolies in uniform but pawns on
the chess board of personal ambitions?
To the ignorant tourist this seems the
most likely solution of the riddle. More-
over, his suspicions are confirmed by
statements from people long resident in
China. Instead of borrowing money why
should she not economize by returning
to the soil hosts of these unnecessary
consumers?
Caspar F. Goodrich
The Atavus
THE Merrills are very modern. This
is natural because they have lived
in the twentieth century for fully twenty
years, as against less than ten in the
nineteenth. It is also forced to some
extent by the apartment in which they
live. This apartment is ultra-modern,
and they have aged perceptibly in trying
to keep up with it. It is in an efficient,
grown-up building; one hurdles no kid-
die-cars in approaching it. Within, there
are no childish whoops and wails, but
only a series of mechanical clicks and
electric hums.
Though I am welcomed most cordially
when I call upon the Merrills, I always
have a devil of a time getting in. I enter
a tight little vestibule, turn a knob, open
a box that is often the wrong box, press
a button . . . and wait. As I wait
I can hear vague, disturbing noises in-
side, a moan of resentment, a clatter as
if someone were throwing up a defense
against me, an irritable rat-a-tat, and
though I be arrayed in all the glory of
the late Ward McAllister, my tile be-
comes a slouch cap, my cravat a knotted
bandana, and I am the person who was
found loitering near the scene of th«
crime.
Suddenly the grilled door in front of
me slides back, permitting me to walk
into the hall. I am no longer a neophyte.
Steeled for the second degree I present
myself to the elevator-boy, a tall, gray-
haired man with the dignity that a sena-
tor is supposed to have. He looks at me
dubiously.
"Merrill's, please." I give the pass-
word a jauntiness which should convince
him of my familiarity with the home
whose sanctity he is guarding.
"Mr. ]\:erriirs?" he asks with an ac-
cent of reproach.
"Yes — and Mrs. Merrill's," I add, just
to assure him that my welcome will be
unanimous.
He hesitates and then asks hopefully,
"Are they expecting you?"
"They are." I confess it.
I can almost hear the Merrills sliding
down his estimation. They had seemed
like nice people, too. He admits me to
the glittering cage. He has given up.
If I proceed to mock the family portraits,
or wipe my nose on my sleeve, or warble
at my consomme, let none blame him!
He has done his little best, but de guesti-
bus non est disputandum.
At the eighth floor I step out of the
car with carefully disguised relief; all
the way up Charon has been staring at
my ear-lobes, and I feel that the Juke
is on me. There is more abracadabra
about getting into the Merrill apartment
proper — mainly matters of vestibules.
First there is a vestibule and then there
is a sub-vestibule, and the door of the
vestibule must be closed before the door
of the sub-vestibule can be opened. This
is somewhat on the principle of the turn-
stile, and is a great help in keeping pro-
cessions out of the home.
The apartment is small and very new.
It is, as Mrs. Merrill has more than once
remarked, "ducky" — but the remark
throws more light upon herself than
upon the apartment. Ducky or not, it is
too complex for a simple soul like me.
There are labor-saving devices on all
sides — one can't make a move without
saving a lot of labor — and the living-
room is bedecked with space-saving de-
vices until, like the Salteena of motor-
cars, it seems dwarfed by its accessories.
There is a table that is actually a multi-
plication-table in mahogany. It can, on
"bridge" afternoons, turn itself into a
host of little tables, or it can play the
role of the long and festive board; test
of all, it can telescope into almost noth-
ing. The electric-light cords are on
spring reels, and your light will go with
you as far as you wish, but is apt to
flash away when you least expect it.
The pride of the house is in the
kitchen. It is an ironing-board that
folds into the wall. True, Mrs. MerriD
has all the laundry-work done outside^
but the board is undeniably ducky. The
way it slips into its niche is a tribute
to the mind of man, and when it is not
in use — which is all of the time — it is as
ornamental as a spinning-wheel.
I
June 5, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[607
The modernity of the Merrills received
a setback with the arrival of Peter.
Babies are so old-fashioned. And Peter
was a regular baby; the very first time
I saw him I realized that. He was pain-
fully pink, and proficient in the vulgar
art of blowing bubbles.
"So this is Peter!" I said, in lieu of
something clever and complimentary.
"That was his grandfather's name,
wasn't it?"
I thought they must have harked back
at least a couple of generations for a
name like that, but to my surprise I
found that they hadn't harked at all.
"He isn't named for anyone," Mrs.
Merrill informed me. "We just selected
'Peter' because it's so quaint."
1 looked at Peter with new interest
and not. a little pity. There he lay in
his crib— -unfortunate child! — doomed to
spend the rest of his days living up to
a quaint name. What a future!
Though his ears are neither pointed
nor furry, if he develops any conscience
in infancy he will feel bound to behave
like an odd, elfin creature. In childhood
he will have to go away by himself and
talk to fairies and flowers when he would
rather converse with Dirtyneck McGrew.
In youth he will have to cultivate an
aversion to civilization, and practice his
whimsicalities while the other lads are
shooting pool. As for love, who ever
heard of anyone named Peter breaking
a woman's heart? Heartbreaking is not
a laudable pursuit, I admit, but we all
like to feel that we could go out and
break a few if we wern't so decent.
Probably when he gets older he will have
to wear grotesque burnsides, waste a lot
of time doddering, and be whimsical
twenty-four hours a day ; in his declining
years he will have to build bird-houses
when he's not writing for The Con-
tributors' Club, and when he dies he will
get a pun for an epitaph and be remem-
bered as a delightful old bore.
All this goes with the name; the Fates
seem to have ordained it. But I hope
the three sisters — or two out of three,
anyhow — may be wrong for once. I
hope that Peter will look like his father,
that he will vote the same ticket and
sleep in the same church. I hope that
he will drink coffee three times a day,
chew gum at the office, marry the third
girl he falls in love with, read the Satur-
day Evening Post, laugh at vaudeville,
spell through "thru," boast of wearing
B. V. D.'s all winter, and smoke Camel
cigarettes.
But — who knows ? — perhaps these very
things will be the quaintnesses of Peter's
iay. In time, he may be pointed out as
he eccentric old body who has vowed
lever to fly, though the planes pass his
:himney every day. He will be thought a
;rifle "queer" because he uses the old-
'ashioned Gillette instead of having his
vhiskers removed by electricity. And it
will be whispered that it is Peter who,
under the name of "Old Subscriber,"
writes those letters to the New Republic
sighing for the good old days when there
was something wrong with the world
every week.
Weare Holbrook
Drama
Dramas for the Reader
Representative One-Act Plays by American
Authors. By Margaret Gardner May-
orga. Boston : Little, Brown and Com-
pany.
Little Theatre Classics, Vol. II. By Samuel
A. Eliot, Jr. Boston: Little, Brown and
Company.
The Soothsayer. By Verner von Heiden-
stam, Translated by Karoline Knudsen.
Boston : The Four Seas Company.
The Bikth ok God. By Verner von Heiden-
stam. Translated by Karoline Knudsen.
Boston : The Four Seas Company.
The Sevkn Who Sleit. By A. Kingsley Por-
ter. Boston : Marshall Jones Company.
MISS MAYORGA has done well to
bring together twenty-four one-act
American plays. If the American one-
act play has not flourished in obscurity,
at least it has blossomed in the shade,
and so recent has been its note that,
without actually counting, I should sup-
pose that about half the authors in this
volume were under thirty-five. The book
(Continued on page 608)
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
Studies in Language and Literature
LUCILIUS
AND
HORACE
A Study in the Classical Theory of
Imitation
By GEORGE CONVERSE FISKE
Associate Professor of Latin
Professor Fiske sets forth the point
of view with which the literary artist of
antiquity approached his work, as a
craftsman consciously accepting a well
defined style, appropriate to his purpose,
and manifesting his originality within
the limits thus set for him. The book
applies these conceptions first to Lucitius,
and then to Horace. The conclusion
brings the classical conceptions into re-
lation with the modern romantic theory
of composition.
The foregoing outline makes plain the
importance of Professor Fiske's work,
not only as a contribution to classical
scholarship, but as a timely discussion
of fundamental critical questions.
Price, $2.50
Orders should be sent to
The Secretary of the Board of Regents
The University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin
BOOKS To Live With
TT is no simple problem — the choice of the
■■■ books that are to be our friends. Day after
day we must see them upon our shelves; must
make them the intimates of our lives. Of course
there are books — casual acquaintances — that will
meet the mood of the moment. They are the
books that, once read, are cast aside. But for
the tried and true friend there must be some-
thing more. Substance, thought, style — these
qualities we must find ere a volume is placed
on the shelf, just within reach, to be read and
re-read. The following books, chosen from an
extensive list, meet these requirements. They
are preeminently books to live with.
My Neighbor, Tbe Working Man
By James Roscoe Day
Chancellor of Syracuse University
A strong and trenchant discussion of present-
day social and industrial unrest.
I2mo. Cloth. Net $2.50, postpaid.
The Balkans. A Laboratory ol
History
By William M. Sloane
New Edition. Reinscd and Enlarged
The author has enlarged his text by something
more than a quarter. The pages of the earlier
editions have been revised, corrected and
changed to correspond in the form of expres-
sion with the additional pages. The volume is
a careful, lucid, and scnolarly review of the
whole Balkan question. A very valuable book
for both students and general readers.
8vo. Three Maps. Cloth. In Press.
Pantheistic Dilemmas
And Other Essays in Philosophy and Religion
By Henry C. Sheldon
Essays dealing with important issues in the
intellectual and religious world to-day. An in-
valuable volume for the student of current
philosophical and religious trends. Professor
Sheldon's sanity of thought and clarity of state-
ment were never more evident than in these
essays.
12mo. Cloth. Net $2.50, postpaid.
Prices are subject to
Public Opinion and Theology
Lail Lectures of the Pacific School of Religion
By Bishop Francis J. McConnell
All thoughtful readers will want to follow the
Bishop through these illuminating and informa-
tive pages.
12mo. Cloth. Net $1.50, postpaid.
The Eyes ol Faith
By Lynn Harold Hough
President of Northwestern University
A keen and critical putting of the relation of
experience to present-day problems of philosophy
and religion.
12mo. Cloth. Net $1.50. postpaid.
Some Aspects of International
Cliristianlty
The Mcndcnhall Lectures, Fifth Series,
Delivered at DcPauw University
By John Kelman
"There are questions of the most vital im-
portance on which every man must form an
opinion. The bearings of these questions are
not confined to the regions of expert knowledge;
and there is a place for impressions of the man
on the street^his general sense of moral values,
his commonsense view of relative importances,
and the free play of his conscience upon the
questions of the hour as he understands them.
It is in his name and from his point of view
that 1 have prepared these lectures." — From
Author's Preface.
12mo. Cloth. Net $1.00, postpaid,
change zvithout notice
New York
THE ABINGDON PRESS Cincinnati
608]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 56
I
{Continued from page 607)
is duly and competently supplied with
preface, introduction, biographical notes,"
bibliographies, and other concomitants
of anthologies. Miss Mayorga classes
her twenty-four plays under eleven
heads. She has just one more category
than Polonius in that tragical-comical-
historical-pastoral passage in which
Shakespeare seems, even in those art-
less times, to find a theme for mirth in
the nicety of classifiers. At a moment
when he was himself wildly capering in
the gloomiest of tragedies, he felt the
value of defensive satire.
It is natural that the one-act play
should be marked by diversity of kinds.
If one collected into two groups the
people with whom one could comfortably
spend a half hour and those one could put
up with for two hours and a half, it is
clear that the first assembly would be
not only larger but more diversified than
the second. Miss Mayorga classifies, not
by dividing the whole like a logician, but
by adding the particulars like a collector.
But there is no good method of sorting
dramas; logic is irrelevant and collector-
ship is lax. Even with eleven heads it is
hard to give each play its proper billet.
"Suppressed Desires" may be satire, as
the editor thinks, but surely it is also
farce; and a "Good Woman" is no more
a "play of ideas" than a "Question of
Morality," which is debited to "comedy."
For myself I have no affection for clas-
sifications of dramas ; they were too dear
to Polonius.
Miss Mayorga has chosen well. She
tells us in her preface that she has some-
times preferred the representative to the
excellent — a preference to which, after a
moment's hesitation, one assents. The
average merit, however, is considerable.
There is no ground as yet for national
exultation, but Americans may well be
soberly and humbly glad in the showing
made by their compatriots in this vol-
ume. On the whole, the pattern is much
better than the goods. The ideas, the
motives, are strong. But the execution
wants steadiness. The hand shakes a
little; there is no assurance in the stroke.
Even this defect is hardly marked
enough to be felt in the theatre, and one
is glad that form rather than matter
should be the seat of the defect. It is
easier for substance to annex style than
for style to annex substance ; neither an-
nexation is child's play.
Envy is sometimes a good touchstone,
and I am moved to confess that I should
like to have written Miss Esther Gal-
braith's "Brink of Silence," Mr. Oscar
M. Wolff's "Where But in America," and,
but for its slanting or sloping morals,
Mr. George Middleton's "Good Woman."
I should like to have been bright enough
to think out the motive of Mr. Percival
Wilde's "Question of Morality," though
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I do not warm to the gelid subtlety of
the result. The volume should serve the
one-act play as furtherance and as
incentive.
In Mr. Eliot's "Little Theater Class-
ics," "Little" and "Classics" should be
strongly underscored. The book adapts
standard plays of other centuries to in-
timate, artistic, solicitous presentation.
There are some intrepidities in Mr.
Eliot which rather stagger me, though
whether the protest comes from real dis-
approbation or simply from that unused-
ness which whimpers at the approach of
novelty it is hard for me to say. For
instance, I stand agape, if not aghast, at
Mr. Eliot's consolidation of the Chester
play and the Brome play on Abraham
and Isaac into one drama. Surely the
divinely pathetic Townley version of this
still enjoyable theme might have served
his purpose better than this adulterous
conjunction.
The "Loathed Lover," the third play,
is a greatly shortened and somewhat
softened adaptation of Thomas Middle-
ton's powerful and formidable "Change-
ling." I doubt if an expurgation so
cautious as Mr. Eliot's has really im-
proved the decorum of the play. Middle-
ton's "Changeling" is, in agreement with
its name, an unwashed and unkempt
brat, and I think its hairiness and
blotchiness become more rather than less
conspicuous after it has been washed,
combed, and wrapped in comely linen. I
rather wonder that Mr. Eliot, whose
restorative hand is omnipresent, has not
troubled himself to iron out the creases j
in Middleton's (or Eowley's) insupport- '
able blank verse.
Mr. Eliot is quite justified in includ-
ing in his book the excellent old farce
of "Pathelin." He has to travel far back
in time to reach it, but "Pathelin" is
worth a journey. I do not quite see,
however, why he should stop on the re-
turn trip to pick up Moliere's "Sgana-
relle," a smart, saucy, bustling one-act
play, whose deserts, I should suppose, had
been paid in full by the merriment of its
contemporaries. The present text, which
is Mr. Eliot's revision of the rhymed
version prepared by Mr. Philip Moeller
for the Washington Square players, is of
an admirable pithiness, zest, and elas-
ticity. Of Mr. Eliot's four curiously
different plays, one approves "Pathelin,"
and "Abraham and Isaac," at least in
the ground work, tolerates "Sganarelle,"
and looks askance at the "Loathed Lover."
But of their fitness to their audience it
is hard to judge. Mr. Eliot expressly
dedicates "Sganarelle" to "lovers of the
new, the whimsical, the picturesque and
style-struck." He would be a bold critic
who would undertake to say what would ,
not please lovers of the new, the whim-
sical, the picturesque, and the style- 1
struck in the modern theatre.
In the "Soothsayer" and the "Birth of
June 5, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[609
God," short plays by Verner von Heiden-
stam, I find a dramatic void. Their
merits consist in serious purpose, power-
ful settings, and a diction — happily re-
produced in Miss Knudsen's picturesque
and gliding English — which has both
shape and color, both complexion and pro-
file. In the "Soothsayer" a man flees
from hearth to temple and from temple
to hearth in alternate faithlessness to
each. The play, on its tiny scale, is like
"Peer Gynt" in its detestation of the un-
committed or half -committed man, and it
is like "Brand" in its presentation of the
conflict between religion and domesticity
for the mastery of a struggling soul.
Unfortunately it adduces no reason for
its dictum that love and priesthood are
incompatible, and its mere word, in the
absence of a reason, will not greatly im-
press a world in which Socrates, St.
Peter, St. Louis, and Ralph Waldo Emer-
son were husbands.
The "Birth of God" is less prettily
wrought, but is somewhat richer in sub-
stance. Two strangers, meeting at night
in our own time in Karnak, hold a solemn
dialogue to which the images of forsaken
gods serve as framework and in which
from time to time the lamentations of
these gods augustly mingle. God is dead;
God is unborn. His birth is foreseen,
and the foresight of his birth is already
the beginning of his presence. All this
is dimly cheerful; it loses its cheer and
it does not acquire clearness when one
of the strangers actually obtains his God
by a voluntary leap into sacrificial flames.
Mr. Porter's preface to the "Seven
Who Slept" is a defense of illusion. It
is a dashing, sprightly, condescending
preface, and much of what it says is
incontestable. At times, however, its
points, like crossing sword-blades, blunt
each other. We are told at the outset
that "the only power which can — or at
least commonly does — dispel an illusion is
another illusion." We are told at the
end that "the modern age has been mis-
guided in its exclusive search after
truth." How can illusion be impaired or
impeded by our search for truth, when,
in the search for truth, we get illu-
sion?
The legendary play, in four brief
episodes, presents illusion as an encour-
agement to virtue in a pointed and clean-
cut anecdote of the transitory revival of
the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. With his
lesson Mr. Porter has hardly succeeded;
the moral is at once importunate and elu-
sive ; the reader can not get hold of it nor
get free of it. But the play, in its in-
formal fashion, shows a measure of
dramatic faculty. Mr. Porter manages
his surprise cunningly, and he has a good
dialogue of the plain, crisp sort in which
all the speeches are erect and solitary,
as insulated in their proximity as the
dwellers in New York apartment houses.
0. W. Firkins
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610]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 56
Problems of Labor and Capital
IV. Chartering vs. Incorporating Employers' Associations
and Trade Unions
THE usual excuse put forth by em-
ployers who refuse to enter into col-
lective bargaining agreements with labor
unions is the alleged irresponsibility of
the unions. Employers, that is, very
seldom succeed in recovering pecuniary
damages from unions for breach of con-
tract. In the belief that compulsory in-
corporation of unions would make it a
simple matter for an employer success-
fully to sue for damages arising out of
a breach of contract, employers through-
out the country are in favor of com-
pulsory incorporation. This movement
is, of course, bitterly opposed by or-
ganized labor. The reason for this op-
position usually alleged by organized
labor is unwillingness to submit to any
public control. There is no valid reason
to suppose that the opposition arises
from a belief that through incorporation
the treasuries of the unions would be
more subject to attack. An ingrained
desire to be free from public scrutiny
and inspection explains itself in the
light of the fact that the trade union
movement was an outgrowth of secret
societies, somewhat resembling the Ma-
sonic orders.
But in all the discussions it has been
but seldom suggested that it would be
equally wise and fair to compel the in-
corporation of employers' associations.
For many years employers' associations
dealing with labor were incorporated
under State laws. In this they followed
the practices of employers' associations
organized for purposes other than deal-
ing with labor. Within the last decade,
however, there has been a marked ten-
dency among lawyers to advise employ-
ers' associations to remain, unincor-
porated. The reason for this advice is
obvious. Under the laws of many States,
such as New York, the statutes covering
membership corporations vest in the
courts a so-called power of visitation, in
effect a power of inspection. To pre-
vent the possibility of any inspection
whatsoever, employers' associations gen-
erally remain unincorporated, the mem-
bers being held together merely by
formal or informal by-laws and consti-
tutions.
Though both labor and capital are
fearful of public supervision, the unions,
as a rule, print in their bulletins, which
are distributed to their members and to
TheShawmut Indian Head
has earned for itself a permanent place in the
universal language of trade marks. Wherever it
is seen, at home or in the remote comers of the
world, it stands for sound banking principles
and the accumulated experience gained in
serving more than three generations of merchants
and manufacturers.
THE NATIONAL SHAWMUT BANK
OF BOSTON
Established
1837
Resources over $250,000,000
40 Water Street
Boston
the public, audited monthly statements
of their financial condition. Knowledge
of this fact comes as a great surprise
to most employers. Hardly a single case
can be mentioned where an employers'
association, organized solely to deal with
labor, has ventured to publish an income
and disbursement statement, though they
willingly make public their records of
votes on important matters, and dis^
tribute such information not only to their
members, but to their particular trade
through their trade press, matters which
the unions jealously keep secret.
Lack of general publicity on both sides
is the basis for much of the lack of con-
fidence existing between employers and
organized labor. The unions, with con- '
siderable justice, allege the existence of
large "strike funds" to crush labor or-
ganizations. That high-priced detectives
are engaged to act as spies at union
meetings is so commonly assumed that
at many union meetings special remarks
are made for the benefit of such spies.
Where such sums exist they are in part
called forth by the failure of the courts
to give such protection to the employers
as they think they are entitled to. J
When employers argue that the incor- ^
poration of the unions would result in
responsibility, they argue from a false
premise and without knowledge of the
facts. It can not be denied that in busi-
ness dealings generally credit is estab-
lished on statements showing assets sub-
ject to attack in the event that the credit
is abused. However, it is most improb-
able that employers would ever be able
to reach the funds of the unions, even
if such funds were subject to legal at-
tack. In the first place, if mandatory
incorporation were to be adopted, the at-
torneys for the trade unions would
speedily pursue the methods of corporate
financing, which have been so success-
fully carried on by capital during the
past decades. Subsidiary corporations
would be organized to which would be
transferred the larger part of the union
funds. A local union in the City of New
York decided some years ago to go into
business on its own account; it bought
a plant worth several thousand dollars
and actually engaged in the line of busi-
ness in which its members were quali-
fied. In order to safeguard the funds so
invested, a separate corporation was or-
ganized, each member of the union hold-
ing a share of the stock. It is plain that
the legal difficulties involved in follow-
ing the union's funds would prove
so expensive and difficult as to make the
relief impracticable. Assuming, how-
ever, that upon a breach of contract
funds of the union could be easily levied
. upon, it must nevertheless be apparent
to anyone familiar with the temper of
the labor movement in this country that
the mere risk arising to the funds in the
treasury would not deter the average
June 5, 1920]
THE REVIEW
[611
labor union from any course previously-
determined upon. Probably every day
in the year some labor union without
funds receives assistance from other
unions in the same or other trades
in other parts of the country. The
seizure of the union's treasury would
only further embitter the workers and
prolong the strike. Is it not also true
that most strikes would come to an end
long before a decision could be reached
in our courts on an action for damages?
What the employers and the workers
really need is not the subjecting of funds
to attack. All that is hoped for from
mandatory incorporation could be accom-
plished through compulsory licensing or
chartering. Legislation should be en-
acted to make mandatory the govern-
mental chartering of trade unions and
employers' associations. Such legisla-
tion should expressly provide that the
financial responsibility of the parties is
unaffected thereby. With this sound and
fair provision, and with a further decla-
ration of the benefits to trade unions of
the compulsory chartering of employers'
associations, it may be that the present
opposition of organized labor to any form
of public interference might be overcome.
Such chartering of the parties to the
present industrial warfare would mean
little more than the public filing of the
constitution, and by-laws and amend-
ments thereto, the periodic filing of de-
tailed financial statements showing not
only assets and liabilities, but income and
disbursements, and the recording of the
names and addresses of all members and
officers of the respective chartered asso-
ciations. A further requirement of some
value would be the compulsory filing of
certificates setting forth the result of all
votes on election of officers or commit-
i tees and proposed demands or strikes on
the part of the workers, or lockouts on
the part of the employers. Through the
medium of chartering, the Government
could obtain power of regulation over
the manner of taking and counting of
votes. The common cry of employers
that they would be willing to deal with
organized labor if the leadership were
the leadership actually desired by the
workers would in part be answered, if,
in addition to the public filing of the re-
sult of the votes taken in such matters,
the Government would also have power
to surround these industrial ballots with
safeguards similar to those now protect-
ing the political ballot. Publicity of
somewhat this sort has been successfully
tried in isolated cases by the more pro-
ifressive employers and unions. Neither
side would revert to the former "star
chamber" proceedings. Unfortunately,
the introduction of similar practices in
ill labor unions and employers' associa-
;ions will take decades of education in
.he absence of mandatory legislation.
Morris L. Ernst
The Whitley System
in the British Civil
Service
IN March, 1917, was issued the Whitley
Report, so called from the name of
the Chairman of a committee ap-
pointed by the Ministry of Labor.
It has introduced into the indus-
trial life of England a remarkable
change. This committee recommended
that employers and employed, in each
trade, should form a Joint Standing In-
dustrial Council and select representa-
tives for the purpose of consultation and
advice on subjects connected with the
interests of the two parties. Employees
thus secured a voice in the regulation
of the labor engaged. This principle has
now been applied to the Civil Service of
the Crown.
Constitutional changes in England
have for centuries occurred with so little
friction and in so quiet a way that their
importance is often unappreciated. It
will be seen, when described, how large
is the change effected by this application
of the Whitley Report, which primarily
was intended to affect only "the main in-
dustries of the country." It came about
in this way. On March 7, 1919, there
was issued a report of a sub-committee
of an inter-departmental committee on
the application of the Whitley Report to
Government establishments. This was
followed in April by a conference at
which it was resolved that a National
Joint Committee should be appointed to
consider a Whitley scheme and make a
report on the same. Accordingly a Pro-
visional National Joint Committee was
formed, consisting of fifteen official rep-
resentatives and fifteen representatives
of the employees in the English Civil
Service. The report of this body, issued
on May 28, 1919, formulated a scheme
which was approved by the Cabinet in
June, 1919, and subsequently accepted
by a Joint Official and Staff Conference
presided over by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. It will be seen by reference
to some of the more important details
how vitally it changes the position of the
English Civil Servants of the Crown.
The new principle, that the employees
are entitled to a voice in the organiza-
tion of the service, is distinctly formu-
lated :
The main objects of establishing a system of
joint Whitley bodies for the administrative
Departments are to secure a greater measure
of cooperation between the State, in its capacity
of employer, and the general body of Civil Ser-
vants, in matters affecting the Civil Service,
with a view to increase efficiency in the public
service combined with the well-being of those
employed; to provide machinery for dealing
with grievances, and generally to bring together
experience and different points of view of
representatives of the administrative, clerical
and manipulative Civil Service.
Complete Banking Service
in Convenient Localities
55 Cedar Street
Broadway at 73rd St.
Madison Av. at 75th St.
12Sth St. at Eighth Av.
Customers of one office have at their
disposal the facilities of all offices.
DEPARTMENTS
Banking Trust
Mortgage Coupon
Credit Transfer & Registrar
Foreign Municipal Bond
Reorganization Safe Deposit
Safekeeping of Securities
UNITED mm
MORTGAGE LlKUSl
COMPANY
Capital and Surplus, $6,000,000
NEW YORK
THE NEW YORK
TRUST COMPANY
Main Office Fifth Avenue Office
26 Broad Street Fifth Ave. and S7th St.
NEW YORK
Capital $3,000,000
Surplus and Profits $11,000,000
Designated Depositary in Bankrtiptcy and of Court
and Trust Funds
OTTO T. BANNARD, Chairman of the Board
MORTIMER N. BUCKNER, President
F. J. Home, Vice-Pre». H. W. Shaw
James Dodd, Vice-Pres.
H. W. Morse, V.-Pres.
Harry Forsyth, Treas.
Boyd G. Curts, Sec'y
J. A. Flynn
A. C. Downing, Jr.
W. MacNaughten
Assistant Secretaries
E. B. Lewis, Asst. Treas.
FIFTH AVENUE OFFICE
Charles E. Haydock, Vice-President and Manager
Mrs. Key Cam mack Assistant Secretary
Russell V. Worstell Assistant Secretary
TRUSTEES
Otto T. Bannard
S. Reading Bertroii
iames A. Blair
Jortitner N. Buckner
James C. Colgate
Alfred A. Cook
Arthur T. Cumnock
Robert W. de Forest
John B. Dennis
Philip T. Dodge
George Doubleday
Samuel H. Fisher
John A. Garver
Benjamin S. Guinness
F. N. Hoffstot
Buchanan Houston
Frederic B. Jennings
Walter Jennings
Darwin P. Kingsley
John C. McCall
Ogden L. Mills
Tohn J. Mitchell
James Parmelee
Henry C. Phipps
Norman P. Ream
Dean Sage
Joseph J. Slocum
Myles Tiemcy
Clarence M. WooUey
Members of the New York Clearing House Asso-
ciation and of the Federal Reserve System
612]
THE REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 56
• Therefore we find a representative
body of employers and employed, for the
heads of departments may be regarded
a^ employers, set up to regulate the Civil
Service system. Accordingly three sets
of bodies are established — a National
Council, Departmental Committees, and
District and OflSce (or Works) Commit-
tees, the first named body consisting of
fifty-four members, half to be appointed
by the Government and the other half
by groups of Stafif Associations.
The object of the Council is to carry
out the principles already described. The
most startling point, and one which in
any country in Europe would be regarded
as subversive of existing institutions, is
that "the decisions of the Council shall
be arrived at by agreement between the
two sides," and then "they shall be re-
ported to the Cabinet and thereupon
shall become operative." Startling does
not seem too strong an adjective to use
in reference to this recommendation, be-
cause it appears to take away Cabinet
responsibility, and the National Joint
Council becomes the real governing body
in regard to the organization of the Civil
Service.
The Departmental Committees will,
however, probably'be of greater practical
utility than the National Council, because
they will deal with the affairs of each
department. The dividing line between
the jurisdiction of the National Council
and of the Departmental Committees is
very vague, for "the precise line of
demarcation between the scope of the
National Council and Departmental Com-
mittees must be left largely to the test
of experience." District Joint Commit-
tees and Sectional Committees are sim-
ply special committees necessitated by
the existence of special sections or grades
in some departments, and do no more
than carry the system of Departmental
Committees into greater detail. The
main interest of the new system is not
in the details, but in the adoption of the
principle of staff intervention in the or-
ganization of the Civil Service.
It is clearly an extraordinary change,
for if there has been one branch of civil
employment in which the employed has
been entirely subordinate to the employer,
it is the Civil Service. The employee
has entered it knowing its terms, its re-
strictions, its pay, and its duration of
employment. He made up his mind from
the moment of entrance that he was a
mere unit in a huge Governmental ma-
chine. Now things are changed — how
changed it will be for the immediate
future to show. One may hope that the
status and work of the English Civil
Service have been such that extreme
changes will not be required. But the
application of the Whitley system to the
British Civil Service makes one consider
when and to what extent the same prin-
RADICAL propagandists in the present
period of world changes are striking
at the very foundation of American institu-
tions.
The most enterprising of these are the in-
tellectual radical journals. They are making
dangerous headway, even among loyal
Americans.
THE REVIEW was founded to dispute the
teachings of such journals and is making
real progress in its work of keeping alive
the principles of American liberty.
f5 A Ytat
140 Nassau Si.
Nem York
ciple will be applied in other countries.
So far as Great Britain is concerned,
the extension is of quite extraordinary
interest because nothing is clearer than
that the original Whitley Report con-
templated only war conditions and the
problems which were likely to arise im-
mediately after the war in relation to
industrial undertakings. Its applica-
tion to the Civil Service shows that its
principles will be permanently applied,
sooner or later, in every kind of employ-
ment. For if it is applicable to the Civil
Service of the Crown, it is applicable
universally.
E. S. ROSCOE
London, May 10
Books Received
DRAMA AND MUSIC
Gorki, Maxim. A Night's Lodging. Four
Seas Co.
Heidenstam, Verner von. The Birth of God.
Four Seas Co. $1.25 net.
Leslie, Noel. Three Plays. Four Seas.
$1.50 net.
Steiner, Rudolph. Four Mystery Plays. 2
volumes. Putnam.
Three Plays of the Argentine. Edited with
Introduction by Edward H. Bierstadt. Duf-
field. $1.75 net.
ESSAYS AND CRITICISM
The Letters of Henry James. Selected and
Edited by Percy Lubbock. 2 volumes.
Scribner.
Hobson, J. A. Taxation in the New State.
Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Jastrow, Morris, Jr. The Eastern Question
and Its Solution. Lippincott.
Kimball, Everett. The National Government
of the United States. Ginn.
Lyman, George H. Story of the Massachu-
setts Committee on Public Safety. Mass.
Committee on Public Safety.
MacMurchy, Dr. Helen. The Almosts: A
Study of the Feeble-Minded. Houghton
Mifflin. $1.50,
Morrison, A. J. East by West. Four Seas.
Ogilvie, Paul M. International Waterways.
Macmillian
Pollock, Sir Frederick. League of Nations.
Macraillan. $4.
JUVENILE
Skinner, Ada and Eleanor. The Garnet
Story Book.
LITERATURE
Amos, Flora R. Early Theories of Transla-
tion. Columbia University Press. $2 net.
MISCELLANEOUS
Kleiser, Grenville. Pocket Guides to Public
Speaking. Ten volumes. Funk & Wagnalls.
POETRY
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1919.
Edited by William S. Braithwaite. Small,
Maynard. $2.25 net.
Barney, Danford. Chords from Albireo.
Lane. $1.50 net
Barrett, Wilton A. Songs from the Jour-
ney. Doran.
Crowell, Joshua F. Outdoors and In.
Four Seas Co. $1.50 net.
Georgian Poetry. 1918-19. Putnam.
Poems of John R. Thompson. Scribner.
$2.
Sarett, Lew. Many, Many Moons. Holt.
$1.50 net.
Still, John. Poems in Captivity. Lane.
Walsh, Thomas. Don Folquet and Other
Poems. Lane. $1.50 net.
THE WEEK
REVIE
Vol. 2, No. 57
New York, Wednesday, June 16, 1920
FIFTEEN CENTS
Contents
Brief Comment 613
Editorial Articles:
The Voice of America 616
Federal Prohibition a Fact 616
The Law or the Cadi? 617
A Rock-Bottom Prophet 619
Worries of the Young Nations. By
Thomas H. Dickinson 620
A "Gold Brick" from North Dakota.
By Eye-Witness 621
Poetry:
Stormbound. By William N. Bates 623
Iris in Kansas City. By Maytime 624
•Batter Up!" 624
Correspondence 625
Book Reviews:
The War— The Last Phase 627
Achievement and Hope 628
Conrad the Great 629
Winwood Reade 629
From Couperin to Debussy 630
The Run of the Shelves 631
Drama :
Barrie, Galsworthy, and Others. By
William Archer 633
Educational Section 634
The Reconstruction of France through
Agriculture. By Andre Rostand 637
T EADERLESS— that is the one ad-
■'-' jective which, by unanimous con-
sent, was assigned to the Republican
Convention as it assembled at Chi-
cago. To take hold of the amorphous
mass there gathered together and
produce something like genuine crys-
itallization — that was the problem
with which the wise heads in and
laround the Coliseum had to grapple.
By the time this paper reaches the
majority of our readers, the final out-
come of their efforts will in all prob-
ability be known. But, whatever the
decision, either as to platform or as
to candidates, the one thing certain
:s that the coming campaign will be
one of the most important in the his-
tory of the country. Issues have been
more sharply defined at other critical
junctures in our country's history;
but not more than once or twice — in
1860 and possibly in 1896 — has the
actual result of the election had a
more crucial bearing on the country's
future than that of this forthcoming
election is likely to have. And the
less distinctly the issues are defined,
the more essential will it be to keep
in view the momentous character of
the consequences which our choice
will almost certainly carry with it.
Never was there a time when it was
more necessary to keep our heads
level.
TWTHEN an immovable object — ^an
" irreconcilable — is met by a po-
litical convention, which is the first
to budge? Hiram W. Johnson's final
position will soon be knowTi ; but even
now it is evident that here is no ques-
tion of firm convictions which a
chance to be President can not mod-
ify. Old Dr. Johnson in a pinch
clearly believes in calling in others
for consultation — which is about the
only comfort one could derive from
the thought of him in the White
House.
TN Utopia there is no place for such
-*- a spectacle as that presented by the
Chicago Convention, for Utopia is
ruled solely by reason, and the
sprawling democracies of this world
by — conventions. The American peo-
ple are not at the moment choosing a
President, they are choosing a cham-
pion who shall engage in a trial by
combat with another champion simi-
larly chosen. As a method of accom-
plishing this result scrutiny of the
omens or the tight-rope tests of Lilli-
put might be expected to work as well
as our way of putting a thousand
citizens into a big auditorium and
under the chemistry of oratory,
cheers, bands, buttons, whispers.
waggings of the head, four per cent,
beer, and whatever else may have es-
caped the revived vigilance of the
authorities, expecting them perfectly
to interpret the people's will. It
is highly ridiculous, of course — part
circus and part race meet — but, and
also because, it is deeply human.
Those who refuse to be interested in
such a spectacle because it does not
nicely conform to every postulate of
reason are themselves the slaves
of fundamental unreason. Bossed
or unbossed, pledged or unpledged,
stampeded or traded, the delegates to
the Conventions do succeed in hittinsr
upon men who prove capable of dis-
charging the duties laid upon them. ,
THHAT the betting odds against the
-'• unfavored candidate in an elec-
tion are habitually less than the ac-
tual indications warrant is a familiar
fact. When, for example, in a Presi-
dential campaign in which there are
practically only two candidates the
odds against one of them are steadily
as bad as 3 to 1, the actual feeling
among judicial observers is that his
defeat is almost certain. Whatever
the explanation of this phenomenon
— and there is more than one reason
that tends to account for it — the fact
itself will hardly be disputed. An
interesting confirmation of it, how-
ever, is furnished by the odds on the
Republican aspirants for the Republi-
can nomination as posted by the firm
handling most of the bets in Wall
Street on Saturday, June 5, just be-
fore the gathering of the hosts at
Chicago. The odds against the can-
didates named were as follows:
Johnson .... 1 to 1 Allen 6 to 1
Wood 7 to 5 Coolidge 8 to 1
Lowden .... 8 to S Harding .... 8 to 1
Hoover 4 to 1 Butler 10 to 1
Hughes S to 1 Knox 10 to 1
Now if we add up the fractions which
614]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 57
represent the probabilities thus as-
signed to the several candidates — Vg
to Johnson, 5. 12 to Wood, etc. — the
total is nearly 2i4» instead of 1 ; and
this allows nothing for the whole
brood of dark horses! Thus it is
safe to say that, on an average, the
chance assigned to these several can-
didates is three times as great as a
cold calculation would make it —
which is quite in keeping with the
experience above referred to, in elec-
tion-betting odds.
SIXTY-SIX members of the Yale
Faculty have signed the follow-
ing protest to the Senate and House
of Representatives:
We, the undersigned, members of the Faculty
of Yale University, are unalterably opposed to
anv interference by an outside nation with our
domestic affairs, and we are equally opposed
to any attempt on the part of our own govern-
ment to interfere with the domestic affairs of
any other nation. We protest, in particular,
against any Congressional resolutions, or items
in political platforms, touching upon the rela-
tions of Great Britain and Ireland. We our-
selves deeply resented proposals of foreign
interference in our domestic affairs during the
Civil War from 1861 to 1865, and we should
not fail to act in the present instance with the
propriety that we then required of other
nations.
It is a shocking absurdity that such
pretests should be necessary, but they
are necessary, and it is the clear duty
of thinking men and women every-
where to do what they can to make
it plain to our representatives at
Washington that the country is
heartily sick of their cheap and dan-
gerous political tricks. "If I were a
citizen of the United States," says
Mr. Philip Gibbs, the war correspond-
ent, in Harper's Magazine, "I should
be afraid — afraid lest my country
should by passion, or by ignorance, or
by sheer carelessness take the wrong
way." Greater than all these is the
danger arising from the behavior of
politicians scavenging for votes.
GENERALITIES often sound so
well as almost to conceal the fact
that they do nothing else than sound.
Mr. Gompers, for example, harking
back to his Carnegie Hall debate with
Governor Allen, asserts with great
emphasis that "the public has no
rights which are superior to the toil-
er's right to live, and his right to de-
fend himself against oppression." As
these words roll forth, one might
imagine, for a moment, that the op-
position had been knocked over the
ropes never to recover. A moment's
genuine thought reveals the fact that
there really is no opposition. No-
body has questioned the toiler's right
to live, or to defend himself against
oppression. The resounding thump
administered by Mr. Gompers was
only against a man of straw of his
own construction. Meanwhile, the
right of the public to insist that the
toiler shall defend his rights by legal
and orderly methods remains un-
scathed.
THE wording of that passage in
the Papal Encyclical on Christian
Peace and Reconciliation which pro-
claims His Holiness to be "not averse
to mitigating to some degree the rigor
of those conditions which, after the
overthrow of the civil principality of
the Holy See, were justly established
by our predecessors to prevent the
coming of Catholic Princes to Rome
in their official character," makes it
absolutely clear that this decision
does not embody a new principle, but
constitutes merely a measure of ex-
pediency. "The dangerous turn of
events," and no turn in the attitude
of the Vatican, is given as a reason
for the lifting of the ban on visits to
Rome of Catholic Princes and heads
of States and this "remission, coun-
selled, or rather wished for, by the
gravity of the times, must by no
means be interpreted as a tacit renun-
ciation of our sacrosanct rights." In
other words, the Sovereign Pontiff
does not renounce his claim to the
temporal power withheld from him
by the King of Italy; he only
waives a particular form of protest
against the latter's encroachment on
his rights, without ceasing to protest
against it.
T^HE returns of the elections for the
-'- German Reichstag are the re-
flection of a centrifugal force at
work among the electorate. The left
wing of Social-Democracy, the so-
called Independents, and the German
People's party, the stronghold of the
capitalistic interests, have scored the
chief victories at the polls. The
former especially have cause for
satisfaction. They have verified Dr.
Rohrbach's forecast by robbing the
Majority Socialists of their title to
that name. The latter party's respon-
sibility for the Government under •
conditions unprecedented in German
history has proved fatal to their
popularity with the masses. The
formation of a new Government on
the basis of this new party alignment
will be fraught with difficulties. A
combination of Independents, Major-
ity Socialists, and Communists would
find a strong block of all the other
parties in opposition to it. A Gov-
ernment of the right is out of the
question, as the People's party and
the Nationalists together do not con-
stitute a majority over the united
Socialist groups. A continuance of
the present coalition of Majority So-
cialists, Democrats, and the Centre is
very unlikely, since the Socialist lead-
ers have paid for their compromise
with the bourgeoisie by a heavy loss
in adherents. If the Centre lead-
ers, in spite of their strong labor fol-
lowing, could be persuaded to join a
coalition of the right, a Government 1
thus constituted would have to face '
opposition from closed ranks of the
working classes, Catholic labor in-
cluded.
T7XPL0ITATI0N of the American
Jl.
Indian is no longer an easy game.
The vigilance of the Indian Rights
Association has recently scored an-
other triumph in a long series by
compelling the suspension of a con-
tract seriously inimical to the rights
and financial interests of the Pima
Indians, on the Gila River Reserva-
tion. The terms of this contract are
analyzed in a pamphlet published by ,
the Association (No. 119, Second 1
Series), and it is made very clear
that its execution would have been a
gross injustice. It involved 50,000
acres of excellent cotton-growing soil,
all capable of irrigation, which would
have gone into private hands for ten
years, with possibility of renewal, and
with no real approach to a fair com-
pensation. The Association reports
that one Pima Indian, having access
to waste water from a canal, last
year broke twelve acres of land in;
this same district and made a profit
June 16, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[615
of $6,000 on his first crop. There
are funds now available for a diver-
sion dam across the Gila River, a few
miles above the Pima Agency. Under
' the circumstances, the humane and
sensible policy of the Government
would be to complete this dam with
all possible speed, and then, through
the Department of Agriculture, to
provide the Pimas vdth the expert ad-
vice which would enable them to de-
velop their own lands.
SO the gentle, merciful, and loving
Bolsheviki finally killed Madame
Ponafidine, after killing all the rest
of the family they could lay hands
on. Only one son survives, and at
last accounts he was with the volun-
teer army. Readers of Madame Pona-
fidine's letters in the Atlantic a year
or so ago will recall the vivid picture
of a family who, hemmed in from all
channels of escape, and gradually de-
prived of everything which made life
possible, saw day by day the closer
approach of the final tragedy. A
friend tells the rest of the tale. The
Bolsheviki returned and killed two
of the sons. They came back again
and removed Mr. and Mrs. Ponafi-
dine to a little plot of ground. The
husband and father being too old and
helpless to perform physical labor,
they compelled the wife and mother
to "work the ground for a living."
Very likely no living could be wrested
from the ground. So again they came
back and simplified the problem by
killing the useless old man. But the
problem was still unsolved, and there-
fore they came back for a final visit
and slew Mrs. Ponafidine. Were the
Ponafidines inoffensive folk, who
asked only to be left alone? Ah, yes,
no doubt ; but "you can't wage a revo-
lution with rose water." These little
sacrifices of the individual life are
necessary oblations on the altar of
the holy cause of Fraternity. None
but reactionaries will protest against
them.
^ qOMEWHAT "bluggy" is the social
*^ outlook in America, unless we
have a care; and we are unlikely to
exercise the proper care unless we
^ maintain the right temper. So we
li| learn from a sort of valedictory ad-
dress given in Boston by Professor
Harold J. Laski, late of Harvard Uni-
versity, but now returning to London
for a post in the School of Economics.
Industrial democracy, otherwise self-
government in industry, he says,
"may be slow in coming, but it is
inevitable, and it is the business of
those who think for the welfare of
the United States to remember that
it will come, if necessary, with blood,
but can be secured without blood, and
can only be secured without it ac-
cording to the temper which you
maintain." The warning sounds
portentous, but its sophomoric qual-
ity quickly reveals itself and allays
fear. Assuredly if we (meaning
everybody) cultivate a temper that
inevitably makes for bloodshed, why
then inevitably we shall get what our
temper calls for. Contrariwise, if we
don't, we shan't, and there's an end
on't. Speaking strictly for ourselves,
we affirm our preference for fore-
casts expressed in more positive
terms. We resent the attempt to har-
row up our feelings by forebodings
which do not forebode. A prediction
bounded by "unless" on one side and
by "if" on the other, even though it
carry the suggestibility of the most
dire and catastrophic events, is no
prediction at all. It is too Laskian,
so to speak, for a world of stern
realities. It is a Brummagem sub-
stitute for the real thing.
IVTO exercise, we are fain to believe,
■^ ^ is so easy as that of clapper-
claw. The increasing amount of it is
surely proof of the readiness with
which the trick is learned. Given the
mood, nothing seems necessary but
a vocabulary — and even a little of
that will go a long way, for of course
one can always repeat. No informa-
tion is necessary — indeed, sound in-
formation would, as a rule, only ob-
struct the railing impulse. No par-
ticular social theory is required; the
Anarchist who wants no government,
the bureaucratic Socialist who wants
much government, and the Pluralist
who wants a multitude of fractional
governments, all join voices in rail-
ing at exactly the same things. There
is but one rule — to rail and to keep
on railing until exhausted, and then
to take a fresh breath and start all
over again. Of course, a basic as-
sumption or two will help. One may
assume that 90 per cent, of every-
thing in the world (outside of Soviet
Russia) is wrong, or that everyone
anywhere intrusted with political
power (Soviet Russia of course ex-
cepted) is a charlatan chiefly con-
cerned with his own interests. Either
or both of these assumptions serves
to concentrate one's railing towards
more or less definite objectives. Still,
one can be economical and get along
without either. There is such a thing
as railing on "general principles,"
and a survey of the field will incline
the observer to the belief that a con-
siderable part of the output comes
under this category. Perhaps it is
idle to call attention to the problem
unless one can suggest a remedy. But
no remedy, except Time, occurs to
us. Our stout ancestors, on much
slenderer provocation, tried various
drastic remedies, including the duck-
ing-stool; but there is grave doubt
as to the resultant benefits. For our-
selves, we can counsel only a stoical
patience to endure the terrific din
while it lasts, confident that some day
it vdll wear itself down to a more
tolerable murmur.
T INCOLN'S saying that you can
^^ fool some of the people all of the
time applies with particular force to
the radical press and its avid follow-
ing. This following, taken by and
large, has a love of bamboozlement
which is intensive, continuous, and
cumulative. The victim always comes
up hungry for more; and the supply
of what he is looking for, great as it
may be, is ever less than the demand.
The radical paper with the largest
circulation in the United States has
one simple rule: to keep its follow-
ing in the tensest possible state of
excitement and apprehension. With
mankind as a whole it may be said
that the bamboozler plays a futile
sort of game. But this does not apply
to the gudgeons of revolutionism.
Each fresh bamboozlement is but a
whet to the appetite, which grows by
what it feeds on. Maybe Lincoln,
with his keen prophetic vision, had
this element in mind.
616]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 57
The Voice of America
ENGLAND has had the habit— she
freely admits it — of muddling
through her crises. But English
muddling has never amounted to hug-
germugger. Englishmen have had,
and still have, a solid common sense
to keep them within bounds. The
confusion of American thought and
feeling to-day is something so differ-
ent that we can get little comfort
from England's past examples. We
are approaching the Presidential cam-
paign at a time when the wishes and
best instincts of the country are still
inarticulate. It is not merely our
foreign policy which is undeter-
mined. The elements of our domestic
life are warring among themselves,
and the stream of traditional feelings
and convictions upon which England
in a pinch has been able to rely to
carry her along is, in our case, badly
clogged. Will it, in the next few
months, make itself strongly felt?
Ours is the difficulty which Euro-
pean statesmen long ago foresaw
for a young powerful democracy.
"A democracy," said Metternich, "is
a perpetual tour de force." We are
now undergoing the extremely awk-
ward experience of turning from a
nation of doers to a nation of think-
ers. Business can not resume its nor-
mal activity until many questions
precipitated by the war, and more
especially by our facile agitators, are
settled; and business men are of a
sudden asked to be metaphysicians.
Problems of abstract justice are up
for decision. Is the right to strike
inalienable? Should work by hand
be better paid than brain work?
What can be said for interest on
capital? In the present state of agi-
tation what institution of the country
is sacred to the popular mind? Ex-
ploring the first principles of justice
is a dangerous experiment for a na-
tion unless common sense also is used
as a guide.
And common sense should tell us
that, whatever the evils of our pres-
ent system, American civilization is
something altogether too precious to
revolutionize. This year we celebrate
the three-hundredth anniversary of
the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.
One might think by the talk of the
feverish radicals who are working for
change, change, and more change that
the life which has sprung up from
that momentous event contained no
health and no wisdom; that the free-
dom bred into our bones had entirely
dried up; that this country had not
been, and was not still capable of be-
ing, a land of marvellous opportunity
for persons with pluck and ambition.
At a time like this it is well to recall
that the American who did most dur-
ing the war to keep Europe from
starving, started life as a poor boy,
and that not only has he achieved
great material success, but his name
is signally honored the world over.
It may well be that our best way
to get on as a nation, now that we
have dipped copiously into the ab-
stractions of panaceas, is to draw in-
spiration from the practical success
of our history of three hundred years.
For it is inspiring for one with any
memory to call up the cases upon
cases of persons who began humbly,
and who by thrift and hard work and
the ambition to provide for their chil-
dren opportunities such as they never
had, gradually made for themselves
positions of security and genuine re-
spect in their various communities.
Are these opportunities So few to-
day that we must think of making
the life of this nation entirely over?
Labor is in great demand, wages are
high, and though costs of living are
dear, they require a degree of saving
far less than that practiced by many
who achieved success in the not dis-
tant past.
There is such a thing as being re-
actionary, the turning of deaf ears to
the call of the present and the future ;
and there is such a thing as being so
progressive as to foster discontent
leading to chaos. We need not be
ashamed at this moment to hearken
to the voice of America calling down
the ages. The new machines of in-
dustry, the overturn of Governments,
the searchings of heart and mind can
not, unless we will it so, blur that
American message ; for it issued from
truth and magnanimity and is just
as urgent for us to-day as when it
first came into being. What is it?
Our ancestors understood it as free-
dom, and if such freedom as they
meant has left this land, we may join
hands with radicals and ask for a
new deal. Have we yet made of the,
humblest workman a slave? If he is
dissatisfied with his job, can he not
still snap his fingers in the face
of his boss and look for other work?
Is his suffrage of less value than a
millionaire's? Has he less rights in
the courts ? Have there been no cases
of workingmen becoming wealthy in
the past ten years? Twenty-five
years ago Americans boasted of their
country; in the present state of con-
fusion they have grown over-apolo-
getic. They can best serve by vividly
remembering America's solid achieve-
ments as they approach the many
problems that confront them now.
For attachment to the past is like
loyalty among old friends; it fur-
nishes an excellent touchstone in the
forming of new allegiances.
Federal Prohibition
a Fact
nnHE Supreme Court of the United
•^ States, without a dissenting voice,
has established the validity of the
Eighteenth Amendment, and has also
affirmed the power of Congress effec-
tively to enforce it. Nor does there
seera to us to be any sound reason sf
large principle why this result should
ever have been in serious doubt. On
questions of procedure — like that re-
lating to the restriction of a Legisla-
ture's power by referendum require-
ments in a State Constitution, or like
that relating to what constitutes
"two-thirds of both houses" of Con-
gress— there was room for theoreti-
cal doubt; but as to the large princi-
ples, it has never seemed to us that
there was.
The large principles which we have
in mind are two. First, that relating
to the contention that the Eighteenth
Amendment was beyond the scope of
the amending power defined by Arti-
cle V of the Constitution; a conten-
tion that has sometimes been but-
tressed by the provision in the Tenth
Amendment (part of the "Bill of
Rights") that the "powers not dele-;
gated to the United States by the
June 16, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[617
fc
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to
the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people." Con-
cerning this whole contention, we said
half a year ago in the Review:
It is safe to say that the amendment will not
be pronounced invalid on the ground that it is
in its nature beyond the scope of Article V of
the Constitution. ... If the Tenth Amend-
ment had been designed to prevent any future
delegation of power to the United States, it
would have so declared in plain terms. "The
powers not delegated to the United States by
the Constitution" means powers not delegated
by the Constitution, either as originally made
or as subsequently amended ; such a power was
granted, for instance, in the Sixteenth Amend-
ment, authorizing a Federal income tax. Nor
is there any weight in arguments based on the
general notion of a "republican form of gov-
ernmer^t"; for a judicial body to declare the
prohibition amendment void because it is de-
structive of a republican form of government
would be an assumption of authority too fan-
tastic to be seriously considered.
The second question of principle
is that relating to the "concurrent
power" of Congress and the several
States to enforce the prohibition
amendment. Whatever juristic or
technical arguments may be brought
up in criticism of this feature of the
Eighteenth Amendment, the common-
sense view of it seems to us to be
perfectly simple, and to coincide with
the view that is taken by the Supreme
Court :
The power confided to Congress by that sec-
tion, while not exclusive, is territorially coex-
tensive with the prohibition of the first section,
embraces manufacture and other intrastate
transactions as well as importation, exporta-
tion and interstate traffic, and is in no wise
dependent on or affected by action or inaction
on the part of the several States or any of
them.
In other words, any prohibition en-
forcement act passed by Congress
must be obeyed; if a State passes a
prohibition enforcement act, that,
too, must be obeyed; and the conse-
quence is that whichever of the two
is most prohibitory is the effective
one. This evidently involves no clash ;
it is simply that whatever is pro-
hibited by either law is illegal.
Complications may, of course, arise
in the matter of the administra-
tion of two laws, where both cover
the same subject-matter and apply to
the same persons ; but that is a prob-
lem ulterior to the question of the
validity of the laws themselves. One
practical consequence is that if some
future Congress should pass a law
making five per cent., or ten per cent.,
the permissible alcoholic content,
then only those States would be
"bone-dry" that vdshed; those that
imposed no more severe prohibition
than Congress did would be as "wet"
as the legislation of Congress per-
mitted them to be.
But it is one thing to say that the
Eighteenth Amendment is a valid
part of the Constitution, and quite
another to say that it is a proper part
of the Constitution. An Amendment
of the Constitution may be valid, and
yet be revolutionary ; it may be valid,
and yet be utterly out of place; it
may be valid, and yet lower the whole
standing of the great instrument of
which it has become a part. All these
things the Eighteenth Amendment is
and does. Our protection against it
should have been found in a prompt
manifestation of the political virility
of our people, instead of being left to
the eleventh hour possibility of a
rescuing decision by an overruling
court .
It is not the violation of any merely
juristic concept of "State rights" that
makes the Eighteenth Amendment
revolutionary; the blow it strikes
goes to the very heart of the idea
upon which our union of States rests,
an idea embodied not in mere legal
distinctions but in the intimate and
habitual thoughts of the people. Any
attack upon the individuality' of the
States, upon their right to manage
their home affairs in their own way,
which may be launched on a \yave of
popular sentiment will hereafter have
plain sailing; the assertion that it is
contrary to the spirit of our institu-
tions will hereafter have but little
force. And into the Constitution,
which has hitherto embodied simply
the framework of our Government
and the guarantee of fundamental
liberties and rights, there has now
been imbedded a police regulation
which belongs on a wholly different
plane, and which will serve as a
precedent for other like intrusions.
The presence of this single one is
enough distinctly to lower the place
of the whole instrument in the peo-
ple's mind; and surely it would not
take many more to degrade it alto-
gether from the place that it has
proudly held during a hundred and
thirty years of national achievement
and national trial.
The Law or the Cadi?
/^NE of the distinctive features of
^-^ our system of government, as
the Constitution of Massachusetts
says, and as many other State con-
stitutions provide, is that it is a gov-
ernment of laws and not of men.
What this means is that our citizens
are to be responsible to a standard
of conduct and of duty fixed in definite
form by law, and not to the mere
caprice or judgment, good or bad, of
any individual exercising the powers
of the Oriental Cadi. In Oriental
law, the Cadi is the centre of justice.
He determines at one and the same
time what the law is and whether it
has been violated. If we were to
have this system of law, we should
need nothing in the way of statute,
perhaps, beyond the Golden Rule.
The Federal Constitution in its
Sixth Amendment provides that a
person accused shall "be informed of
the nature and cause of the accusa-
tion." Under a long series of cases,
the rule had been established before
the war that the citizen is entitled
to be informed by the law, as well as
by the complaint, what acts or con-
duct are prohibited and made pun-
ishable; in other words, to know in
advance of any prosecution what the
law requires him to do. The citizen
must live up to the standard set by
the law and not by the varying
standards of public officials in the ab-
sence of law.
The Lever law, passed under war
conditions, provides in paragraph
four :
It is hereby made unlawful for any person
... to make any unjust or unreasonable
charge in handling or dealing in or with any
necessaries.
The section also provides a penalty
of $5,000 fine, or two years' imprison-
ment, or both, for the violation of
this section, adding immediately that
the section does not apply to any
farmer, dairyman, or other agricul-
turalist, with respect to produce or
products raised or produced by him.
But the Lever law does not set up any
standard whatever by which any man
can know in advance what rates or
charges are deemed unjust or unrea-
sonable. All over the country, Fed-
eral officials, acting under the Lever
618]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 57
law, have been arresting citizens, be-
rating them in the public press, and
subjecting them to criminal prosecu-
tion, for alleged unjust or unreason-
able charges in handling or dealing
with necessaries. However irritated
we may feel at excessive prices, as
the expression of selfishness and
rapacitj', we have here the question
of whether the method of prevention
is not worse than the disease. We
have to consider whether or not, by
laws of which this Lever Act is a
good example, the old rule under
which a government of law has been
here established, and under which
our country has grown, is not being
insidiously supplanted by an Oriental
system, enforced by official Cadis,
and subjecting citizens to a purely
bureaucratic control hitherto un-
known in this country. It is for our
citizens to take thought whether they
believe that such a transformation
should be allowed to occur.
Let us consider briefly some of the
cases in which the old principle re-
quiring that the citizen should know
in advance have been considered by
the courts. Here, for example, is
a decision on an ordinance in the Dis-
trict of Columbia which provides that
every street railway company shall
both supply and operate "a sufficient
number of cars, clean and sanitary,
in good repair, to all persons desirous
of using said cars without crowding
such cars." The railroad was charged
with unlawful failure to operate such
cars without crowding. The Court
declared the law unconstitutional. It
said, among other things:
The Sixth Amendment provides that in all
criminal prosecutions the accused shall be in-
formed of the nature and cause of the accusa-
tion. In other words, when the accused is led
to the bar of justice, the information or indict-
ment must contain the elements of the offense
with which he is charged with sufficient clear-
■ ness to fully advise him of the exact crime
which he is alleged to have committed. . . .
What shall be the guide for the court or jury
in ascertaining what constitutes a crowded car?
What may be regarded as a crowded car by
one jury may not be by another. What may
constitute a sufficient number of cars in the
opinion of one Judge may be considered in-
sufficient by another. What may be regarded
as grounds for acquittal by one court may be
held sufficient to sustain the conviction by an-
other. There is a total absence of any defini-
tion of what constitutes a crowded car. This
important element cannot be left to conjecture
to be supplied by either court or jury. It is
of the very essence of the law itself and with-
out it the statute is too indefinite and uncer-
tain to support an information or indictment.
Here is another case in which a Fed-
eral Court passed upon the validity
of an act providing that railroad com-
panies shall not charge "unreason-
able" or "unjust" rates of fare for
the transportation of passengers.
The act did not say what should be
the rate, but simply that it should be
just and reasonable. The Court held :
There is no standard whatever fixed by the
statute, or attempted to be fixed, by which the
carrier may regulate its conduct, and it seems
clearly to us to be utterly repugnant to our
system of laws to punish a person for an act,
the criminality of which depends not on any
standard erected by the law, which may be
known in advance, but one created by the jury.
And especially so, as that standard must be so
variable and uncertain as the views of differ-
ent juries may suggest and as to which noth-
ing can be known until after the commission
of the crime.
As Judge Brewer says in another
case, where a similar statute was in-
volved :
In order to constitute a crime, the act must
be one of which the party is able to know in
advance whether it is criminal or not. The
criminality of an act cannot depend upon,
whether a jury may think it reasonable or un-
reasonable. There must be some definiteness
and certainty.
As the Supreme Court has held in a
case arising long before these war
laws were enacted: "Laws which
create a crime ought to be so explicit
that all men subject to their penalties
may know what act it is their duty
to avoid."
Time and again decisions of this
sort have been made. We are dealing
here, not with legal technicality, but
with fundamental principle. We are
considering whether or not the basis
of bureaucracy shall be laid under
war conditions and continued after
the war is over. Old principles, fun-
damental in our law, are violated by
the quoted section of the Lever law.
No man can tell in advance what
standard of prices is fixed, what
rate of profit is allowed. Whether
the storekeeper or purveyor of neces-
saries would be subject to criminal
prosecution is left a matter of dis-
cretion to prosecuting officers and
juries, and no standard in one case
sets the rule or standard in another.
From the standpoint of business, it
is a wholly intolerable situation. Is
it also an illegal encroachment upon
the rights of citizens? Conflicting
decisions have been rendered in the
lower Federal Courts and the matter
is now on its way to the Supreme
Court for final determination.
While the ultimate outcome of this
particular statute as to its constitu-
tionality is of course a judicial ques-
tion, it is not inappropriate at this
time for the public to consider the
perplexities which this law creates, to
note the extent to which the shadow
of criminal prosecution falls upon all
merchants and traders engaged in
the supplying of necessaries to the
people. It is entirely appropriate to
observe and comment upon the op-
portunities for favoritism and graft
which are created by this extraor-
dinary law. What is a reasonable
rate or charge ? How can a merchant
determine that which is unjust or un-
reasonable? Under a recent ruling
of one of the Federal District Courts,
the same article sold at the same price
by two different dealers may result
in one merchant being a criminal and
the other not, since one may have
bought the goods he sold at a lower
price than the other. Suppose we
have a small store in which numerous
articles are sold, some sold under
competitive conditions and substan-
tially without profit, others at a very
low profit, and a third class sold at a
high profit, but the whole volume of
the business being sufficient only to
produce a modest income for the
storekeeper. Is he subject to criminal
prosecution and imprisonment, if the
goods showing the highest profit, con-
sidered by the price examiners, are
unreasonably high?
Let us get clearly in our minds
what concerns us all. We are at the
end of a war period, in which vast
bureaucracies have been built up, at
enormous public expense, for sup-
posed public purposes. Thousands
of men in these bureaucracies have
exercised authority, have expended
and often grossly wasted public
money and drawn large salaries. Are
these bureaucracies to continue in
times of peace? The Lever law is a
startling instance of the bureaucratic |
extension of the idea of the public I
prosecutor as a director general of
industry. The sober sense of the
American people will sometime re-
quire the return of its government
to the form and substance of Anglo-
Saxon freedom, to a government of
laws and not of men.
June 16, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
tea
A Rock- Bottom
Prophet
QF prophecies of disaster there is
^-^ such an abundance, in these
days of world-wide trouble, as to fur-
nish satisfaction to every variety of
taste in pessimism. And it must be
confessed that there is no need of
pessimist bias to give to forebodings
of evil ample warrant. At no time
in the memory of living men have so
many, elements of danger conspired to
envelop in doubt the prospects of the
civilized world. When, therefore, a
writer comes forward with a fresh
survey of the situation, from a stand-
point of his own, and finds that Euro-
pean civilization is face to face with
utter collapse, he is pretty sure to
have a large and attentive audience.
In the North American Review for
June, Major Charles Lacey Hall, an
officer in the Engineer Corps of the
United States Army, presents us with
such a survey and such a conclusion.
His article is not a mere recapitula-
tion of existing troubles and menaces.
It is "an attempt to arrive, by his-
torical analysis, at the reasons for
the impending collapse." The rea-
sons are rooted in the history of mod-
ern capitalism, which is character-
ized in a few bold, strong strokes.
Thus the true inwardness of the
policy of colonial expansion is ex-
posed in this simple and clean-cut
fashion :
[619
c^L^'::^'""''- '''"' '"^^^ """'""^ "—
(a) The inhabitants of the state itself, that
IS, the general public.
(b) The enemy.
stated Itf .'P^u"^^"}' .°f '*"= semi-civilized
states and of the colonies. Another alterna-
diate tL°* '° ^T,^'' ■' ** ''"- b"t to repu-
e!ufin„ probability of repudiation is the
existing menace to capitalism.
The peace of Versailles, "dictated
by the Entente capitalists, is their
scheme for converting their paper
wealth into real wealth at the expense
partly of the enemy and partly of the
mhabitants of semi-civilized states" ;
but Major Hall points out categori-
cally why neither of these things can
actually be done, and proceeds to tell
us what Europe is really up against
haf denenH.H ^^^ It' P^^^rvation of capitalism
lias depended on the progressive amelioration
• of the condition of the lower classes. In order
to accomplish this amelioration the excess
riom°/.rf"K ?" "°^"^" be taken from
erV or Lf • '''i" ■""'' ^"^ "'"^'n^d from sub-
rolrnll ''^'^^.^"d countries. Hence, a strong
colonial policy was an absolute necessity t%
the proletariat, as well as to the bourgeoisie
a fact rather well appreciated by the fofmer!
Again, as to the condition to which
capitalism has been reduced by the
war:
From the day war was declared the Western
i-owers began to use up their accumulated
overseas capital and thus dissipate their
sources for further commercial exploitation.
1 hey also proceeded to capitalize their credit
for all It was worth. By this means wealth
was transferred out of the hands of the holders
ot fixed capital, the most naturally conserva-
tive forces of the state, either into economically
useless goods or labor (munitions of war and
pay of the army) or into the hands of entre-
preneur capitalists. These latter held their
wealth in paper money, and this money could
only be converted into real wealth at the ex-
HiZ^f l^ """r" ^,°'"''on IS repudiation, either
direct or by a further inflation of credit. This
atter means is the one now actually being fol-
lowed and IS apparently destined to continue,
iiy It money is being reduced in value gradually
until It no longer pays to print. This reduction
naturally unsettles international exchange, and
with It international trade. The raw mate-
rial producer in Polynesia has been accustomed
to get money for his cocoanuts with which to
buy red cloth. When he discovers that, for
his cocoanuts, he no longer gets a reasonable
amount of red cloth, he stops producing-
unless he can get another source of supply
for his red cloth. Also the soldiery who have
kept him in order stop soldiering when their
pay comes in perfectly useless paper. The
raw material market is thereby cut off ; and the
home state, "not having of its own whereof to
live, starves. At this point, in pure despera-
tion, the people turn Bolshevist. To this exact
spot all European states are travelling with
varying speed, and when tliey reach it, capital-
ism will have collapsed and Europeans will
have to starve until they become few enough to
live off the land. During this period of starva-
tion it is reasonable to expect that every insti-
tution of society we know, every rule of mo-
rality we are accustomed to, and every motto
we hold dear, will utterly disappear from the
European continent.
Before such a combination of re-
morseless logic and picturesque pres-
entation, what can one do but bow
one's head in submission? Yet there
is a lurking feeling that the thing is
a little too clean-cut — that history is
not compressible into quite so simple
a formula ; one suspects that no man
can be quite so wise as Major Hall
sounds. And suddenly there appears
a gleam of genuine hope that he may
be mistaken about some of his grand
conclusions. For, coming down to
the comparatively simple problem of
the advancing of American credit for
the restoration of European industry,
Major Hall has this to say about the
difficulty Europe will experience in
meeting the obligation:
Since the adoption of prohibition there are
practically no European goods needed in the
liw 'fi? ^*?'"' ^''"P* ^ fe* articles of luxury,
? **>« '"'"est can be paid only in ^
tal m.rlf?' "I'-'^rials from tropical and orien-
tal markets, shipped from them in exchange
for European manufactured goods.
abroad ^^'*"*'''"'^" of American tourisU
,u''^^ J''^"^^"L°^ "='*''« of immigrants to
1^ '[ j""""- The first class will always be
limited, as America still exports raw materials
on Its own account. The second class is un-
likely to grow for some years; and the less
we have of the third the better. Altogether the
outlook IS not promising.
When we came upon this passage, we
breathed a deep sigh of relief. If
Major Hall had turned to no more
elaborate a work than the World
Almanac, he would have found that
our total imports of wines, malt
liquors, and distilled spirits, in the
fiscal year ending June 30, 1914, were
$20,300,000, while our entire imports
from Europe amounted to $896,000,-
000. If he was satisfied to draw upon
his inner consciousness for an esti-
mate of the effect of prohibition upon
the volume of Europe's trade with
this country, it seems not impossible
that his selective imagination had
something to do also with his account
of larger matters, and with the cock-
sureness of his conclusions upon
them. Which, by the way, would
not be worth all this notice but for
the fact that it is typical of a large
class. The woods are full of Cas-
sandras. It would be foolish to shut
our ears to their warnings ; but it is
well to remember, too, that for the
one Cassandra whose story has been
preserved there have been ninety and
nine who have been every whit as
solemn, but whose names have been
swallowed up in oblivion along with
their unfulfilled prophecies.
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
Published by
"°*, }i''I}°'""- Weekly Co«po»*tiok
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Hakold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars
/ear in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, ^fty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright, 1920, >n the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD de WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Ayres O. W Firkins
A. J. Barnouw w. H. Johnson
Jerome Landfield
620]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. .-)7
Worries of the Young Nations
THE United States is now one hun-
dred and forty-three years old,
which is a tolerably mature age as
nations go. While we consider our-
selves youngsters, it is a fact that
only the Governments of Great
Britain and Japan are older than the
Government of the United States,
and that there is no Government,
great or small, on the face of the
globe which has not suffered radical
constitutional changes during the
period of our unbroken constitutional
existence. The peoples of the old
world recognize this more clearly
than we have done. Americans went
to Europe feeling like spoiled dar-
lings; they found that they were
looked upon as rich uncles. They had
a plenitude of resources; more than
this, they were known to have had
longer experience in running a de-
mocracy than any other nation.
Paderewski of Poland and Masaryk
of Czechoslovakia had studied our in-
stitutions on the ground. It has
taken the aftermath of the Great
War to teach us some of the oppor-
tunities as well as the penalties of
national maturity.
Between the Baltic and the Adri-
atic Seas there are now eleven states,
not including Greece and Turkey,
where before the war there were five.
The largest of these, Poland, has a
population of about 27,000,000;
Czechoslovakia, in round numbers,
has a population of 12,000,000;
Greater Serbia, 11,000,000 ; Rumania,
8,000,000, and Austria, 6,000,000. By
the scratch of a pen a large part of
the government of these countries
has been transferred from the field of
internal administration to the domain
of foreign affairs. Without question-
ing the propriety of this transfer
there is left for the statesmen of the
countries themselves who were re-
sponsible for the change, and for the
statesmen of the great nations who
underwrote it in the treaty of peace,
the problem of handling these affairs
at least as well as they were formerly
handled under the old regime. Upon
their ability to do so depends the
security of the new nation and the
peace of the world. No one of
these nations can supply all or nearly
all the subsistence needed for its own
economic life. Three have no sea-
coast whatever; the rivers and rail-
roads upon which they depend for
transport traverse from one to three
states before reaching a world port.
One has coal, another has oil, another
has a sufficiency of wheat. None has
a sufficiency of all three, and some
have little or none of any of them.
Can the New States Survive?
Can the states themselves within
a year after liberation provide that
internal stability and that external
foresight which are necessary to
build up their own prosperity and to
guarantee peace with their neigh-
bors? It is not surprising that the
first answer is a dubious one. Never
had rulers of new states such bur-
dens as haunt the pillows of their
statesmen. History may smile, but
not they, at the worries caused them
by their own people. Everywhere
there is childlike faith in the law
and the prophets, dependence on the
aphorisms of freedom and the efficacy
of politics to accomplish all ends,
from digging coal to running a rail-
road and solving a tangle in interna-
tional finance. But the number of
men who can give to harassed admin-
istrators the benefit of expert counsel
on food supply, train dispatching, the
increase of coal production, and the
mysteries of international exchange,
is very small indeed. From some ex-
perience in riding in the trains of
Europe I should say that the average
worker thinks to manage these by the
caucus system. And I am credibly
informed that he thinks banking
problems can be handled in the same
way. The Government's use of such
experts as it can find is seriously
handicapped by the party system as
it exists in Europe. The United
States worries along with two par-
ties ; Great Britain turns to coalitions
only under the stress of major neces-
sity. Our new pupils have a dozen
parties apiece. Aside from the fact
that mutual jealousies limit the gov-
ernment to the use of mediocre men,
there is the further disadvantage
that the coalition government cannot
act quickly nor vdth true foresight,
and in external affairs it is too likely
to have to face half a dozen ways.
The Case of Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia provides an excel-
lent illustration of the condition in
which a new state may find itself,
quite apart from its own merits or
failings. In some respects Czecho-
slovakia is the most favored of all
the new states of Central Europe.
And its perplexities are the direct
outgrowth of its abundant endow-
ment. Czechoslovakia is in the posi-
tion of a dog which has cornered a
supply of bones and is surrounded by
other dogs ravenous for meat. Bo-
hemia, which is the commercial part
of the new republic, contains the best
farming lands and three-quarters of
the mines of the old Austrian Em-
pire. It has several large industrial
cities, it manufactures much of the
steel, and has in normal times ex-
cellent railroads. Tendencies are al-
ready manifest which will isolate
Czechoslovakia by encircling it with
dissatisfied and needy neighbors.
There are three million Germans on
the western front of Bohemia who
have set their hearts on being joined
to Germany, now that their ties with
Austria are broken. On the northern
border Polish labor is in the majority
in Teschen. The problem of the
Silesian coal fields is the most con-
fused boundary tangle in Europe. In
the little Duchy of Teschen three lan-
guages are spoken. Just outside of
Mahrisch-Ostrau there is a point at
which, in 1913, the three empires of
Russia, Germany, and Austria joined.
Now envious eyes are turned to this
very spot by Poland and Czechoslova-
kia and Germany. Below the ground
are rich veins of a gas coal which is
indispensable to the economic life of
all Central Europe. Not only Poland
and Czechoslovakia, but Germany
and Austria and Hungary are more
or less painfully interested in the dis-
tribution of this coal. Without it
their cities cannot be lighted, their
traction lines cannot run. It is axio-
matic that under present confused
June 16, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[621
conditions no single country should
be burdened with the responsibility
for the control of the distribution of
this commodity. Whatever way the
problem is solved, the possession of
this coal is bound to be the source of
anxiety on the score of international
relationships as its loss would be the
source of economic anxiety. Just at
present the Czechoslovaks are in pos-
session. Production is cut to about
seventy per cent, of normal; trans-
portation facilities are far below the
demand, and deliveries to foreign
countries are held up by diplomatic
misunderstandings.
On the south the Magyars are an
interrogation point to-day, but only
yesterday they were strong enough
to push a wedge between the Czechs
and the Slovaks. Will the marriage
between the Slovaks, who are agra-
rians, and their industrial fellow-
citizens, the Czechs, endure? The
answer depends upon many contin-
gencies, not the least of which lie
outside of Czechoslovakia in the do-
main of international affairs. If the
Great Powers can find a world pro-
gramme, Czechoslovakia and the other
young nations can endure. But if
they are to be left alone to seek their
own salvation, confusion is as certain
as cobwebs in dusty corners. Czecho-
slovakia has no sea-coast. She can
get and give only by railroads and
rivers that traverse the domains of
her watchful neighbors. Already
there are signs of an approaching
understanding among these. Ger-
man-Austria is making advances for
an "economic entente" with the other
members of the former Austrian Em-
pire and is reaching across Czecho-
slovakia for a military alliance with
|l Poland.
What of Austria?
It is true that at the present time
' little is to be feared from any military
action of Austria, but Austria is not
to be ignored as a source of influence
in the Greater Balkans. Austria is
worse off than Bohemia for coal and
lands; she is economically better off
than Bohemia in the sense that, while
the one country has lost its limbs,
the other has lost its directing head.
The city of Vienna, of two million in-
habitants, which formerly command-
ed a wide empire of industry and
mines, is now the capital of an area
in which the industry is negligible
and the agriculture second-rate, in
which the railroad systems are trun-
cated, and in which there are no
mines. A population of seven million
cannot long support a capital of two
million people, nor can it indefinitely
live under the conditions of hunger
and impoverishment. A practical
solution might be that Vienna shrink
to an appropriate size to serve the
country. Such a solution argues
without those economic and creative
factors which made Vienna the chief
commercial city of Eastern Europe
before the war. It may be so ar-
ranged that ownership of the Czech
and Slav industries pass out of Ger-
man-Austrian hands. This would not,
however, solve the problem involved
in the fact that it was Vienna which
before supplied the direction of these
industries and the machinery for in-
ternational commerce. If the world
wishes to transfer that machinery
to other cities it must aid in the
transfer. Otherwise there will be
every tendency for procedure to seek
its old channels.
Mutual jealousies between the new
countries of Central Europe are ham-
pering the development of that in-
dustry and self-reliance which are
essential to their prosperity. It is
still too difficult to get a proper and
equitable distribution of export ma-
terials, coal, oil, and agricultural
products. Expert labor sits on one
side of a line ready to do work which
is sorely needed on the other side of
the line, and a narrow and selfish
"national interest" denies its use.
There is still needed the friendly and
neutral cooperation of the older
brothers among the nations to assist
the young nations through their try-
ing stage. The question whether this
shall be accorded is rapidly passing
out of the domain of abstract discus-
sion.
Thomas H. Dickinson
A "Gold Brick" From North Dakota
TT is often said to be easier to sell
-*- a gold brick on Broadway or in
Wall Street than to the American
farmer of to-day. There were many
smiles among those familiar with
the situation, when they read in the
New York Times of Sunday, May 16,
1920, "Governor Frazier's Own Story
of the Nonpartisan League," written
by Governor Lynn J. Frazier of
North Dakota. Knowing ones saw
at a glance that the Times had been
"gold-bricked."
The Governor attempts to give the
reader the impression that the Non-
partisan League is a cooperative,
economic movement. On the con-
trary, it is distinctly political, de-
signed to give political power to its
leaders, most of whom have been
proved to be closely allied with the
radical movements of the country.
These leaders, from the first, have
been members of the Socialist party ;
some of them have been affiliated
with the I. W. W., and Governor
Frazier himself was in a working alli-
ance with John Fitzpatrick, radical
labor leader of Chicago, principal
promoter of the new Labor party,
and has now aligned himself, as well
as the organization, with the Com-
mittee of 48.
Governor Frazier showed himself
to be one of the "smooth" kind in his
account of the Fargo Bank case :
One of the erroneous reports about the Non-
partisan League is the story of the so-called
failure of the Scandinavian-American Bank at
Fargo. Many publications received the im-
pression that it was the Bank of North Dakota
that had been closed. The Scandinavian-
American Bank is an ordinary farmers' state
bank, which had been friendly to the farmers'
movement and which had helped to finance
various farmers' organizations. The opposi-
tion to the Nonpartisan League movement, in-
cluding the Attorney General of the state, who
had turned traitor to our organization, tried to
discredit and put out of business this farmers'
bank. It was illegally closed, as was shown
by the supreme court decision, which finally
re-opened the bank. It is still doing business
and should never have been closed.
The Scandinavian-American Bank
was not "an ordinary farmeFs'
State bank." A. C. Townley, the
president and founder of the Non-
partisan League, had secured con-
trol of the machinery of this bank
and used it to finance the Nonparti-
622]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 57
san League, and subsidiary organiza-
tions of the League, to a total of
$432,000, on collateral that would
never have been accepted by any
properly managed institution.
These loans were in direct viola-
tion of the State banking law, which
provides that a bank may not lend
more than 15 per cent, of its capital
stock and surplus to one account.
The capital of the Scandinavian-
American Bank was $50,000 and the
surplus $10,000, a total of $60,000.
This would make the highest loan
permissable to any one account
$9,000. In violation of the law, the
bank lent to four Townley accounts
$432,000. Furthermore, the "collat-
eral," supposed to be deposited with
the bank, was left in control of the
borrower and in the custody of the
borrower's agents, without having
been checked by the bank officials,
whose only record of the "collateral"
was that reported by the agents of
the borrower.
The bank was closed and a tempo-
rary receiver appointed by action of
the State Banking Board, on the di-
rect and definite recommendation of
the Assistant Attorney General and
two deputy State examiners, who
acted under orders of the State Bank-
ing Board, and who reported the
bank in a state of insolvency as a re-
sult of the large loans to the Townley
organizations. These examiners also
reported that the bank had absolutely
no cash legal reserve, but was main-
taining a "book reserve" through
"book credit" with a Duluth bank,
based on a deposit of discounted
paper for the definite, specific, and
understood purpose of enabling the
Scandinavian-American bank to show
a "book reserve" only.
Governor Frazier says that the
bank was illegally closed, yet the
president and cashier were later ar-
rested, charged with violation of the
State Banking act, and the president
was convicted by a farmer jury, in a
court presided over by a special dis-
trict judge appointed by Governor
Frazier, instead of the judge then sit-
ting regularly in that district.
It is true "the bank was re-opened
by order of the Supreme Court of the
State." The deputy bank examiner
who had been installed as temporary
receiver was removed, and the bank
was ordered to resume business, with-
out its resources having been re-
habilitated. The Supreme Court of
North Dakota comprises five mem-
bers, four of them elected by the Non-
partisan League. Notwithstanding
the fact that the bank case was al-
ready in the District Court, and
would have come to the Supreme
Court under due procedure, the ma-
jority of the Supreme Court, at the
request of the leaders of the Non-
partisan League, arbitrarily assumed
jurisdiction, gave a swift "once-over"
hearing on affidavits filed by the
Nonpartisan League attorneys, and
refused to hear witnesses on behalf
of the State Banking board, which
was made the defendant.
Three of the five justices rendered
a decision that the bank was solvent,
principally on the affidavits of the
president and cashier. The question
of jurisdiction, proper and legal pro-
cedure, and all other points raised by
the defense were practically ignored
and no witnesses were given a hear-
ing.
This was too much for one of the
Supreme Court judges elected by the
Nonpartisan League, who filed a dis-
senting opinion declaring the major-
ity decision to be a fundamental and
far-reaching error.
It strikes at the very foundation of judicial
due process of law . . . Compared to a de-
nial of judicial due process, all other questions
are as chaff to the wheat. It seems to me that
this proceeding is most extraordinary; I have
searched in vain for any precedent for such
action ... If considerations of this charac-
ter are once made controlling to the extent of
precluding trials, then government by injunc-
tion will become the accepted rule instead of
the odious exception.
It is true "the bank has been re-
opened and is still doing business,"
but new stockholders have bought in,
new capital has been added, and a
complete change in the management
effected. Possibly the best reply to
Governor Frazier's reference to the
bank is found in the statement issued
by the new directors, who say :
Our aim is to rebuild the bank, getting it
back to its former position as a safe and sane
banking institution. . . . That the bank ever
got into politics was not the fault of the stock-
holders now in charge, except that they did
not realize the course that was being taken by
the officers then in charge. . . . We directors
are very much interested in bringing the bank
out of the mud.
Governor Frazier's reference to his
action in the coal strike crisis, last
November, just as carefully and com-
pletely hides the true facts in that
case. Every action of the Governor
in that crisis indicated his desire to
bring about a condition that would
give him an excuse for seizing the
mines and operating them under the
State Socialism programme of the
League leaders, just as it was the
purpose of the leaders of the nation-
wide strike to bring about a condition
that would serve as an excuse for
nationalization of mines.
As a matter of fact, the Twenty-
seventh district of the United Mine
Workers of America was not in-
cluded in the call for the strike of
coal miners, and John L. Lewis, act-
ing president of the United Mine
Workers, did not expect a strike in
North Dakota. Mr. Lewis told Gov-
ernor Frazier this when the Governor
wired to the acting president of the
United Mine Workers appealing for
permission to operate the mines un-
der some sort of State supervision.
Mr. Lewis informed the Governor
that the lignite miners of North Da-
kota had a contract with the opera-
tors until September 20, 1920, and
referred him to Henry Drennan of
Butte, Montana, president of the
twenty-seventh district.
Governor Frazier and Drennan
held several conferences, which were
followed by Drennan's making an
abitrary demand of the operators for
a 60 per cent, flat increase in the pay
of the miners. This increase was not
to go to the miners themselves; it
was to be paid into the treasuries of
the miners' locals in other States.
This would have meant that the lig-
nite coal industry in North Dakota
would have been required to pay
nearly $50,000 per week into the
strike funds of an organization whose
members in other States were then
defying the Government of the
United States.
Naturally the operators of North
Dakota refused to accede to these
demands. Drennan ordered a strike,
and then, on November 11, in the face
of acting President Lewis's with-
drawal of the national strike order.
Governor Frazier issued a proclama-
June 16, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[623
tion of martial law, suspending all
civil rights, and seized the mines in
the name of the State, and proceeded
to operate them under conditions de-
manded by President Drennan, even
to the point of expelling non-union
workers from some of the mines.
The mine owners appealed to the
courts, and the executive came back
with the dictum that, martial law
having been declared by the Gov-
ernor's proclamation, the civil courts
had no power to intervene. Never-
theless, District Judge Nuessle
promptly issued an order that the
mines should be restored to their
owners. At the same time he ex-
pressed consciousness that resistance
of the judiciary department to the
executive department might plunge
the State into civil war, but declared
even that condition preferable to
despotism. "It seems to me that it
amounts on the one hand to confisca-
tion, and on the other to involuntary
servitude," was the court's comment
on the action Governor Frazier had
taken. "I realize that any mandate
this court may issue, unless the Gov-
ernment chooses to recognize it, can-
not be carried out without civil war.
But are we," asked the court, "to
permit the executive to go ahead and
exert the powers of the judicial and
legislative departments to make laws,
to construe them, and to decree how
they shall be enforced? That would
be despotism."
The Governor's next step was an
application to the Supreme Court for
an injunction restraining the District
Court from putting into effect its
order for the return of the mines to
the owners. The Supreme Court re-
fused, and Associate Justice James
E. Robinson, one of the Nonpartisan
League members of the Court, wrote
a scathing denunciation of the Gov-
ernor's action,. which was pronounced
from the bench, in which he said:
Pandering to the labor vote, we have passed
laws to permit and encourage strikes, picket-
ing, and idleness ; a law to permit any person
to quit work in disregard of his contract, and
to persuade others to do likewise ; a law to
prevent coal miners from working more than
8 hours a day, and a law to subject mine
owners to a tax of nearly five per cent on their
payroll. We have a statute of 27 printed pages
subjecting mine owners to fearfully expensive,
onerous and drastic rules and regulations. The
result is that the pleasant summer days have
passed with only a limited production of coal.
We have sown to the wind and we are reaping
the whirlwind. The long, cold winter is upon
us, and without any grievance, our well-paid
miners have quit work and struck pursuant to
orders from some labor agitators. The miners
were willing to continue work for the same
wages, with an advance of 60 per cent to be
paid to the agitators and idlers. To this the
mine owners did not accede, and the result is
that, with the military, the Governor has un-
dertaken to operate the mines.
An injunctional order has been issued re-
straining such operation. The Governor applies
to this court for a writ to forbid the district
court and the mine owners from interfering
with his operation of the mines. His position
is that the courts have no jurisdiction to inter-
fere iinth him when he acts as a commander
of the militia, but that the courts have jurisdic-
tion to aid him by enjoining all parties from
obstructing him; in other words, that the courts
have only such jurisdiction as the Governor
may permit them to exercise; that the courts
may aid him, but if they thwart his wishes he
may use military force to defy them and to
turn them out of their offices.
In every civilized government the courts are
the bulwarks of freedom and civil liberty, the
refuge of the citizens for protection of life,
liberty and property. The military power is
for military purposes only. It may be used to
suppress insurrection and to repel invasion. It
may not be used to take from him that has and
to give to him that has not.
The shortage of fuel is in no way diflferent
from a shortage of bread and butter, flour and
feed and other necessities of life, and who will
say that such shortage does authorize the mili-
tary to take bread or grain from one and to
give it to another. It follows that the Gov-
ernor has no jurisdiction to declare martial
law for the purpose of taking over the mines,
or to cause anyone to do it, and any order to
that effect is wholly void. Motion denied.
Governor Frazier refers with
pride, apparently, to the fact that
Mr. Townley owns and controls two
daily newspapers and fifty weeklies
for the purpose of "informing the
people of the facts of the political
and economic situation in our State."
He does not relate, however, how Mr.
Townley forced through the last
Legislature a bill making these
papers in which he is interested,
and in which a number of the
members of the Legislature are in-
terested, the "legal papers" of the
State in their respective counties and
requiring all public notices of every
kind and nature to be printed in
them. Thus there have been trans-
ferred to these Townley-owned and
controlled publications more than
$300,000 worth of patronage taken
from other newspapers; as a result,
at least sixty weekly publications
in various parts of the State have
been killed off.
The Governor also fails to tell the
readers of the New York Times that
the members of the Nonpartisan
League are urged, and all but com-
manded, to read no papers save those
owned and controlled by the League
leaders ; and it is in that manner that
they "inform the people of the facts
of the political and economic situa-
tion in our State."
But for naive suggestions and de-
lightful climax, it would be difficult
to find anything better than the con-
cluding thought of the Governor's
story. He says, "If this industrial
programme is not a success, it will
die a natural death. . . . Then why
is it necessary for the opposition to
spend thousands upon thousands of
dollars trying to discredit a move-
ment which cannot possibly survive
if it is not a benefit to the rank and
file of the people?"
To this, of course, the people of
North Dakota reply that they are ex-
pending the thousands with the hope
of preventing Governor Frazier and
his associates from involving their
State in a programme that will cost
the people of North Dakota millions
upon millions.
EYE-WITNESS
Poetry
Stormbound
"TIEYOND my ken the winds their
■■-' combat wage,
The dashing waves roll in on every
side.
And we, the victims of the surging
tide.
Lie impotent their fury to assuage.
Its black sides straining with the
tempest's rage.
Our ship is borne along without a
guide.
The tattered sails are rent and cast
aside.
The hold is flooded, and no anchor-
age."
So wrote Alcaeus in the distant past
When civil strife in Lesbos held full
sway
And petty tyrants sought to rule the
land.
We, too, sail on by wind and sea
harassed.
And through the mists we blindly
grope our way;
God grant we find a pilot to command.
WUiLiAM N. Bates
624]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 57
Iris in Kansas City
HERE in the West the iris is bloom-
ing. Blooming in little yards, by
farm houses on unfrequented roads, and
in big gardens ; white, white veined with
lavender, lavender, mauve, violet, purple,
blue purple, pink, cream yellow, yellow,
and velvet red, smoke purple, every one
beautiful, some almost too beautiful. It
is growing everywhere that any one will
plant it. Drop a piece and it will root
itself on clay banks or in the garden
loam. The only thing that keeps the
world from being smothered in iris is
that if left alone it grows so exuberantly
that it finally smothers itself.
If that were all the world offered in
beauty now it would be enough to satisfy
one's soul, but that is just the foreground
of the picture. With the iris blooms the
dainty columbine, as delicate on their
stems as fairies poised between flights.
And lower down the spice pinks are
sweetening the air. While out in the
great farming world emerald green vies
with purple earth, and as the cloud
shadows sail across the fields the greens
change to blues and back to fresh shades
of green.
It is useless at this season to talk to
gardeners of anything but gardens. We
wander among the iris like worshippers
hypnotized by the play of sunlight upon
colors ; we remembered them as beautiful
last year but nothing ever could have
been like this!
Moths work their will in our houses,
and spring cleaning is for the drudges
of the earth. This is the hour of the
gardener's rejoicing. Frosts are over
and done. His seedlings, which have to
risk a late frost if they are to grow large
enough before the heat seizes them, are
safely set out. Each week we have been
told that the peach crop has failed, plums
and cherries were going, and little was
to be looked for in the way of apples and
strawberries. But somehow these dole-
ful predictions have not been fulfilled,
and the world gives back the hopeful
smile of the once agitated gardener.
One must, indeed, garden with grati-
tude and philosophy. Anything that my
garden produces I receive with gratitude
and anything that fails I feel sure can
somehow be replaced. I give it credit for
having tried its best to grow, but there
are some things no self-respecting plant
can stand; I can at any rate admire its
courage. One of my neighbors who had
put out a row of flowers one morning to
have them blown nearly out of the ground
by a spring gale told me that she could
hear those plants shriek at her, "Why
on earth did you plant us here? Don't
you know this is no place for flowers in
a gale like this?" Yet if for one instant
heaven smiles they grow like our friend
Jack's famous lentil. One can see the
difference between morning and evening.
This year we had very little rain or snow
all winter. One morning in March it
began to rain. By night the grass looked
green. It rained the next day too. In
a week my jonquils had grown out of the
ground and were in bloom, and the leaves
had come out on the early shrubs and
rose bushes. I wonder if I must tell
what happened on Easter Sunday to
teach those ambitious leaves where they
belonged ? No, I am not going to tell, be-
cause it had never happened in ten years
of gardening, and I do not feel that it
really is typical, but it was awful.
But I do not care, because now the iris
blooms and it is glorious. Some love to
struggle and toil over their plants and
love them more for the labor expended,
but not so I. Give me the iris that just
blooms for the planting. No bugs at-
tack it, rarely does anything injure it;
one plants and one receives a thousand
fold. Peonies may be poor for lack of
rain at the proper moment, chrysanthe-
mums may multiply, but so sometimes do
the attacking aphis; the iris, however,
blooms whether the season is late or
early, whether there was too little rain
last summer or too much snow in
January.
Maytime
"Batter Up!"
THE times are singularly deficient in
great men. War produces great
men; the people wills them into exist-
ence, for the people in time of war knows
exactly what it wants. But it grows
harder and harder for great men to carry
over into the troubled times that follow
upon wars; the people is no longer of
one mind, nor are its many minds clearly
and cleanly made up. Those who try
of their own strength to be great quickly
discover that their roots do not reach
down to the life-giving waters. But a
people must have its heroes none the less
— a. people always ready to barter happi-
ness for history; and great men, we
were long ago assured, are "the quint-
essence of history."
It is only on some such view of things
as this that a great people, having pretty
thoroughly muddled its relations with
most of the other peoples of earth, and
about to subject itself to an agony, quite
unparalleled anywhere else, that is de-
signed to discover him who for its
sins is to hang the next four years upon
the cross of the Presidency, should never-
theless be moved to its inmost depths at
the possibility, grown less and less re-
mote, that Babe Ruth will actually and
indubitably, once and for all surpassing
the might of men hitherto, swat the ball
into the centre-field bleachers. Even if
he does not achieve this ultimate feat,
he has already done enough to entitle
him to greatness. Fifteen home runs, a
quinzaine of perfect, unanswerable wal-
lops, no less than three in a single game,
and all within a season still so young that
the summer sun has hardly yet warmed
him to his work, where else can one
point to human effort so skillfully, so
triumphantly, in short, so heroically
disposed ?
"There is this other characteristic of
greatness about it, too, that others are
doing well what at the moment he does
superlatively. His giant stick rises from
an underwood which not meanly chal-
lenges its towering top. The renaissance
of batting upon which the ancient and
critical scarp of Coogan's Bluff looks
down approvingly is not the work of one
man. But none must complain if the ap-
plause of the world centres itself on Babe
Ruth. It is a case of Shakespeare — and
the rest. The world must have its hero.
Let no one suppose that baseball is a
game. It is a symbol ; and the home run
is its perfect expression, its pearl, whole,
unique, finished. No such katharsis any-
where as your home run; it clears the
passions as it clears the bases. Purged
and refreshed, life is for the moment
radiantly conscious of itself. In a world
of tentatives, of frustrations, of mis-
directions, it is the one thing complete
and satisfying, transmuting the raw
materials of life into the perfect product
and leaving nothing at loose ends; that,
at any rate, is that.
There should be no cloud in one's satis-
faction over great deeds nobly done be-
cause of the possibility that the recent
resurgence of human prowess at the bat
may owe something to the hampered
state of pitchers. One likes, of course,
to think of the batter as bravely standing
to whatever life offers him, refusing, to
his profit, the bad if he is wise enough
to recognize it, and finding the good to
his advantage only if he can make use
of it. Now, however, that the pitcher is
estopped from putting his blackest magic
on the ball, may no longer employ sand
or emery, or, most potently magical
agency of all, saliva, to make the ball
gyre and rocket like a woodcock, the
chances of the batter seem measurably
improved. But that slight convention-
alization of the game does not at all de-
tract from its value as a symbol. Here,
again symbolically, is represented the
progress of civilization, consciously re-
moving from life some of its wilder and
more erratic hazards. No game is good
if it is not playable, and life, if it is to be
well lived, must at least be livable. The
rules are the proof of greatness — at once
its test and its demonstration.
There is another side to the matter.
If Mr. Ruth, by reason of his unques-
tioned position as hero, is allowed to
stampede the Republican convention, if
he consents in accepting the Democratic
nomination, if, assuming his batting
June 16, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[625
average shows no falling off, he is earn-
estly consulted about the high cost of
living and the desirability of trading
with the Russian Cooperatives, if his
opinion is sought as to the possibilities
of communicating with Mars, then will
come the real test of his greatness. Mat-
ters need go but a little further and no
less than this will happen. No public
error is so common as to confuse the
symbol with the thing, an error which
the symbols themselves are only too
prone to share. It is a wise nation and
a rare that knows it own heroes — and
their limitations. To be wise and a hero
is granted to but few among the gods.
But to have had a Babe Ruth at all,
whatever fortune hold for him (and us)
is cayse for present thankfulness.
Correspondence
Prince Feisal on Zionism
To the Editors of THE Weekly Review:
I quite agree with Professor Reed's
statement that Prince Feisal is thor-
oughly qualified to speak for the Arabs
touching Palestine. And this is what
Prince Feisal had to say about the Zion-
ist programme as submitted to the Peace
Conference ' and now written into the
public law of Nations, at San Remo:
Paris, March 3rd, 1919.
Dear Mr. Fe.\xkfurter:
I want to take this opportunity of my first
contact with American Zionists, to tell you
what I have often been able to say to Dr.
Weizmann in Arabia and Europe; we feel that
the Arabs and Jews are cousins in race, have
suffered similar oppressions at the hands of
the Powers stronger than themselves, and by a
happy coincidence have been able to take the
first step towards the attainment of our na-
tional ideals together. We Arabs, especially
the educated among us, look with the deepest
sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our
Deputation here in Paris is fully acquainted
with the proposals submitted yesterday by the
Zionist Organization to the Peace Conference
and we regard them as moderate and proper.
We will do our best in so far as we are con-
cerned to help them through. We will wish
the Jews a most hearty welcome home. With
the chiefs of your movement, especially with
Dr. Weizmann, we have had and continue to
have the Closest relations. He has been a great
helper of our cause and I hope the Arabs may
soon be in a position to make the Jews some
return for their kindness. We are working
together for a reformed and revised Near East
and our two movements complete one another.
The Jewish movement is national and not im-
perialist. Our movement is national and not
imperialist and there is room in Syria for both
of us. Indeed, I think that neither can be a
real success without the other. People less in-
formed and less responsible than our leaders
and yours, ignoring the need for cooperation
of the Arabs and Zionists, have been trying to
exploit the local difficulties that must neces-
sarily arise in Palestine in the early stages of
our movement. Some of them have, I am
afraid, misrepresented your aims to the Arab
peasantry and our aims to the Jewish peas-
antry, with the result that interested parties
have been able to make capital out of what
they call our differences. I wish to give you my
firm conviction that these differences are not
on questions of principle, but on matters of
detail, such as must inevitably arise in every
contact of neighboring peoples and are easily
adjusted by mutual good will. Indeed, nearly
all of them will disappear with further knowl-
edge. I look forward and my people with me
look forward to a future in which we will help
you and you will help us, so that the countries
in which we are mutually interested may once
again take their place in the comity of civilized
peoples of the world.
Believe me,
Feisal,
Delegation Hedjazienne, Paris
Felix Frankfurter
Cambridge, Mass., June 7
The "Intellectuals"
To the Editors of The Weekly Review:
What is taking place in America now— some-
thing with which Europe has long been familiar
—IS the formation of an intellectual class.
revolutionary in tendency and bound together
by a common antipathy for the present order
of things. Although not organized, it has
coherence; and it exercises power through a
number of brilliantly edited journals, which,
though recently established, have rapidly gained
wide circulation and influence. It may be
stated that the weekly which, unlike the daily
and the monthly, is primarily an organ of
opinion, is now largely in the hands of radicals,
who are thus in a position to mobilize a large
and influential section of public opinion in
favor of their ideals.
A reader of Tolstoi, Marx, Ibsen, Shaw and
Sorel, no matter how young and superficial, is
an intellectual, if his views of life are radical.
I Use these contrasts in order to emphasize the
new meaning of the word, not to disparage the
intellectuals, for among them there are to be
found scholars and thinkers and scientists of
a high order of ability.
Matthew Arnold, John Stuart Mill, Huxley,
Lowell, Emerson, Hugo, Taine were put into
handsome bookcases with closed doors. On the
open shelves appeared Shaw, Wells, Nietzsche,
Marx, Anatole France, Ibsen, Tolstoi, Dos-
toievsky.
From "Revolutionary Intellectuals" in the
June Atlantic Monthly.
Comment is needless, but it might
serve a good purpose if your sound and
conservative weekly would put these so-
called intellectuals in the class where
they belong. Probably most college men,
for example, will be rather amused to
find themselves, according to Mr.
Shapiro's definition, in his "intellectual
class." They have been talking prose all
the time, it seems, without knowing it.
W. F. BiSSING
New' York, May 27
The Kaiser's Case
[The author of the following letter was for
several years Professor of International Law
at the University of Berne and is now a mem-
ber of the bar of that city. He is one of the
leading authorities in Switzerland on juris-
prudence.]
To the Editors of The Weekly Review:
It is clear that the expiation under
consideration can have, and as a matter
of fact, probably is intended to have, an
additional and higher objective. The
present war has been one of the greatest
occurrences in the existence of man-
kind. It is in the interests of history
and of humanity in general that the
blame for its origin be fixed for all
time. The tenets of international law
were so often violated that some ob-
servers have asked if there has not been
a complete breakdown of the system.
It is a public duty that these violations
and their causes be determined. History
and international law, truth, and justice,
demand this; international morality de-
mands it no less.
The havoc that the war has caused in
the soul of peoples is so vast that it
can not yet be fully comprehended. If
those responsible for the war had not
at its beginning intentionally brought
about a moral confusion by representing
themselves before the world as the inno-
cent victims of aggression, this moral
disaster could have been avoided. But as
it was, they succeeded in violently dis-
turbing the moral equilibrium through-
out the neutral countries, and this
equilibrium can now be restored only
through expiation and through the de-
termination of the whole truth.
This might have been accomplished
without asking for the Kaiser's extradi-
tion if the German people had acknowl-
edged the truth, if they had candidly
admitted their culpability, if they had
resolutely repudiated the guilty old
regime and brought the criminals to jus-
tice. But the expected and much desired
change in the mental attitude of the
Germans unfortunately has not occurred.
The German people are as blind as be-
fore. They do not see the injustice done
the world by Germany. On the contrary,
they consider as unjust the merited pun-
ishment that has overtaken them. Instead
of acknowledging their own culpability
and repenting, the new Germany endeav-
ors to obscure this culpability and to vin-
dicate the old regime. The truth, even in
the Germany of to-day, is not pro-
claimed unadorned. The German people,
instead of doing penance, indulge their
self-admiration in the role of the victims
of injustice, of injured innocence. This
mental attitude makes it imperative to
fix the blame once and for all, because
only thus can be found the moral basis
for the co-existence of the nations.
Thus the problem of expiation for the
responsibility for the world war, the
question of the extradition of the guilty,
has become a moral problem. Will it
not be much more effective if the former
Kaiser, when the facts have been de-
termined through judicial procedure,
suffers for his moral guilt a moral pun-
ishment, and instead of being a martyr,
be simply delivered over to the verdict
of history? It seems to me such a moral
sanction would be the best and more ob-
vious solution for the punishment of
crimes that stand outside of the positive
sphere of the law.
Ottfried Nippold
Berne, Switzerland. April 15
626]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 57
Business and the Tax Burden
To the Editors of The Weekly Review:
We are, most of us, agreed that in-
creased production is necessary in order
to reduce the high cost of living. But
we must reckon with the fact that the
manufacturer considers his business with
a view to returns, and that our present
system of taxation, instead of offering a
premium for increased production, puts
a fine on the manufacturer who earns
more than a stated amount — increasing
the size of the fine (or tax) as the profit
increases.
Personally, I see no hope for increased
production on a large scale so long as the
present system remains in force; by way
of illustration I offer an instance which
occurred in Alabama: Some time ago a
mill man purchased a small tract of tim-
ber, estimating that he had approxi-
mately a ten-year cut. He continued to
operate until about June 2, 1919, and
then closed down. Eventually an auditor
called to go over his books for the year,
and asked why he had shut down at that
time of the year, to which the operator
replied that he had made about all the
Government seemed to think he was en-
titled to, and, if he continued running for
the balance of the year, it merely meant
giving the Government approximately
forty logs out of every hundred. As the
Government paid him nothing in return
for depreciation of his teams and for
the wear and tear on his machinery, he
could not see the wisdom of continuing
operation. In addition to this he also
figures, since the Government seems to
think that he is entitled to make only so
much per year, that it would be to his
best interest to operate six months out
of every year, whereby he would have
a twenty-year cut.
I believe that in many industries of
fundamental importance men are reason-
ing in exactly the same way as the Ala-
bama saw-mill man. On such men the
cry for increased production will have
little effect so long as they labor under
the present heavy burden of taxation.
Geo. Calhoun
Tampa, Fla., March 6
"The Jest"
To the Editors of The Weekly Review:
Now that "The Jest" has passed from
the stage it so conspicuously adorned,
and the distinguished actors are reaping
less exotic laurels in other fields, it may
not be impertinent to inquire whose was
the edict which so harshly vulgarized
certain episodes of so beautiful a play.
Was it, one wonders, translator or stage
manager, that assumed the responsibility,
for example, of altering the third act
where the fettered Neri is confronted
with his victims — a scene rancorous to
be sure, but dignified in its rancors — so
that, rather than the electric air of
tragedy, we breathe in the fetid mental
atmosphere of a reformatory for mor-
bid incorrigibles. The despots of the
Renaissance, it may be argued, were for
the most part incorrigibles, but it evi-
dently pleased Signor Benelli, as it
pleases us, to believe that beautiful
decoration, lovely garments, and the im-
minent presence of il Magnifico might
impart, even to an environment of crime,
a picturesqueness and a conduct of evil
far removed from the ravings of the de-
fectives of a city slum.
"Mad, indeed, he is, poor sufferer!"
says Laldomine, as she approaches the
arch-criminal she has loved to her own
undoing, and then cries to him "Neri!
Neri!" while the bitterer Fiammetta
cries "Sir Traitor!"
"He answers not," says Laldomine
again, "and I — I pity him !"
Fiammetta
A traitor moves me not to ruth but wrath I
Laldomine
Me too, he has deceived . . . What would you
have!
Why look for reason where no reason is I
Later on, Fiammetta says
"I would not trust him."
and the more subtle Laldomine responds
"And I would long to dare
To trust . . . that I might trust him more I
For when I see him not, then I detest —
And when I see him, then, again, adore I —
Yes, I am at thy feet again, again!"
Fiammetta
The brute I he promised me that he would wed,
Give me a house as he has given Ginevra: —
She, the astute, has got both house and gear.
Would Fiammetta had but loved thee less I"
Laldomine
For me, there's nothing — nothing — I repent !
Fiammetta (drawing nearer to Neri)
How grim he isl
And fettered well — ^and cannot sin again 1
. . . Dullard I!
Laldomine
You have no mercy!
Fiammetta
I am a woman — and where love has led
Now hatred urges.
(To Neri)
I offer votive prayer
That you may never know again
The light of reason! thus you shall never
more
Betray fond women!
Laldomine
Alas! you are a viper, Fiammetta!
Does nothing move you ? See how he suffers !
How his poor eyes are darkened —
His cheeks aflame !
and later, when Fiammetta has reached
the climax of her rage, she exclaims:
I am too honest not to know I hate!
Laldomine
Cruel is honesty!
Fiammetta
Best that I leave you then!
(To Neri)
Yes, yes, I go — and go
Without tearing your eyes I Traitor and knave !
I go!
This is a somewhat free but quite un-
chastened translation of part of this act
and of that part of it in which the two
ladies are most uncompromising in ex-
pression, with their former lover and
with each other. Now, however modern
opinion may lament Laldomine's lack of
proper resentment, or feel that Fiam-
metta nurses too intolerant a grudge, at '
least they both yield to the restraints of
a plane of emotion tense but not frenzied.
In the recent adaptation, these victims
of seduction look and behave like the
Furies of a red-light district and "clinch
and roll over" in an access of hysterical
and physical abasement, as far from the
probable as from the limits of an exact-
ing dramatic taste. Can not an Ameri-
can audience believe in the verities
of a grand passion unless they are sus-
tained by a strangle-hold? And as for
the tremendous catastrophe of the fourth
act, so superbly represented, so triumph-
ant in situation, where, in that unforget-
able pose of a satisfied, but still appre-
hensive vengeance, in incomparable grace
of color and outline, Giannetto stands
against the curtain waiting the entrance
of the murderer, why must Neri, to the
dismay of the sensitive, trail in a bloody
nightshirt — or did the overexcited Neri
pick up a pillow-sham or a bureau-cover
upon which to wipe his weapon? Why,
rather, should he not bring with him the
dagger — blood-stained, if you will, but
still the dagger of the text. Modern
audiences are too inured to bedroom
scenes to balk even at pajamas, if
necessary to the action, and of course
Gabriello's blood had to go somewhere,
but when it was a question of the
Renaissance and Lorenzo, the grand man-
ner would seem to be better maintained
by the blood-stained dagger and the
flame-colored mantle of the author's
choice.
And again, what is the theological or
other warrant for that sensational prayer
offered at the last, by Mr. John Barry-
more, admirable as it is in grace and
pictorial effectiveness, but very confus-
ing to one's apprehension of Giannetto's
religious affiliations? We find no other r
than that of a single exclamation. |
"Nature!" cries Giannetto, in the
tumult of his curiously contradictory
impulses.
Let me weep at least, in order not to know
The torture of the evil I have wrought.
And thus, this Hamlet of the Renaissance :
To slay myself — or not to slay — I do not dare.
It is not only regret at the defacement
of a great play — a defacement appar-
ently uncalled for by any necessity of
cutting off the superfluous or suppress-
ing the unintelligible, to bring it within
the limits of performance — that shadows
the pleasure in a striking rendering
lovely to the eyes; it is, likewise, the
fear that the retort to all criticism will
be that the public demands the conces-
sions. A. E. T.
Hartford, Conn., March 11
June 16, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[627
Book Reviews
The War— The Last Phase
The Last Four Months of the War. By
Major-General Sir F. Maurice. Boston:
Little, Brown and Company.
Our Greatest Battle. By Frederick Palmer.
New York : Dodd, Mead and Company.
WHOEVER wishes to get a clear idea
of the greatest of battles should
read both these books together, for they
supplement each other nicely. General
Maurice writes military history, con-
cerns himself only with operations, his
unit is the army. Mr. Palmer's unit is
the American division. He adds to his
account of operations in the Meuse-
Argonne an elaborate commentary on
the entire effort, from the point of view
of all ranks.
In its larger aspect the last battle is
a miraculous feat of recuperation. In
the late spring of 1918 the Germans had
driven nearly to Amiens in the west and
to Chateau-Thierry in the south. The
Kaiser had prepared his observation
tower on the Marne to witness the as-
sault on Paris. In about six weeks after
the Germans had been checked by our
2nd and 3rd divisions, on the Marne,
late in July, they were smashed back to
approximately their positions of 1914. It
should be noted that this victory was
won by those British and French armies
which had lately been thoroughly
thrashed. Our American aid in this
preparatory stage was confined to casual
reinforcements and to the flattening of
the salient at St. Mihiel. But our par-
ticipation had proved that the American
divisions were highly efficient, and ready
to be made into corps and armies. It
was this demonstration that justified in
the autumn of 1918 that final blow which
had been timed for the following spring.
In six weeks from the last days of Sep-
tember the German armies were thrust
back fifty miles eastward along the en-
tire front, their communications were
cut, their morale deeply impaired, the
Kaiser had fled, and Germany was a
republic.
General Maurice discusses briefly the
disaster of early 1918. It was due to
dispersion of the British effort on sev-
eral fronts, and the illusion of an inex-
pensive decision in the east. Haig was
180,000 men short, and driven to the
desperate course of breaking up two
cavalry divisions and one hundred
trained infantry battalions for replace-
ments. In the face of this, he had to
take over twenty-eight more miles of
front. Gough's Fifth Army, at the
juncture of the French and British, con-
sisted of fourteen depleted and battle-
worn divisions, holding forty-two miles
of front. It can not be said that they
yielded. They were overwhelmed by a
three-to-one superiority consisting of re-
organized divisions from the Russian
front. General Gough was in an im-
possible position, and, as is usual in such
cases, was made a scapegoat for the
War Office.
Their sacrifice and the whole disas-
trous battle of Flanders were needless.
There were troops in England, awaiting
a hypothetical invasion, surplus troops
also in Palestine. Lloyd George had
come to the conclusion that only a stale-
mate was possible in the west, meanwhile
he would wait for the Americans. We
may add that if Jellicoe had attacked
resolutely instead of weakly at Jutland,
the Germans would have had small fight-
ing edge for the Friedenssturm of 1918.
At least the collapse of the British de-
fense brought about unity of command.
On April 14 Marshal Foch assumed
supreme command of the Allied forces.
The pages which General Maurice de-
votes to Foch are most instructive.
Foch, in distinction from the Germans
who regarded war as a science, con-
sidered it as an art. Where the Ger-
mans held to long-prepared and highly
elaborated plans, he believed in large
principles and simple plans based on the
divination of the moment. Thus the
Germans were constantly wearing them-
selves out in unlimited offensives which
were badly timed and articulated. Even
in the victories of early 1918, they gave
respites between battles. They lacked
the sense of occasion and opportunity
which Foch had in the highest degree.
Two days after he took command, April
16, he quietly declared that the Battle
of Flanders was over, and that Haig
would need no reinforcements. This was
a few days before Mount Kemmel fell
to the Germans — a serene and correct
estimate made in the face of confusing
and apparently discouraging facts.
When Foch got ready to strike, he
smote relentlessly and without pause.
"He makes his counter-attack on July
18, and the second battle of the Marne
ends with the Germans behind the Aisne
and the Vesle on August 6. On August
8 Haig opens the Battle of Amiens, and
on the twelfth it ends with the Germans
in their lines about Chaulnes. Mean-
while, on the ninth, Humbert has already
begun the battle of Lassigny, which
comes to an end on the sixteenth, and
from the seventeenth to the twentieth
Mangin is driving the Germans from the
Aisne heights. As soon as he stops,
on August 21, begins the battle of
Bapaume." It lasted till August 31. Six
days earlier Home struck from Arras,
completing by September 19 the recap-
ture of Kemmel, and the occupation of
the Drocourt-Queant switch. From Sep-
tember 6, the French advanced rapidly
on the Somme, and on September 12 and
13 two American corps cleaned up the
salient of St. Mihiel. In less than two
months Foch had launched eight major
attacks every one of which had suc-
ceeded, and there had never been time
between battles to rest or reorganize the
shattered German divisions.
From the moment on August 14 when
Ludendorflf advised Berlin to make peace
the war was won. Their forces had
shrunk from 207 divisions with 66 in re-
serve in May to 185, with 19 in re-
serve in early September. Meanwhile
the British, who were supposed to be
crushed, had come back in irresistible
force, and the fighting mettle of the
green American divisions had been
abundantly demonstrated.
At this point the British war Cabinet
wished to halt. They feared the Ameri-
cans were not fully ready. They still
hoped for an inexpensive decision from
Saloniki. Even Foch hesitated to ask
greater sacrifices of the English and was
willing to wait till the American organ-
ization should have been perfected.
Pershing believed his new armies would
make up in spirit for what they lacked
in finish and experience. Thus it was
due to the insight and confidence of Haig
and Pershing that the push for victory
was timed not in the spring of 1919 but
in the autumn of 1918. General Maurice
finds that the decision, though immedi-
ately costly in lives, was strategically
sound and as compared with the alterna-
tive plan economical in every way.
We leave the reader to follow the
essentially simple strategy of the final
battle in General Maurice's lucid pages.
The German line now lay nearly straight
from Nieuport to Verdun. The task was
for the English and French to swing
back a great door while the Americans
attempted to shatter the hinges in the
Argonne-Meuse. The English had the
longest walk, the Americans the tough-
est mechanical problem. If either failed
in the mission, the French at the centre
could have done little. How the two na-
tions accomplished their task is familiar.
The climax had its sensational features.
To see the Americans emerge at Sedan
must have satisfied the spirit of Lafay-
ette, while certain units and individuals
of the "Old Contemptibles" heard the
command "cease firing," on November
11, 1918, in the precise positions on the
field of Mons from which they had re-
treated in August, 1914.
On the much debated point whether
the armistice was premature General
Maurice has no doubts. The Germans
were soundly beaten, and no commander
was justified in sacrificing further lives.
In any event the Allied Armies had out-
run their supply and were incapable of
a decisive general advance before spring.
To be sure, an American offensive in
Lorraine was fully prepared, but it of-
fered no military advantage comparable
to the cost.
General Maurice does not dwell upon
the unnecessary waste of the early
628]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 57
stages of the war, before unity of com-
mand was attained. Such, however, will
be the inevitable reflection of every .
reader as he closes this book. Barring
shakiness in woulds and shoulds, most
venial in a soldier and a Scot, the book
is admirablj' written. The just propor-
tion between narrative, comment, and
personalia is preserved. It should re-
main among the rather few military
classics. To present a work of this
importance without an index is un-
pardonable.
Mr. Palmer undertakes to give an ac-
count of the final American operations,
division by division, and also to convey
the picturesqueness and color of our en-
tire overseas effort. In this blending
process operations come off badly. Every-
thing is in the book, but it is only a dis-
ciplined reader who can keep the course
of events clearly in mind. Comment
obstructs narrative. The author is
naturally oppressed by the greatness of
his theme, and keeps the stylistic pres-
sure uniformly too high. Indeed, his
account of administration is more val-
uable than that of field operations. He
makes one feel the shock of adjustment.
The new officers appalled by their novel
responsibilities and the off chance of
orders to Blois present an appealing pic-
ture. One feels the somewhat sinister
imminence of the Fort Leavenworth men,
nameless potentates, who, from the gen-
eral staff or the dreaded Vehmgericht at
Blois, disposed of the reputations and
even of the lives of our young crusaders.
One feels as pathetically the fates of the
old regulars, shaped all their lives to
little things, and suddenly faced with the
dilemma of avowing or concealing in-
competence. One feels even more the
grim endurance of men in the ranks
cynically yet cheerfully observing the
rise and fall of their temporary princes.
One senses the ruthless, intelligent will
of the Commander-in-Chief making the
human sacrifices required by speed and
the emergency. One sees the confusion
emerge into a kind of rough order in-
spired by an indomitable will to win.
Here and in the admirable portraits of
the commanding generals lies Mr. Palm-
er's success. He has lived into his mat-
ter, and whether he describes army cooks
or air men, "Y. M." secretaries, or Sal-
vationers, engineers, or truck drivers, you
feel that he has campaigned with them
and understood them. Hence his book
is indispensable for those who will share
in imagination the misery, confusion,
and glory of those great days in France.
The account of American operations re-
mains to be written, and it is likely to
come in its definitive form not from any
member of the A. E. F. but from some
calm person in shell glasses who will
study the orders, reports, and war diaries
with glacial detachment. Mr. Palmer is
no monster of this sort. His book
abounds in heart, perhaps somewhat to
the detriment of its permanency.
Mr. Palmer confirms General Maurice's
low opinion of the German service of in-
telligence. On all main issues it was
wrong. In particular its calculations of
morale were grotesquely amiss. Even in
the smaller field they failed to anticipate
the American offensive in the Meuse-
Argonne. In this as elsewhere the scien-
tific conception of warfare undid them.
Foch, in all the operations, and Pershing,
whether in generously expending his
new divisions along the straining line in
July or in insisting on fighting with his
half ready armies in the last stage, alike
showed that quality of artistic imagina-
tion without which there is no great
military leader.
Achievement and Hope
The Century of Hope : A Sketch of Western
Progress from 1815 to the Great War. By
F. S. Marvin. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
IT is good to be cheerful — especially
good, physicians tell us, for the diges-
tion— and to any victim of dyspepsia
we heartily recommend this book. Its
method is clear, its conclusion simple.
As for method, in a succession of chap-
ters dealing with the various fields of
human activity, Mr. Marvin points out
the great achievements of the nineteenth
century, culminating in these glorious
years of the twentieth. In government
he shows the steady advance of democ-
racy, nourished on the principles of lib-
erty, equality, and fraternity announced
by the French Revolution. Education
has been deepened and broadened (as
every teacher knows). Science has
slowly become more certain of herself,
and with her development has blessed the
world with a succession of miraculous in-
ventions which have made existence
easier and larger for all men. Literature
has kept pace with the expansion and
purification of practical life, enriching
the age with such prodigies of the
imagination as Victor Hugo, to name
only one of the stars of the galaxy. In
his heart man has been growing more
religious year by year, or at least has
been growing religious in a better sense
of the word.
We condense necessarily; those who
desire the full breath of flattery must
read the book — they will feel themselves
mighty tall fellows. This is not said
in irony. Granted that some of Mr.
Marvin's statements are questionable,
and some of his judgments a bit queer
(e. g., that Carlyle "was the strongest
influence towards Socialism, in the wide
sense of the word, among English writers
of the nineteenth century"), nevertheless,
the details of genuine progress here
heaped together make an imposing array.
So much for the method of the book.
When we come to consider Mr.
Marvin's conclusion we are not so sure.
What that conclusion is may be guessed
from the title of the book. Much as has
been accomplished, still all is but prep-
aration: "Come grow young with me.
The best is yet to be." Or, to quote Mr.
Marvin instead of perverting Brown-
ing: "In the world a wider conscious-
ness, though nascent, has still to come.
That we believe in its coming, even in
the midst of the greatest war, is of all
symptoms the most striking of an Age
of Hope." Now we — the reviewer of
this book, not Mr. Marvin's world-
we — make no prophecy regarding the
future. Of the sweetness of hope we
have knowledge :
Truth justifies herself, and as she dwells
With Hope, who would not follow where she
leads ?
But there is still that "unconceming
thing," the matter of fact. Is this really
an age of hope? Somehow an acquaint-
ance with the radical press as well as
the conservative leaves one, against one's
will, with an impression that these days
of ours are not so hopeful as they ought
to be. The paradox is even a vexation.
Why, after a period of such stupendous
achievement is there so little lightheart-
edness, so little spontaneous hope among
men? The discouragement, such as it
is, does not seem to be a result of the
war itself; though it may have arisen
from a sudden return to reflection
brought about by the shattering of illu-
sions begotten during the war.
Mr. Marvin offers no answer to such
a question — naturally, since he feels no
discouragement. But perhaps the sug-
gestion of an answer might be wrung
from him despite his cheerfulness. One
observes, for instance, that social prog-
ress seems to be identified by Mr. Mar-
vin with socialistic progress, and that
for him Karl Marx is the man who "saw
things whole." Is it possible that an
age of accomplishment has not ended in
an age of hope — speaking always of the
present mood, not of things far off —
just because it has been suffering from
this confusion all the while? Again,
one observes that in the evolution of
religion, as Mr. Marvin sees it, "the
growth of scientific thought and the in-
creasing hold of practical activities must
take first place." He is emphatic about
this:
It remains, however, profoundly true — the
most important fact in our whole discussion—
that the spiritual forces, of which we may trace
the workings in the same period, are the
supreme factors, both in building the individual
soul and in giving a common soul to all hu-
manity. This common spirit is best exhibited,
and most powerfully enlarged, in the two chan-
nels of the growth of science and the applica-
tion of science.
Science is well, very well, and practi-
cal activities are well; but is it possible
that an age of enlightenment has not
June 16, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[629
ended in an age of hope just because it
has too often failed to distinguish be-
tween the spirit of science and the
spirituality of religion? We ask these
questions without attempting to answer
them.
Conrad the Great
The Rescue: A Romance of the Shallows.
By Joseph Conrad. New York: Double-
day, Page and Company.
WE who have had a sense of groping
for the old magic amongst the later
tales of Joseph Conrad may find it in
this book. Here are the salt and spicy
atmosphere, the haunted beauty, the
strangely woven texture, with its pat-
tern, revealed as if casually by gleams
and cross-lights so that only when the
web is completed do we really perceive
its pattern. And here is the spirit, not
simply the body or dress, of adventure
and romance. It is all, to be sure, as far
as possible from the reality of facts, an
elaborate invention. But it is an in-
vention in the older sense — the discovery
of a scene and. an action which might
have been, might be at any time, in the
world of creative dreaming which em-
bodies the inward nature of man.
"The shallow sea that foams and mur-
murs on the shores of the thousand
islands, big and little, which make up the
Malay Archipelago, has been for cen-
turies the scene of adventurous under-
takings" : with this quiet gesture the en-
chanter begins the weaving of his spell.
A Chaucerian motto in the title-page has
already warned us frankly that we are
to give not sober belief but a willing
temper to the imaginative enterprise in
hand:
For wende I never, by possibilitee.
That swich a monstre or merveille mighte be !
This is the older Conradian world of
"Nostromo" and "The Nigger of the
Narcissus," of exotic seas and far-flung
shores and strange yet not contemptible
peoples among whom the white man
moves, here and there, either feebly as
one who has succumbed to the enervat-
ing lure of the tropics, or triumphantly
as the exemplar of the British seaman's
code: duty, loyalty, endurance, honor.
Triumphantly as exemplar, but never
happily as individual; since in Conrad's
melancholy Slavic eyes to be good (that
is, faithful, steadfast, a gentleman) is
not more certainly to "acquire merit"
than to be unhappy. . . . This also
is the eloquent Conrad of old time, with
the golden and at times voluptuous voice,
not British, nor Polish, nor French, but
trebly nourished and enriched for our
enchantment. At the very least, what
melody, what imagery!
"On the unruffled surface of the straits
the brig floated tranquil and upright as
if bolted solidly, keel to keel, with its
own image reflected in the unframed and
immense mirror of the sea. To the south
and east the double islands watched
silently the double ship that seemed fixed
among them forever, a hopeless captive
of the calm, a helpless prisoner of the
shallow sea."
But linked and blended with the verbal
and emotional splendor of the earlier
romances are the sharper ironic vision
and, at times, the more restrained man-
ner of the later Conrad. An announce-
ment by the American publisher explains
this oddly composite effect. "The Rescue"
was begun twenty years ago (the period
of "Lord Jim"), partly written at that
time, and then laid aside, not to be com-
pleted till this year. It interprets an
early episode in the life of Captain Tom
Lingard, who figures in Conrad's first
two novels, "Almayer's Folly" and "An
Outcast of the Islands." His strong,
primitive virtue finds in youth escape
from the crooked bonds of "civilized" life
and a field of exultant activity in the
Malayan seas. There he becomes "King
Tom," a rough paladin of honorable ad-
venture. Chance or fate leads him to
become the savior and champion of a
Malayan prince and princess, robbed of
their island kingdom. They are a pair
worthy of devotion; but only King Tom
would have made them a dominant ob-
ligation. On the eve of its discharge,
when time is ripe for the decisive blow
against the usurpers. Fate takes a hand.
A yacht full of sophisticated Europeans
is stranded in the very mouth of his ad-
venture. His first impulse is to get rid
of them anyhow, to let them be wiped
out by the Malayans; by any means to
have them out of his way; for he can
see nothing but his sworn duty to his
proteges. But of course this will not
do. A new set of obligations to men of
his race, and especially to the woman
among them, force themselves upon him.
Thenceforth he must struggle and be
torn between friendship, and honor, and
love; and on every side in this supreme
crisis his boasted luck forsakes him. His
passion for the woman, his love for his
ship, his faith in the old human derelict
he has set afloat once more, all work
against the fulfillment of his sworn re-
solve. The end is failure, the end of his
love, the destruction of his noble young
pair, the ruin, as he feels it, of his honor.
The closing scene in which he wordlessly
renounces the woman who has set his
safety before that honor, and sets the
Lightning's course towards no port, but
simply away from that of the yacht
which bears the symbol of his defeat,
stops short of tragedy only as it leaves
us feeling that the hero who has escaped
the final defeat will live to fight again,
with however sad heart, and under a flag,
however dimmed and torn.
A story of sombre magic, enforcing
once again the old Conradian struggle
between on the one hand the apparent
chances of incident and complications of
circumstance summed up in the word
Fate, and on the other, the primary valor
and fidelity of the human soul. In this
conflict Conrad beholds humanity losing
and losing again; yet not quite to the
point of despair, so long as the worship
of valor and fidelity endure. Conrad's
skepticism, deepen and broaden though
it may as the years go by, may, rightly
marching under this double standard, be
of more inspiration to his kind than the
chameleon banners of the all-believers.
These, at all events, are "Anglo-Saxon"
virtues in which the romancer discerns,
as it were, a last hope for the world;
and if that hope seems dim, we may
comfort ourselves with the reflection that
after all the fellow is only a Slav!
H. W. BOYNTON
Win wood Reade
The Martyrdom of Man. By Winwood Reade.
New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
AMONG those books which have led a
subterranean existence and yet have
managed to live and even flourish with-
out the sunshine of popularity or the
oxygen of public discussion, Winwood
Reade's "Martyrdom of Man" furnishes
a curious example. Ignored by critical
opinion at the time of its publication,
unmentioned in most histories of litera-
ture, it has, nevertheless, continued to
live on and go through many reissues.
Radical journals frequently quote it
(though Reade was politically a conserva-
tive or, at most, a Whig), industrious
compilers of lists of books which have
influenced them not seldom include it,
and lovers of the bypaths of thought
and of the curios of literature, like Mr.
Philip Hale, still honor it with an occa-
sional reference. The anomaly is worth
a brief investigation.
Winwood Reade was a self-reliant, self-
willed man, reminding one in his eccen-
tricity and stubbornness of his uncle,
the famous novelist, Charles Reade. His
first ambition was to be a writer, but,
upon the failure of his abortive novels,
he decided rather impulsively to become
an African explorer and succeeded so
well in his enterprises that he was able
to boast: "Henceforth no man can say
that I am only a writer ; for I have proved
myself a man of action as well as a man
of thought."
But it was as a writer after all that
Winwood Reade was destined to keep his
name alive. While his work in Africa
is now all but forgotten, his sombre, but
stimulating, "Martyrdom of Man" con-
tinues its semi-clandestine existence.
The book was published in 1872. Its
author's first intention was to write on
the part which Africa had played in the
world's story. But the conception grew
under his hands until it became a full-
fledged philosophy of history. His guid-
630]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 57
ing principle of explanation is given in
the last pages of the book: "I give to
universal history a strange but true title
— The Martyrdom of Man. In each gen-
eration the human race has been tor-
tured that their children might profit by
their woes," The successive stages in
this painful upward struggle he desig-
nates as war, religion, liberty, and intel-
lect, and to each of them he devotes a
section of his book. But another stage
is yet to be traversed: we must in the
interests of right thinking rid ourselves
forever of anthropomorphic religion.
For Winwood Reade was a thorough-
paced rationalist, believing, like Buckle,
that progress lies through the clarifica-
tion of the intellect.
It was mainly owing to Reade's attack
on Christianity that "his book was passed
over in disdainful silence by so many.
He speaks like a dogmatic atheist when
he sums up his attitude in these words :
"Supernatural Christianity is false. God-
worship is idolatry. Prayer is useless.
The soul is not immortal There are no
rewards and no punishments in a future
state." At other times his tone is that
of the agnosticism current in his day:
man will never be "nearer than he is at
present to the First Cause, the Inscruta-
ble Mystery, the God"; the "Supreme
Power is not a Mind, but something
higher than a Mind ; not a Being, but some-
thing higher than a Being ; something for
which we have no words; something for
which we have no ideas." Reade does
not hesitate to call Jesus a dervish; he
suggests that he was, like other prophets,
uncouth in appearance and uncleanly in
garb; he regards him as simpleminded
and subject to hallucinations; he thinks
that he did not move consistently on the
highest moral plane, since he appealed
to the self-interest of his hearers and
displayed in his words the spirit of a
persecutor. The God-worship which
Jesus taught must be classed with those
provisional expedients — famine, war, slav-
ery, inequalities of conditions — which
nature employs for the development of
man and which she throws aside when
they have served her turn.
But though Reade regards the past
life of the human race as one long
tragedy, he is unquenchably optimistic
about the future. "Our religion, there-
fore, is Virtue, our Hope is placed in
the happiness of our posterity, our
Faith is the Perfectibility of Man." If
he seems to echo the eighteenth century
in those words, on the other hand, he
sounds very like Mr. Bernard Shaw
when he says : "All men indeed can not
be poets, inventors or philanthropists;
but all men can join in that gigantic and
God-like work, the progress of creation."
The seductiveness of his work for so
many readers comes, one may conjecture,
largely from the combined appeal which
he makes to our grim sense of the
tragedy of the past and to our innate
hopefulness for the future. His facile
generalizations, which give the experts
pause, have a potent attraction for the
lay reader. Greek and Roman culture
is seen, not as the very fount and origin
of all civilization, but as a mere episode
in the cause of universal history. Every-
thing is made simple and clear with a
few bold strokes, and the multiplicity of
the trees never obscures the woods. The
lively style is an added stimulus to the
reader, for the author possessed an un-
deniable talent for direct and forcible
statement. When he becomes enthusi-
astic in his narrative he can revivify the
past as tellingly as Macaulay, whom he
resembles also in the crispness of his
sentences. All of which may help explain
why "The Martyrdom of Man" has now
reached its twenty-first edition.
W. K. Stewart
From Couperin to Debussy
French Music of To-Day. By G. Jean-Aubry.
London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner &
Co.
IT is the fashion at the Metropolitan
Opera House, and in other places, to
belittle the importance of French music.
But it is none the less admitted by musi-
cians of high rank and standing that
the most notable advances made in music
since the death of Wagner have oc-
curred, not as some seem to think, in
Germany, but in France and Russia.
When the Metropolitan, son»e fifteen
years ago, denied that there were French
operas worth performing here, Mr. Ham-
merstein (the manager of the Manhat-
tan) proved the absurdity of the con-
tention. What Mr. Hammerstein began
has been continued by the management
of the Chicago Opera Company, and,
rather grudgingly, by the Metropolitan
management. Yet even now we have
hardly an idea of the wide range and
varied interest of French opera.
In the concert room, again, within the
past ten years, Mr. Damrosch, Mr.
Stransky, and some others have proved
the value of French modern music.
They have allowed us opportunities of
enjoying the symphonic works of masters
like Debussy, Dukas, Florent Schmett,
and d'Indy, to say nothing of the Belgian,
Cesar Franck, who, to a great extent,
was the inspiration of his French suc-
cessors.
But there are still vast treasures wait-
ing for explorers in French music, not
only in the scores of modern masters,
but also in the achievements of their
forerunners. Before Gluck, the Aus-
trian, gave us "Orfeo ed Euridice,"
Rameau had written operas of impres-
sive dignity. His "Indes Galantes," his
"Hippolyte et Aricie," had established
him in France. His "Castor et Pollux"
(which was revived in Paris recently)
was in its day perhaps the most popular
of all then current operas.
Before Rameau, the amazing Couperin
family (all organists and writers for
the harpsichord and clavecin, in turn)
had really founded the French school
which later on sought full expression
in so many ways. To the Couperins, and
more particularly to the second Francois
Couperin, known as "le Grand," we owe |
a whole musical literature, including "
songs of rare beauty, lovely and enchant-
ing works for clavecin, simple yet often y
wonderful organ music. The style of |
Couperin, to us, may seem archaic. But
to musicians of his time it was as modern
as Debussy's is to ours. It was dis-
tinguished by melodic grace and clear-
ness. Without the resources of the mod-
ern orchestra — and in most cases for a
single instrument — the "great" Couperin
produced small, delicate masterpieces.
Not "Tristans" or "Messiahs," to be
sure, but very precious; for they were
pioneer examples of an art which was
destined to take shape at last in the opera-
comiques of Gretry, Herold, Boieldieu
and Auber; in the operas and lyric
dramas of Rameau, Massenet, and Cha-
brier; in the tone-poems, songs, and
ballets of Ravel, and Gabriel Faure, and
Debussy.
It may seem fanciful to link some of
the modernists just named with Fran-
gois Couperin. Yet, from the essays of
Jean-Aubry, collected and translated into
English by Edwin Evans, which make
up the volume whose title stands at
the head of this review, it appears quite
plainly that in considerable measure,
Frangois Couperin inspired some of the
most complex works of Claude Debussy.
The Russians, and especially Moussorg-
sky, no doubt also largely influenced
Debussy in his "Pelleas." And so did
Wagner. But, in his piano pieces and
his exquisite songs, one sees the influence
of Couperin and Rameau. Mr. Jean-
Aubry tells us, in an essay on Debussy,
that the creator of "La Mer" and "Pel-
leas" was once an interested listener at
the revivals by the St. Gervais singers jj
of the older French composers who pre- f
ceded Couperin. The very title of his
"Hommage a Rameau" is an avowal of
the debt he owed that master.
The truth is that, for something like
five centuries, there has been a French
tradition in the art of music. Couperin
and Rameau clung to that tradition.
Herold and Gretry and a dozen more
were true to it. While Faure and Mas-
senet, in different ways, helped to per-
petuate it.
To quote a passage from Mr. Jean-
Aubry's "The French Foundations of
Present Day Keyboard Music," the char-
acteristics of Rameau were the "plas-
ticity of his rhythms, a sense of orderly
life, delicacy and care in maintaining
the balance of expression." Like Coup-
June 16, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[631
erin before him, and most later French
composers, his aim was to attain a musi-
cal maximum of expression with a mini-
mum of effort. As the author of "French
Music of To-day" with no little justice
says, the chief features of French music
bear a remarkable correspondence with
those of the French mind and tempera-
ment.
"First, clearness. Not the external
clearness of works which are devoid of
thought, like some Italian compositions,
but the clearness of the mind that has
reflected, and that puts forth in good
order the results of its mediation."
Next, "the avoidance of all that is re-
dundant; knowledge, without the desire
to display it; a horror of pedantry; a
taste for pleasantry and for wit."
The French composers of all periods
have intuitively shrunk from the Ger-
man way of mixing up music with meta-
physics, philosophy, and literary theories.
In the present century they seek variety
of expression, atmosphere, picturesque-
ness, rhythmic beauty. They are sensu-
ous, and on occasion sentimental, viva-
cious, sweet or ironic, very delicate. They
have subtility to a fault, and grace,
and piquancy. But above all they have
charm, charm, charm.
They could not, if they would, have
Wagner's power, or the sensational ex-
travagance of Richard Strauss. Their art
is light and fine, discreet, alert, and rarely
vulgar. And, as Mr. Jean-Aubry gleefully
reminds us in his opening essay, Romain
RoUand, after attending a musical festi-
val in Alsace-Lorraine some fifteen years
ago, declared that "French art was
. . . taking the place of German art."
In Germany, since Wagner's day, there
has been a tendency to confound gran-
deur in music with immensity, to prefer
quantity in instrumentation to quality,
volume of sound to eloquence.
In the great temple of the art divine
there is room for many schools. It is
mere snobbery to proclaim that we must
always thirst for Wagner, Bach, and
Beethoven. All who have hearts and ears
respect and love those giants. But why
should they not also love Debussy,
Rameau, d'Indy, Berlioz, Couperin, Bizet,
Herold, and Charpentier?
The French composers of our time may
not have touched the heights. Yet they
have far outdone their rivals in their
own fields. Only Strauss compares (per-
haps favorably) with them in ingenuity.
None equal them in variety or — though
that does not mean much, of course —
in art — in zeal and industry. If the
Germans and Italians have traditions,
which go back to Father Bach, the
French have theirs, to which they cling
devotedly. And, while the glory of the
German school seems to be fading, the
future of French music is aglow with
hope.
Charles Henry Meltzer
The Run of the Shelves
Books of the Week
[Selected by Edmund Leiter Pearson,
Editor of Publications, New York
Public Library.]
Letters of Traveu By Rudyard Kipling.
Doubleday. ^
Letters from America and other
lands in 1892; from Canada in
1907; from Egypt and the East in
1913.
All and Sundry. By E. T. Raymond,
author of "Uncensored Celebrities."
Holt.
Witty and ironical little essays
about Foch, Kipling, the Prince of
Wales, Conan Doyle, President Wil-
son, Chesterton, and others.
The Maintenance of Peace. By Colonel
S. C. Vestal. Putnam.
Too extensive for casual reading ;
a careful research by a military
writer into the causes that have in-
terrupted peace, how wars have
been and may be prevented. The
writer thinks that peace is too
precious to be sought in vague
optimism, too difficult of attain-
ment to be won by pretty phrase-
making.
The Port of New York. By Thomas
E. Rush, Surveyor of the Port.
Doubleday.
The romance of the past and the
business of to-day in New York
Harbor.
L
AS journalist, critic, and novelist, ex-
Premier Clemenceau has had much to
say about the Jews. He shows the spe-
cialist's knowledge of their habitats and
habits from America to Asia, and though
his presentation of them is never flatter-
ing, the same may be said of his estimate
of every other sect or class of humanity
concerning which he has emitted his
caustic dicta. His "Au Pied du Sinai"
(Paris: Georges Cres), though it bears
the imprint of this year, is composed of
stories and sketches of which all, or the
majority, were evidently written long
ago. In one of these he speaks of hav-
ing reached the age of fifty some three
years before, and as M. Clemenceau was
born in 1841, this bit of work thus ap-
pears to date back at least a quarter of
a century. The new book is only a
belated fellow to the two or three simi-
lar volumes which he published a genera-
tion ago. But the Tiger always writes
well, though always severely, and there
is both profit and amusement in the new
arrival. The conclusion is keen and just,
though perhaps pitched a little high for
American readers, who do not think of
Semitism as a serious menace. "Reform
the Christians who are still masters of
the world, and it will not be necessary to
exterminate the Jews ..."
There is sombre power in the sketch
of Baron Moses of Goldschlammbach,
who went mad with grief because men
hated him for gold-grabbing, an instinc-
tive process which he could no more re-
strain than a bird can help singing, and
who wandered the streets begging,
promising himself that he would give
his millions for the feeding of the hun-
gry if one charitable passer-by would
drop a copper into his wretched out-
stretched hand. There is still more in
the rancor of the poor Galician Jew tailor
who is forced into the army by the
trickery of his wealthy co-religionists,
and who comes home to reap a terrible
vengeance. There is droll and almost
cheerful humor in the tribute to the en-
terprising son of Jacob who sold the
Tiger a two-dollar pair of spectacles for
ten dollars, and there is a grotesque
abandon, which is not without precedent
in the earlier books, in the irreverent
anecdote of the old Israelite whose en-
joyment of Paradise was spoiled by the
apostasy of his son. The Tiger's Ameri-
can admirers who read French will be
interested in this whimsical setting forth
of certain of his vigorous opinions.
Gossip has been saying for some time
that M. Clemenceau was on the point of
writing his memoirs. But now that he
has returned to Paris from his Egyptian
tour and can speak for himself, we learn
from a private and most reliable source
"qu'il n'est pas dans ses intentions
actuelles d'6crire."
The "Open Vision" by Dr. Horatio W.
Dresser (Thomas Y. Crowell Company)
is a book about relations with the dead.
It is also a book about the life of God
in the human spirit. Its art lies in the
combination of these elements. The oc-
cupancy of the human soul by the divine
spirit is the highest conception of the
highest religions, a conception that may
almost be said to attain the grandeur of
the superhuman without falling into the
cheapness of the miraculous. Spiritism
rests on a far lower plane. Communica-
tion with the dead merely as the dead
is neither high nor low; it is neutral
with the same neutrality that attaches
to communication with the living. But
historically the instrumentalities, human
and mechanical, which have furthered
the alleged communication have been
sordid. Dr. Dresser's object is to clear
spiritism of its dross, and to raise it to
a level where it can act on equal terms
and in close conjunction with the life in
God. Accordingly, he throws away the
mediums, and what we may call for
brevity the media. He has no interest in
tables, no faith in experiments. In his
632]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 57
scheme for exchanges between the two
worlds, spirit is to act upon spirit with-
out the intervention of a medium, and
mind is to influence mind without the
intervention of the senses.
If these are tactics, they are admirable
tactics. In robbing spiritism of half the
charms which make it interesting to its
disciples, they strip it of half the ob-
jections which alienate and irritate its
opponents. The question is whether the
shift of base is possible. To the vast
majority of seekers the agency of me-
diums seems more effectual than their
personal efforts in producing a sense,
authentic or illusory, of communication
with departed spirits. Moreover, disen-
chantments await the reader who pauses
over the examples of mystic intimations
supplied by Dr. Dresser from the store-
house of his personal experience. He is
informed of the perilous nearness of a
train, of the whereabouts of a missing
diamond. It is strange that a divine
being who prefers the uniformity of his
operations to the safety of Pompeii, San
Francisco, or Messina, should think the
life of Dr. Dresser or the recovery of a
lost jewel a sufficient reason for a breach
in that routine. Dr. Dresser's reasoning
is systematic, but not powerful, his piety
refined but not robust; his style expands
discreetly in the calm of a featureless
level
Mr. Theodore Stanton and Mrs. Stan-
ton-Blatch are finishing for Messrs.
Harper and Brothers a biography on
which they have been engaged for some
years — that of Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
who died in 1902, leaving a mass of
documents, letters, and notes bearing on
the reform movements which charac-
terized the middle of the last century.
This work will be especially interesting
for the light which it throws on the
whole woman suffrage struggle, for Mrs.
Stanton was first in America to make the
formal and public demand for "the politi-
cal enfranchisement of women," as the
phrase went in 1848. The history of
the long effort, now on the verge of ac-
complishment, for the securing of woman
suffrage by Federal amendment, is given
here in a manner in which it has never
been presented before.
Mr. George Middleton has published
six new one-act plays under the title
"Masks" (Holt). That Mr. Middleton
is somebody anybody can perceive. The
paper jacket, always so affectionate to
its own contents, does not strain the
truth when it praises the dexterity, the
frugality, of his unbending and imperi-
ous technique. His art is akin to mathe-
matics. Apart from the soundness of
the fabric, his strength lies largely in
the hardness, the firmness, the insistence
of the individual stroke. Unfortunately
for Mr. Middleton, this hardness strikes
inward, and the virtue of the technician
becomes the limitation and incumbrance
of the man. In his plays, every sen-
tence, every phrase, works, but it works
under a kind of duress, and the best
service is not obtainable from characters
and situations in a state of helotage.
Donne's famous line, "A bracelet of
bright hair about the bone," might sug-
gest the glittering surface and hard core
of every one of the half-dozen plays in
"Masks."
In "Masks" itself, where Mr. Middle-
ton brings into his own play two imag-
inary characters from his hero's play,
he hardens and cheapens these spectra
to the injury of a really good conception.
In the "House," he attempts sentiment,
and, adroit as he is, gets no closer to
real feeling than celluloid gets to ivory.
"Jim's Beast" has a novel and happy
setting in a museum of palaeontology,
but, when the husband reclaims the
faltering wife by contrasting her for-
getfulness of her children with the
maternal tenderness of the fossil bronto-
saurus, Mr. Middleton lets us see that
human beings for him are very close to
petrifactions. The "Reason," the sixth
play, is strong and vile. As drama it is
excellent, but there are a few excep-
tional infamies in life the recital of
which amounts to collusion. Such is Tom
Sabine's conduct in this play.
"The attempt to escape from an enemy
country," says Mr. Eric A. Keith in "My
Escape from Germany" (Century Co.),
"viewed as a sport, though its devotees
are naturally few and hope to become
fewer, has a technique of its own." Mr.
Keith ought to know. He got away three
times; the first time he was taken by a
ruse after he had crossed the border
without knowing it; the second try did
not take him so far; the third was suc-
cessful. He is not even a novice at writ-
ing of his experience, since before the
peace he published an account veiled as
to many details for the protection of
those he left behind. He is a Briton and
a sportsman. His preface discusses the
technique of the game, equipment and
the like, as if it were like climbing the
Matterhorn; a matter of life and death,
but not of business. Temperament or
schooling enabled him to keep cool
throughout the prolonged emergency of
his three attempts; the habit made his
attempt successful, but it does not make
for the success of the book except as a
convincing document, for it leaves the
tone unemotional, and dulls effects which
might legitimately show more color. For
this the author's prison life would amply
account, and perhaps it is hardly fair
to mention it, since the book has thrill
enough in its mere situation to satisfy
any ordinary reader, so much, in fact,
that it is hard to comment on it except
in terms of the art of fiction. "The
Spy" of Cooper stands as the archetype
of situation for sustained thrill, for from
the nature of his mission the hero is in
danger at every turn of his devious way.
His success is to make his friends think
him a foe that his foes may believe him
a friend; his friends may shoot him if
he succeeds, and his foes will surely do
so if he fails. Second only to this situa-
tion is that of the escaping prisoner in
an enemy country. A moment's peace
is not so much as a breathing space, for
you never know till it is over that it is
anything more than a deceptive calm.
Not even the assurance of the title that
the end shall crown the work can rob any
page of its ticklish suspense. You read
it in ravenous haste, draw a breath, and
go back over the details. Then you lay
it aside and think of the flight through
the heather in "Kidnapped," Gerard's
escape from the tower in "The Cloister
and the Hearth," the prison delivery in
"St. Ives," and you ponder on the mys-
terious nature of the true romance.
"Text criticism" has done much for
modern scholarship, but the security of
its results must evidently rest upon the
most scrupulous care in its processes.
To base some revolutionary thesis as to
authorship or date of a certain text upon
the presence in it of a certain number
of specific peculiarities, and then to have
some more accurate observer prove that
your figures are radically wrong, and
thus that your thesis is bereft of the
very basis on which you chose to set it,
is disconcerting, to say the least. This
is just what an American Homeric
scholar. Professor John A. Scott, of
Northwestern University, has been do-
ing with the text critics who have been
seeking, since the days of Friedrich
August Wolf, to disprove the unity of
the Homeric poems, on the ground of
irreconcilable differences in their vari-
ous parts. While it might be unsafe to
say that he has finally put the separatist
theory out of court, there can be no rea-
sonable denial that he has made wreck
of the great mass of alleged textual dis-
crepancies upon which the denial of unity
has been so confidently based, and that
he has left little ground for claim to
authoritative scholarship to a good many
who have busied themselves in accumu-
lating such "discrepancies." In the
March number of the Classical Journal,
Professor Scott tells in a very interest-
ing way how years of study of the
Homeric text have brought him over
from his early acceptance of the destruc-
tive theory to a firm belief that the Iliad
and Odyssey are the work of one great
poetic genius, Homer, and that we have
them essentially as he left them, with-
out expansion, contraction, or expurga-
tion. "Schliemann defied the authority
of higher criticism and found Troy; the
scholars of to-day are again defying that
authority and are finding Homer."
June 16, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[633
Drama
Barrie, Galsworthy, and
Others
IN my last letter I complained of the
dearth of plays worth writing about;
to-day I have more material than I know
what to do with. In the last few weeks
we have had a sudden rise in the quality
of the work presented, synchronizing
with a rather less sudden fall in the
popularity of the theatre as a whole. I
do not think that there is any relation
of cause and effect between these phe-
nomena. It was pure chance that led
Mr. Galsworthy and Sir James Barrie
to break their long silence on two con-
secutive evenings; and the slump in re-
ceipts, far from resulting from this
rise in literary values, had set in weeks,
if not months, before it. The truth sim-
ply is that the war fever which kept the
theatres full whatever rubbish they pre-
sented, if only it was rubbishy enough,
has at last subsided, and that its sub-
sidence has encouraged serious play-
wrights to creep out of their shells.
Perhaps they may suffer temporarily
from the general cooling-off of the public
craze for the theatre; but the ultimate
effect of the slackening of an unhealthy
and uncritical craving for "shows" of
every class can not but be good in the
main. If this state of things continues,
the demand for theatres will decline,
rents will fall to a reasonable level, and
good plays will no longer have to be taken
off merely because they do not absolutely
fill the house every night in the week.
Sir James Barrie's "Mary Rose" is not
& play which gives me, personally, very
much pleasure. When we wander beyond
the confines of reality, I think it should
be in search either of sheer delightful-
ness (as in "A Midsummer Night's
Dream"), or of some symbolic or phan-
tasmagoric message (as in "Faust" or
"Peer Gynt"). Now there are many de-
lightful details in "Mary Rose," but its
fable is in essence profoundly pessimistic,
with a pessimism which is not serious,
but, so to speak, capricious. If Sir
James Barrie really meant to tell us that
life was at the mercy of occult malevo-
lences, such as those which shape the
destiny of his heroine, I should hear him
with respect, if not with agreement.
But I do not think he means the only
message which can rationally be ex-
tracted from his story. He tells it sim-
ply to give us pleasure of a pathetic,
a semi-tragic, order; and somehow or
other I can not take pleasure in such a
fantasy. If people in general like to
exercise their imagination on these lines,
then Sir James is right and I am wrong ;
for there is certainly nothing unworthy
or unbeautiful about the play.
What we are asked to conceive is
this: An ordinary couple of well-to-do
English people, resident in Sussex, and
differing from their neighbors only in
a little extra amiability, go to the Heb-
rides one summer with their thirteen-
year-old daughter, Mary Rose. The
father, an enthusiastic fisherman, is in
the habit of taking the girl to an islet,
only a stone's throw from the coast; and
one day, while his back is turned for
a moment, she vanishes away. After
searching every possible nook and cranny
of the islet, the heartbroken parents
naturally give her up for lost; but be-
hold ! after a month, she turns up again
on the very spot where she disappeared,
and without the smallest knowledge that
anything unusual has happened to her.
Then she grows up into a marriageable
maiden, rather child-like for her years,
but otherwise apparently normal. The
uncanny incident in her past has been
sedulously concealed from her; but when
a young naval officer proposes for her
hand, her parents quite honorably tell
him the story. With the intrepidity of
his caste, he marries her, and they have
a son; and then, carrying intrepidity to
the point of foolhardiness, he must needs
take her to the Hebrides, and picnic on
the mystic islet. He turns his back for
a moment, to stamp out the fire they have
lit, when suddenly a burst of wild music
is heard (inaudible to the lieutenant)
and Mary Rose walks off as if in a state
of somnambulism, and is lost to mortal
ken. This time her eclipse lasts for
twenty-five years, at the end of which
she returns to her Sussex home, as young
as ever, and very much pained to find her
parents quite old and her husband mid-
dle-aged. Her son she does not find, for
the young scapegrace has run away from
home and gone to Australia. Apparently
— for details are denied us — she dies of
chronic anachronism, a distressing, but
fortunately rare, disease. But her woe-
ful weird pursues her beyond the grave.
She disappears only too easily in life,
but she can not disappear in death. Her
ghost haunts the Sussex manor-house,
sadly depreciating its value ; until at last
her runaway son arrives, in the person
of an Australian soldier. Then one
would have thought that her perturbed
spirit might have found rest; but Sir
James Barrie will have nothing to do
with such facile optimism. She is as
incurably anachronistic in the spirit as
in the flesh, and declines to recognize
her child in this strapping Anzac. What
occurs at the very end is not quite clear,
but I hope, and almost venture to believe,
that she permanently disappears into the
Celtic Twilight from which she originally
emerged. But how she came to be born
of ordinary English parents in the
County of the South Saxons remains a
harassing mystery. If her forbears
had been second-sighted Gaels we could
have understood it better.
Turning to Mr. Galsworthy's play,
"The Skin Game," we find ourselves on
solid English earth again. There are no
"harps in the air," no vanishing ladies,
no semi-malignant ghosts. (I forgot to
mention that, if I rightly understood the
matter, the ghost of Mary Rose came
within an ace of doing grievous bodily
injury to her son.) "The Skin Game,"
an inelegant expression wholly unfa-
miliar to me, is understood to be roughly
equivalent to "War to the Knife." The
combatants are representatives of two
classes, the static squirearchy and the
dynamic plutocracy or mechanarchy.
Mr. Hornblower, a rather aggressive
member of the latter class, comes to set-
tle in the immediate neighborhood of the
ancestral "place" of the Hillcrist family.
Their relations might have been ami-
cable enough but for the fact that Mrs.
Hillcrist is of a masterful, opinionated,
and decidedly "stuck-up" character. She
offensively closes her doors against the
Hornblower family, with the result that
Mr. Hornblower threatens to buy a piece
of land within three hundred yards of
the Hillcrist mansion, and to erect a
factory upon it. The land is put up to
auction, the Hillcrists strain every nerve
to secure it, but Hornblower defeats
them by a rather mean trick. Mean-
while Mrs. Hillcrist has learnt a secret
about Hornblower's daughter-in-law (his
wife is dead) which, if revealed, will not
only destroy the happiness of the Horn-
blower household, but drive them from
the district. Against the will of her
rather ineffectual husband, she uses this
knowledge to terrorize Hornblower into
re-selling the plot of land. It is intended
that the secret shall be disclosed to Horn-
blower alone; but it inevitably leaks out
and becomes common property, to the
total discomfiture and misery of the
Hornblower clan. The squirearchy is
thus victorious, but at the cost of its self-
respect; and the moral seems to be that
class warfare is embittered by a defi-
ciency on both sides of what Matthew
Arnold used to call "epieikeia or sweet-
reasonableness."
Moral or no moral, the drama is a very
strong one. Many of the scenes — not-
ably that of the auction — are breathless
in their tension. Some critics disparage
it as melodramatic, but they are surely
wrong. The play represents the clash
of character with character, and the fact
that the clash happens to be a violent one
does not detract from its artistic qual-
ity. I have been a little afraid of late
years that Mr. Galsworthy was losing his
grip of the stage; but it has never been
stronger than in "The Skin Game."
The same week which brought Mr.
Galsworthy and Sir James Barrie to the
front witnessed the production of an-
other noteworthy play, "The Grain of
Mustard-Seed," by Mr. H. M. Harwood.
This is a really thoughtful and witty
63-1]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 57
political comedy, the best thing of its
kind since Mr. Granville Barker's
"Waste." We see how a self-made man
and a political idealist, who has elab-
orated a very important housing scheme,
is at first welcomed by the Government,
and then summarily "turned down"
when he declines to emasculate his
scheme out of respect to inveterate preju-
dices and vested interests. The portrait
of Lord Henry Markham, M.P., the cyn-
ical party wire-puller, is admirable and
apposite. Indeed the play, though it
wore the colors of no party, abounded in
lines which were intimately applicable
to the present situation. It was much
less satisfactory on its sentimental than
on its political side. The middle-aged
idealist, the millionaire proprietor of a
patent food, was made to fall in love
with a wisp of a girl, a daughter of the
governing classes, supposed to be a rep-
resentative of post-war pessimism, cyni-
cism, and moral laxity — in fact, a thor-
oughly bad lot. I feared at one time
that the ennobling influence of "Pongo"
(the patent food) was going to effect a
diange of heart in this worthless young
person, and that all was going to end
happily. Mr. Harwood, however, spared
us this extreme of conventional opti-
mism. He left his hero speechlessly flab-
bergasted by the revelation of his lady-
love's moral obliquity. But the whole
idea of this love-interest was merely the-
atrical. The pure-hearted man of the
people marries in his own class and does
not go a-gadding after corrupt slips of
aristocracy.
That Mr. Harwood's heroine is not
really, or at any rate not characteris-
tically, a post-war type, may be gathered
from the fact that she is very nearly
duplicated by the heroine of a comedy
by Mr. H. V. Esmond, "Birds of a
Feather," which was written several
years ago, though produced only the
other day. This is a play of really high
dramatic quality; but its intellectual and
moral standpoint is that of about twenty
years ago — whence, no doubt, its lack of
success.
Miss Gertrude Jennings, authoress of
the very successful "Young Person in
Pink," has followed it up with another
three-act play, "Husbands for All,"
which is much less happily inspired.
Miss Jennings takes us forward to the
year 1925, and imagines that an auto-
cratic Director of Reconstruction has
hit upon the plan of correcting the short-
age of males by legalizing "lateral mar-
riages," or, in plain language, bigamy.
Not only are such marriages declared
legal, but every husband who has fewer
than seven children is compelled, on pain
of imprisonment in Dartmoor as a
conscientious objector, to contract a
"lateral" union. Miss Jennings' gift of
bright dialogue enables her to make this
skit fairly entertaining; but her invent-
ive and constructive powers are, un-
fortunately, by no means on a level with
her wit.
The Shakespeare Festival at Stratford
this year has been noteworthy, not so
much for exceptionally good acting, as
for the success with which the producer,
Mr. Bridges Adams, has solved the prob-
lem of combining the advantages of the
non-scenic Elizabethan platform with
those of the modern pictorial stage. By
the skillful employment of movable
columns, Mr. Adams secures what is
practically an expanding and contract-
ing proscenium, by aid of which he can
change his scenery, or perhaps one
should say indicate changes of scene,
without any appreciable loss of time. He
suggests the environment of the action
without building up realistic stage-pic-
tures; and that this is the true principle
of Shakespearean mounting there can
be little doubt. Successful experiments
in the same direction have been made at
the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, and
(with a touch of regrettable eccentric-
ity) by Mr. Nigel Playfair at the Lyric
Theatre, Hammersmith. The abolition
of the long waits necessitated by the
changing of heavy "sets" of the old
Lyceum school is a most valuable reform.
Much more questionable is the use that
is being made of this new facility. The
craze of the moment is for what I have
ventured to call "holus-bolus Shake-
speare"— revivals in which no single
word, however obsolete, however incom-
prehensible, however manifestly corrupt,
shall on any account be omitted. That,
at all events, is the ideal; but some of
the longer plays, such as "Hamlet,"
"Richard III," "Cymbeline" and "Corio-
lanus,". can not even be galloped through
within the limits of a modern theatrical
evening. Mr. Bridges Adams gave us
three hours and three-quarters of "Ham-
let"— far too much for the endurance of
any ordinary audience — yet even to this
end he had to make considerable cuts.
His "Cymbeline," from which he cut
something like 500 lines, lasted three
hours and fifteen minutes. At Birming-
ham they raced through "Othello," minus
some 60 lines, in three hours; but the
play was recited rather than acted, and,
furthermore, recited with extreme verbal
inaccuracy. It need scarcely be said that
our latter-day purists will not spare us
any of the obscene and otherwise obsolete
expressions which are far less offensive
in Shakespeare than in his contempora-
ries, but are nevertheless disagreeably
frequent in some of his plays. The
whole movement is one of extravagant
re-action from Irving-Tree-Daly methods
of reckless mutilation. Common sense
will presently re-assert itself, and it will
be recognized that Shakespeare is to be
honored in the spirit and not in the let-
ter. Since we know that Elizabethan
performances seldom exceeded two hours
and a half, we are bound to conclude
that in his longer plays he wrote a good
deal that he did not intend to be spoken.
But even if all his plays could, without
gabbling, be performed within a reason-
able limit of time, it would remain mere
folly to speak passages which the lapse
of centuries has deprived of all their
savor, and even rendered absolutely in-
comprehensible. It is not only inartistic
and absurd, but positively immoral, to
force actors to speak and pretend to
understand lines which, even if not cor-
rupt, are the battle-ground of the com-
mentators, and have no vital meaning
for any human creature.
William Archer
London, May 6
EDUCATIONAL SECTION
University Training
for Business
ALTHOUGH nearly all the universi-
ties of the United States now have
departments, schools or colleges of com-
merce or business administration, there
still seems to be something incongruous
in this alliance of the university with
the business world. Possibly this is be-
cause the movement is so recent — the
Wharton School of the University of
Pennsylvania was founded in 1880 and
the School of Commerce of New York
University in 1900 — but more probably
it is because of the mediaeval origin of
the university as a corporation or guild
of masters and scholars chiefly inter-
ested in theological studies and organ-
ized for mutual protection against un-
friendly townsmen. Of course, they
were always willing, as now, to receive
doles from charitable citizens, but the
thought of making other than spiritual
return never entered their mind.
But it was not long until the scope of
university activities widened to include
medical and legal studies, as well as phi-
losophy or the liberal arts, until in most
universities the four traditional facul-
ties were established for the training of
clerics, physicians, lawyers, and teachers.
After this the universities ceased to give
birth to new faculties; and even the
universities of America, which were
built on European models, long held
aloof from a number of occupations
which were becoming learned profes-
sions in all but the name.
Truly sensible people, who are, to be
sure, few in number, do not care a fig
June 16, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[685
I
I
whether their occupation be called a
trade or a profession, but in point of
fact a learned profession has certain
marks or characteristics which distin-
guish it rather clearly from a typical
trade, and give it a claim to special con-
sideration from the university. The
chief of these is the scientific basis of
the occupation — an organized body of
knowledge of sufficient volume to justify
a mature person's spending some years
in the study of it before entering fully
into the activities of his career. From
this point of view the list of learned
professions should probably be extended
to include literature and the fine arts,
military and naval science, engineering,
scientific agriculture, dentistry, phar-
macy, journalism — and business. Of
course, it is possible to write without
literary training, to fight without mili-
tary science, to farm without being an
agriculturist, to pull teeth without being
a dentist, to sell goods without being a
business man. Genius and folly know
no rules, but ordinary men require years
of study and experience for the mastery
of any really learned profession.
Some successful business men question
the validity of this argument, and insist
that cadets should enter business at an
early age and grow up with it, gaining
sxperience and picking up what theory
they may need as they go along. Do
not such conservatives overlook, among
other important considerations, their
own unusual ability, the fact that pio-
neer days are almost over, the rapid
changes that are going on in business,
and the new type of business man that
is coming into the field? Apprentice-
ship, it is true, is the old and tried
method of training — tried and found
wanting. Formerly all the learned pro-
fessions were recruited in this way; the
aspirant to holy orders began as a nov-
ice, servant to the alder clerics; the
budding lawyer swept the floor in a law
office; the young medico mixed pills for
lome physician or was apprenticed to a
lurgeon. After a time, as the volume
of knowledge increased, it was found
that broader and sounder instruction
could be obtained in the schools, and to
them the most enterprising students
flocked, leaving their belated brethren
to learn a weird mixture of truth and
error in the service of quacks and petti-
foggers.
For all that, we still find a few physi-
cians, lawyers, clergymen, and teachers
who dislike the schools, and some busi-
ness men who hold that nothing worth
while about business can be taught in
the university. Such distrust of learn-
ing reminds one of the quaint Greek
skeptic whose philosophy was summed
up in the formula "Nothing is; if any-
thing is it can not be known; if it can
be known it can not be taught." Pos-
(Continued on page 636)
To underttand and discuss intelligently this vital question
you, as an American citizen and voter, should read
THE
PEACE CONFERENCE
DAY- BY- DAY
A Presidential Pilgrimage
Leading to the Discovery of Europe
By CHARLES T. THOMPSON
Superintendent of the Associated Press Foreign Service
With an Introductory Letter By
COL. E. M. HOUSE
It is a day-by-day chronicle of just what occurred, with all the sidelights;
what the leading figures in that memorable assemblage said and did; the fine play
of intrigue and statesmanship; the dramatic incidents; the secret conclaves and
understandings; the rise and fall of the Fourteen Points; the shattering of high
ideals; the battle of Covenant versus Alliance; the struggle for the Spoils of War;
the matching of wits between Europe and America in the greatest diplomatic
game of all time. It is the truth at last.
At all bookstores $2.^0, postage extra
Publishers
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636]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 57
{Continued from page 635)
sibly we should complete the chain of
sophistry by adding a fourth proposi-
tion to the effect that, if anything can
be taught, it can not be applied in actual
practice.
The fact is that the stock of knowledge
that has been accumulated by genera-
tions of business men has not died with
them, but has been recorded in books,
magazines, reports, and othor forms, and
is now so great that no business man
can keep up with it. Indeed, the de-
mands of business are so exacting that
many business men, immersed in affairs,
can scarcely find time to read the daily
papers and glance through the trade
journals, while the economic and finan-
cial periodicals are quite neglected, and
of the numerous books and reports
treating of important phases of business
economics they do not even know the
names. Apart from the disheartening
lack of time, one trouble is that they do
not know what to read; another, that
they have not formed habits of study;
a third, that they lack the stimulus of
class discussion and the guidance of
competent teachers. No doubt, capable
and determined men can overcome all
these obstacles, but the way of self -edu-
cation is hard, and those who have not
had preliminary professional schooling
are severely handicapped. The school-
trained men may have more theory than
practice; but the theorist will soon gain
practical experience, while the mere
practitioner can seldom, if ever, pick up
all the theory that he needs.
The logic of the situation has, in fact,
forced the universities to make provision
for the new disciplines, and has com-
pelled all but the most conservative busi-
ness man to admit that the coming gen-
eration of business executives — if not
those in subordinate positions — should
have a schooling in business principles
and methods such as they themselves did
not and could not obtain. The only
serious obstacle in the way of carrying
out plans for the higher education of
business men is the difficulty of obtain-
ing competent teachers. But this ob-
stacle is by no means insuperable. The
trouble is due to the poverty of the uni-
versity rather than to any inherent im-
possibility of teaching the mysteries of
business. All professional schools have
been confronted with the same problem,
but the best of them have long since
solved it, partly by finding practitioners
who can give a portion of their time to
the schools, partly by inducing experi-
enced men to retire from practice and
give the whole of their time to the work
of teaching. Besides, the best universi-
ties already have competent teachers of
commercial geography, economics, money
and banking, corporation finance, trans-
portation, accounting, business law, sta-
tistics, insurance, and other standard
courses, and it is only for the more prac-
tical subjects, such as business organiza-
tion and management, that it is difficult
to arrange.
Educational movements such as this
are of the greatest significance as indi-
cating a spirit of co-operation and mu-
tual appreciation between the universi-
ties and business men that should result
in great good for both parties. The
standards of business efficiency and
ethics should be raised by the influence
of university ideals, and academic ways
of thought and action should derive
benefit from contact with the practical
affairs of business life. The one danger
to be feared is the growth of a tendency
to regard the practical and tangible re-
sults at which the business education so
largely aims as setting a standard to
which university study as a whole should
conform. But the right way to guard
against that danger is not to refuse
recognition of the part the university
may play in business education, but to
maintain in full vigor and authority
those higher intellectual functions which
must, in the future as in the past, be
the heart and centre of the university's
life.
THERE is a kind of squinting optim-
ism in the "talks to students and
graduates" which President Hadley has
brought together under the title of "The
Moral Basis of Democracy" (Yale Uni-
versity Press). "I wish I could think,"
he says, "that the world to-day is as
sound of head as it is right of heart."
No doubt, he adds, people are more ready
to-day than ever before to think about
their conduct and its consequences; but
still the complexity of life has outstript
the growth of thought, so that the need is
to raise our intelligence up to an equality
with our goodness of heart. So it is that
all through these talks President Had-
ley stresses the need of taking thought
in the political and social problems
that must confront the college man when
he goes out into the world. That, he be-
lieves, is the true messages of the Gospel,
that men should not only desire to do
right but should reflect more earnestly
upon what is right. Ah, well-a-day! It
is pleasant to know that our hearts are
in the right place, that we are no longer
greedy and selfish and overbearing and
belligerent by nature; it is wholesome
doctrine to tell us to take better heed of
our acts in our universal desire to serve
the world. Yet two things we seem to
miss in these eminently useful and up-
lifting discourses. We should like now
and then to hear a word addressed to
those who still are conscious of the old
Adam of unrighteousness in the heart,
and we should like also a plain statement
now and then that education is a good
thing in itself, in the joys and consola-
tions it may bring, with no thought of
serving the world. This "service," it is a
noble idea. But somehow, hearing it so
frequently, we can not forget the idle
story of that land where everybody pros-
pered by taking in everybody else's ,
washing. Something like this must have
occurred to Epictetus when, in his hum-
ble school at Nicopolis, he had this con-
versation with a student anxious to for-
get himself in service:
"But my country," says he, "will lack assist-
ance, so far as lies in me."
Once more I ask, What assistance do you
mean ? It will not owe colonnades or baths to
you. What of that? It does not owe shoes to
the blacksmith or arms to the shoemaker; it is
sufficient if each man fulfills his own function.
Would you do it no good if you secured to it
anotlier faithful and self-respecting citizen?
"Yes."
Well, then, you would not be useless to it.
"What place then shall I have in the city?"
Whatever place you can hold while you keep
your character for honor and self-respect. But
if you are going to lose these qualities in try-
ing to benefit your city, what benefit, I ask,
would you have done her when you attain to
the perfection of being lost to shame and
honor?
LATIN scholarship was caught by the
war in the middle stage of one of its
most laborious and important modern en-
terprises, the preparation and publica-
tion of the "Thesaurus Linguae Latinse."
The material had been assorted and ar-
ranged in due order, many scholars were
at work upon their assigned portions,
and publication had reached about the
middle of the fifth volume. As the work
was being done in Germany, under the
auspices of the five learned Academies of
Berlin, GOttingen, Leipsic, Munich, and
Vienna, the stress of war soon brought it
virtually to a standstill, through inroads
on its editorial staff, scarcity of printing
materials, and disarrangement of its
finances. One fascicle, the sixth of Vol-
ume V, was printed in 1915, and has just
reached American subscribers. At the
same time comes word that the under-
taking is in serious financial distress,
and an effort is now in progress among
American philologists to raise a fund
sufficient to avoid immediate disaster. Is
it not possible to find in America a more
radical and profitable method of relief?
The work is of importance not merely to
a small group of Latinists, but to every
The Brick Row Book Shop, Inc.
of New Haven
Announces the opening of its
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at
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Opposite the RUz-Carlton
Visitors will find here good books,
old and new, in unusually attractive
surroundings.
I
June 16, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[637
branch of learning connected with Latin,
either directly or indirectly. Some speedy
means of carrying it to completion ought
to be found — speedy, of course, as is
consistent with its own standard of thor-
oughness and scholarship. We have in
this country, at Washington, an institu-
tion which, according to the declared
purpose of its founder, "shall in the
broadest and most liberal manner en-
courage investigation, research, and dis-
covery." It would be an admirable illus-
tration of that breadth and liberality
which stands at the head of their donor's
deed of trust for the Trustees of the
Carnegie Institution to tender to the
management of the "Thesaurus" a grant
sufficient to permit a complete reorganiza-
tion of their editorial staff, and assure
publication as rapidly as the matter can
be put in shape. A number of American
scholars were engaged in this work at the
outbreak of the war, and a still greater
number could easily be enlisted, if funds
were available.
The Reconstruction of
France through
Agriculture
FRANCE has always been essentially
an agricultural country. At the
present time, about half her population
is rural. She has few great industrial
or commercial cities, but many villages.
From this point of view, the appearance
of France has changed but little since the
Middle Ages. The great alterations of
the nineteenth century, which trans-
formed the conditions of economic life,
did not affect our country to a degree
comparable to that seen elsewhere. Yet
few countries have undergone, in the
course of ages, crises so grave as those
through which France has passed. And
few have known how more rapidly to
heal their wounds; this is owing
especially to the richness of her soil, the
evenness of her climate, and the per-
sistent industry of her peasant popula-
tion. A class destined by its very nature
to feel most disagreeably the weight of
wars, foreign or civil, the class from
which are recruited the hardiest soldiers,
the rural population has paid a heavy
tribute in the recent war. Statistics
show that of our 1,500,000 dead, the
peasants have furnished 55 per cent., in-
dustrial laborers 18 per cent., clerks, mer-
chants, and professional men 27 per cent.
And if the war has ruined certain of our
most prosperous industrial cities, it has
likewise devastated those of our prov-
inces most advanced in agriculture and
furnishing our finest hai-vests of cereals
and sugar beets.
Our supply of cattle has been reduced
{Continued on page 638)
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638]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 57
(Continued from page 637)
no less by requisitions, by destruction
due to the invader, and by the necessity ■
of feeding immense armies. Finally, the
threat of failure in the bread supply, the
basis of French alimentation, led the Gov-
ernment to adopt a wheat policy the fatal
consequences of which we now appre-
ciate. The principle having been asserted
that it was necessarj', by every means, to
avoid increasing the price of bread, this
price has been kept far below the cost
of production, the state making good the
difference. The fixing of the price of
wheat has been managed in such a way
that a paradoxical situation has been
reached in which the raising of wheat is
less profitable than that of oats, rye, or
barley. Hence, there is a decrease in
acreage sown to wheat, the peasant find-
ing it more advantageous to devote him-
self to other crops.
To so many causes of impoverishment
may be added the devastation of our for-
ests, sacrificed to the demands of the
national defense, or scientifically de-
stroyed by the enemy, or, finally, an-
nihilated by the rage of battle.
In consequence of the war, then,
French agriculture finds itself obliged
to face a crisis of unprecedented gravity.
With a greatly reduced supply of manual
labor, with ten departments ruined for
long years to come, its problem is to pro-
duce at least as much as before 1914 —
THE NEW YORK
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Assistant Secretaries
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FIFTH AVENUE OFFICE
Chablzs E. Haydock, Vice-President and Manager
Mas. Kir Camhack Assistant Secretary
R(;ss>LL V. WoasTCLL Assistant Secretary
TRUSTEES
Otto T. Bannard
S. Reading Bertron
iames A. Blair
lortimer N. Backner
James C. Colgate
Alfred A. Cook
Arthur T. Cumnock
Robert W. de Forest
John B. Dennis
Philip T. Dodge
George Doubleday
Samuel H. Fisher
John A. Garrer
Benjamin S. Guinness
F. N. Hoffstot
Buchanan Houston
Walter Jennings
Darwin P. Kingsley
John C. McCair
Ogden L. MilU
Tolin J. Mitchell
James Parmelee
Henry C. Phipps
Norman P. Ream
Dean Sage
Joseph J. Slocum
Myles T ierney
Clarence H. WooUey
Uembere of the Netc York Clearing House Asso-
ciation and of the Federal Reserve System
even more, if the country would free it-
self in some degree from the heavy
tribute which it must pay to the out-
sider in consequence of the importation
of commodities indispensable to its life.
Still further, the entire year 1919 was
marked by evidences of anxiety, on the
part both of the Government and of in-
dividuals, concerning the farmers. This
was rather unusual, the foremost thought
being, heretofore, to satisfy the demands
of the laborers, strongly organized in
their unions, rather than those of the
peasants, isolated on their farms. Nor
were political considerations foreign to
this granting of attention to the Social-
istic proletariat, rather than to the con-
servative mass of the rural districts.
And yet, immediately after the vic-
tory, everyone turned to him whom
journalists and politicians emulously
proclaimed to be the savior of the coun-
try— doubly its savior through the blood
shed in such abundance, and the labor
carried on at the rear by that part of
the rural population which was left, the
women, old men, and children. The battle
for the peasant, one writer has called it.
Political parties, the sacred union once
broken, have turned towards this great
force, which does not know its own
power, to win it to them. Economists
and historians have recalled that on the
morrow of our worst disasters, it was
agriculture that restored a condition of
equilibrium. It would be difficult to
construct a bibliography of all that has
been written on this subject during the
past fifteen months, articles in the news-
papers and reviews, and books of scien-
tific or sentimental trend.
At so much praise, more or less dis-
interested, the peasant was at first
amazed; but with his practical spirit,
he took advantage of the situation on
occasion of the legislative elections of
November, 1919. It was especially the
rural vote that brought into the Cham-
ber of Deputies so many new men, of
moderate tendencies, who gave to the
Assembly a conservative tone which it
had not manifested since the National
Assembly elected at the close of the war
of 1870-1871. This, however, is only one
side of the question, the political. The
economic side is less easily resolved. It
is an easy matter to say. Produce, pro-
duce in abundance! But there must be
the means with which to produce. The
soil, kept in order as well as possible
during the war, needs to be fertilized in
order to get back its productive capacity.
Worn out agricultural machinery must be
replaced. But the crisis in the trans-
portation system impedes all efforts.
Even if the factories of France and of
foreign lands could supply the demand
(and such is far from being the case),
the railways are not in condition to as-
sure the arrival of the fertilizers, the
machinery, and the necessary fuel for
the motors. Phosphates, for example,
are found in abundance in the North of
France, in Belgium, and especially in
Tunisia. There are few or no cars from
the first, few or no vessels from the sec-
ond. Potash, of which recovered Alsace
could furnish us a considerable quantity,
remains in heaps at the mouth of the
mines. On the first of April, 1920, the
Minister of Agriculture said, in reply to
a question put by a deputy, that 250,000
tons of potash fertilizers were ready for
shipment, but that the difficulty of
transportation would permit of the de-
livery of only 1,000 tons per day. And
so the mines are accepting no more
orders.
As for agricultural machinery, an ef-
fort has been made to produce it in
quantity, both by factories long special-
ized for that purpose, and by trans-
formed munitions factories; here again,
the lack of coal, and strikes, have de-
layed production. As to foreign-made
machinery, English, Canadian, or Amer-
ican, the cost of carriage raises the price
to a point almost out of reach, and that
which comes to our crowded ports re-
mains upon the docks, for lack of cars
to take it away.
But in spite of so many unfavorable
conditions, no one thinks of giving up in
despair, and the work in the fields goes
on, the French peasant having an incal-
culable fund of "stick-to-itiveness," and
of attachment to the soil. It is, indeed,
one of the characteristic traits of his
temperament, noted by all observers. He
loves the soil, and ardently devotes him-
self to its conquest. After each great
social upheaval, he is the beneficiary of
the troubled situation in which the nation
finds itself. Thus, after the religious
wars of the sixteenth century, and the
liquidation of a part of the property be-
longing to the abbeys, the peasant had
his share. His share was still more im-
portant, we may believe, on occasion of
the sale of national properties at the time
of the Revolution. Finally, the army
just mustered out has seen the small
holding almost entirely cleared of mort-
gage indebtedness, and still further, the
purchase by the peasant of lands given
up by their owners, desirous of realiz-
ing money with which to meet the in-
creasing cost of living.
The farmer has acquired, then, in
small purchases, that which in other
times constituted vast domains; the re-
verse of the medal is that the property
is cut up into very small bits, and that
this division is further increased by our
legislation, and by the necessity of
partitionings after the death of owners.
This constitutes an obstacle, and Rot
among the least, to putting the soil in
condition to yield a reasonable economic
return. Some think of remedying the
situation by a reversal of this process
{Continued on page 640)
June 16, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[689
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640]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 57
(Continued from page 638)
of dismemberment, that is to say, by a
series of exchanges and compromises
which would reestablish, upon a more
logical basis, the division of the totality
of our land. But a reform of this nature,
even if it appeared theoretically attract-
ive, would surely arouse a resistance
which sociologists or legislators do not
suspect.
This minute division of landed prop-
erty is a hindrance, also, to the develop-
ment of cultivation by the use of the
motor, which, to tell the truth, has not
yet fulfilled the hopes founded upon it.
The motor-driven machines in agricul-
tural use, of French or foreign make,
do not give complete satisfaction. Built
in general with a view to cultivation on
a large scale, which is exceptional in our
country, expensive and too complicated
to be easily kept in repair, they have not
yet really gained their right of citizen-
ship. It is incontestable, however, that
in them is to be found the solution for
the crisis in the labor supply. Further-
more, there are serious efforts to con-
struct models better adapted to the
specific conditions of our country, more
economical of fuel than the American
models, and also more durable; for in
France one does not like to change too
often a utensil with which one is familiar.
Along with this feeling, a propaganda
is taking form in the rural districts, dis-
trustful of novelties in general, and at-
tached to traditional methods. Yet in
1919 and 1920, expositions of motor cul-
tivation have been numerous, and have
been followed attentively by the most
progressive element among our farmers.
But there is another movement, pre-
eminently social, which has manifested
itself with such spontaneity, and so gen-
erally over the entire territory of France,
that it ie important to set it forth in
clear relief. It is the extension of agri-
cultural syndicates. These have had a
legal existence since 1884, and in some
regions have been considerably developed.
The lessons of the war have here brought
forth their fruit. The vital necessity
of cooperation has been apparent to all,
especially to those who have been in the
armies. The successes secured by the
revolutionary workingmen's syndicates
have led the peasants, essentially enemies
of revolution, since it threatens the
right of property, to group themselves
together, in turn. Where syndicates
were already in existence, they have seen
new adherents coming to them en masse;
where there was none, they have been
created.
The agricultural syndicate has this
peculiarity, that it is neither exclusively
of workmen, nor exclusively of employ-
ers, but a mixture of the two. It is gen-
erally non-political. It exerts itself to
put its members in direct connection
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with producers, for the purchase of sup-
plies, or farming utensils. Again, it fills
an educational function in diffusing
modern methods and in studying tech-
nical questions too difficult for the mass
of farmers. It creates mutual credit
companies, and mutual insurance com-
panies to protect its members against
losses by the death of cattle, and by fire.
A network of this kind is beginning to
spread itself over all France. If these
attempts were to remain isolated, their
future would be hazardous. These
groupings by professions strike at too
many interests not to encounter opposi-
tion. It was necessary, therefore, to
federate these syndicates. In 1919, two
great organisms appeared, the General
Confederation of Farmers, and the Na-
tional Confederation of Agricultural
Associations. It is to be desired that
the future may see the union of these
two organizations with a common end.
Finally, a reform which may attain
great importance has been voted by Par-
liament— the creation of Chambers of
Agriculture. These will be exclusively
professional, and will function within the
framework of the Department of Agri-
culture. While commerce has long had
its chambers, agriculture has always
been without them. The error is now
going to be repaired, and the farmers,
in order to solve the problems which
interest them, are going to have com-
petent representatives, chosen among
themselves, disposing of an important
budget and endowed with sufficient
means to initiate useful projects.
In conclusion, we may say that French
agriculture is going to be in position
to collaborate effectively in the work of
national reconstruction. Professionally
organized, defended in Parliament by
many of its most authoritative repre-
sentatives, who, until the last elections,
had held aloof from political struggles,
the rural class has become conscious of
itself. Thanks to our possession of
North Africa, and to the return to the
mother country of the provinces lost in
1870, we have at our disposal beds of
chemical fertilizers of great value; and
thanks to our reconquest of the Briey L
basin, and of Lorraine, we have the f
scoriae, or refuse, from the process of
dephosphorization. Above all else, we
have the peasant of France, who, if a
little sleepy upon the soft pillow of an
easy life before the war, has taken a
new vigor, in spite of the blows which
have thinned his ranks. He knows that
many years will pass before the world's
affairs have regained their normal
course; but years do not frighten men
trained by their rugged life to long cal-
culations, and to submission to the laws
of Nature.
Andre Rostand
Flamanville, Manche, France,
May 15
fe,**'
THE WEEKLY
REVIEW^
Vol. 2, No. 58
New York, Wednesday, June 23, 1920
FIFTEEN CEN1 S
Contents
641
Brief Comment
Editorial Articles:
The Result at Chicago 644
"Greek for the Greek-minded" 645
Is There a Public? 646
Cheradame on Lloyd George 647
The Republican National Convention.
By Jerome Landfield 649
The Problem of Palestine — A Rejoinder.
By Elisha M. Friedman 650
The Laodiceans. By Marion Couthouy
Smith 651
Correspondence 652
Book Reviews:
A New History of the French Revolu-
tion 653
Study and Fable 654
Admiral Fisher Speaks His Mind 654
Suggestions for a Far Eastern Policy 655
The Run of the Shelves 656
Drama:
On the Verge of Literature. By O. W.
Firkins 658
Export Credits and European Rehabili-
tation. By Guy Emerson 659
fyHE democratic ideal, which Amer-
-'■ ica inherits from the classical
world, hastens forward to introduce
the new candidates to their country.
Mr. Coolidge is at pains to explain
that the rent of his part of the two-
family house in which he lives is
thirty-two dollars a month and not
thirty-five, as erroneously, perhaps
maliciously, reported. We wonder
how the other family would feel if he
chose to carry on a front-porch cam-
paign this summer. Mighty pleased,
is our guess. And as for "Doc"
Harding — the old "doc," that is, for
it is well known that the son of the
village doctor always bears the cour-
tesy title of "doc," too — he is dis-
covered to the country washing the
buggy that has succeeded to the old
jenny mule of earlier days. "Warren
G. always was a good boy." Of course
he was; everybody knows what that
means. It isn't in the least incom-
patible with having belonged to a
beefsteak club that wasn't just an eat-
ing club, or with having chewed
tobacco with an efficiency that in-
spired the awe of his fellows, or with
having swiped melons as the leader
of the Stunners. The country is sud-
denly invited to take an interest in
some very plain and very sturdy
Americans. It doesn't find this pros-
pect very thrilling at first glance. The
country has been having a pretty big
time of it lately and has outgrown,
or thinks it has outgrown, some of
the things it used to admire. Quite
apart from the question of who
will be elected and who ought to be
elected, it will do the country good
seriously to ponder the lives of these
two men. It will do it good to real-
ize afresh that living in a small town,
winning one's way in a small town
and holding the liking and the respect
of one's fellow citizens the while, is
not a dull business, but one that is
both exciting and satisfying to those
who have character sufficient to re-
spond to it. It will do the country
good to remind itself again that the
qualities engendered by success in
such a life are qualities which form
no mean part of the equipment of one
who aspires to the highest honor in
the gift of his fellow-citizens.
pOMMENTS in the English and
^ French press on the Republican
nomination indicate a feeling of satis-
faction which has been reached by a
process of elimination. The thought
of Johnson in the White House was
naturally a nightmare to Europeans,
and by comparison with him the pic-
ture of Harding as President appears
roseate. That the latter is a friend
of Myron T. Herrick is a sufficient
guarantee to the French that Mr.
Harding, if successful in November,
will work for pleasant and helpful
relations with their country It
must also be a source of gratification
to them to remember that Senator
Harding was numbered among those
Americans who earnestly believed
that the United States should have
found an earlier opportunity to enter
the war.
'pHERE is an old story about a
recipe for a highly complicated
salad, which, after giving minute in-
structions as to how the concoction
should be effected, winds up with the
direction, "then throw it out of the
window." That about fits the case of
the Presidential primaries, in the
present stage of their development.
Whether there is any way of making
them a better instrument for their
purpose is another question. But
enough is known already to show that
the mere creation of machinery for
the registration of popular prefer-
ences, even if that machinery were
uniform throughout the country,
would furnish no assurance of the
direct Presidential primary being a
good way to make choice of a candi-
date for President. There are times,
indeed, when such a poll would
give a significant result. When, for
example, there are two outstanding
figures to whom the choice is prac-
tically limited from the start, the vote
may really be entitled to the weight
of a public decision. But in a free-
for-all race, or anything like it, the
result turns on a hundred factitious
elements, and carries little moral
authority. To overcome this deficiency
by a cast-iron legal regulation may
be a way of settling things, but
whether it is a good way is open to
most serious doubt.
"IvrOBODY in the State of New York,
-'-* and few intelligent citizens any-
where, will fail to understand just
what the platform makers at Chicago
have in mind when they "demand
that every American citizen shall en-
joy the ancient and constitutional
642]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 58
right of free speech, free press, and
free assembly, and the no less sacred
right of the qualified voter to be rep-
resented by his duly chosen repre-
sentatives." This is the epilogue to
the sorry play that was enacted at
Albany by Speaker Sweet and his mis-
guided followers, and pronounces the
verdict of the party on the perform-
ance. Upon this outcome the Repub-
lican party and the nation are to be
congratulated. What threatened for
a time to be an immense help to the
cause of revolutionary agitation has
been relegated to the position of a
mere passing escapade. Those Repub-
lican leaders, like Mr. Hughes, and
those Republican newspapers, like the
New York Tribune, that came out
in vigorous protest against the at-
tempted proscription of radical opin-
ion and the attempted disfranchise-
ment of radical constituencies, did an
invaluable service to their party and
to the country. It was the prompt-
ness and energy of that protest that
prevented the affair from attaining
dangerous dimensions at once; and
there can now no longer be any doubt
that the protest was not only sound
in itself, but represented the true at-
titude of Americans generally, what-
ever momentary impulse there may
have been to give way to passion or
prejudice.
TiyrR. HOOVER will not be our next
ITl President, but it is quite possible
that he is destined to play a role no
less important. We do not refer to
the possibility of his service in the
Cabinet of the next President. Be-
sides the opportunities of extraordi-
nary helpfulness which are open in
this direction, there is another field
in which his transcendent organizing
ability may be of even greater im-
portance to the world. The appal-
ling conditions in Central and East-
ern Europe, to which Mr. Davison re-
cently directed public attention, show
no signs of passing; and the longer
they continue the more desperate is
the need of something really effective
being done to cope with them. If an
international arrangement could be
made whereby the direction of all
remedial efforts in that great area of
human distress and economic paraly-
sis was centred in a single head, some-
thing might be accomplished that was
commensurate with the need. And
Herbert Hoover is the one man in all
the world to whom the working of
such a plan could be entrusted with
confident expectation of success.
JUST where the "progressively-
minded" are headed for is becom-
ing more and more of a mystery. Mr.
Villard tells us, in the Nation, "In-
deed, I no longer believe that any
President elected under the existing
political conditions could give satis-
faction to progressively-minded men
and women, though a man of Cleve-
land's type might go far towards so
doing." If this be true, one is forced
to the conclusion that the "progres-
sively-minded" have been woefully
misrepresented by each and all of
the "journals of opinion" which have
assumed to speak in their behalf. Mr.
Villard's memory may be poor, but
there is a man down at Atlanta, just
now running for the Presidency, who
doubtless recalls without difl[iculty
the Chicago railway strike of 1894,
the injunction secured by President
Cleveland's Attorney General, and the
sending of United States troops to
Chicago to see that the order of the
court should not be disobeyed. There
were many men of progressive mind
who applauded the President for this
vigorous assertion of national au-
thority against disorderly interfer-
ence with the functions of the Gov-
ernment in the carrying of the mails ;
but such applause is not exactly what
one expects from those who would
pass muster as "progressives," on in-
spection by the editorial experts of
present-day "Progressivism."
WE note with pain the increasing
evidences of odium sociologi-
cum among the brethren who are
striving to bring in the ideal society.
There are many roads to Utopia, and
the travelers thereon are not at peace.
Their opinions of one another are
unflattering. They say hard things,
and they mean them, too. The ac-
quisitive, reactionary, hypocritical
bourgeoisie are bad enough, but they
would appear to be glorified angels
when compared with the members of
the rival sects of revolutionists. "The
class-conscious workers of America,"
reads a recent document of the Com-
munist party, "are through with the
stinking carcass that calls itself the
Socialist party of America. . . .
[It] is the most dangerous enemy of
the working class, and as such we
shall wage a bitter struggle against
it." The old Socialist Labor party
has always had a decidedly unfavor-
able opinion of its upstart rival, the
Socialist party, and its language of
denunciation has not mellowed with
the flux of time. "The Socialist
party," says the letter of acceptance
of the S. L. P.'s Presidential candi-
date, "is essentially nothing but a
petty tax-reducing concern, an ag-
gregation of the cheapest of cheap
politicians, hoping to ride into politi-
cal jobs on the present wave of 'radi-
calism.' " But the other extremist
factions are almost as bad, and must
be treated accordingly. "With the
other wings and feathers, the rags
and tatters of the labor movement, the
I. W. W., the Communists, Commu-
nist Laborites, and what not, we must
deal unflinchingly." Each of these
factions, we must regretfully say,
views its rivals in much the same un-
charitable light. One exception is to
be noted in the fact that recent cir-
cumstances have swung the Commu-
nist Laborites into a more favorable
attitude toward the Socialist party.
But otherwise all is discord and re-
crimination. The outlook is disquiet-
ing; for how shall we attain to the
earthly heaven when its consecrated
exponents spend most of their time in
damning one another to perdition?
/~\F the three proposals put forward
^-^ by the Mayor's Committee
charged with forming plans for New
York's permanent war memorial — a
bridge across the Hudson, a public
building on the site of Madison
Square Garden, and a triumphal arch
— the bridge was rightly given first
place. On grounds both of utility
and of sentiment it seems to be by
far the most appropriate. A Hudson
River bridge is desperately needed.
It would be a daily blessing to more
people, and a greater blessing, than
a public building, and it could easily
June 23, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[648
be combined with the essential fea-
tures of a triumphal arch. The
building of a bridge has from of old
been regarded as a work of especial
piety. Flung across waters which the
foot of man may not walk, it is a
link between two worlds. Who of the
millions who shall move upon its
stately span but would come to think
with poignant and reverent affection
of those dead in whose name it sprung
into being?
IN Italy the political situation is
very much like the one which the
late elections for the Reichstag have
created in Germany. No party is
strong enough to form, unsupported,
a dependable majority for any Gov-
ernment. Coalitions are the neces-
sary evil by which the worse evil of
domestic anarchy must be cured. But
the parties to these makeshift com-
promises are too ill assorted to be re-
lied upon in the solution of crucial
questions involving a sacrifice of one
or the other's principles. An illus-
trative instance of the inconstancy of
such alliances is the attitude of the
Popular party, the political organiza-
tion of the Catholic voters, at the first
and at the second resignation of
Signer Nitti. The earlier crisis was
brought on by the Popular party's
joining the Socialists in defeating the
Government ; on the eve of his second
resignation Signor Nitti found him-
self forsaken by all but the Catholics.
The latter reproach him with too
much indulgence towards agrarian
Communism and the exactions of
labor. That is why they ousted him
a month ago with the help of the
very element which they accused him
of treating too gently. This hair-of-
II the-dog-that-bit-you policy could not
cure the country of its anarchy. Its
only result was a strengthening of
the Catholic element in Nitti's recon-
structed Cabinet, and, by so much,
more bitter opposition from the So-
cialists as a consequence.
THE three Allied Commissioners in
Budapest have agreed to make
joint representations to the Hun-
I garian Government for restoration
of order and avoidance of mistreat-
ment of minorities in Hungary, ac-
cording to a report to the State De-
partment from the United States
Commissioner, U. Grant Smith. Our
radical weeklies will hail this news
as a confirmation of the rumors they
helped to circulate concerning the
White terror in Hungary. A White
Paper published by the British Gov-
ernment about a month ago, contain-
ing the results of an investigation
made, at the request of Lord Curzon,
by Admiral Troubridge and General
Gorton, disposes of the assumption
that this step of the Commissioners
is proof of the existence of a White
terror. The conclusion arrived at by
the two investigators, and fully
shared by the other Allied representa-
tives at Budapest, was an absolute
denial of the allegations. "In the opin-
ion of my colleagues and myself,"
wrote General Gorton, "there exists
no White terror in Hungary," and Ad-
miral Troubridge concluded one of
his letters from Budapest with the
statement, "Life here is just as safe
as in England." The representations
of the Commissioners must have been
called for by recent disorders which
Horthy's Government may have been
slack in repelling; they do not refer
to any systematic persecution under
Government auspices.
MR. BENJAMIN TURNER, a
member of the British Labor
delegation to Russia which has just
returned to England, is credited with
the statement that "the Soviet Gov-
ernment has the acceptance of the
bulk of the people, the good-will of
many, and fierce opposition from the
Social Democrats, who say individual
liberty has been destroyed." This af-
fords an interesting counterpart to
the picture of public opinion in this
country, where the Soviet Govern-
ment remains unrecognized with the
approval of the bulk of the nation,
where many are not unfavorably dis-
posed towards it, and where the So-
cial Democrats hail it as the only form
of Government worthy of adoption
by the American nation.
GENERAL GOURAUD, the French
High Commissioner in Syria, con-
cluded an armistice with Mustapha
Kemal Pasha on May 30. A few
days later M. Millerand caused great
emotion in Paris by a grave state-
ment to the foreign affairs commis-
sion of the Senate with regard to the
policy of France in the Orient. He
declared that General Gouraud's
army, in spite of reinforcements, had
to engage in a strategic retreat, a
term whose euphemism did not con-
ceal the dark reality. The exact con-
ditions of the agreement with the
Nationalist leader have not yet been
published, but so much is known,
that they include the withdrawal of
French forces from "certain" towns
in Cilicia. Apart from the critical
situation of the French forces re-
vealed by this transaction, it can not
fail to have a serious effect on the
peace negotiations with Turkey, as
any success scored by Kemal will
strengthen the opposition in Con-
stantinople against the Sultan and
his British-approved Cabinet. And
what success is better calculated to
heighten his prestige in the Turkish
world than the conclusion of an agree-
ment with one of the Great Powers
constituting his official recognition as
the actual ruler of Anatolia?
"/CONTEMPTIBLE is the nation
^ which does not stake its all on
honor!" With these words Schiller,
in "Wilhelm Tell," justified the Swiss
struggle for liberty, and with these
words from Schiller Prince Joachim
Albrecht of Hohenzollern justified in
court his attack with bottle and glass
on members of the French Mission in
the Hotel Adlon at Berlin. This
Prussian avatar of William Tell,
punctiliously addressed by the pre-
siding judge as "Your Royal High-
ness," gave flight also, in the course
of the trial, to a winged word of his
own creation : "A German man must
be able not only to live and die for
his country, but also to suffer for it."
As the Berliner Tageblatt comments,
Joachim Albrecht has certainly not
died for his country; it is a question
if he has lived for it; and "suffer"?
Perhaps at the Hotel Adlon. However,
German liberals find some balm in
the fact that in this trial, for the first
time in Prussian history, a Hohen-
zollern was tried openly in a civil
court, and fined 500 marks, a small
amount, in truth, but all the state's
attorney asked for.
644]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 58
The Result at Chicago
'T'HE Republican party goes before
■■■ the country with an uninspiring
candidate and an uninspiring plat-
form. So much as this will be widely
conceded by Republicans, as well as
generally asserted by Democrats. At
a time when the nation is faced with
problems of the utmost gravity, and
when its relations with the outside
world are of an importance never be-
fore equalled, the party that has for
two years been in possession of a ma-
jority in both houses of Congress has
chosen as its leader a man of no pecu-
liar distinction, who has never played
a leading part in public affairs; and
has presented a declaration of prin-
ciples which, consisting in the main
of long arguments in arraignment of
the opposing party and in commen-
dation of itself, fails to define its own
position on the leading issue of politi-
cal controversy. Whatever else may
be claimed for this result, it is clear
that inspiration is not to be found in
it. If the campaign is to have ap-
pealing quality, it will be because of
the heart that may be put into it by
subsequent developments.
Concerning the question of the
League, however, while the Conven-
tion might have done somewhat bet-
ter, it was practically out of its power
to do much better. The time for do-
ing much better was months ago.
Long before the Convention met, it
was clear that a kind of disorganiza-
tion of opinion had obtained in the
party which made the assertion of a
clear-cut position on the treaty im-
possible. When a party is divided
into two opposing camps, it is some-
times quite possible to strengthen it
by a clear decision in favor of one
faction. Thus in the campaign of
1896 the Republican party took a firm
stand for the gold standard, and let
the silver men in it bolt or not as they
pleased. But the peculiarity of the
present situation was that only one
of the two principal factions on the
treaty was thoroughly in earnest.
The delegates who stood with the
Johnson-Borah irreconcilables were
heart and soul against the League;
but there was no great body of dele-
gates that was heart and soul for the
League. You can rally men that are
heartily for one position to stand up
for that position and defy the men
that are against it ; but what can you
do with people who hardly know what
their own position is ? And that was
the situation in which the Republican
party, after a year of manoeuvring,
found itself at Chicago in regard to
the treaty.
It is too early to say what that situ-
ation will be when the campaign de-
velops. Much will depend, of course,
upon the action of the Demo-
cratic Convention at San Francisco.
Whether Mr. Harding will undertake
to add anything to the platform
declaration remains to be seen. In
the meantime, it is important to take
exact note of the position in which
that declaration itself leaves the
party. The treaty plank is of pre-
cisely the character which has seemed
to us inevitable. It was designed for
the purpose of holding together
everybody who is not in favor of ac-
cepting the treaty without reserva-
tions. It says many things that sound
inimical to the treaty, and carefully
refrains from promising acceptance
of the League, even with the Lodge
reservations; so much as this was
done to keep the Johnson-Borah peo-
ple from revolting. But it is equally
careful to say nothing that promises
rejection of the League ; and it winds
up as follows:
We pledge the coming Republican Adminis-
tration to such agreement with the other na-
tions of the world as shall meet the full duty
of America to civilization and humanity, in
accordance with American ideals and without
surrendering the right of the American people
to exercise its judgment and its power in favor
of justice and peace.
Obviously, ratification of the treaty
with the Lodge reservations, or with
any others, milder or stronger, that
might seem at the time expedient,
would be in no way inconsistent with
this "pledge." If the various sections
of the party should, throughout the
campaign, jog along together without
any further definition of its position
on the subject, and if the party
should carry the election, the whole
question will be an open one for the
new President and the new Congress
to settle. Whether the Democrats
will be able to smoke the Republicans
out of this peculiar, but on the whole
not uncomfortable, position on the
treaty, is one of the interesting ques-
tions of the forthcoming campaign.
That the platform takes no stand
on the subject of prohibition, and that
its declaration in regard to Mexico is
inconclusive, we do not find to be good
ground for censure. The question of
prohibition, so far as regards the near
future, has become, since the Supreme
Court rendered its decision, essen-
tially a question of Congressional de-
termination of the degree of rigor
with which the prohibition of "intoxi-
cating" drinks is to be carried out.
That is a question of great social,
and even political, importance ; but no
obligation rests upon national parties
to divide on the lines of that issue.
The question of Mexico is in a differ-
ent category ; but there is ample rea-
son why a gathering like that at
a national nominating Convention
should hesitate to commit a party to
a definite stand in so difficult a sub-
ject. We ourselves would regard in-
tervention in Mexico, except under the
most absolutely unmistakable neces-
sity, as a national calamity; and if
the Convention had adopted a plank
that meant probable intervention we
should have regarded it as a misfor-
tune. But to find fault because the
platform declares an intention to as-
sert American claims more vigor-
ously, and yet carefully avoids the
implication of an interventionist
policy, seems to us hypercritical.
High credit must be given to the
Convention for the clearness with
which it has stated its position on
labor, and on the closely related issue
of railroad ownership and operation.
Here are real questions, questions
upon which the attitude of the incom-
ing Congress and the incoming Presi-
dent will be of crucial importance.
The Republicans declare, without ifs
or buts, that they are "opposed to
Government ownership and operation
or employee operation of the rail-
roads." On the general question of
the relations between capital and
labor — or rather between employers
and employed — the position of the,
party is stated" with a degree of pre-
cision unusual in political platforms.
The declaration is in accurate agree-
ment with the recommendations of
June 23, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[645
the second of the Industrial Confer-
ences held at Washington, upon the
President's call, in which Mr. Hoover
is understood to have been the lead-
ing influence. It recognizes "the
justice of collective bargaining." It
denies "the right to strike against the
Government." In the case of public
utilities, it favors "the establish-
ment of an impartial tribunal" to de-
cide disputes, the decisions of the
tribunal "to be relied on to secure
their acceptance," and the tribunal to
"refuse to accept jurisdiction, except
for the purpose of investigation, so
long as the public service is inter-
rupted." In private industries, it
does "not advocate the principle of
compulsory arbitration," but favors
"impartial commissions and better
facilities for voluntary mediation,
conciliation and arbitration, supple-
mented by the full publicity vv^hich
will enlist the influence of an aroused
public opinion."
The position thus laid down, both
on railroad operation and ownership
and on industrial relations generally,
has already aroused the antagonism
of prominent labor leaders. In the
course of the campaign it will doubt-
less be branded with that cheap and
handy epithet "reactionary" ; but it is
reactionary only on the assumption
that everything that does not con-
template a radical change in the eco-
nomic order is reactionary. To sober
American liberals it will appeal as a
straightforward statement of a pro-
gramme of intelligent progress tow-
ards a bettering of industrial con-
ditions. It is a question of acute
interest whether the Democrats will
make a bid for the labor vote by writ-
ing into their platform a declaration
contrasting with this. Such a move
is quite within the possibilities, even
the probabilities, of the situation.
And if the San Francisco convention
should put forward a plank designed
to satisfy the demands of labor-union
extremists, and to appeal to the
predilections of the semi-socialist "in-
tellectuals," it is by no means im-
possible that the issue thus drawn
will become the leading issue of the
campaign.
Upon the nomination of Governor
Coolidge for the Vice-Presidency the
Convention is to be heartily congratu-
lated. The spontaneity with which
this nomination was made is itself
matter for hearty satisfaction, and
is in contrast with the spinelessness
of the rest of the proceedings. There
can be no doubt that the presence of
Mr. Coolidge's name on the ticket will
add materially to its standing with
the people. And it is to be hoped that
his occupancy of the second place on
it will not preclude the injection into
the campaign, upon more than one
occasion, of that kind of savor which,
if he had been nominated for Presi-
dent, his speeches might have been
counted on to contribute abundantly.
However, the curtain has barely risen
on the play, the first actors have not
yet made their bow, the identity of
others is still to be disclosed, and the
character of the plot is open to a
great deal of conjecture. In times so
unusual as these, it is the part of
wisdom to possess one's soul in pa-
tience while events are unfolding to
a point where an accurate perception
of what is at stake shall be possible.
"Greek for the Greek-
minded'
J J
rpHE discussion over the study of
-'- Greek has led some of its oppo-
nents to propose — a generous con-
cession, apparently, in their own es-
timation— that it be left to "the
Greek-minded," as an elective branch
entirely in keeping with their mental
aptitude and disposition. And now
and then we find some sincere,
though not Hellenically clear-sighted,
friend of Greek expressing a similar
opinion. The former class are inter-
ested in any plan that will leave the
largest possible percentage of stu-
dents the utmost freedom to take the
kind of studies in which they are par-
ticularly interested. The latter are
charmed with the conception of a
scholarly elite, a saving remnant, pur-
suing the study into the very sanctum
sanctorum of Greek art, literature,
and philosophy.
If the two classes were skillfully
cross-questioned, their ideas as to
what a "Greek-minded" student is
would be found to disagree. With the
former, the term would hardly con-
note more than a scholarly habit of
mind, and predominantly literary
tastes, with no particular interest in
the natural sciences, or the newer
group of "social sciences" — poor grist
for their particular mills, and indeed
not standing very high in their re-
spect, yet capable of being educated
after some fashion, and possibly use-
ful in keeping the Greek teachers
busy, so that they will not be trying
to tempt the "scientifically minded"
into their classes. To the other class,
Greek-mindedness would consist in
that quickness of mental perception,
that keenness of intellectual insight,
that discriminative appreciation of
varying beauties and harmonies, that
instinctive preference for the delicate
rather than the clumsy, the accurate
rather than the careless and slouchy,
that joy in searching and finding
out, in many fields of truth, which
entered characteristically into the
makeup of the "lively Greek."
Now as a matter of fact, while the
man of this type is sure to enjoy the
study of Greek, sure to draw rich
profit out of it, and to impart that
profit generously to others, he is at
the same time the one man who is
best able to give a fairly satisfactory
account of the use of his intellectual
talents without it. To set Greek to
one side as a virtually hedged-in pre-
serve for this type of student would
be no more appropriate than to limit
the physical-training facilities of the
schools and colleges to the small
group whose physical endowment and
athletic disposition were most nearly
perfect at the outset.
There is no field to-day more in
need of a liberal infusion of this life-
giving Greek element than that of
scientific investigation; for there is
no field in which the temptation to
intellectual narrowness is greater.
The task of research into the secrets
of the physical universe is worthy of
the best and most complete mental
equipment imaginable; and yet we
find the banks of the great sea of
nature-knowledge lined with would-
be "scientists," angling for its tarpon
and tuna with intellectual tackle not
finely enough tempered to hold even
blue-gills and "geggle-eyes." It is
646]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 58
wrong to set up the alternative of
"science or classics," as did a recent-
participant in the discussion over
compulsorj' Greek at Oxford. The
proper ideal to hold up is as large an
infusion of the subtly penetrating
Greek spirit as possible into the field
of modern scientific research. And
just as far as possible, that infusion
should come by the normal and most
effective method of direct contact
with the Greek language, literature,
and art.
No effort should be made to force
Greek into educational curricula as
a positive requirement. What is
feasible is that Greek should be of-
fered, by well-equipped teachers and
with a liberal supply of illustrative
material, in at least one high school
of every large city. Such provision is
wholly in harmony with the most ad-
vanced ideas of the elective system of
study; and when all that is asked is
the mere possibility to elect the study
of Greek, for those who desire it, op-
position to it smacks of a narrowness
unbecoming genuine educators, and
inimical to sound education.
Is there a Public?
TN their recent debate Mr. Gompers
■■- had no answer to Governor Allen's
inquirj' whether the public had any
rights in a strike which interferes
with the production and distribution
of necessities. Consequently he could
not say what steps he would take to
protect rights concerning whose ex-
istence his silence showed him to be
in doubt. That he did not, in a good-
natured way, say "the public be
damned" may be due to a belief
that there ain't no such animal as the
public. Everybody is either a laborer,
and as such, in hearty sympathy with
every effort of labor to improve its
condition, or else he is a capitalist,
and, as such, opposed on principle to
all strikes of whatever character.
It is not likely that anybody could
be got consciously to assent to a posi-
tion so extreme as this. It is a theory
which has all the facts against it.
Again and again, especially of late,
the public has risen in its might and
unanswerably asserted that, be differ-
ences what they may, life meanwhile
must go on. In England and in Sweden
the public has successfully met some-
thing resembling a general strike.
Nothing like a general strike has
arisen in America, but if one may
judge by the behavior of the public
in the face of a police strike or a
railway strike, there is a public which
at any rate believes that it exists,
and which believes it has rights that
can, under sufficient provocation, be
enforced.
It is due to the essentially foreign
character of the more radical think-
ing in this country that there should
be any tendency to identify the "pub-
lic" with a "bourgeoisie," or middle
class. Even the American laborer is
not particularly conscious of himself
as the member of a class. He is a
man who every now and then feels
that he has a grievance, a "raw deal,"
and in those circumstances he sets
about using such means as he has of
getting the trouble corrected. This
means is usually the strike, and it is
generally the case that if the griev-
ance can be at all made plain to the
overwhelming majority who have no
immediate concern with the matter
their sympathy — the public's sympa-
thy— immediately goes out to the
strikers. No doubt the American
laborer is a very poor-spirited fellow
not to be continually agitating for
some big overturn of the social struc-
ture, not merely little things like
better wages and better conditions;
but these are the things he is inter-
ested in.
In this respect laborers are at one
with the public ; they are not merely
as good as the so-called middle-class,
and even better able to exert their
power: their attitude is essentially
the same as that of the great mass of
people who make up the public. It
ought not to be so, on any theory of
class conflict, but in America at any
rate it is so. If the sense of class
identity is weak, or at least of brief
duration, even among organized
labor, it is still slower to declare
itself among the millions wha are
either unorganized laborers or merely
technically capitalists. But in their
degree they respond in exactly the
same way. Given a sufficient griev-
ance and they — the public — will act
to correct it. And on their side will
be found many who in other circum-
stances would themselves use the
strike for their own immediate ends.
When a strike brings to a halt the
production and distribution of neces-
sities, there is very little difference
in its effect on "bourgeois" and on
laborers. Apart from the few whose
interests are immediately bound up
in the strike, and the still fewer who
console themselves for present hard-
ship with the hope that the far-off
divine event of revolution is moving
nearer, both "laborer" and "bour-
geois" become indistinguishably mem-
bers of a public which recognizes
that there are limits to what it can
afford to put up with.
The decision recently rendered by
a New York court that common car-
riers shall not consent in a strike
of the handlers of produce, making it
impossible for goods to be moved ex-
cept on terms dictated by the unions,
is an important landmark in the
slowly defining status of the public.
If the longshoremen are not so well
off as they might be, it is too bad;
if they can not agree with the car-
riers or the carriers with them, again
too bad. Settle it if possible, and let
each side get what it deserves, and, if
possible, what it thinks it wants. But
meanwhile, gentlemen, don't expect
the rest of the country to sit by and
starve while you are arranging your
little difficulties. The decision re-
bukes the carriers — who are presum-
ably capitalists — quite as much as the
longshoremen. And it rebukes both
in the name of everybody else who is
not a direct party to the quarrel — in
the potent name, that is, of the public.
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
Published by
The National Weekly Corporation
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Harold de Wolf Fuller, Treasurer
Subscription price, five dollars a year in
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be sent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, W. C. 2, England.
Copyright, 1920, in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD de WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Harry Morgan Ayres O. W. Firkins
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnson
Jerome Landfield
June 23, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[647
Cheradame on Lloyd George
[M. Cheradame has dealt so long with the
uncertain march of future events, and his writ-
ings have excited so much interest on both
sides of the Atlantic, that anything coming
from his pen is worth attention. The article
by him which follows is, at any rate, an
interesting historical document, not because
of the light it throws upon Mr. Lloyd George's
alleged pro-Germanism, but for what it reveals
of French fears and suspicions as to Great
Britain's foreign policy. History is the record
of human errors, and the idea now possessing
certain statesmen in Paris as to the perfidy
of the British Premier is of no less historical
value for being, as we firmly believe, a sad
delusion. Lloyd George's leniency towards
Germany is not dictated by the German ele-
ments of international high finance, but rather
by the influence of British liberal opinion and
the pressure of labor. He is not such a fool
as to be working, after the immense sacrifice
to which he stimulated his country in the war,
for an end which would make that sacrifice a
needless waste. Not the financial and political
ruin of France is his aim, but the economic
revival of Germany. To consider the latter in-
compatible with the welfare and safety of
France is forgivable in a nation still suffering
from the wounds inflicted by a prosperous Ger-
many. But the world would pay the French
an ill service by encouraging their anti-British
bias tending to substitute for the Entente Cor-
diale. which stood the test of the war, an alli-
ance of France with her young proteges of
West and East Europe, whose chief desert in
Frenchmen's eyes is their hostility towards
Germany and Hungary. The old continent can
not be pacified by rebuilding its political
framework on foundations of enmity and
hatred.]
fyHE moral and material failure of
-■- the Peace Conference has natu-
rally made many Americans averse to
taking any interest in the affairs of
the Old World. Still, in spite of the
Atlantic, the moral, political, and eco-
nomic ties connecting the two Conti-
nents are so many and so close that
the United States could not ignore
what is happening in Europe without
serious damage to purely American
interests.
The situation I have now to expose
is so strange that even such readers
as have lost their interest in Europe
will thank me for bringing it to their
notice. It will seem improbable only
to those who did not read my former
previsions which, at the time, seemed
singularly audacious but have now
been justified by the events.
The general German manoeuvre
which is actually developing is vir-
tually the same as denounced by me
t under the title "Le Coup de I'Armis-
I tice," in my book "The Pan-German
I Plot Unmasked," which was pub-
lished early in 1916. The dangers
and deceptions of the armistice which
are now facing the Allies were ex-
posed in "The Essentials of an En-
during Victory" (Scribner, Decem-
ber, 1918). Those readers who fol-
lowed my articles in the New York
Tribune at the end of 1918 and the be-
ginning of 1919 can now verify the
accuracy of my statements.
The origin of the present situation
consists in the fact that the armistice
was signed between the Allies and
Germany under conditions which ap-
pear more and more amazing. The
Allied army in Hungary, which could,
without any risk, have marched across
Bohemia upon Berlin, was forced to
give up this plan by the armistice of
November 6, 1918, with the Dual
Monarchy, and its unity was later
broken up in obedience to orders
whose origin has remained mysteri-
ous. Official German documents
throw a vivid light upon the strange
circumstances which preceded the
conclusion of the armistice with Ger-
many.
In the first months of 1919, a sharp
conflict arose in Berlin between the
President of the Council of Minis-
ters and General Ludendorff. The
polemic that ensued was so violent
that the Government was induced to
publish, under the title "The Origin
of the Armistice," a long series of
ofllcial German documents which to-
gether form a big volume. A certain
number of these documents concern
the role played by Mr. Wilson in the
period preceding the armistice, and
reveal the existence of secret in-
formants in German employ through
whom the German Government knew
at almost every hour during those de-
cisive days the intimate thoughts of
the President. Americans will be
deeply interested in the perusal of
these documents of indubitable au-
thenticity. A German edition of them
has appeared in Berlin. A French
edition, by Captain Koeltz of the
French General Staff, has been pub-
lished by the Renaissance du Livre,
78 Boulevard St. Michel, Paris, under
the title, "L'Aveu de la Defaite Al-
lemande. Les Origines de I'Armis-
tice." Americans who will take the
trouble to read the documents atten-
tively will soon become convinced that
hostilities ceased under very surpris-
ing conditions. A similar conclusion
is to be drawn from a declaration
made by M. Poincare, then President
of the Republic, in an address at
Givet early in December, 1919 : "The
day when the German armies," he
said, "signed their capitulation be-
fore the victorious troops of Marshal
Foch they were incapable of carry-
ing on the war, and three or four
days of continued fighting would have
forced them to absolute surrender. It
was in order to escape that disaster
that Germany signed the armistice."
As a matter of fact, it was the
captains of international finance,
many of whom are of German origin,
that, pulling the wires behind the
scene, made an end to the war before
a decisive victory was achieved. As,
since the armistice, the Germans have
ceded large shares in their industrial
concerns, at very advantageous con-
ditions under the present rate of ex-
change, to certain Americans and,
especially, to a number of English-
men, these are now so deeply inter-
ested in German business that they
are doing their utmost to rescue the
Germans from the economic conse-
quences of the Peace Treaty and, espe-
cially, from those involved in the
reparations.
The influence exerted by these
financiers on Mr. Lloyd George is so
powerful that the latter has aban-
doned the formula of his peace pro-
gramme: guarantees, sanctions, rep-
arations. In fact, the affairs of Eu-
rope are being settled in such a way
as to make it seem that Mr. Lloyd
"George wished to divide between
Great Britain and Germany the
hegemony over Europe and Asia.
That is why Mr. Lloyd George is do-
ing his utmost to prevent France
from applying the Treaty and to save
Germany from the consequences of
the war. The full weight of these
moves must gradually devolve upon
France, which under those conditions
can not fail to succumb. As a result
of this policy France will be brought
under the Anglo-German yoke. Cen-
tral and North Russia and more than
half of Siberia will become a Qerman
t »
648]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 58
colony exploited on behalf of Anglo-
German syndicates. This is the ex- .
planation of Mr. Lloyd George's
favorable attitude towards the Rus-
sian Bolsheviki, whose principal
leaders are German agents. Poland
will be subjugated, and Hungary will
ser\-e as a base for the Anglo-German
interests against Czechoslovakia, Ru-
mania, Jugoslavia. As to Turkey,
the Caucasus, Persia, South Russia,
they will form the exclusive share of
British imperialism.
Such is, in rough outlines, the
political plan to which Mr. Lloyd
George has been won over, and
whose realization is obviously al-
ready being attempted, as appears
more and more clearly from recent
occurrences. The Germans see an
immense advantage in this combina-
tion of their own invention. By it,
they have practically succeeded in de-
stroying the Entente. They have,
thanks to Mr. Lloyd George's inter-
ference, evaded the real guarantees
which they ought to have furnished
and the judicial sanctions for the
crimes committed during the war.
The Germans are now working to
elude the imposed reparations, and
Mr. Lloyd George goes out of his way
to help them find the supple formula
which, while seemingly leaving the
rights of France intact, will neverthe-
less furnish to the Germans the
means of evading somehow their
execution.
In this entire transaction with the
English the Germans have, naturally,
their own particular aim in mind.
They know perfectly well that the
financial ruin of France is bound to
involve her political ruin. They also
know that England will lack the-
power to maintain her hegemony over
the Balkans, Turkish Asia, and South
Russia. The Germans are quite right
in this respect. The social situation
of England does not allow her, con-
fronted as she is by the growing diffi-
culties in Ireland, in Egypt, and in
India, to realize for good the im-
perialistic plans on a gigantic scale
of Mr. Lloyd George.
It follows, therefore, that, ulti-
mately, the Anglo-German combina-
tion, if it developed unimpeded, would
result in the establishment of the
Pan-Germany which the Ludendorffs,
the Helfferichs, the Bernstorffs, who
are still the wirepullers behind the
scene, have not ceased to imagine as
a possible reality. „
Fortunately, the extremely danger-
ous character of Mr. Lloyd George's
foreign combinations is becoming so
prominent that the consummation of
this particular one is far from cer-
tain. Part of his project is based on
Gennany's hold on Central and
Northern Russia, and her exploitation
of that area on behalf of Anglo-Ger-
man syndicates. This plan, however,
involves the crushing of Poland.
During the last months, Mr. Lloyd
George has done all he could to bring
this about by the combined action of
the Germans in the West and the
Bolshevik army in the East, an army,
by the by, which is in reality a Ger-
man force consisting of Russian mer-
cenaries.
But here commences a new miracle
capable of upsetting all Mr. Lloyd
George's combinations. Poland is
governed by a man of great capaci-
ties, Marshal Pilsudski. He has
wisely not waited for the German-
Bolshevik forces to crush the nascent
Poland. The Polish army, which has
made enormous progress in the last
few months, has inflicted a serious de-
feat on the Russian Bolsheviki. If,
as is to be hoped, the Polish troops,
which will perhaps be joined by the
Rumanians, follow up their successes,
it is not impossible that these will
lead to the overthrow of the abomina-
ble regime of Lenin and Trotsky,
which has reduced the Russian people
to enforced labor. As to the Czecho-
slovaks, the Jugoslavs, and the Ru-
manians, they are ready to prevent
Hungary from becoming a bastion
for the Anglo-German schemes
against them. If, finally, Marshal
Pilsudski has the wisdom to render
to the Russians the truly Russian ter-
ritories, and to conclude with them a
cordial peace, after freeing them from
the Bolshevist yoke, the immense
consequences of such a course would
be that the project of Berlin and Mr.
Lloyd George would be frustrated and
Europe could again look forward to a
regime of liberty. But we have not
yet advanced so far.
In view of this general situation
the interest of the United States
seems clearly defined. America must
see her interest in the establishment
of a state of affairs which will free her
forever from the nightmare of hav-
ing again to interfere with military
force in the quarrels of the Old Con-
tinent, and which will enable her to
carry on a stable and profitable com-
merce with the nations of Europe,
once for all freed from the oppres-
sion of Germany.
The European combination which
would most surely enable the Ameri-
cans to obtain these results is the con-
sistent elaboration of the programme
which eminent American statesmen
are said to have approved for the re-
construction of Europe — an "Entente
Cordiale" between France, Belgium,
Poland, Jugoslavia, Czechoslovakia,
Rumania, and Greece.
Not until that alliance is fully
realized will Americans be per-
fectly free from the fear of having
again to intervene in the affairs of
Europe, for it will possess sufficient
power to prevent a renewal of the
Pan-German peril. That combina-
tion will also furnish the means of
readjusting the financial situation by
ending the crisis of the exchange.
That obstacle once surmounted, the
Americans will be able to do profitable
business with about 130 million Con-
tinental Europeans anxious to wel-
come them.
What is the immediate requirement
to produce this desired result? It
is desirable that American opinion
should express its sympathy with the
cause of Poland, of Rumania, of
Czechoslovakia, of Jugoslavia, and
that American business men should
not hesitate to procure for these
countries the means of vindicating
their independence. Poland espe-
cially has need of arms and ammuni-
tions. It were to be wished that
Americans favored these operations, j|
which are more likely than any others
to put an end to the Bolshevist pesti-
lence. No action of Americans at the
present hour can be more conducive
to provoking subsequently, by reac-
tion, a beneficial effect for the United
States. I
ANDRfi CHfiRADAME |
June 23, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[649
The Republican
National Convention
AFTER five sweltering days in the
Chicago Coliseum, to say nothing
of the days and nights in candidates'
headquarters, hotel lobbies, and clubs,
the Republicans have chosen their stand-
ard-bearers for the election in Novem-
ber. Nine ballots were required to bring
this about, and up to the seventh ballot
the delegates seemed all at sea and a
dead-lock apparently impended. Then
came the quick swing to Harding which
relieved the tense situation, and the
weary delegates heaved a sigh of relief
rather than of satisfaction. To nominate
Coolidge as Harding's running-mate was
a matter quickly disposed of.
The judgment passed upon the nomi-
nation by many of the representatives of
the press was that it was a triumph of
the so-called "Old Guard" and the Sen-
ate group, and it must be admitted
frankly that the nomination must have
afforded the stand-patters considerable
satisfaction; but to attribute the nomi-
nation to their direct manipulation is to
give them too much credit and to ignore
the outstanding characteristic of the
Convention, which was its absence of
leadership. The causes underlying the
nomination of Harding were, in fact,
quite different.
The key-note of the work of Mr. Will
H. Hays as Chairman of the Republican
National Committee has been harmony,
and by the word "harmony" Mr. Hays
meant the bringing together into the
fold of the Republican party all possfble
factions, and especially reuniting with
it the Progressives, even those of the
left wing. This involved a dangerous
degree of compromise with the tradi-
tional principles of the Republican party
and led to a situation of which certain
political adventurers were not slow to
take advantage.
It was this that gave to Hiram W.
Johnson and his associates, Senator
Borah and Senator McCormick, an im-
portance in the Convention out of all
proportion to their actual strength. John-
son came to Chicago prepared, with the
assistance of Hearst and William Hale
Thompson, to stage a great popular dem-
onstration that should stampede the Con-
vention. Had there been real leadership,
this manoeuvre would have been evaluated
at its proper worth. Owing to the lack
of it, Johnson was able to make a dis-
play of strength that was not without its
effect upon the Resolutions Committee
in their work upon the platform. In
other words, the whole policy of harmony
at any cost enabled this group to hold up
the Convention and prevent the nomina-
tion of either General Wood or Governor
Lowden. If, therefore, the delegates
were obliged to select a somewhat neu-
tral candidate rather than a more force-
ful and positive leader, they have the
Johnson group to thank for it. It was
the selfish and opportunist policy of the
Senator from California that made such
a selection a logical necessity.
The opening of the Convention was
somewhat dull and listless. Little en-
thusiasm was displayed either on the
floor or in the galleries. The key-note
speech of Senator Lodge was well re-
ceived, though frequent remarks were
heard to the effect that in his effort to
justify the position of the Republican
Senators he laid far too much emphasis
on the struggle between President
and Senate rather than upon the chasm
between President and people. With
its statements, however, the delegates
showed themselves in accord.
As for the delegates themselves, they
were essentially regulars. A majority
of them had been delegates in the 1916
Convention, and in reply to a question
as to whether there was any likelihood
that they would be stampeded, an old
Republican war-horse remarked that the
Convention was "a basket of hard-boiled
eggs."
The first real struggle of the Conven-
tion came in the sub-committee of the
Committee on Resolutions, which labored
all night to formulate a plank on the
Treaty and League of Nations that would
satisfy the demands of Johnson and
Borah. The plank finally adopted was
practically that written by Senator Root
just before his departure for Europe,
and while it was generally felt that John-
son had succeeded in blocking a state-
ment more in harmony with the position
of the mild reservationists, such as Mur-
ray Crane desired, it was in reality a
Pyrrhic victory and did not tend to
strengthen Johnson's position in the Con-
vention. Another long delay took place
when the sub-committee report came be-
fore the Resolutions Committee, a delay
which caused the perspiring delegates to
become very restless.
It was not until late in the afternoon
of Thursday that the report was finally
brought before the Convention and the
platform read in extenso by Senator Wat-
son. On the completion of his reading
occurred an incident at once amusing
and instructive. A fresh and self-asser-
tive young man from Milwaukee named
Gross, for some unexplained reason a
member of the Resolutions Committee,
presented a minority report — the report
of a minority of one. It was a long,
rambling screed, couched in the cus-
tomary patter of the Socialists, and might
have emanated either from LaFollette or
from Victor Berger. The hour was late
and the delegates tired and impatient,
and at first they showed their displeasure
and impatience vigorously. But at the
request of the Chairman the young man
was given a hearing to the bitter end
with derisive tolerance, and was not per-
mitted to make a martyr of himself, as
was evidently his intention.
Friday witnessed the whole series of
nominating and seconding speeches, with
accompanying demonstrations. These
time-wasting demonstrations have grown
to be a great nuisance in Conventions
and bear unmistakable signs of artificial
organization. The one exception to this
was the spontaneous outburst from the
audience that greeted the nomination of
Hoover. He was easily the most popu-
lar candidate with the audience of all
those brought forward; the only thing
he lacked was delegates. The best of
the addresses was made by Mrs. Douglas
Robinson, Colonel Roosevelt's sister, in
seconding the nomination of General
Wood. It stood out as a gem amidst a
welter of platitudinous and commonplace
speeches. The worst address was the
speech of Charles S. Wheeler of San
Francisco, placing in nomination the
name of Hiram W. Johnson. If Johnson
at any time had any chance of becoming
the Republican candidate, this address
effectually killed it. Allusions to the
power of the press and the fact that his
candidate was divinely chosen brought
forth a cry of "Hearst," which was taken
up with derisive cheers by the whole
audience, while an insinuating allusion
to the campaign expenditures of the two
leading candidates called forth a chorus
of boos from the floor. When Mr.
Wheeler sat down, Johnson's candidacy
had been punctured beyond repair.
Throughout Friday night numerous
conferences took place in the effort to
break the dead-lock, and when the Con-
vention met on Saturday, the feeling
was general that Harding would be
chosen, though the names of Sproul and
Knox were also heard as alternatives. It
was said that Johnson was willing to re-
lease his delegates from their pledges
provided he were given assurance that
neither Wood nor Lowden would be nomi-
nated, and that his preference was for
Knox. When the recess was taken Satur-
day afternoon, the nomination of Hard-
ing was a foregone conclusion; but two
more ballots were required to bring this
about. Harding's name did not arouse
superlative enthusiasm, but there was a
general feeling among the delegates that
they had selected a candidate against
whom nothing could be said, and that in
so doing they had averted the threatened
break in the Republican party and had
got off lightly from the Johnson chan-
tage. Joined with this was an undercur-
rent of uneasy feeling that, under Hard-
ing's leadership, the Republican party
would by no means have a walk-over in
November and a nervous interest in the
prospective proceedings of the Demo-
cratic Convention at San Francisco.
Jerome Landfield
I
650]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 58
The Problem of Palestine
A Rejoinder
"rpHE Problem of Palestine," by
J. Edward Bliss Reed, printed in a
recent number of the Weekly Review,
asks American public opinion to "sup-
port the enforcement of the clause in the
Balfour Declaration that promises se-
curity to the great majority of Pales-
tinians who are not Zionists." It may
seem a gratuitous insult to a friendly
power for Mr. Reed to urge "that Amer-
ica has a great responsibility" to tell
Britain how she is to carry out the terms
of her mandate over Palestine, a mandate
given under a treaty which we have yet
failed to ratify, and under which we,
therefore, have neither obligations nor
rights. Mr. Reed makes his appeal in
spite of the fact that a statement in an-
other part of his article renders such an
appeal superfluous and irrelevant. For
he quotes the just and sober official state-
ment of General Bols, Chief Adminis-
trator for Palestine, ending in the words
"the inhabitants may be assured that the
Government is well intentioned towards
them and holds only the scales of justice
in its hands." Mr. Reed makes his ap-
peal to America at a time when her in-
terest in Near Eastern affairs is regis-
tered in the decisive defeat of the reso-
lution in favor of an American mandate
over stricken and suffering Armenia.
Why does Mr. Reed come to a conclu-
sion diametrically opposed to that held
and advocated in the United States since
1891? In that year the Reverend Wil-
liam E. Blackstone and Henry Clay
Trumbull, late editor of the Sunday
School Times, sent a memorial to Presi-
dent Harrison, signed by hundreds of
prominent Americans, favoring the
restoration of Palestine to the Jewish
people. The Zionist cause has been con-
sistently supported in America since
then. It has been recently espoused not
only by President Wilson, Secretaries
Baker and Daniels, and Senator Lodge,
but by the leaders of American intel-
lectual and spiritual life, Charles W.
Eliot, G. Stanley Hall, Henry van Dyke,
Right Reverends Charles S. Burch and
Luther B. Wilson, and James Cardinal
Gibbons, among others.
Mr. Reed opposes Zionist aims in
Palestine because of a mistaken point of
view. He talks in terms of territories
and thinks in terms of theology. But
Zionism is concerned only incidentally
with the former and not at all with the
latter. Zionism is an attempt to solve
a social problem, the Jewish problem.
This is not a problem of Palestine, it
affects countries outside of Palestine. It
is a world problem. It is not an Arab
problem; it affects all of Christendom.
For in Eastern Europe there are seven
million Jews who can not all remain
there. The disorganization of Europe,
the breakdown of the industrial mechan-
ism, has created a surplus population.
And even before the war, the Jew had
an uncomfortable berth on the edge of
the volcano. In Poland there had been
developing a crushing anti-Jewish boy-
cott. Since the war, Dmowski has said
quite frankly that the boycott was part
of "a war of extermination." In Ru-
mania the native-born Jew, whose an-
cestors settled there hundreds of years
ago and who may have served his coun-
try in war time, was an alien in the eyes
of the law, in spite of the treaty of Berlin
in 1878. Rumania's signature to the re-
cent Treaty of Peace with Austria will
not bring this discrimination to an end.
The stroke of a pen does not suddenly
alter national psychology, nor will it
promptly change the relation of illiterate
and fanatic people towards others of dif-
ferent ethnic stock. The signing of the
armistice brought an end to hostilities
among the belligerents but did not stop
massacre and pillage of the Jew in East-
ern Europe.
All the old superlatives of the history
of martyrdom have been exceeded. The
massacres in the Middle Ages have been
outdone in the past three years. In East-
ern Europe tens of thousands of Jews
have been murdered and hundreds of
thousands made destitute. And that is
why "they are waiting at Odessa, Con-
stantinople, Constanza, and Vladivostok
for passage to their new home." That is
why, as Mr. Reed calls them, "aliens,
chiefly Russians, Poles, and Rumanians
are to come in and possess the land" of •
Palestine.
What are the charges against Zionism,
set forth by Mr. Reed? The burden of
his attack is, not what Zionists have
done, but what they may do. And what
are the fearful plans of the Zionists? "It
is of utmost importance to understand
that Zionism desires in Palestine more
than a mere place of refuge for op-
pressed Jews," asserts Mr. Reed. The
Jews who as a minority people have
suffered for untold centuries now seek
a place where they may be guaran-
teed freedom. A people that has been
driven out of its homeland, and has wan-
dered weary and worn, now seeks a rest-
ing place from which no majority can
turn them out at will, a homeland in
which their fathers dwelt for a period
that exceeds the history of any nation
of Europe on its soil, a homeland in
which they developed a culture which,
through its daughter religion, constitutes
the cornerstone of modern civilization.
Truly the Jews do not seek a mere refuge
in Palestine as a minority. History has
taught them the futility of such a quest.
For, in the Middle Ages, liberal Poland
invited the Jews to take shelter within
her borders, and to-day they are under
the painful necessity of seeking homes
elsewhere.
Mr. Reed contends further that "the
Jews that emigrate there will not go in
the same spirit in which thousands of
Europeans have sought our shores."
Hardly could he have found a broken
reed less suitable to lean on. Not in the
same spirit, indeed, will the Jews go to
Palestine as the Europeans came to our
shores. What was the motive of all but
the earliest immigration into the United
States? Economic opportunity in a rich
land, self-interest, the desire to partici-
pate in an industrial bonanza. The spirit
that is urging Jews to go to Palestine
is not this spirit. For the land is now
barren and desolate. Its economic at-
tractions are nil. The spirit that moves
them is the spirit of the Puritans, of the
Quakers, of the Huguenots, and of the
other colonial non-conformists, who, in
an age of individualism, sought freedom
of conscience. And in the present social
era, the Jew seeks freedom for his people,
and an opportunity to express himself
unhindered by physical force or by more
subtle, though not less painful, social
stigma. The group of Russian Jews who
went to the waste lands of Palestine in
1881 suffered the fate of our early
settlers in Massachusetts and Virginia.
Like them the "sons of Moses" and the
"lovers of Zion" perished from starva-
tion and fever. The immortal monu-
ment they left behind is the eucalyptus
tree, the Jew tree, the Arab calls it —
that drained the malarial marshes for
the later colonists.
What are the other wicked plans of the
Zionists for Palestine? They brought
from Scotland a town planner of inter-
national fame. Sir Patrick Geddes, "to
draw plans for the reconstruction of
Jerusalem * * * and for the de-
velopment of Jaffa, Haifa, and other
places." Worse still, they are planning to
develop the industrial resources of the
land, which have remained neglected for
centuries. They are planning to increase
production at a time when the world
sorely needs goods. They are planning
to relieve Poland and Rumania of their
"surplus" population. The Zionists aim
to bring to Palestine the mechanics of
civilization, sanitation, transportation,
and education. The Zionists, under
British auspices, are guilty of applying
the methods that developed North Amer-
ica and Australia.
Mr. Reed bases a long list of griev-
ances against Zionists on the personal
opinion of an unnamed writer of a letter
to the Manchester Guardian, reprinted
June 23, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[651
in Palestine, an unofficial paper, and un-
related to the Zionist organization. This
presumably irresponsible letter-writer
states that "the Zionists require a pref-
erence in the settlement of the waste and
dead lands * * * and a priority
in any concessions for public works on
the development of the natural resources
of Palestine." Aside from the very
relevant and practical fact that the Brit-
ish Government is in control of Palestine,
and that what "Zionism requires" counts
for naught except insofar as, in the
opinion of the British authorities, the
best interests of Palestine may be ad-
vanced, Mr. Reed quite naively cites in
destruction of his own argument the
official statement of General Bols, as-
suring even-handed justice to all the
inhabitants.
To refute the other charges, one
need but quote Mr. Reed's own state-
ments made in another article. In the
Weekly Review he says, "Zionists do not
wish equality of privilege for Christian,
Arab, and Jew." Elsewhere, however,
he wrote "the Zionist organization has
founded orphanages and hospitals that
minister not to the Jew alone, but to
Christian and Moslem alike, and it has
brought to maintain them many women
highly qualified for their work both by
their spirit of devotion and their tech-
nical training."* Again, he contends in
this article that "organized Jewish labor
in Palestine has declared that only
Hebrews shall be employed on public
works." And the irresponsible writer of
the letter "reprinted in Palestine would
require 'adequate employment of Jews in
constructing and operating any public
works.'" What are the facts? Have
the Jewish colonists at any time in the
past thirty years actually conducted a
"boycott on Arab labor"? Let Mr. Reed
himself speak. In another article he
stated that .the Arabs have found em-
ployment in the Jewish colonies to the
extent of about one-third of the total
population of the colonies.
As evidence of the Arab opposition to
Zionism, Mr. Reed cites the fact that in
some cities there have been Arabs who
paraded and demonstrated. These were
Instigated by political propagandists that
opposed a British mandate and that be-
came particularly vigorous immediately
prior to the confirmation of the Balfour
Declaration by the Prime Ministers at
San Remo. And as a climax to these ef-
forts of months to incite the Arabs
against the Jews, Mr. Reed mentions a
riot in which five Jews and four Arabs
were killed. Through a sinister propa-
ganda, the Arabs are being taught the
methods of the Black Hundreds of
Russia. Ten thousand times five have
been slaughtered in Europe since the
signing of the armistice. Wholesale
massacres of Jews to drive them out of
Eastern Europe furnish a powerful mo-
tive to emigrate which can not be
stemmed by a few retail killings in
Palestine. The tremendous pressure
driving Jews out of Europe can not be
met by the petty resistance to their im-
migration into Palestine.
These excesses in Palestine are de-
plorable, but they do not reflect the
sentiment of the masses. What is the true
voice of the Arab? Does the absentee
landlord, the effendi, the non-Pales-
tinian Arab, who fears the deprivation
of the privilege of exploiting the igno-
rant peasant, of the right to farm taxes
and to thrive on bakshish, speak for the
large majority of Arabs in Palestine?
The latter sent a protest against the
anti-Jewish riots in Jerusalem to Gen-
eral Bols. The representatives of eighty-
two Arab villages sent this petition :
We have the honor to express to you our
protest and our demands be forwarded to
the Peace Conference and to the British Gov-
ernment.
First to cancel the declaration and demon-
stration of a few men in the cities of Palestine,
especially Jerusalem and Jaffa. We, the under-
signed, are the majority, in numbers seventy
per cent, and in land and holdings (tenantry),
ninety per cent. * * *
We state further that there is no danger
to public or private interests in Zionist immi-
gration and that our mutual relations will be
those of justice.
The generous soul that vibrates with
sympathy may with profit turn his at-
tention from the few hundred thousand
Arabs in Palestine who are being raised
to higher Western standards of living
by the operations of the Zionist organiza-
tion. Let him look to the millions of
Jews in benighted lands, repressed and
thwarted, and of potential service to the
world which enjoys the fruits of the
labors of a Bergson, an Ehrlich, a Flex-
ner, and a Jacques Loeb. Let his right-
eous indignation be directed to secure
for the Jews in Eastern Europe what the
Balfour Declaration guarantees the Arabs
in Palestine. Perhaps an altruist may
find that it profits the Arabs more if he
devotes his time, not to inciting them
to riot in Palestine, but to developing
them in the Hedjaz, Syria, and other
Arab lands, many times as large as
Palestine in area and in population, and
richer in resources.
It is a penny-wise social policy which
attempts to allay the imaginary ills of
a small group and to ignore the physical
suffering of a greater group. Mr. Reed
may with profit ponder the closing
verses of the book of Jonah, "Thou hast
pity on the gourd, for the which thou
hast not labored nor madest it grow.
And should I not spare that great city
wherein are more than six score thou-
sand persons?"
The Laodiceans
"To the Angel of the Church of the Laodiceans write .
thou art neither hot nor cold. 1 would thou wert cold or hot."
Elisha M. Fkiedman
I know thy works, that
WE are the Laodiceans : we know not the ice nor the fire ;
We have never sprung to the edge of doom at the call of a brave desire;
We have basked in the tepid noon-tides; we have drawn an even breath;
We have never felt between our lips the savors of life or death.
We are the Laodiceans, loved not by God nor man;
We boast in our ease or riches, and take what praise we can;
No love shall sear us with longing, no grief shall turn us to stone;
We shall not dance to the pipes of Spring, nor answer to joy or moan.
We are the Laodiceans: when God's great summons came.
Cleaving the hosts of living men, as with a line of flame.
We were tossed aside like vagrant leaves at an idle wind's behest.
For we knew not the ways of battle, and we found not the ways of rest.
We are the Laodiceans : We have slight fear of Hell,
For even its master can not say, "Ye have done my bidding well."
And what for us would Heaven be, with its endless lift and range?
We are doomed to a passionless limbo, that knows not life nor change.
We are the Laodiceans : we care not for wrong nor right ;
We have no part in a world's defense, no cause for which to fight;
The fruits of the ground are sweet; we would rest in our garden-places,
But God Himself shall drive us out, between the black star-spaces.
We are the Laodiceans : our fight is with only those
Who would send us to burning deserts, or whelm us in alien snows;
We feel no lure of march nor flight; we taste not hope nor shame;
And we die, in our visionless Eden, of a curse without a name.
Marion Couthouy Smith
'Yale Review, April, 1920.
652]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 58
Correspondence
Retroactive Income Taxes
To the Editors of The Weekly Review:
I have read with interest your very
lucid editorial entitled "Stock Dividends
Again." More than two months ago I
sought to point out what you now show
in your editorial — that a second t^ on
past incomes is, in reality, either a tax
on property or on that which has ceased
to exist Those incomes either have been
spent or have become capital. It is in-
conceivable that the Supreme Court
would uphold a new tax on what no
longer exists; and in so far as the past
incomes have become capital, the tax
would be a direct tax and void, because
not apportioned among the States. The
iniquity of the proposed tax is obvious
for other reasons — its retroactiveness
among them — but it has been a surprise
to me that the very first conception of
it was not killed by criticism as to its
constitutionality. Instead of this I am
informed by Mr. Rainey, its first pro-
ponent in Congress, that practically his
entire committee considers it legal; and
I learn that the legal advisers of the
Treasury Department, in the beginning
at least, were of this opinion too.
Some doubts, however, must have crept
into Congressional minds on the subject,
for another proponent of the same idea,
Mr. Johnson of South Dakota, in his bill
of April 27 for raising the bonus for
soldiers, proposes a subterfuge to turn
the Constitutional difficulty. He pro-
poses to call his tax a tax on 1920 cur-
rent income only, but to take up to 80
per cent, of it, or of what he defines as
its "war income," using as a basis for
his definition of "war income" the in-
come, not of that year, but of the past
years of 1917 to 1920. You had evi-
dently not noticed this feature of our
latest economic thought in Congress
when you wrote your editorial, and I
enclose correspondence that I have had
with the Solicitor of Internal Revenue
on that subject, which may be of interest
to you. And Mr. Rainey has proposed a
new bill in nearly identical terms with
Mr. Johnson's. To my mind, while these
new bills purport to tax this year's in-
come, inasmuch as the rate of tax is
based on the incomes of past years it is
really another form of taxing a second
time those past incomes. I believe such
a tax as Mr. Johnson's is not only void
because as a tax on past incomes it is a
tax on capital, but also because it violates
the uniformity clause of the Constitution.
If Mr. Johnson's tax can be sustained,
then by that same reasoning two per-
sons, each having a hundred thousand
dollars income in 1920, could be taxed on
8uch incomes — the one just nothing at all
because he happened to have no income
in past years, and the other 80 per cent,
solely because he did happen to have a
large income in those other years.
Surely this is not an income tax for
1920 that complies with any reasonable
view of the uniformity in taxation re-
quired by the Constitution. Nor is it an
income tax at all, since it is not really
based on current income but on some-
thing else. As well enact a tax on 1920
incomes so-called and base the rate on
people's holdings of real estate. Would
that be an income tax? I can not help
thinking that these new measures are
as obnoxious to the Constitution as Mr.
Rainey's original measure, and that both
are so, notwithstanding the opinions of
the legal advisers of the Treasury or Mr.
Rainey's committeemen.
The whole bonus proposal looks at this
time less likely to become law than it
did — but it will not do to relax our
vigilance in any respect, when a bonus
bill has just passed the House by a
large majority and with a retroactive
provision for taxing the corporate right
to declare stock dividends.
Charles Robinson Smith
Glendale, Mass., June 4
The Housing Problem
To the Editors of The Weekly Review:
In your editorial "A Cost-of-Living
Exhibit" on May 8, you fail to bring out
what seems to me the most significant
reason for the striking contrast between
the relatively small increase in house
rents and the great increase in clothing
costs, etc.
Houses differ in one fundamental par-
ticular from the great majority of com-
modities which enter into commerce with
sufficient freedom to establish ascertain-
able market prices. In the case of cloth-
ing and food and fuel, for example, the
total stock on hand at any given time
(actually or potentially on the market
subject to sale and delivery for imme-
diate use) is a fraction of the total an-
nual production. In the case of houses,
as in the case of diamonds and gold, the
stock in existence, and potentially sal-
able for immediate use to any buyer who
offers an advance on the current market
price> is enormously greater than the
normal annual production, or even of any
possible annual production under any
conceivable stimulus.
A rising cost of production with any
commodity of course tends to check ad-
ditions to the stock on hand until the
demand so outruns the supply as to raise
the market price to meet the production
cost. But while the effect is relatively
prompt on the market price of those ar-
ticles of which the stock on hand is
quickly exhausted by actual consumption
when the rate of production falls off,
the readjustment is inevitably slow in the
case of such things as houses, of which
the quantity in existence and potentially
on the market enormously exceeds the
annual production. The market price
commanded by new houses can not
greatly outrun the market price of simi-
lar houses already existing, and to pro-
duce a given percentage of increase in
the average market price of all existing
marketable houses — the accumulated pro-
duction of many years — the shortage
must be much longer continued, or more
acute, or both, than in the case of ordi-
nary commodities.
Except in so far as the increased cost
of production is very temporary, there ap-
pears to be no escape from the economic
necessity of acquiescing in the accrual of
a stupendously large "unearned incre-
ment" for the owners of the existing
houses, until the market price and rental
value of houses, old and new, shall have
risen to the point where it catches up with
the cost of production. The unfairness,
the "profiteering," of such a process
rankles, and this helps to retard the re-
luctant raising of purchase price and
rentals even under the stimulus of acute
and increasing shortage.
The human hardships and social dam-
age which are wrought by such a short-
age of housing, long continued, are for
the community far more serious than
the mere fact of the economic injustice
of the "unearned increment" received by
those who happen to be house owners.
The housing shortage is one of the worst
of all the evil results of inflation, because
it combines slowness of price adjustment,
on account of the relatively great stock
potentially on the market, with great
hardship while the shortage lasts.
In^case of commodities whose market
price responds violently to relative
changes in supply and demand, making
for spasmodic fluctuations in price, the
interests of the community are served
by devices which promptly apply the
brakes to soaring or to plunging prices.
In the case of houses the adjustment of
price is naturally so slow that any de-
liberate efforts of the community should
be in the direction of accelerating the
required adjustment, whether on a ris-
ing or a falling market. To retard the
process of adjusting house values to the
cost of production by "anti-profiteering"
efforts on the part of a community suf-
fering from acute housing shortage is
to play the part of those conservatives
who were once defined as "they who re-
main in hot water lest they be scalded."
Frederick Law Olmsted
Brookline, Mass., June 1
[Mr. Olmsted treats the supply side
of the housing problem; the editorial re-
lated to the demand side, "the way in
which an increasing volume of money
operates to raise prices." Eds. THE
Weekly Review.]
June 23, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[658
Book Reviews
A New History of the French
Revolution
The French Revolution : A Study in De-
mocracy. By Nesta H. Webster. New
York : E. P. Dutton and Company.
MOST histories of the French Revolu-
tion inspire either enthusiasm or
indignation, or, it may be, a mixture of
both. Mrs. Webster's new history in-
spires rather, and is intended to inspire,
a sort of cool disgust. The odd circum-
stance is that she gets this eifect not
as an enemy but as a champion of the
popular cause. Her argument is, in brief,
as follows: The King knew what the
people wanted and was prepared to give
it to them; but at the critical moment
various groups of conspirators inter-
fered violently and thwarted both the
royal and the popular will. Mrs. Web-
ster divides the conspirators into four
main groups: (1) those who sought to
change the dynasty of France and put
the Due d'Orleans (Philippe Egalit6)
on the throne; (2) the Subversives,
affiliated with Spartacus-Weishaupt and
the Illuminati of Bavaria, who attacked
all religion and government, fomented
class hatred, and held out the promise
of unlimited loot; (3) those who worked
in the interests of Prussia; (4) the
English revolutionaries who aimed to
overthrow the Governments both of
France and England. Only the fourth
of these intrigues may be said to have
failed outright. Prussia succeeded in
breaking the Franco-Austrian alliance
and this became the point of departure
for her increasing domination. The
Oi'leanists triumphed in the Revolution
of 1830. As for the Subversives with
their dangerous secrets for imposing
the will of a fanatical and highly organ-
ized minority upon a passive and unor-
ganized majority, one can trace their
activities without any change in the
underlying theory — and it is a chief
merit of Mrs. Webster that she brings
out clearly this connection — from Jaco-
bins of the eighteenth century to Bol-
shevists of the twentieth.
There were the instigators (who re-
mained in the background), the agita-
tors, the instruments. Mrs. Webster ad-
mits popular participation in the taking
of the Bastille and in the Tenth of
August, but in general, as in the Sep-
tember Massacres, the people were
either mere instruments or passive spec-
tators. "I am convinced," she says,
"that the day will come when the world,
enlightened by the principles of true
democracy, will recognize that the
French Revolution was not an advance
towards democracy but a directly anti-
democratic and reactionary movement,
that it was not a struggle for liberty
but an attempt to strangle liberty at its
birth; the leaders will then be seen in
their true colors as the cruelest enemies
of the people, and the people, no longer
condemned for their ferocity, will be
pitied as the victims of a gigantic con-
spiracy."
Mrs. Webster's justification of the
heart of the people is, one can not help
reflecting, more or less at the expense of
its head. Had it not been for the pro-
digious gullibility of great masses of
persons, the formidable secrets that she
describes for inciting tumults in the in-
terests of a few conspirators would have
been of no avail. She herself speaks in
one place of "the amazing credulity of
the Parisians" and in another of "the
amazing credulity of the country people."
The truth is that neither the good nor
the evil of a movement like the French
Revolution emanates spontaneously from
the people. It is all a question of leader-
ship; and the one serious doubt about
democracy is whether it can show suffi-
cient critical discrimination in the choice
of its leaders. Now, the Revolution was,
on the whole, singularly unlucky in its
leaders. Mirabeau and Danton, who
had practical sagacity, were venal volup-
tuaries. Those who were upright, like
Louis XVI himself and many of his
counsellors, and who yet allowed the
Revolution to drift into anarchy, suffered
from something even graver than the
lack of practical sagacity. They were
made ineffective by their acceptance of
some of the very principles that led to
this anarchy and which, in the earlier
stages of their application, seem to Mrs.
Webster so admirable. Croker speaks
of "the King's unfortunate monomania
that no blow should be struck in his de-
fense." This monomania is not unrelated
to the growing belief not only that the
will of the people is sovereign but is iden-
tical with its shifting caprice, for exam-
ple, with the will of a Parisian mob.
If the King and his counsellors had not
been thus touched by the new philosophy,
the "whiff of grapeshot" would not
have come before 1790 at the latest and
there would have been no reign of
Terror.
In general, Mrs. Webster does not put
sufficient emphasis on the philosophic
aspect of the Revolution. She has writ-
ten an interesting and ingenious survey
from her own special angle, but one can
not help feeling that the angle is a some-
what narrow one. At times she seems
almost to reduce the Revolution to the
proportions of a dynastic intrigue. She
does not make us feel sufficiently that,
more than any previous revolution, it
must be judged as a movement of ideas
— nay more, as the dawn of a new re-
ligion or sham religion. She is quite
right in seeing one continuous move-
ment from Spartacus-Weishaupt to
Lenin; but we shall never understand
the power of these men if we regard
them simply as "subversives." In their
own eyes and those of their followers
they are, as she herself points out,
"idealists." The enthusiasm they in-
spire is due, above all, to their appeal to
the type of imagination that one may
call, in opposition to the "moral imagi-
nation" of which Burke speaks, Arcadian.
One should make large allowance for the
idyllic element in the psychology of
the terrorist. It seems incredible that
Robespierre and St. Just should have
hoped by wholesale massacre to bring
the real France, which was too rich and
populous, into line with the Sparta of
their dreams. Unfortunately scarcely
anything is incredible in those who, in
pursuit of some "ideal" conjured up by
the Arcadian imagination, have once al-
lowed their logic and emotions to part
company with common sense. In spite
of the accumulated experience of a cen-
tury as to the upshot of revolutionary
Utopias, Mr. Bertrand Russell has just
been setting forth, in the columns of the
Liberator, an "ideal" that is as absurd
in theory and would prove at least as
sanguinary in practice as that of Robes-
pierre and St. Just.
The Revolution abolished innumerable
partial evils and accomplished innumer-
able partial goods. It is still possible,
however, to doubt, not merely on tra-
dition but on purely psychological
grounds, whether this movement was
right at the very centre. Carlyle, whom
Mrs. Webster, like most other recent
writers on the subject, disparages, puts
the issue squarely: "Alas, no, M. Roux!
A Gospel of Brotherhood, not according
to any of the Four old Evangelists, and
calling on men to repent, and amend each
his own wicked existence, that they
might be saved; but a Gospel rather, as
we often hint, according to a new Fifth
Evangelist, Jean-Jacques, calling on men
to amend each the whole world's wicked
existence, and be saved by making the
Constitution."
According to Mrs. Webster, England
was preserved from the French anarchy
and ruin not only by the statesmanship
of Pitt and eloquence of Burke but by
the sound common sense of the English
people. She might have added by the
influence of religion, especially by the
Methodist and Evangelical movements.
These movements were marked by
plenty of the new emotionalism, but at
all events they did not encourage the
individual to shift the burden of moral
responsibility, to make "Society his
glittering bride, and airy hopes his chil-
dren." At present, if we are to judge
from the article by the Bishop of Here-
ford in the Edinburgh Review of last
January, the drift of an important sec-
tion of the Anglican clergy is towards
Socialism.
654]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 58
Study and Fable
An- Imperfect Mother. By J. D. Beresford.
New York: The Macmillan Company.
Tamarisk Town. By Sheila Kaye-Smith.
New York : E. P. Button and Company.
THE deadly limitation of the kind of
realism that tries to record fact
without interpreting it is that it so soon
runs short of facts. The only story a
man knows with literal knowledge is his
own. Or there may be some single per-
son or type outside himself who is so
intimate a part of his consciousness and
his experience as to belong to his story
almost as he himself belongs to it. Mr.
Theodore Dreiser knows Mr. Dreiser,
esse and posse (no great range) ; and he
knows a woman of whom Sister Carrie is
the earliest and best embodiment. When
he has set forth the beings and surround-
ings and doings of those two (as he did
long ago), he is done. Thereafter he can
only deal in variation and caricature.
That is his sad fate, and we oughtn't to
keep twitting him on it. So it is with a
number of his English contemporaries,
J. D. Beresford, for example. He wrote
three novels about one Jacob Stahl — an
amazingly intimate and absorbing chron-
icle of a fellow-being who, we never
doubted for a moment, was in everything
that mattered the author himself. Jacob
pleased us, or held us, primarily, I think,
because while he was not a noble hero of
the antiquated Victorian strain, he was
not, either, the feeble wordy aesthetic
drifter of a later model. He had a pref-
erence for decency and even an instinct
for conduct. So has the son of "An
Imperfect Mother." Stephen Kirkwood
is a Jacob Stahl mutatis mutandis, a good
solid youth of lower middle class who
after a touch of public school training
chooses to go in for the solid unpreten-
tious career of building contractor.
But this is the record of "a life un-
folding under a definite influence." In
fact, we are here observing a Jacob, or a
Stephen, in a frankly psychoanalytical
light, especially in relation to the in-
fluence of his mother. And in order to
give saliency to this study, Stephen is
provided with a mother extraordinary, a
mother modern and temperamental. We
are to suppose that she married Stephen's
good little father out of cussedness ; that
she bore marriage and motherhood with
tolerably good grace for twenty years;
and that she then fell madly in love with
one Threlfall, cathedral organist and
ravager of hearts. After coolly discuss-
ing this with Stephen, now a boy of
seventeen, she leaves him and her poor
little devoted husband, and her two grown
prigs of daughters, and goes off with
her Threlfall to "live her own life."
Years later, long after the death of the
poor little husband, Stephen finds his
mother in London, a successful minor
figure of the theatre; married to her
Threlfall, who has also succeeded; and
ornament of a gay little upper-Bohemian
society. Something of the old spell of
almost passionate affection is rewoven
between them. But another influence
which at its birth has had much to do
with their first parting is now deepened
and confirmed. The imperfect mother at
last transcends her nature by yielding
Stephen to his predestined mate. It is
an easy enough book to read; but there
is nothing much to carry away from it,
except the impression of an experienced
chronicler rehandling his materials in
the light of an "idea." Stephen's self-
expressive mother is the new figure ; but
only new as a subject for Mr. Beresford;
and, on the whole, rather outside his
special realistic scene.
The "new novel" of England (aside
from its public-school and country-house
department) deals almost exclusively
with the British middle-class provincial,
either at home or in London — the Clay-
hangers and the Jacob Stahls. Mony-
penny of "Tamarisk Town" is a Clay-
hanger robed in romance. His maker
belongs to a group later and less stand-
ardized than Mr. Beresford's. In this
book, as in "The Challenge to Sirius,"
Sheila Kaye-Smith strikes a richer imag-
inative note than Mr. Beresford, or any
of his contemporaries except Hugh Wal-
pole, has been capable of. Veracity is of
no consequence to this writer except as
a means of interpretation. Nor is she
content with the dry conversational
cleverness of the pseudo-recorders. She
uses language not as a set of counters but
as a plastic medium. She has a power of
description not less eloquent than that of
Eden Phillpotts, and free from his tend-
ency to lapse into a sort of hypnotic
drone.
In the hollow of the hills that, to the North,
melted into the Sussex Weald and, to the
South, broke and crumbled into the sea, Mar-
lingate lay with the green of the tamarisks haz-
ing its streets. The town itself was a tumble
of blacks and reds, a mass of broken colors
flung between the hills, into the little scoop be-
tween the woods and the sea. It lay there like
a thing flung down, heaped and broken, rolling
to the very edge of the waves, and held from
falling into them only by its thick, battered
Town Wall.
A mist usually hung over it, the webbing and
clotting of its sea breezes as their spindrift met
the homely things of its atmosphere— the grey
hearth-smoke, the stewing heat of the town's
crooked ways, the dews that refreshed the
tamarisks at night. There was nearly always
this fog of smoke and spray over Marlingate,
melting its reds through purple into the deep,
dancing blue of the sea ; only now and then the
colors came out clearly, blocks of blacks and
red, with slashes and slices of white, and the
old grey mouldings of church and Town Hall
with their battlemented windows. Then the
weather-wise spoke of rain, and those wise in
other ways than the weather's, saw in the town
a queer, changeling beauty, as if it lay between
the hills a fairy's town. A wind would rise
and shake in the woods, and blow down Fish
Street and High Street to the sea; and the
sighing waves would answer the sighing trees,
and roar and cry to each other over the little
red town that divided them, deep calling to
deep, eternity calling to eternity across time.
So runs the prelude, with Monypenny,
the solitary, watching from his window
in Gun Garden House, feeling the men-
ace of nature, of the woods and sea about
to regain their own, of himself and
Marlingate already "pledged to a divine
destruction."
Monypenny of Marlingate, in his
grave and white-haired youth, imposes
himself as a personal force upon his fel-
low-townsmen. He plans and achieves
prosperity for the little fishing town
through transformation into a fashion-
able resort, carefully protected from
trippers and all cheap lures for cheap
people. Then love comes to him and
cheats him; and to avenge himself
against fate he sets about the slow de-
struction of that which he has created.
As mayor he is able insidiously to effect
the vulgarization of the place ; and in the
end he perishes, by a frankly poetic jus-
tice, at the hands of the mob he has
turned loose to the ruin of his once be-
loved town. The tale has something of
the magic of style and of mood which be-
longed to Stevenson's fragmentary "Weir
of Hermiston"; and as it is a work of
imagination we need have relatively
small fear of later and paler imitations
or variants of the same product by the
same hand. I can think of rereading
this book; for me it has the glamour of
true story-telling, the creative reality
which is so dismally absent from most
studies of fact.
H. W. BOYNTON
Admiral Fisher Speaks
His Mind
Memories and Records. By the Admiral of
the Fleet, Lord Fisher, in two volumes,
with portraits and illustrations. Vol. I,
Memories. Vol II, Records. New York:
George H. Doran Company.
THESE are books, as the author ad-
, mits, "without plan or sequence" —
so many lightning flashes of wit, scorn,
indignation, admiration, and ambition.
One imagines a hale and hearty old man
walking up and down the floor, thunder-
ing and sputtering, while the rapt stenog-
rapher works — from time to time shying
letters and documents at her, partly to
ballast the recitation, partly to see her
duck her pretty head. Anecdote, official
report, character sketch, apt quotation,
hint of literary and religious preferences
are a glittering woof woven into the warp
of solid naval history. And the gaudy
fabric has coherence and charm of its
own sort. One feels the great person-
ality behind an often fantastic rhetoric.
When Admiral Fisher became First
Sea Lord in 1904, he celebrated his
advent by scrapping 160 obsolete ships,
and discharging 6,000 unnecessary me-
June 23, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[655
chanics. Long an advocate of speed and
the big gun, he reorganized the fleet on
the basis of dreadnoughts and battle
cruisers. He stopped the dispersion of
the fleet, assembling most of it in home
waters, and keeping it in constant readi-
ness for action. In 1902 he had dem-
ocratized the training of officers through
the establishment of the College at Os-
borne. In 1907 he completed this work
by making promotion open throughout
the naval ranks. He foresaw the sub-
marine menace, predicted the war with
Germany to the year, advocated in vain
a proper provision of sea mines, intro-
duced the turbine engine and fuel oil. He
reduced the time of building battleships
from three years to one. With volcanic
energy he combined adroitness. He not
merely discharged the 6,000 workmen
made superfluous by scrapping useless
ships, but also found them jobs. With
the keenest sense for materiel, he never
lost touch with the greater issues of ■
strategy. When he retired in 1910, he
left as his monument the modern Brit-
ish Navy.
He had become an enfant terrible. The
office admirals hated him. The pacifists
shuddered at him. Had he not advocated
"boiling oil" at a Hague Conference, and
advised "Copenhagening" the German
fleet? Yet the people knew his worth,
and so did the young navy. October 30,
1914, two months after war broke out,
he was recalled to his old post of First
Sea Lord. Three days after his appoint-
ment came news of the disaster off Cor-
onel. Fisher launched the only Nelsonic
stroke of the war. He sent Sturdee's
battle cruisers to sea with the repair
gangs aboard, and on December 8, Von
Spee's squadron was annihilated off the
Falklands. Nothing less than the con-
trol of the seas was involved in the de-
cision. A prolonged chase of Von Spee
would have seriously weakened the North
Sea fleet, while by the simple process of
dispersing his cruisers as commerce de-
stroyers, England's sea traffic might have
been crippled. On this single conclu-
sive fight of the war the Oxford Pro-
fessor of Poetry, Sir Herbert Warren,
fairly beat the punning record, and in
Latin, as follows, Merserat Ex-Spe
Spem, rediit spes, mergitur ex-spes,
which congratulatory verse may be ren-
dered: "Von Spee sunk the Good Hope.
Hope revived. Von Spee is sunk hope-
lessly."
In his six months of control. Lord
Fisher planned a great armada of 612
vessels to seize the Baltic and effect a
Russian landing in Pomerania, laid
down the gigantic, lightly armored battle
cruisers — the so-called "Irish ships,"
made good the deficiency in submarines,
and prepared gunboats for the Mesopo-
tamian campaign. He resigned in May,
1915, when he found the navy was to be
seriously expended in the futile cam-
paign at the Dardanelles, but continued
to do great work as Chairman of the
Board of Invention and Research.
He would himself be the first to admit
that his loss to the Admiralty was irre-
parable. Small defensive ideas, theories
of attrition dominated by the naval
strategy of England, and the fiasco of
Jutland were a necessary consequence of
lack of energy and imagination. And
the only man in England who could have
supplied that imagination and energy
was the septuagenarian Admiral Fisher.
Again, we have his word for it, and the
joke of it is that he is perfectly right.
"Passive pressure" to be sure brought
the German fleet ignominiously to Scapa,
but it also prolonged the war by two or
three unnecessary years. And what if
the German fleet had been "Copenhag-
ened" in 1910?
John Arbuthnot Fisher's prodigious
energy and zest for life were lucky in
finding early opportunity. At 13, in 1854,
the last living Captain of Nelson joined
with Nelson's niece to get him a mid-
shipman's appointment. From 15 to 19
he shared in the China War, at 19 he
was in acting command of a small vessel.
"I entered the navy penniless, friendless,
and forlorn. While my messmates were
having jam, I had to go without. While
their stomachs were full, mine was often
empty. I have always had to fight like
hell, and fighting like hell has made me
what I am."
One keeps going in such a life only
through abundant toughness and humor
and sentiment. Admiral Fisher has
these qualities super-abundantly. In the
sixties he would vary the responsibility
for the British Navy by dancing all
night. He openly yearns for America
because the land of the Summer Girl
which may be secured in Midwinter at
Palm Beach need not be relinquished
till Midsummer at Bar Harbor. He re-
joices in the American ship's barber who
propitiated an impatient client by asking
him if he were leaving the ship. Ad-
miral Fisher's gift for comradeship
makes him an admirable portraitist.
King Edward is drawn to the life, in his
beautiful considerateness, slightly tinged
with fussiness. "He had the Heavenly
gift of Proportion and Perspective."
Even more vivid are the sketches of sea-
men. Absent-minded Lord Kelvin, enter-
ing immaculately dressed with his
trousers neatly carried on his arm, is un-
forgettable. One loves the unnamed ad-
miral who because torpedoes were not
known in his youth declined to bother
about them in his old age. He was prob-
ably the same one who being torpedoed
thrice in manoeuvres by a submarine and
requested by the young commander to
withdraw, simply signalled in return
"You be damned." But the obscure por-
traits are even better, and an antholo-
gist could make a handsome gleaning.
There is no dull moment in the two
volumes. As epilogue we may choose a
letter to a friend which has bearings on
navy matters both sides of the water.
March 27, 1918.
My dear Blank,
It has been a most disastrous war for one
simple reason — that our navy, with a sea
supremacy quite unexampled in the history of
the world (we are five times stronger than
the enemy) has been relegated into being a
"subsidiary service". What crashes we have
had!
Tirpitz — Sunk
Joffre — Stranded
Kitchener — Drowned
Lord French —
Lord Jellicoe — Made Viscounts
Lord Devenport —
Fisher — Marooned
* * *
Heaven bless you I I am here walking 10
miles a day ! and eating my heart out !
And a host of minor prophets promoted.
(We don't shoot now! we promote!)
Yours, etc.,
Fishes.
Suggestions for a Far
Eastern Policy
Have We a F.\r Eastern Folicv? By '7 larles
H. Sherrill. New York: Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons.
ONE-HALF of Mr. Sherrill's book is
not suggested by its title, and deals
with matters which have no political im-
plications— with the flora of the Ha-
waiian Islands, with Japanese umbrellas,
footwear, lanterns, street games, chry-
santhemum shows, and private gardens.
Upon these topics Mr. Sherrill writes en-
tertainingly and with artistic apprecia-
tion, but without adding much of sub-
stantial value to what is already common
knowledge.
As to whether the United States has
a definite Far Eastern policy, a negative
is not distinctly asserted but is clearly
implied. At any rate our author pre-
sents us with one of his own which he
considers worthy of adoption by our
Government. Shortly stated, it is as
follows : That the United States should
refrain from all opposition to Japan's ex-
pansion north and west upon the conti-
nent of Asia, that is, in the regions of
Manchuria, Mongolia, and Siberia; that,
in return, Japan should agree to aban-
don her southeasterly development and
transfer the Caroline and Marshall
Islands to international control or to ad-
ministration by Australia; and, thirdly,
that Japan, Australia, and the United
States should jointly guarantee the in-
dependence of the Philippines. This
plan, he says, "ought to satisfy all four
parties concerned, assure peace in the
Pacific, progress for American trade in
cooperation with Japan, and add another
star of altruistic achievement to the
656]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 58
American escutcheon." At what point
the American altruism enters it is a little,
difficult to see, unless it is deemed a
laudable philanthropy that Japan be per-
mitted to secure an increase of her po-
litical and commercial interests at the ex-
pense, or, at any rate, without regard to
the wishes of, China and Russia. The be-
lief that, from such a policy, progress for
American trade in the Far East would be
promoted is evidently founded upon a
confidence that Japan will reverse all her
former practices and permit the na-
tionals of other Powers to trade upon
equal terms with her own subjects in
regions over which she has dominant
political influence or control.
Mr. Sherrill also refers to another Far
Eastern policy for the United States,
first put forward by him in 1915, ac-
cording to which the Philippine Islands
should be exchanged for European pos-
sessions in the Caribbean Sea. He says
that he has received many expressions
of approval of this plan, but he does not
dwell upon it to the extent of explaining
whether or not this would mean the
abandonment by the United States of
all efforts to exercise an influence, politi-
cal or commercial, in the Orient.
Without stopping further to consider
these attempts at constructive states-
manship, we may turn to some of the
other points made by Mr. Sherrill. The
strategical importance to the United
States of the Hawaiian Islands is prop-
erly emphasized. By the possession of
Jaluit, on one of the Marshall Islands,
attention is called to the fact that Japan
obtains a naval base some fourteen hun-
dred miles nearer to Hawaii, and there-
fore to California, than she had previ-
ously possessed. Of Japan's determina-
tion to control Shantung, Mr. Sherrill
says:
It means an eleventh-hour decision to pre-
vent the passage into white hands of that last
remnant of Asia which fronted on the Japan
dominated waters, the waters so vital to the
island race living in their midst. ... If I
were Japanese, I would loosen my hold on
Shantung at the same time that the French,
English, and Russians relinquish their acquisi-
tions of Chinese territory, and not a minute
sooner ... If Japan had not taken over Ger-
many's rights in Shantung . . . then one of
the usual Euroneaii anncxcrs would surely have
stepped in just as England did into Wei-hai-
wei, or Russia into Manchuria after the Japa-
nese defeat of China, and annexed it. At the
date of this writing I firmly believe that China
will receive back far more of Shantung from
the Japanese than she would have gotten had
the English or French occupied the German
holdings there.
Mr. Sherrill is of course entitled to hold
such personal opinions as these, but they
surely must have been formed in igno-
rance or disregard of occurrences in
China and Korea since 1905. How little
Mr. Sherrill appreciates Chinese national
sentiment is shown by his description
of the recent "student movement" in
China as "a pettish outburst against a
stronger race by one whose childish be-
havior confesses its helplessness to em-
ploy more manly methods of national pro-
test."
Mr. Sherrill is convinced that the Fili-
pinos are not yet qualified for full self-
government, and that an independent
Philippine republic, unprotected by some
strong Power, would not long endure, and
might, indeed, prove a serious menace to
a peaceful Pacific.
Japan's record in Korea he reviews
with complaisance and even commenda-
tion.
W. W. WiLLOUGHBY
The Run of the Shelves
Books of the Week
[Selected by Edmund Lester Pearson,
Editor of Publications, New York
Public Library.]
The Stranger. By Arthur Bullard.
Macmillan.
A new novel by the author
who, as "Albert Edwards," wrote
"A Man's World" and "Comrade
Yetta."
Swinburne as I Knew Him. By Coul-
son Kernahan. Lane.
Beginning the process of "un-
freezing" Swinburne— strange as it
seems that anything glacial should
be connected with his name.
The Irish Case, Before the Court of
Public Opinion. By P. Whitwell
Wilson, American correspondent of
the London Daily News. Revell.
Written at the request of Amer-
icans, to refute the theory of the
Sinn Fein that anything about Ire-
land by an Englishman is "propa-
ganda," but by a Sinn Feiner be-
comes "facts."
SiMSADus: London; The American
Navy in Europe. By John Langdon
Leighton. Holt.
"Simsadus" was Admiral Sims's
cable address. The book describes
our naval participation from the
point of view of American naval
headquarters.
IT would be hard to think of a more
appropriate and more interesting
special collection of books for a public
library than that of New Bedford, which
has filled a large number of its shelves
with books about whales and the whale
fisheries. Books, pamphlets, whalers'
log-books, and pictures make up the col-
lection, which is listed and described in
a bibliography whose mere items are
fascinating to read. There is Lorrin
Andrews' treatise (with Hawaiian im-
print) entitled "Sabbath Whaling; or,
Is it Right to Take Whales on the
Sabbath?" — which one may imagine a
Yankee skipper answering with, "Yes,
provided you take Right whales." There
is the "Narrative of the most extraordi-
nary and distressing shipwreck of the
whale-ship Essex * * * which was
attacked and finally destroyed by a large
spermaceti whale in the Pacific ocean,"
published in 1821. And there is so mod-
ern an item as "Whale Meat and Hoov-
erism." The bibliography is illustrated,
notably with a half-tone of the fine statue
of the Whaleman, which stands before
the New Bedford Public Library, with
its motto: "A dead whale or a stove
boat."
"Talks with T. R." from the diaries
of John J. Leary, Jr. (Houghton Miiflin
Company) is an unusually interesting
book. It is a really valuable book. It is
certain to be read ; it deserves to be read.
•But it should certainly not be read alone.
The Roosevelt of these papers is real, but
partial; he is a reporter's Roosevelt, a
Roosevelt cast in type-metal. The Roose-
velt of the Autobiography is not this
Roosevelt; he is only his brother. Still
less is the Roosevelt of the letters to the
children Mr. Leary's T. R. ; he is only
his cousin. It is what we may call with-
out any malice the Cashel Byron attitude
of Mr. Roosevelt that is conspicuous in
Mr. Leary's pages, and the style is like
the splitting of kindling wood. Some-
times a match is put to the kindlings.
There is much plain sense and much more
plain speaking; the certainty is char-
acteristic, the vigor is stimulating, the
sincerity is unquestionable. Mr. Roose-
velt copies and enacts nobody else; a
cynic might suggest that he sometimes
copies or enacts T. R. The author of the
book had done well to omit certain viru-
lent assaults on living Americans, notably
President Wilson. At the time of utter-
ance these words may have been excus-
able, but their publication after Mr.
Roosevelt's death and before Mr. Wil-
son's is a matter which even the admirers
of Mr. Roosevelt and the adversaries of
President Wilson may permit themselves
to regret. Allusion is made to the
"pseudo-Americanism of Wilson." Wil-
son is a "selfish, dishonest politician";
he "never had an ideal in his life." "I
despise the man, and dislike his policies
to the point of hate." The motto "de
mortuis nil nisi bonum" would seem to
have its correlative, indeed its condi-
tion and occasion, in the silent formula,
"a mortuis nil nisi bonum." One should
not fire from behind a tomb; the shelter
is too manifest. What Mr. Roosevelt
now feels, if his mind still acts, no one
can say. But it is at least permitted to
the generous and the loyal to hope that
he left vindictiveness on the meaner side
of the grave, that he has risen to a point
of view from which his charity can in-
June 23, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[657
elude in its enlarging circle all his fel-
low-citizens, even that citizen in whose
hands rests for the moment the pilotage
of the Republic.
Professor Horatio S. White, of Har-
vard, the literary executor of the late
Willard Fiske, Librarian of Cornell, is
continuing the series of volumes drawn
from the latter's posthumous papers.
The first of these was "Chess Tales and
Chess Miscellanies," which appeared in
1912.. The present volume, "The Editor"
(Badger), is the first of three to be
printed under the general title, "Memo-
rials of Willard Fiske," and is just out.
It is made up of selections from Mr.
Fiske's editorial work on the Syracuse,
N. Y., daily Journal, from 1863 to 1865,
and will be followed by "The Traveller"
and "The Lecturer," and finally by a
biography.
At this moment when the whole pro-
cess of bookmaking is even more beset
with difficulties in France than here, it
is most creditable on the part of the
Plon-Nourit house to begin a series of
cheap but well-printed books whose con-
tents is of more than passing worth. The
"Bibliotheque Plon," 16mo, paper-cov-
ered volumes of from 200 to 250 pages,
began appearing last winter, at the low
price of two francs, and fourteen have
so far been issued, with two additional
volumes each month. Among the authors
represented are Paul Bourget; the new
academician, Henry Bordeaux; the late
Paul Margueritte, Mistral, and Dos-
toievsky. The two newest volumes are
"Le Chevre d'Or," by Paul Arene, the
Provencal poet who died in 1896, a tale
of passionate love told with all the verve
of a meridional ; and "Jeanne d'Arc," one
of M. Gabriel Hanotaux's best pot-boil-
ing productions, a condensation and re-
hash of the octavo and quai"to which
he published ten years ago through
Hachette. If M. Hanotaux was sent last
month as a special ambassador to the
Jeanne d'Arc canonization ceremonies at
Rome, it was largely due to association
of his name through these volumes with
that of the new saint.
Poe books continue to appear in
France. Since we noticed in this column
a few weeks ago Fontainas's "Vie
d'Edgar Poe," even a more acknowledged
specialist, Professor Emile Lauvriere,
has come forward with another volume,
his third, devoted to "one of the most
popular authors of the whole world," as
he styles him. "Edgar Poe: Contes et
Poesies" (Paris: La Renaissance du
Livre) opens with an Introduction which
is a resume of M. Lauvriere's two previ-
ous volumes — ^"Edgar Poe, sa Vie et
son Oeuvre" (Paris: Alcan, 1904) and
"Edgar Poe" (Paris: Bloud and Gay,
1911), "scientific studies of the poet,"
as he describes them. The publisher of
the present volume also issues a series
entitled "Les Cent Chefs-d'oeuvre
Etrangers," which contains a neat little
volume of Poe, some 150 pages of prose
and 30 of poetry. While the peculiar
aroma of the Tales is fairly well pre-
served in translation, the same is not true
of the poetry, as M. Lauvriere is the first
to admit. "To Helen," "Eldorado," and
"The Raven" lose half of their inde-
scribable charm in French, and "The
Bells" presented such difficulties that
M. Lauvriere has left it severely alone.
Sending us his book. Professor Lauv-
riere gives us these "three chief reasons
why Poe exerts such an influence in
France" :
The first is that, however morbid he may
be, he reasons, and most educated Frenchmen
like reasoning. The second lies in the fact
that his fantasticality reached us at the very
moment when that sort of thing had a vogue
in France. The third is because he had a good
translator — Baudelaire — who was fascinated by
him and liad the public attention at that mo-
ment. It should be noted, too, that it is the
prose of Poe which has exercised influence in
France, for his poetry, in my opinion, is un-
translatable, the music of words not being
transportable into another tongue, especially
in the case of a language without tonic
accent.
In the Revue des Deux Mondes for
March 15, 1920, M. George Lecomte has
the following sentence: "Les Associa-
tions d'ecrivains viennent de la leur
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Since 1836, the National
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IN 1630, John Winthrop,
Governor of the Massa-
chusetts Bay Company, lead-
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land, settled on the north
bank of the River Charles.
Insufficient water supply
compelled a move.
An earlier inhabitant told
of Shawmut — Indian for liv-
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spring, on the peninsula.
There the colony located
their new-world Boston.
The National Shawmut
Bank is established within a
stone's throw of that his-
toric site, now in the heart
of America's greatest work-
shop for shoes, leather, tex-
tiles, paper and machinery.
658]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 58
['la' means 'criticism'; leur' refers to
'publishers'] rappeler en essayant de
provoquer une resurrection de la critique
iitt6raire, ainsi que, sur la proposition de
la Soci^t^ des Gens de Lettres et du
Syndicat de la Critique, le Congres du
Livre de 1917 en a solennellement emis
le voeu" (page 427). Two points in this
remark impress the observant foreigner.
The first is the state of French criticism,
as it appears even to bodies, to organiza-
tions, always far slower than individuals
in the perception and reception of ideas.
"Resurrection" is a strong word. Its
logical antecedent is death. But M.
Anatole France is still breathing, still
articulate, and, even if the darkest view
be sound, if no survivors are discernible,
it is certain that in their common de-
parture from the salon of French letters
criticism will say politely to M. Anatole
France, "After you."
The second point of interest is the
nature of the remedy. We have an As-
sociation, a Society, a Syndicate, a Con-
gress, banding zealously together for the
resuscitation of the art. An American
or Briton would feel that the patient —
at least the Anglo-Saxon patient — would
be more likely to come to in the absence
of so many officious nurses to surround
his pillow and cut off the air. But France
still relies on collective action in the field
of letters. The love of revolt, which is
characteristic of the period, has not de-
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Otto T. Baonard
S. Reading Bertron
James A. Blair
Mortimer N. Buckner
James C. Colgate
Alfred A. Cook
Arthur J, Cumnock
Robert W. de Forest
John B. Dennis
Philip T. Dodge
George Doubleday
Samuel H. Fisher
John A. Carver _
Benjamin S. Guinness
STEES
F. N. Hoffstol
Buchanan Houston
Walter Jennings
Darwin P, Kingsley
John C. McCall
Ogden L. Mills
John J. Mitchell
James Parmelee
Henry C. Phipps
Norman P. Ream
Dean Sage
ioseph J. Slocum
fyles Ticrney
Clarence M. Woolley
Members of the New York CUarinff House Asso-
ciation and of the Federal Reserve System
stroyed the faith in discipline, which is
characteristic of the race. The French
still value authority, and the double oc-
casion which authority gives for the
grace of loyalty and the elation of revolt.
One of the differentiae of French crit-
icism is the precision of its attempt to
express the reaction of the absolute or
general French minds to the French
mind in particular (that is, to the book
in its hands). In the later nineteenth
century, criticism itself was often partic-
ular, often adventurous, but, even so, it
defined adventure in the sense natural
to a people in whom the respect for tradi-
tion is compatible with a pretty strong
infusion of the contempt for tradition.
Possibly the present movement means
the recall of criticism to its old central-
ity. The inference from M. Lecomte's
remark would be that the French not
only want criticism, but tvill it, and that
the will no less than the want may be
powerful in the sustaining or revivify-
ing of the form.
Drama
On the Verge of Literature
Violet Pearn's "Fair" at the Neighborhood
" Playhouse . . . "Nightshade" at the Gar-
rick Theatre.
VIOLET PEARN'S "Fair," which has
held the boards for half-a-dozen week-
ends at the Neighborhood Playhouse, is
an attempt to depict and to decide the
conflict between puritan and epicure in
a sombre village on the Cornish edge of
Devonshire. Strollers set up a fair with
dancing and music in the dreary centre
of the protesting little town. A ferment
begins in the pleasure-loving heart of the
young daughter of the austerest elder of
the village, and extends itself to the
young minister, who is moved to joy,
terror, and bewilderment by the sight of
her replenished loveliness. In the crit-
ical midnight scene of the second act, he
is impelled to take her life as an agent or
embodiment of Satan, and, in the recoil
from his own violence, is converted to the
worship of beauty, and leads her forth
in Act III to share with him a new life
in the joyousness of unfettered impulse.
The play is too slight for its central in-
cident, and its frail and slender fabric
can not sustain the formidable weight of
an attempt at homicide from religious
motives.
It will be seen from the prompt and
cheerful outcome that the doubleness of
the universe presents no difficulties to
Miss Violet Pearn. The universe is per-
fectly simple. "Then come kiss me,
Sweet-and-Twenty," is the sum and
kernel of its message. That impulse is
both holy and accursed, that restraint is
both groveling and noble, that human in-
stinct is profoundly right and profoundly
wrong in its interpretation of the needs
of the human spirit — these complexities
have no disquiets for Miss Pearn. I shall
not contest the main thesis, but one lit-
tle unfairness in the use of the term
beauty is worth pointing out. Beauty is
related on its upper side to the dignities
and sanctities of life, and on its lower
side to the sports and gayeties. You
may call beauty sacred (Miss Pearn
talks of the God of beauty) ; you may
call pleasure beautiful; and in this
double turn you have almost consecrated
pleasure. This seems the unconscious
strategy of Miss Pearn.
Do I lay too much stress on the moral
and rational aspect of a simple folk-
tale? If so, it is Miss Pearn's own un-
curbed didacticism that has invited and
countenanced that stress. Miss Pearn's
thesis dominates her story exactly as the
hated father dominates the young girl in
her play ; it allows the wild young thing
no peace or freedom in the fulfilment of
its own impulse. I think it rather un-
fair in Miss Pearn to pound the desk
so much in denunciation of the general
unrighteousness of preaching. She is
not without talent; she can even stir us
for a moment as in the young minister's
really penetrating outcry: "0 God, dost
thou know how hard it is to be a man?"
But my judgment of the "Fair" as a
whole is that the author has unduly sim-
plified her tale to provide more space
for the expounding of an unduly simpli-
fied philosophy.
The acting was fair. Miss Alice
Lewisohn makes the young girl a sprite,
sheer, and absolute sprite, from first to
last. This is excusable, but hardly wise.
Obedience to the call of the wild would
be much less remarkable and therefore
much less dramatic in a sprite than in a
human being. Mr. Thomas F. Meaney,
Jr., made the minister's pietism and his
interior conflict imaginable, but did not
make real to us his impulse towards
beauty, his quest of the gleam. The best
acting in the play was supplied by Messrs.
S. Philip Mann, Jowan Pherys, and John
Roche in the neatly defined and sharply
contrasted comedy of the three elders.
An arch and deft pantomime ballet called
the "Magic Shop" formed an engaging
afterpiece to the serious play.
"Nightshade," by an unknown hand,
was produced June 7-11, by Mr. Henry
Stillman at the Garrick Theatre in special
matinees. The performance leaves crit-
icism rather cold to the play and rather
friendly to the author. Compact inten-
sities in mutual relations, an air that re-
mains electrical long before it becomes
explosive, the power, in Miriam, for in-
stance, to keep a character on the exact
boundary between two contrasted atti-
tudes— these traits are palpitant with
promise. Even the diction, on which
I
June 23, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[659
satire has been so quick to fasten, seems
to me to preserve its affinities with vigor
in the midst of its surrender to absurd-
ity. The difficulties of the play, apart
from the unwisdom of this diction, are
the unalloyed ugliness of the primary sit-
uation, and the fact that the play goes
mad — absolutely mad — in the abandon-
ment of its fourth act.
There are seven characters, known
only by their Christian names, of whom
two are merely furnishings and super-
fluities. The other five, who occupy the
same American farmhouse, are the farm-
owner, the wife, the son, the son's sweet-
heart, later his wife, and the hired man.
The circumstance that transmutes this
apparently colorless and meaningless
group into a storm-centre is the fact that
the son's wife has been — very possibly
still is — the father's mistress. I think the
author is maladroit in the conduct of this
situation, where an ingenuous person
would have been more skillful. To be
naif up to a certain point, to have a tract
of naivete in one's mind, is very useful
even to the possessor of sophistications;
it helps him to gauge his auditors. The
present author is so indifferent to the
ugliness of this fable that he is insensible
of its horror, and its horror is the ground
of its dramatic force. De Curel, in the
portrayal of a like situation in "Les
Fossiles," could have instructed him in
the advantage of a sensitive treatment
of a brutal theme.
We come next to the peculiar dialogue.
Every one must concede the perils of a
diction which permits observations and
retorts like the following to be habitually
uttered in an American farmhouse:
"Even the blind are not fools"; "Per-
haps folly is the greater wisdom." To
this aphoristic vein is added the instant
and constant passage by metaphor from
the material setting of life to its inner
significance. The young man finds night-
shade in bloom. "Nightshade!" he ex-
claims, "Stabbing beauty! Stabbing
pain !" The process in other forms is by
no means unsuited to literature, or even
to drama. D'Annunzio teems with it;
but perhaps its fitness for D'Annunzio
is the measure of its unsuitability to the
lips of the American farmer in a prosaic
century. Nevertheless, I find the diction
often terse and tense under all this in-
cubus of literature, and there are mo-
ments, such as Miriam's implacable
"Well?" in reply to the young wife's
I mention of her own death as the sole
alternative to another threatening issue,
when its suggestiveness is potent. There
lis life in this diction; there is life in its
(follies.
Lastly, comes the insensate fourth act.
[Clive, as we all know, was surprised at
(his own moderation. The author of
M'Nightshade" at the end of his third act
iBeems to be alarmed at his own temper-
lance. He plunges into excess less from
the love of excess than from the fear of
restraint ; he adopts violence as a precau-
tion. The mother murders (in effect)
the son's wife; the father turns out the
mother into the storm; the hired man
presumably appropriates the mother; the
son fires a gun which crushes the last
remnant of life in the young girl as she
lies quivering iir the father's arms. The
strength and interest of all these charac-
ters lies in a certain brooding vigilance;
when they release themselves, they ef-
face themselves; and the play vanishes
in their effacement.
The acting, broadly viewed, was of
high quality. Miss Grace Knell made a
very attenuated Cora, and Mr. Gerald
Hamer was merely adequate as the son.
But Mr. Gordon Burby's father was excel-
lent, Mr. Alfred Shirley imparted vivid-
ness to the rather impossible hired man,
and Miss Content Palaeologue was strong
as Miriam, the mother, up to the point
when she determined to be powerful. The
play lends itself to acting; that is another
reason for holding that the future has a
place for the author of "Nightshade."
0. W. FlEKINS
Export Credits and European
Rehabilitation
SIR GEORGE PAISH, in an interest-
ing article in Ways and Means of
May 29, summarizes judiciously the pres-
ent economic situation of Europe, and its
relation to the United States. Still in-
sisting upon the imperative need of par-
ticipation by America in the economic
and financial reconstruction of Europe,
he makes no mention of the gigantic
credit flotation which he had earlier pro-
posed, and recognizes the limitations of
America's ability to aid.
He speaks in a friendly and apprecia-
tive way of the work of the Atlantic
City Conference called by the Chamber
of Commerce of the United States last
October, and of the report of the com-
mittee of the Chamber there appointed,
saying that "the tone and tenor of it is
all that could be wished." He sanctions
the committee's view that "action by
the Government of the United States is
prerequisite to practical effort on an ex-
tensive scale" and that American in-
vestors can not provide the sum needed
by Europe so long as American taxes are
so heavy, and large American investors
have to put their funds into tax-exempt
A ToAver
of
Strength
THE STRENGTH OF THE
BANKERS TRUST COMPANY is
founded upon the bedrock of character,
experience and great financial resources.
For this reason, the Company has come to
be regarded as a tower of strength in the
financial community. Many important busi-
ness concerns are looking to it for the service
and co-operation obtainable only from an
institution of unquestioned dependability,
complete equipment and far-reaching banking
connections.
Bankers Trust
Company
Member Federal Jfesert'c System
New York
Resources
Over Four Hundred Million Dollars
660]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 58
securities. He concurs in the view that
Europe must return to work, and to the"
practice of thrift, and must make prog-
ress towards the reduction of inflated
currency, the balancing of budgets, and
political stability, before American in-
vestors will have complete faith in Eu-
ropean securities. He takes note, too,
of extravagance and speculation in the
United States, which have limited sav-
ings and shortened the supply of domes-
tic capital, leaving inadequate surpluses
of capital to export.
Sir George emphasizes again the immi-
nence of the problem. He feels that
America can not wait for complete Eu-
ropean recovery before extending the
credits which the situation demands.
The general problem presented is un-
doubtedly an acute one. Despite the
very extensive discussion and agitation
which have gone on since the Armistice,
and even before the Armistice, adequate
measures have not been devised for sup-
plying Europe with long-term credits for
financing the export balance, since the
United States Government ceased to do
so about the middle of May, 1919. It
is true that the exporters themselves,
who are most vitally interested in the
pecuniary side of the matter, since it is
to them that the profits in the export
trade immediately accrue, have been able
by one or another device to keep going
a tremendous flood of exports to Europe.
The figures for our monthly balance of
trade have run several hundred millions
for every month since the Armistice, and
the figures for our balance with Europe
alone have been even greater than our
balance with the world. The investor,
able to obtain seven per cent, on safe
American securities, has not in general
been attracted to the prospects of similar
yields, or yields a little higher, on Eu-
ropean securities, but the active business
man has often been willing to tie up a
portion of his working capital in advances
to European customers, which run far
beyond the ordinary period for commer-
cial credits. The violent breaks in the
exchange rates make it clear that not
nearly all of the exports to Europe have
been financed in this manner, but there
is no doubt that a large volume has been.
The United Kingdom, financially
strongest of all the countries of Europe,
has been aiding the Continent to a great
extent since the Armistice. In her deal-
ings with France, Italy, Belgium, Ger-
many, Austria, Hungary, Rumania, Eu-
ropean Turkey, and Russia in 1919, she
imported goods to the value of only £98,-
.314,000, but exported goods to the value
of £351,237,000, showing an export sur-
plus of £252,923,000 for the year. The
first three months of 1920 show a similar
ratio. This export surplus represents an
heroic effort on the part of Great Britain,
since Britain's balance of trade with the
world as a whole is adverse, and since
she has done it in the face of increasing
financial strain. It is of course not at all
comparable with the excess of exports
over imports which the United States
has sent to Europe, running far beyond
four billions of dollars for the year 1919,
but it does mean that an enormous vol-
ume of goods has gone from Great Brit-
ain to the Continent, which, added to the
volume sent from the United States
directly, means that Continental Europe
has received and is receiving aid from
the rest of the world on a grand scale.
Though weaker financially than we
are, the British are more capable of
engaging in transactions of this kind in
proportion to their financial strength.
London has for generations specialized
in direct trading with the Continent, and
has developed agencies which make possi-
ble a scattering of risks, so that no one
individual may suflfer greatly if a par-
ticular venture turns out unsuccessfully.
Indeed, by the process of distributing
risks, diffusing them over the whole mar-
ket, and combining many promising ven-
tures, the certainty of loss in a portion
of the enterprises has been combined with
a certainty of gain on the totality of
such ventures, in the normal run of Lon-
don's experience.
If a substantial portion of the Conti-
nent revives industrially and financially
at a reasonably early date, Britain will
enjoy enormous profits from these ven-
tures. In part, her attitude towards the
Continent grows out of sympathy for
allies and friends in distress, but in very
substantial part, in the opinion of many
British authorities, it represents also ex-
ceedingly good business. The British,
aware of the beneficent influences of in-
dustry and trade, see no conflict between
these two motives, and indeed feel that
the best philanthropy is that which in-
volves trading profitable to both sides.
To make it possible for friends in dis-
tress to do business and to regain finan-
cial stability is to protect their pride and
independence at the same time that ma-
terial benefits are conferred upon them.
The great plans for the financial assis-
tance of Europe, through governmental
coSperation and through the organiza-
tion of great placements of security is-
sues with investors, have not mate-
rialized. Business enterprise has, in con-
siderable measure, filled in the gap. But
this enterprise has lacked certain fea-
tures which, to many observers, seem
necessary for the full rehabilitation of
Europe, in that traders, acting without
concert in any particular case, will neces-
sarily choose the most profitable oppor-
tunities, and so will neglect some of the
most necessitous cases. Moreover, in-
dividual enterprises, operating without
coordination, have been unable to exert
the influence which would lead to more
careful expenditure, to the imposition of
higher taxes, and to balanced budgets.
Trade carried on in this manner, more-
over, has been in too large a degree a
trade in luxuries, and in too small a de-
gree a trade in raw materials and other
things necessary to set the whole of in-
dustry going in Europe, although raw ma-
terials have gone over in very large vol-
ume. If some centralized economic con-
trol could be established, leading to the
full cooperation among all the countries
of Europe, the proper distribution of
goods, the control of transportation fa-
cilities, and the restriction of luxury
consumption, the requirements of Eu-
rope would be reduced by hundreds of
millions of dollars. It is almost more a
job of organization and engineering than
it is a job of financing.
The problem is far from solved. There
is need for rebuilding the world organi-
zation which has disintegrated since the
Armistice. Nationalistic jealousies have
asserted themselves vigorously at a time
when there was need to subordinate nar-
rower purposes to a great common emer-
gency. We can not be content, therefore,
with the present methods of extending
aid to Europe. We can not be confident
that they will continue on an adequate
scale. We can not be confident that they
will get results commensurate with the
capital laid out. They must be supple-
mented by organized activity, and by in-
tergovernmental cooperation. They must
not, however, be supplanted. So far as
it can safely and effectively be done, aid
should be extended on a business basis by
business enterprises seeking profits.
The private capital to be secured will
probably be, on the whole, the capital
of men willing to make ventures, rather
than the capital of the investor who seeks
absolute security. The best results will
probably be obtained by methods which
make possible unusual return on ven-
turesome enterprise, rather than by
methods which seek merely to give nor-
mal return on safe investments.
Conditions abroad show many encour-
aging signs. Belgium has made very
gratifying recovery. British industry
has revived splendidly, and the financial
courage of the British Treasury in re-
gard to taxation, and the policy of reduc-
tion of the public debt, are worthy of
the finest traditions of British finance.
Italy has been making heroic efforts to
balance her budget. In France, and
throughout Europe, there are authorita-
tive voices speaking wisely and sanely,
and there are patriots working bravely,
against great odds of tradition and nar-
rowness of vision, for the public good.
But there is still suffering and distress in
Europe of an appalling sort, and there
are grave industrial and financial diffi-
culties. The world can not wash its
hands of the problem. The United States,
above all, must recognize and assume her
share of the responsibility.
Guy Emerson
THE WEEKLY
REVlEW^
l^
Vol. 2, No. 59
New York, Wednesday, June 30, 1920
FIFTEEN CENl S
Contents
Brief Comment 661
Editorial Articles:
The Old Familiar Charge 664
The World and the Soothsayers 664
Greeks and Poles 665
Population and Housing 666
Shepherds and Song in the Day's News 667
Big Sinners and Little Ones. By Agnes
Repplier 668
The Monroe Doctrine as an Adventure
in Foreign Policy. By Elbert J.
Benton 670
Jobs for New Brooms. By Edward G.
Lowry 672
Correspondence 673
Packing the Books. By Edmund Lester
Pearson 675
Book Reviews:
Complexities of the Irish Enigma 676
The Mystery of Jutland 677
Hamilton the Democrat 678
Mission Life at St. Antoine 679
Unhappy Tales 679
The Run of the Shelves 680
Early June. By E. G. H. 683
Drama:
"The Merchant of Venice" at the
Playhouse. By O. W. Firkins 684
Educational Section:
Research and Organization. By Ar-
thur Gordon Webster 686
The American Exporter in "Wonder-
land" 588
WTHAT the San Francisco Conven-
" tion will do about the Presi-
dential nomination is a thing that few
persons are rash enough to predict
with any confidence. But what it
would do if the President's bodily
health were on a level with his mental
vigor seems plain enough. That there
should be any talk at all of a third-
term nomination, in view of the mani-
fest uncertainty of Mr. Wilson's
health, is the strongest possible testi-
mony to the commanding position he
continues to hold in his party. Were
it not for that obstacle his renomina-
tion would be, so far as one can judge,
almost a certainty.
A S it is, he bids fair to dominate the
■^- proceedings. Indeed, the charac-
ter of the Democratic Convention is
made about as inevitable by ante-
cedent history as was that of the Re-
publican Convention. It is impossible
in a few days' gathering of a thou-
sand delegates to reshape the funda-
mentals of a situation. There are
times when two opposing elements
in a party are fairly evenly matched,
and when their division is on a
definite issue. In that case the issue
may be fought out in Convention.
The result need not necessarily be a
compromise, but may be a decisive
victory for one side, in which the
other side will acquiesce. At Chi-
cago, no such situation existed. It
was certain in advance that the
League of Nations issue would be
treated in somewhat the manner in
which it actually was treated. In like
manner, the Democrats are bound to
adopt a formula pretty closely ap-
proximating to President Wilson's
position.
'T'HERE remains nevertheless the
■*■ question whether the platform
will seek to conciliate reservationists
by a skillfully elastic phrase. Mr. Wil-
son, though in practice he has made
ratification impossible by his attitude
towards reservations, has never flatly
declared against all reservations hav-
ing any substantial quality. It is still
within the bounds of possibility that
the campaign, instead of intensify-
ing the League issue, may tend to sub-
ordinate it. This will be especially
likely if the Democrats should adopt
a radical plank on labor and Govern-
ment ownership. On those issues —
and the Republican platform has
spoken out with great clearness upon
them — there are the makings of a
genuine fight.
WHATEVER attempts may be
made by the Johnson-Borah
bitter-enders to give the fight a dif-
ferent turn, says Mr. Taft, the issue
that is sure to emerge in the end is
this:
"Was Mr, Wilson right in killing
the League with the Lodge reserva-
tions?"
There is one aspect of this ques-
tion to which we should like particu-
larly to direct attention, for it has
received far less notice than it de-
serves. Mr. Wilson, in putting
through his League programme at
Versailles, assumed the responsibility
of securing its acceptance on his re-
turn. European statesmen would not
have entered into the bargain had
they not been assured that the fulfil-
ment of it was practically certain.
Mr. Wilson unquestionably gave that
assurance in good faith. But when he
came home he found that his power to
carry out his promise was involved
in doubt; before long, it became ab-
solutely certain that, unless he made
important concessions, he could not
possibly get the treaty ratified. In
this situation, was he not under a
solemn obligation to the nations
which had put their trust in him to
get this country into the League on
the best terms he could obtain?
'T'HE one possible justification for
■*• not doing so would have been the
unwillingness of the other Powers to
accept our cooperation on these
terms; but it has long been certain
that this obstacle did not exist. On no
other basis than his individual opin-
ion or desire, Mr. Wilson has kept this
country out of the League into which
he had promised his associates at
Versailles to put it. He has, to be
sure, been plajdng for what he re-
gards as a big stake — to obtain the
League unmodified, or nearly so. But
it is a tremendous gamble ; and to our
mind he had no more right to gamble
with the trust he assumed at Ver-
sailles than a man has a right to put
to the risks of Wall Street specula-
tion a trust fund committed to his
care. We should be glad to hear from
662]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 59
readers of the Weekly Review on this
question.
THOSE who, largely on grounds
of propriety, resented Admiral
Sims's disclosures and the subsequent
naval inquiry will do well to ponder
the following facts which the inquiry
has brought to light. The Senate
passed a resolution, on April 12, 1916,
calling on Secretary Daniels for "a
communication dated August 3, 1914,
from the General Board of the Navy
warning the Navy Department of the
necessity of bringing the Navy to a
state of preparedness." On April 21,
1916, Secretarj' Daniels declared, in
an official reply to the Senate, that
the document in question "does not
refer to the necessity of bringing the
Na\'y to a state of preparedness."
Yet in the first paragraph of its com-
munication the General Board had
said: "In view of the immediate
danger of a great war in Europe,
• * * the General Board ear-
nestly urges that the battleships be
brought home, docked and put in per-
fect readiness"; and in the last sen-
tence had urged: "We should pre-
pare now for the situation which
would thus be created." This bare
statement of the facts sufficiently re-
veals Secretary Daniels's confusion
and lack of decision in the early
stages of the European war ; but such
disclosures, though shocking, will
amount to little unless the result of
the investigation is embodied in a
comprehensive report.
WHEN the head of one of the big-
gest department stores in New
York is arrested on charges of prof-
iteering; when the warrants allege
that a suit bought for $5.50 was
offered for sale at $15, one costing
$15 at $33.75, etc.; when the special
agent in charge of the case states that
there are 185 separate counts, alleg-
ing profits ranging from 90 to 275
per cent. — we must all sit up and
take notice. It is not merely a ques-
tion of legal guilt or innocence ; what
the public ought to be able to find out,
somehow, some time — what it ought
to have been able to find out long be-
fore this — is whether these things
are typical. Are retail prices of such
necessaries as clothing, usually or in
any large proportion of cases, of such
exorbitant character? It looks much
too bad to be true; but what is the
truth? So far as the individual case
here in question is concerned, the trial
will presumably bring out the facts;
but what are the facts in general?
"Profiteering" has been the word of
the day for two years and more, but
the country is as much at sea con-
cerning the extent of it as it was at
the beginning. In ordinary times,
competition can be counted on to keep
profits down to a reasonable level ; but
in times when nobody knows what
ought to be regarded as a normal
price, the working of competition be-
comes a very imperfect process. If
some part of the vast amount of
money expended upon the mechanical
piling up of statistical figures had
been directed to the task of getting at
the homely facts of retail business,
we might have been in a position to
know something definite about them ;
and if the situation called for legis-
lative remedy, we might have found
something better in that line than a
law which once in a while manifests
itself by a sensational raid, and the
rest of the time does nothing what-
soever.
'T'HE real purpose of Krasin's visit
-'■ in London and his conversations
with Mr. Lloyd George and other
Cabinet Ministers seems to have been
generally overlooked. The skillful
talk about trade with Soviet Russia
has successfully concealed the more
important pourparlers. Mr. Krasin
is neither a fool nor a fanatic. He
is perfectly aware that the Soviet
Government will not give up any con-
siderable amount of that gold reserve
which constitutes its sole means of
attaining any financial stability, and
he also knows that the stocks of raw
materials in possession of the Soviet
Government and available for export
are so small as to be negligible for
purposes of barter. What is it, then,
that Mr. Krasin and his associates
seek under cover of airy talk about
Russian trade? The convinced Com-
munists form but a small percentage
of the Soviet authorities to-day, as
Mr. Krasin has already pointed out.
On the other hand, there has grown
up among them a class which they
themselves term the "new bour-
geoisie." For these people the Bol-
shevik revolution was a means of at-
taining power and acquiring prop-
erty. But their new-found riches are
likely to vanish in smoke if some-
thing is not done to rescue the eco-
nomic life of Russia from the des-
perate position to which the Soviet
Administration has brought it. They
now believe that the one way out is
to secure the aid of foreign capital
and enterprise in restoring and reor-
ganizing Russian industries, and they
regard Krasin as the Moses to lead
them out of the Bolshevik wilderness.
Should the British financial groups
look favorably upon his proposals, he
will naturally ask them to exert pres-
sure upon the British Government to
recognize the Soviet Government, and
thereby legitimate the proposed
transactions. It will be easy for him
to suggest further inducements in the
way of promises to abstain from revo-
lutionary propaganda and to limit
Soviet aggression in the Near and
Middle East.
'T'HE Japanese Government appears
■*- anxious to come to a settlement
with China on the Shantung question,
but China refuses to negotiate di-
rectly. The Mikado's Government
professes to be surprised at this mani-
fest distrust of its honest intentions
in the face of repeated declarations
which "leave no room for doubt as
to the singleness of purpose with
which Japan seeks a fair and just
settlement of the question." We sus-
pect that it is not the Government's
singleness of purpose but the single-
ness of the Government itself which
is in doubt at Peking. There is am-
ple proof of the existence of a mili-
tary junta, which either dictates to
the nominal Government its policy,
or thwarts it when independently
adopted. Even statesmen who, while
out of office, were bitter critics of
Japan's Chinese policy, become in-
struments of that policy themselves
when vested with governmental
power. Baron Goto, during the ad-
ministration of the Okuma Ministry,
issued for private circulation a pam-
June 30, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[668
phlet which exposed the evils of Japa-
nese policy in China. But when, after
the fall of the Okuma Government,
November, 1916, Baron Goto became
a member of the Terauchi Cabinet,
no attempt was made at reversing
the policy he had condemned. Ex-
perimental lessons of this kind must
make the Chinese hesitate to believe
the Japanese professions of "single-
ness of purpose." They are given by
the nominal Government, but they
are discredited by the Government
de facto.
"'yHE accepted explanation of
Conkling's enmity for Blaine,"
writes Chauncey M. Depew in some
recent reminiscences, "was Blaine's
allusion to him, during a debate in the
House, as a turkey cock." Well, the
language in which the turkey cock ap-
peared was something more than an
allusion; and as for the enmity, it
had an earlier origin, which prob-
ably no diver among the wrecks of
time will ever discover. The episode
of the clash is worth recalling; for,
though well-nigh forgotten in these
days, it bulked big to our fathers of
the post-bellum time. Moreover,
Blaine's part in it furnishes a classic
example of what in those days was
regarded as a "crushing reply." The
clash happened on a day in 1866, and
the scene was the House of Represen-
tatives. Conkling had the floor.
Blaine interposed. "Does the gentle-
man from New York yield to the gen-
tleman from Maine?" asked the
Speaker. "No, sir," replied Conkling.
"I do not wish to have anything to
do with the member from Maine, not
even so much as to yield him the
floor." When, later, the member
from Maine got the floor, this is what
he said:
As to the gentleman's cruel sarcasm, I hope
he will not be too severe. The contempt of the
large-minded gentleman is so wilting ; his
haughty disdain and grandiloquent swell, his
majestic, super-eminent, overpowering, turkey-
gobbler strut, has been so crushing to myself
and all the other members of the House that
I know it was an act of the greatest temerity
for me to venture upon a controversy with him.
But, sir, I know who is responsible for all this.
I know that within the last five weeks, as mem-
bers of the House will recollect, an extra strut
has characterized the gentleman's bearing. It
is not his fault. It is the fault of another.
That gifted and satirical writer, Theodore Til-
ton, of the New York Independent, spent some
weeks recently in this city. His letters pub-
lished in that paper embraced, with many seri-
ous statements, a little jocose .satire, a |>art of
which was the statement that the mantle of the
late Winter Davis had fallen upon the member
from New York. He took it seriously, and it
has given his strut an additional pomposity.
The resemblance is great. It is striking. Hy-
perion to a satyr, Thcrsitcs to Hercules, mud
to marble, dunghill to diamond, a singed cat
to a Bengal tiger, a whining puppy to a roar-
ing lion. Shade of the mighty Davis! Forgive
the almost profanation of that jocose satire.
"Conkling," writes Depew, treating
of the year 1880, "was swayed by a
perfectly savage hatred of Blaine."
We do not wonder.
■rVEN the more moderate (or less
-"-^ candid) zealots who move about
under the nebulous appellations "rad-
ical" and "liberal" are busily en-
gaged in hurling language at one
another as to who is who and what
is what. The pro-war liberals were
and are a poor, timid, and compro-
mising lot, according to the anti-war
liberals ; while the antis, according to
the pros, are an ineffective and unin-
structed group of sentimentalists who
did not and can not grasp the mean-
ing of realpolitik. To the radicals
(the unspecified sort — mere raJi-
cals) , as well as to the Socialists and
the Communists of various groups,
both liberal wings are about equal in
lack of understanding of fundamental
things and in all-round futility. And
so they are all talking it out, and the
controversial combat thickens. The
points at issue are in number as the
autumnal leaves along the brooks of
Vallombrosa and in variety as the
figures in a kaleidoscope. Was the
late Randolph Bourne a Liberal ? Yes,
says Professor Laski in the Freeman,
but the wrong kind, because he had
an inadequate notion of real liberty.
Nothing of the sort, answers a
Communist - Socialist correspondent :
Bourne was a "creative skeptic," and
he had exactly the right notion of
liberty. Did Professor John Dewey
and the New Republic really bring
on America's intervention in the
war? There is high authority for
the charge, but the matter has not
yet been suflSciently threshed out for
a verdict. It is easy enough for the
radical and anti-war liberal brethren
to agree upon the reprehensibility of
anything that promoted the war ; but
to admit so large an effect from so
futile an agent as a pro-war liberal
goes hard. It is therefore unlikely
that the verdict against the de-
fendants will be more severe than
that of "accessory before the fact."
Ordinary folk can watch the whole
combat with serenity. If the contro-
versialists succeed, to even the slight-
est degree, in clarifying their own
minds a social good will have been
gained.
TJATS, mice, and English sparrows
— such are the remnants of a
once glorious fauna towards which
Mr. Homaday, of the New York
Zoological Park, warns us that we
are drifting, through lack of adequate
measures to check the forces of ex-
termination. One may admit a bit
of exaggeration in his words, but as
a means of emphasizing the urgency
of the case it is pardonable. Mr.
Homaday's pamphlet, "The End of
Game and Sport in America?" shows
that the bag-limit laws of New York,
together with the number of persons
authorized to hunt, make legally and
arithmetically possible the killing of
nearly two and a half billion wild
birds and quadrupeds in a single
year. In other words, the real re-
striction is not the legal limit on the
amount to be killed at all, but merely
man's inability, for various reasons,
to use up any considerable portion of
the privileges which his hunting
license gives. But he can use enough
of these lavish '•oncessions to threaten
all kinds of game birds and animals
with extinction. Mr. Hornaday sug-
gests that all iegal bag limits be re-
duced by one-half, and all open sea-
sons in the same proportion. Fur-
thermore, he would license the indi-
vidual to hunt only one year out of
two, and would raise the license fee
to three times its present merely
nominal figure. He urges the friends
of wild life to use their influence for
the public acquisition of marshes,
waste woodlands, and mountains as
game "sanctuaries," and to encourage
the planting of large quantities of
berry, nut, and seed bearing bushes
and trees, with such annuals as kaflir
corn, millet, and sorghum cane, as
food for wild birds. One hopes that
his pamphlet may have a wide and
fruitful reading.
664]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 59
The Old Familiar
Charge
THE country is approaching a
Presidential campaign for which
men who like to know exactly where
they stand can have little relish. For
even the fresh indications that Mr.
Wilson will dictate the Democratic
platform give no assurance that the
issues will be squarely joined. Over
and above the issues will be the per-
sonality of the President, about whom
even intelligent antagonists can sel-
dom argue with any satisfaction.
Those opposed to the President will
be told that, whatever the judgment
of the present generation, the future
will rank him as one of the greatest
men of all time. It is indeed a sure
sign of Mr. Wilson's capacity for
greatness that he has so caught the
imagination of many persons, both
here and abroad, that they have seen,
however vaguely, his vision of a new
world order. But this only adds to
our present difficulty. Those who have
not "seen the light" will be asked
to accept too much on faith — which
is not the American way.
No amount of reasoning will en-
tirely rid the situation of that diffi-
culty. Yet there may be some ad-
vantage in disposing of one argument
which is' sure to be used insistently
against the opponents of the Presi-
dent. They will be called "little
Americans." It is high time that they
learned how to defend themselves
against the charge. The case of Sen-
ator Harding himself is instructive.
Such a career as his is typically Amer-
ican — humble beginnings ripening
into a life of large opportunities. An
American he surely is. Is he a "little
American"? Much depends upon the
year in which he is examined. From
the moment the President gave the
word, there was no one in the Senate
more eager to see the war prosecuted
to a decisive conclusion than he.
Would anyone in those days have
thought it proper to dub him a "little
American"? And what shall be said
of the Americanism of that host of
persons now unfriendly to the Presi-
dent's international programme, who,
long before 1917, agitated for our ac-
tive participation with the Allies?
A mass of nonsense has been ut-
tered at the expense of the "little
Americans." A great majority of our
citizens have all along been heartily
in favor of destroying once and for
all the menace of Prussianism, and
opposition to the President increased
because he seemed to many, in the
early years of the war, to be making
Germany's case easier than it should
have been. To them the President's
later advocacy of a League of Nations
appeared to be the outcropping of a
perfectionist, who could not be sup-
posed to use the new instrument more
effectively than he used the position
of President in confronting German
insults and brutalities. It was
prompted, they felt, by an easy confi-
dence in international machinery de-
signed to take the place of the free
individual action which, if directed by
another hand, would have made our
war record a prouder one. They were
eager to see the Allies through their
difficulty and to help execute the
terms of peace. If they could not
approve all the clauses of a Covenant
the creation of which Europe itself,
we now know, would have been glad
to postpone until after arranging the
peace terms, are they therefore to be
called "little Americans" ?
We trust that the phrase will be
discredited before the campaign pro-
ceeds very far. It would merely con-
fuse a valuable issue. For the coun-
try wishes by all means to know what
the candidates intend to do about Eu-
rope. That we must now assume
large responsibilities with reference
to Europe is certain, and it will not
do to trust any half-hearted profes-
sions on this important matter. Yet
let it be remembered that they are
not "big Americans," or big anything
else, who, through a vague yearning
for a perfect world, or through their
implicit confidence in the judgment
of one man, shout for the Covenant
just as it stands. It is the tough-
minded American to whom we must
look in this emergency. That many
such, while approving the reserva-
tions, have for years worked fever-
ishly to relieve Europe's distress is
evidence enough that they are neither
hard-hearted nor little, Americans.
The World and the
Soothsayers
'T'HE British Ambassador, in his ad-
dress to the Princeton Alumni,
drew a picture of the world's state of
mind, and of the prospects of the ex-
isting economic order, which was cal-
culated to make the young men to
whom he was speaking anything but
merry. He followed it up, it is true,
with the assurance that he was "far
from pessimistic," that he believed
that "out of this turmoil, this seeth-
ing and bubbling of new thoughts and
new ideas, we may get something a
little saner, a little nobler, in our
civilization"; but what reason there
was for this hope he was apparently
content to let his audience guess for
themselves. If the existing economic
order has proved a ghastly failure,
something more is required to war-
rant a denial of pessimism than a
mere vague impression that better
things are coming. Sir Auckland
Geddes appears to belong to that large
company of misty "liberals" who rise
superior to their allegiance to the in-
stitutions of the past and present,
without having gone through that
mental travail which is necessary for
the formation of a different allegiance
to take its place. "The stage is surely
set for great changes," he tells us;
for millions of working people are
saying to themselves, "What is a life
worth that at the end leaves us
with nothing achieved except having
avoided being starved to death, and
having produced children who will
follow in our path?" And not only
is this the case at the present time,
but "as this century opened, we had
in Europe an order that was ob-
viously nearing its end."
This sort of thing, uttered with
portentous solemnity by the repre-
sentative of the British Empire in our
country, is calculated to make a pro-
found impression upon open-minded
young men. "Here," they say, "is a
man who really knows what is going
on, a man who can estimate the grav-
ity of the present, and forecast the
development of the future, as we can
not. Of course, we all know that this
is a time big with important changes ;
June 30. 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[665
we all know that there is a vast
amount of unrest among the working
people the world over ; but we are apt
to imagine that improvement will
come without subversion or revolu-
tion, and here is a wise man who,
though refraining from using these
words, is clearly convinced that it is
all up with the world as we have
known it. We might as well make up
our minds that Socialism is upon
us, and adjust ourselves to the in-
evitable."
But let us look at the matter a little
more closely. Is there any evidence
that Sir Auckland has done any real
thinking on the subject, either as to
its facts or its philosophy? He does
not appear to be a Socialist; on the
contrary, apart from its broad vati-
cinations, his talk sounds like that
of any other British or American pub-
lic man who feels that important eco-
nomic and social changes are taking
place, which it will require great
sagacity to make safe and beneficent.
The trouble with him, as with so
many of our own half-way apostles
of a new social order, is that although
he presents a state of things so grave
that nothing short of Socialism can
possibly mend it, he shrinks from ac-
cepting the position either of a So-
cialist or of a pessimist. Things are
going to come right somehow ; we are
going to have omelets without break-
ing of eggs.
As to his account of facts, it hap-
pens that Sir Auckland gives us a
very excellent means of judging of
the weight to be attached to it. He
has made the brilliant discovery that
the real cause of the European War
was the growth of American popula-
tion, which had had the effect of mak-
ing wheat unendurably dear in Ger-
many. Let us hear exactly what Sir
Auckland says :
Believe .me, I have gone into this thing fairly
carefully, and I think that it is not very diffi-
cult to show that the development of your
population here was the principal cause in
making the European War inevitable.
Germany was being forced into a position
with rising food costs — look at the change in
the price of wheat in the first ten years of this
century — Germany was being forced into a
position in which she almost had to fight.
Now there had actually been a con-
siderable rise in the price of wheat
in the first ten years of this century ;
but the price just preceding that time
was not a normal one, but that ab-
normally low price which furnished
the foundation for Bryan's whirlwind
campaign for free silver in 1896. It
happens that the course of wheat
prices in Germany was the subject
of an elaborate article which ap-
peared in the leading German eco-
nomic journal, Conrad's Jahrbiicher,
in 1914. From this it appears that
the average price of wheat per hun-
dredweight during the period 1847-
70 was 10.95 marks ; in the following
three decades the average price was
11.43, 8.35, 6.76, respectively, the last
figure being for the decade 1891-1900.
The average price for 1901-5 was 6.65
marks; for 1906-10, it was 8.02, for
the year 1911 it was 7.85 and for 1912
it was 8.38. So it appears that that
price of wheat which was so terrible
that Germany was driven to fight out
of sheer desperation was only 20 or
25 per cent, above the phenomenally
low price of 1891-1900, and was de-
cidedly below the prices that had pre-
vailed for half a century preceding
that low-price decade.
So far, then, from having "gone
into this thing fairly carefully," Sir
Auckland has not even the poor
support of a little specious bit of
statistics to sustain his tremendous
conclusion that Germany was in a
position "in which she almost had to
fight." The idea was in any case so
monstrous — the gap sq enormous be-
tween a high price for wheat and the
burning up of the world as a remedy
— that we cite the figures not so much
to refute what every sensible man
ought to recognize at once as an ab-
surdity, as to bring out the irrespon-
sible character of the whole breed
of Sir Oracles to whom a time of dis-
turbance like the present opens such
abundant opportunities. What des-
tiny has in store for the world is ob-
scure to the rest of us, but it is
manifest to them; and most fre-
quently it is the "economic interpre-
tation of history" that gives them the
key with which they unlock the
secrets of the future. It is an ex-
tremely handy instrument, and does
completely in a moment what years
of study without it would fail to ac-
complish. But whether the easy-go-
ing conclusions to which it gives ac-
cess are trustworthy or not is another
question ; and it is a bit of good for-
tune, therefore, to get an occasional
test of the matter when, instead of
dipping into the future, the sooth-
sayer ventures with a like jaunty con-
fidence into questions of the past. One
such confident dealer in world-horo-
scopes. Professor Simon N. Patten of
the University of Pennsylvania, some
years ago put forth the happy-
thought discovery that the true cause
of the French Revolution was that the
industries of France had been ruined
by the "industrial revolution" in Eng-
land; but he happened to overlook
the trifling circumstance that in 1789
the "industrial revolution" was still
in its embryonic stage, and could not
possibly have produced any note-
worthy effect on French prosperity.
It may be that the existing order of
society is on its last legs, but the
solemn pronouncements of this type
of prophets add nothing whatever to
the reasons we may have for think-
ing so. And men of sense should con-
cern themselves not with fatalistic
guesses as to what the future is to be,
but with the duty of helping to shape
that future according to their own
judgment of what is good.
Greeks and Poles
■yENIZELOS is bent upon enforc-
^ ing the Turkish peace treaty
without, if need be, the assistance of
the Powers. His unexpected arrival
at Hythe had, apparently, the twofold
object of pressing this offer and of
obviating any intentions on the part
of certain Powers to temporize with
the Turk. The recent agreement be-
tween General Gouraud and Mus-
tapha Kemal constitutes a serious
menace to the Greeks of Asia Minor,
and is likely to be followed by further
concessions to the Nationalists by the
French, who, in trying to placate the
Nationalist leader, may hope to safe-
guard their interests in Syria and,
at the same time, play him against
the British. Greek interests, there-
fore, fall in line with the policy of
England, which, having gained con-
trol of the Turkish Government in
666]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 59
Constantinople, must look upon any
compromise with the Nationalists in
Anatolia as an attempt to thwart that
polic> and to neutralize the results it
has achieved so far.
There is a striking analogy between
the role which Venizelos wishes to
assign to Greece and that which Po-
land is now playing under the man-
agement of Pilsudski. Russian Bol-
shevists and Turkish Nationalists are
both a menace to Europe and her
ciNnlization, and it is with the claim
of rendering service to these that both
the Polish Republic and the Greek
Kingdom are willing to take up arms
against their eastern neighbors. The
difference is in the response which
their sacrifice meets in the west. Pil-
sudski receives moral and material
support from Paris and is praised in
the French press for his political
foresight and his championship of
Western culture; in England public
opinion is either cool or indignant at
the Polish offensive, which it con-
demns as a fit of megalomania. But
the same French press which consid-
ers the Red terror such a menace
as to justify the encouragement of
Polish expansionism, is stubbornly
opposed to strong action being taken
against the Bolshevists' Allies in Asia
Minor, the Turkish Nationalists un-
der Mustapha Kemal's leadership.
Here it is England which favors such
action, and the latest reports as to
the British rushing their entire Medi-
terranean fleet to Turkey read like an
angrj' reply to the French armistice
with Mustapha Kemal.
It is clear that the policy of neither
Power, reacting so differently to the
same menace in different parts of
the world, is based on any distinctly
defined principle. One would think
that, if the Bolshevist danger de-
mands the sacrifice of Polish lives and
French money, a similar sacrifice on
the part of Greece should receive a
similar support from France. But
jealousy of British power in Asia is
stronger with the French than their
fear lest the success of Kemal's op-
position to the treaty should indi-
rectly benefit his allies in Moscow.
As Saladin says in The Talisman, "A
wild cat in a chamber is more danger-
ous than a lion in a distant desert."
So to the French the nearer danger
of British hegemony in anterior Asia
is a greater menace than the far-off
one of Soviet Russia getting hold of it.
Thus Venizelos and Pilsudski,
united in opposition against a com-
mon menace, are divided by the
diverging policies of their power-
ful supporters. It is questionable
whether Poland, even with the whole-
hearted assistance of British opinion
and Mr. Lloyd George's Government,
could realize her ambitions. The
events, so far, seem to justify our ap-
prehension that the danger from
abroad would tend to strengthen
Lenin's position by rallying all Rus-
sian parties round the Government in
charge of the country's defense. In
Asia Minor the chances are different.
Venizelos intends no aggression such
as that of Pilsudski. He offers the
services of the Greek army only for
the protection of the frontiers de-
limited by the peace treaty against
the aggression of Mustapha Kemal, a
rebel against his own Government
and sovereign. Kemal's defeat is de-
manded by the safety of Greeks and
Armenians, by the prestige of the
Powers that drafted the peace treaty
which he defies, and by the necessity
of stemming the red tide of Bolshe-
vism wherever it rushes across the
Russian frontier. Incidentally, the
overthrow of Kemal, it is true, would
serve to establish British power over
a wider area than seems compatible
with the French interests. But view-
ing the situation with an eye to the
interests, not only of France, but
of the world and its peace, we believe
that France, even at the risk of in-
directly promoting the interests of
England, would serve her own, and
those of Europe and Asia, by backing
the Greeks rather than the Poles.
The decision taken at Hythe by
Lloyd George and Millerand to ac-
cept Venizelos' offer is a welcome
indication that the French Premier,
at any rate, refuses to be responsible
for the policy advocated by the
Temps, which, to quote Auguste
Gauvain's definition in the Journal
des Debats, consists in "making
things easy for the Turkish National-
ists in order to make things embar-
rassing for the English."
Population and
Housing
l^EW YORK'S gigantic size has not
made it superior to the kind
of mental agitation which American
cities of lesser magnitude experience
when Uncle Sam's census count fails
to come up to their expectations. The
outstanding feature of that count, as
it stands in the preliminary announce-
ment, is that the population of the
Borough of Manhattan fell from
2,331,542 in 1910 to 2,284,103 in
1920, a loss of 47,439. Revision
of the census may alter this result;
apparently good authorities, basing
their conclusions on pertinent con-
siderations, differ in their opinion on
the question. But it is safe to say
that Manhattan's population either
actually declined, or at all events in-
creased very little, during the decade.
This circumstance, taken in con-
junction with the acute shortage of
housing in Manhattan, suggests an
important question bearing upon the
shortage of housing in other cities as
well as in New York. During the
first half of the decade, and more,
house-building was going on as
usual; and, although there has been
in Manhattan a large amount of con-
version of dwelling property into
business property, it does not seem at
all probable that this has been suffi-
cient to more than cancel the addition
that has been made to dwelling ac-
commodation during the decade. If
this be so, and if the population has
either declined or remained station-
ary, how is the housing shortage to
be accounted for ? There seems to be
but one possible explanation. It is
that there are large numbers of fam-
ilies which are now occupying more
dwelling space than they did ten
years ago — in other words, that the ^^
crowding of some people into less ^^|
space is caused by the expanding of ^^
others into more space.
Just how largely this factor actu-
ally accounts for the situation in
New York, or in any other place, is a
question that can be determined only
by careful and difficult investigation.
But that the factor does enter into
the case hardly admits of doubt. The
June 30, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[667
thing is one illustration, and a very
important one, of the profound dis-
turbance that is caused by the great
and sudden change which has taken
place in money valuations. That dis-
turbance is due to the irregularity
with which the change has taken
place. While wages on the whole
have probably risen less than prices,
and while most salaries have risen
very little, there are many classes of
labor whose compensation has ad-
vanced much more rapidly than
prices have — has trebled or more,
while prices have doubled. But house
rents were far slotver to rise than
general prices; it is only within the
last year that a very great rise of
rents has been general. Now in those
circumstances it seems inevitable that
many classes of working people
should, in the course of the first two
or three years of their greatly height-
ened wages, have availed themselves
of the chance to get better dwelling
accommodations, at the reasonable
prices then still prevailing; and this
would have, with the cessation of
building, the unescapable conse-
quence of crowding the rest of the
wage-earning and salaried class into
more restricted quarters. And the
same kind of thing must have hap-
pened among the well-to-do classes, as
between those that found their money
incomes increased beyond the aver-
age and those that did not.
The point is important in itself;
bearing, as it does, both upon the
ethics and the economics of the hous-
ing question. But it has also a wider
interest. For it points towards a fea-
ture of the high-price situation in
general which has received far too
little attention. Tremendous as is
the evil that has been wrought by the
great fall in the purchasing power
of the monetary unit, it is necessary
to remember, in the interest of truth,
that the high prices which are one
man's poison are another man's food.
The thing works gross injustice; it
ought to be prevented if it can be
prevented, cured if there is any good
way of curing it; but it should be
noted that there are, even in the
wage-earning class, large numbers of
persons who have been gainers, not
losers, by it.
Shepherds and Song
in the Day's News
A YOUNG man, Paul Darde— so
-^ runs a Paris despatch — who
began life as a shepherd in the
Cevennes, has won the Prix National
for sculpture. In that bit of news
there is matter for plea-sant reflection
which, though it will solve none of the
problems that press upon us, may at
least force them back to a point from
which they can not overwhelm us.
A shepherd, who, while he watched
his flock, learned to carve strange
little figures in wood! Why not?
From oldest times shepherds, when
not singing and piping more sweetly
than the murmurings of pine, have
ever been quaint carvers of dials that
they might justly note the passage cf
quiet hours over grass softer than
sleep. One, more fortunate, perhaps
had sight of the Great Pan himself at
noonday, or of a faun a-crouch, his
eye fixed on yonder grove of tama-
risks where but lately it marked the
gleam of a white shoulder. It was an-
other shepherd who left his father's
scanty flock and went forth to slay
his tens of thousands and to sing im-
mortally to the praising harp.
A shepherd, too, of the Cevennes!
Doubtless of the sunnier slope, the
better for flocks, which looks towards
the vine and olive of a land which
speaks not "oui" or "si," but "oc."
There would be needed, one fancies,
just that touch of warmth to temper
the stern piety of a Camisard ances-
try, just that sense of the goodliness
of earth to lend body to the mystic
ecstacies of the son of a people who
numbered themselves also among the
prophets. The Gothic face, craggy
and bearded, of the young sculptor
should lift itself, for a glimpse of the
pagan world, to Rome's turbulent,
mirthful, sunburnt Provence.
His successful contributions to the
Salon, the despatch tells us, are a
crouching faun and a snake-locked
Medusa. Not a Greek faun, we war-
rant. The sculptor confesses to being
a reader of Dante. Eccovi! Here is
a faun that, too, has been in Hell.
His smile proves it. It is the smile
he wore on the night that the plain
folk of the Cevennes did away in the
name of the Lord with the Abbe du
Chayla who in the Lord's name had
persecuted them. He is a faun who
has crouched not by rivers of Tempe
or of Arcady but by the river of
time. And not the placid Greek Me-
dusa, we fancy, imaging in her coun-
tenance the stony death which is the
instant lot of all who look upon her.
Rather, a Gorgo quivering under the
sorrows that have been laid upon her,
and sensible that if sorrow itself is
no less immortal than she, endurance
also is not less.
If this is not enough refreshment to
have picked up beside the worn and
dusty highway of the day's news, ob-
serve the item that immediately fol-
lows it. Madame Melba, singing near
London into a microphone, is heard
through the agency of wireless tele-
phone in Rome, Madrid, Berlin, and
Stockholm. That is another side of
the picture — man through countless
generations at work on his theories
and devices, testing, discarding, con-
triving, not knowing exactly what is
to come of it all, but finally, by means
of it, sending the living voice to
earth's uttermost parts. There, too,
quite unexpectedly, is the solution of
a problem. When it comes finally to
a point of conversing with other
worlds, what can man possibly say
worthy of the vehicle of his own mag-
nificent contrivance? The platitudes
of Mayor greeting Mayor across a
continent, the dismal facts of our
economics, the details of the latest
fashionable murder — not these,
surely, but the voice of Melba, a lan-
guage that would be understood in
other worlds than ours.
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
Published by
Thi National Weekly Corporatiom
140 Nassau Street, New York
Fabian Franklin, President
Hakold di Wolf Fullkk, Trtaturtr
five
advance. Fifteen cents a copy. Foreign post-
age, one dollar extra; Canadian postage, fifty
cents extra. Foreign subscriptions may be aent
to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 24, Bed-
ford St., Strand, London, \V. C. 2, England.
Copyright, 1920, in the United States of
America
Editors
FABIAN FRANKLIN
HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER
Associate Editors
Hauy Morgan Avrks O. W. Fiikins
A. J. Barnouw W. H. Johnkn
Jerouk Landfikld
668]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 59
Big Sinners and Little Ones
TN the years when Mr. Henry La-
■'■ bouchere solaced his combative
soul and agitated the British public
by touching off explosives in the pages
of Truth (a vivacious periodical with
a disputable title) , it was his especial
joy to print in parallel columns a se-
lection from the lists of crimes com-
mitted weekly in England, with their
curiously ill-adjusted penalties. Four-
teen shillings fine for assaulting a
wife. Fourteen days' imprisonment
for stealing a scrag of mutton. Ten
shillings fine for assaulting a police-
man. Two months' imprisonment for
stealing a pair of boots. Ten shillings
fine for knifing a sister-in-law — prob-
ably under provocation. Ten shil-
lings fine for sleeping out of doors, in
default of a bed to sleep in.
Making due allowance for Mr. La-
bouchere's incomprehension of the
British temperament, its profound
distaste for thieving, and easy disre-
gard of a skirmish, he was right in
assuming that justice in England
"wad thole amends." It is plain
that he was puzzled as well as af-
fronted ; and we Americans can sym-
pathize with his perplexity when we
read in one column of our morning
paper that a man was arrested, fined,
and sent to jail for carrying a flask
of whisky; and in another column
that a gang of thieves had carted
away, without let or hindrance, four-
teen barrels of whisky, valued at
$21,000, from a bonded warehouse.
The extraordinary acuteness of the
law in X-raying a citizen's hip pocket,
and bringing to light one little flask,
contrasts strangely with its extraor-
dinary obtuseness in allowing to male-
factors all the leisure and liberty
needed for rolling down fourteen bar-
rels from the high racks where they
were stored, examining their con-
tents, piling them on a truck, and
carrying them peacefully away.
The bulk and weight of merchan-
dise would seem to the uninitiated to
be an important factor in its safety;
but this is because we picture thieves
as subject to intrusion. The burglars
who removed from the shelves of a
New York dealer twelve hundred silk
sweaters, weighing half a ton, and
valued at $30,000, were undaunted by
the specific gravity of their find.
There is something oppressive in the
mere thought of half a ton of sweat-
ers, and it must have taken patience
and perseverance to purloin them.
But as $60,000 worth of silk coats
had been stolen from an adjacent
building two weeks before, and $35,-
000 worth of clothing from a build-
ing in the rear one week before that,
the burglars were probably working
along familiar and accustomed lines.
With an intelligence almost human,
the detectives employed on the case
opined that all three burglaries were
committed by the same band ; but re-
gretted that "in each instance they
were so careful about their move-
ments that they did not leave a single
clue." One wonders what these an-
noyed officials expected to find. Visit-
ing cards and telephone numbers to
facilitate arrest?
That liquor brought from unregen-
erate ports to the United States
should be discovered and confiscated
is natural enough. All the agents
have to do is to search every boat
that comes along, and sooner or later
they will find something. But that
two men who distilled a little whisky
in the tranquil privacy of a Bronx
stable should have been swiftly ap-
prehended, and severely punished,
illustrates what we like to call the
"Argus eyes" and the "long arm" of
the law. Apparently the only safe
thing to do with whisky in this coun-
try is to steal it. This is so well un-
derstood that six million dollars'
worth has been unlawfully removed
from the guardianship of the Re-
public.
When booty of lighter weight and
higher value is desired, the burglar
transforms himself into a "motor
bandit," and carries off his prize on
sunny days at noon. If he works
along the line of least resistance, he
is content to smash a jeweler's win-
dow glass, take what he wants from
the window, step into his confeder-
ate's "high-speed" motor, and disap-
pear behind a smoke screen from the
gaping crowd in the street. If his
confidence and his cupidity run high,
he walks with a few well-selected as-
sociates into the jeweler's shop, holds
up clerks and customers with revol-
vers, helps himself to whatever is
most costly, and retires in good form
to the waiting car.
This occurs so often, and with such
monotonous sameness, that each new
crime reads like a repetition of the
old one. I know few things more in-
telligible or more pitiful than the de-
fiance of a Chicago jeweler, who,
when confronted with the customary
bandits and the customary revolvers,
and bidden to open his safe, answered
desperately: "Go ahead and shoot!
I've been robbed so often, and lost
so much, that I'd just as soon you
would." The robbers, so bidden, did
shoot ; then herded the two clerks into
a rear room, emptied the jewel cases
into a canvas bag, and left their vic-
tim huddled bleeding and unconscious
on the floor. God is in his Heaven,
without doubt; but all is not right
with a world in which such things
happen daily.
There, is a periodical published
weekly in New York called the
Jewelers' Circular, which is presum-
ably bought and read by men in that
line of business. I picked up a copy
for May 19, 1920, expecting to find
articles on goldsmith's work and pre-
cious stones; instead of which this
particular number read like an echo
of the Police Gazette. There was
first of all a description of a "Burglar-
Proof Show Window," protected by
two sheets of fine glass with a "py-
roxylin plastic sheet" between them,
and warranted to give window-
smashers "the surprise of their young
lives." Next came a long account of
the ingenious robbing of Philadelphia
jewelers in a Philadelphia hotel by an
imitation cripple, who had $35,000
worth of jewels sent to his apart-
ments, and took away all he wanted,
after locking up the messenger in a
bath-room. This account was hope-
fully headed, "No Trace of Gem Ban-
dit."
Two pages further on there was an
interesting paper on a Jekyll and
Hyde chauffeur who ran a respectable
car for a respectable family in the
June 30, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[669
daytime, and a bandit car for bur-
glars at night. This was followed by
a warning to Chicago and Milwaukee
jewelers to be on their guard against
a young man of simple and confiding
manners who desires to look at unset
diamonds for an engagement ring,
and who manages to leave a paste
substitute for at least one valuable
stone. Then came a photograph of
Pedro Silva, a young Italian who,
with a Mexican accomplice, raided a
number of jewelers' shops in the
State of Kansas. Then a brief dis-
sertation on some New Jersey safe-
breakers, an account of a pearl rob-
bery in New Orleans, a diamond rob-
bery in Cincinnati, a diamond and
pearl robbery in Kansas City, another
in Chicago ("no clue to the robbers"),
and last but not least the pleasant tale
of the recovery of jewels stolen from
Sioux City, because the bandits' car
stuck in the mud. All honor to the
bad roads of Iowa !
It is a generous showing for a week.
When Mr. William E. Johnson, known
to newspaper readers as "Pussyfoot"
Johnson (a phrase equally offensive
to prohibitionists and to cat-lovers),
spoke last March in Paris to the
French Anti-Alcoholic League, he told
his audience that in his arid and ad-
mirable land, "The prisons are empty,
the banks are full, the people are hap-
py." A terrestrial paradise, not clearly
recognizable to those who live in it.
If the people are happy, they have a
confoundedly uneasy way of mani-
festing their content. If the banks
are full, money is tight. If the pris-
ons are empty, it is partly because
minor offenses are less frequent, and
partly because major offenders, who
ought to be in prison, are at large.
The preposterously high rates of bur-
glar insurance point to a state of
recognized insecurity. When that op-
pressed member of the public body
known as the tax-payer protests
against these rates, he is told that the
steady increase of burglary, the value
of the goods stolen, and the impossi-
bility of obtaining either protection
or restitution, make such insurance
the costly thing it is, and may end
by making it impossible.
To say that this carnival of crime
is attributable to "widespread social
conditions" is simple, safe, and un-
hampered by any promise of better-
ment. A Tammany administration
may account for the lawlessness of
New York, but not for the lawless-
ness of other cities. Mr. Arthur
Woods, an able ex-Police-Commis-
sioner of New York, has informed us
in the pages of the New York Tri-
bune that "Scientific policing of a city
is comparatively a new thing in our
American life," and adds that the
great Metropolis has given "intensive
study" to the needs of every precinct
she controls. This sounds hopeful;
but the edge is taken off our confi-
dence when we read further on that
"there are on an average twenty-five
persons a day arrested in New York
who are mentally defective." Of
course! These are just the people
who would be arrested — as easily
scooped up as were the drunks and
disorderlies of the old bad days, as
far removed from the disobliging
criminals who carry off a ton and a
half of goods, and leave no "clue" be-
hind them.
An anonymous ex-convict, writing
recently in the Outlook, regrets that
the judges of the criminal courts
should so often come to the bench
with "blunted ethical perceptions."
Curiously enough, this is a phrase
which the unenlightened have been
wont to apply to wrong-doers. It is
not only the men who strip show-
cases, open safes, hold up paymasters,
and shoot the disaffected whose
standard of ethics seems imperfect.
Eighty-two lynchings in the year 1919
would seem to indicate that trial by
jury had grown distasteful to a sec-
tion of the public. The men who of-
fended the majesty of the law by dis-
tilling a few gallons of whisky in a
stable were sent — very properly — to
prison. The man who offended the
majesty of the law by standing up
in a Virginia courtroom and saying
that he hoped to see the American
flag go under, and the red flag float
in its stead, had his bond reduced to
one-tenth of the original sum, through
the courtesy of the Department of
Labor in Washington, and was
promptly released to do all in his
power to lower the Stars and Stripes.
The same leniency was accorded to
Robert Minor, who, having striven
without much success to undermine
the loyalty of the American soldiers
at Coblenz, and win them over to Ger-
many and the Spartacists, was freed
from the annoyance of military re-
straint, and suffered to return to the
United States, to pursue his labors
under more harmonious conditions.
The consideration shown to these of-
fenders was in exact proportion to
the gravity of their offense.
It is an old story, and far more uni-
versal than Mr. Labouch^re ever sus-
pected. The most painful problem
which confronted us in the great war
was the slacker, a very human per-
son, after all, whom we took little
trouble to understand. Courage is
largely a matter of education, loyalty
of tradition. The slacker had, as a
rule, neither education nor tradition
to help him face the guns. Dvdce et
decorum est pro patria mori would
have meant as little to him in one
language as in another. He was sim-
ply and honestly afraid; and the ac-
counts he could not help hearing of
Germany's ferocity lent anguish to
his fear. An inglorious and pitiful
figure whose hard fate it was to be
asked for greater things than his na-
ture could yield.
For such a culprit, lenity is as rea-
sonable as it is right. But when that
arch-slacker Bergdoll, whose name,
Grover Cleveland, insults the memory
of a great American, illustrated the
ease with which wealth evades the
law, the scales of justice seemed a bit
unbalanced. This young German-
American has always entertained a
lively contempt for restrictions of any
sort. When he drove a car, he drove
it recklessly. When he was deprived
of his license, he went on driving
without one. When he played at
aviation, he flew his plane perilously
low over the city's roofs. When he
refused his service (it wouldn't have
been worth much) to his country, he
did so defiantly and rejoicingly, send-
ing derisive postals from various
States to the disappointed officials of
the Draft Board. It was a superla-
tive contempt for authority which in-
duced him to return home after the
armistice, and which finally compelled
his arrest.
670]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 59
Now why should Mr. Gibboney and
Mr. Romig have assured the public
that Bergdoll would have been re-
leased anyhow as soon as the adju-
tant-general had reviewed the case;
and lamented that the "impatience" of
their young friend had made him un-
willing to bide a few weeks longer in
prison. Apparently it was a question
of patience or impatience, of willing-
ness or unwillingness, and the deci-
sion was left to the prisoner.
In Mr. Galsworthy's last volume of
tales there is a heart-rending sketch
of a good, a very good, German in
London, who is interned during sev-
eral years of the war, to the ruin of
himself and his family. It is the kind
of stor>- which is sure to strike a sym-
pathetic chord in the sentimentalist's
heart. The disastrous results of Eng-
land's long delay in interning her
German residents is naturally not al-
luded to. The inevitable inclusion
of the innocent with the guilty in a
general internment is dwelt upon with
emphasis. Consequently, violence and
treachery are allowed to drop out of
sight, and censure is reserved for the
possible blunder of the well-inten-
tioned.
France's indulgence to the great of-
fender is proved by the clemency ac-
corded to Caillaux, for whom "ex-
tenuating circumstances" were dis-
covered, but not divulged, who was
held to have served his term while
waiting for trial, whose other penal-
ties were too light for consideration,
and who is once more at liberty to
dishonor his country's name. It took
the courage and the noble rage of
Clemenceau to compel a prosecutioii.
An acquittal was not possible. But
that Caillaux should walk, free and
disdainful, over the graves of French
soldiers whose work he strove to
undo, is an insult to every man who
died for France. There was a bitter
irony in inviting Mr. Hearst to help
welcome our returning troops. Had
Caillaux been at large on the Four-
teenth of July, he might have oc-
cupied a distinguished post at the
Fete de la Victoire. Was Benedict
Arnold asked to be a guest of
honor at the inauguration of Wash-
ington ?
Agnes Repplier
The Monroe Doctrine as an Adven-
ture in Foreign Policy
TN American history every departure
-'- in foreign policy from one based
upon geographical isolation is an ad-
venture into world politics. Wash-
ington laid the basis of the policy of
isolation, and for an immediate pur-
pose— to protect the United States
from its late enemy. Great Britain,
and likewise from its ally, France.
His goal was freedom of action and
an American character. Jefferson
wrote of isolation as an end in itself.
He declared in his inaugural that
there was enough land within the
bounds of the United States, that is
east of the Mississippi, for "the
thousandth and the thousandth gen-
eration." He recommended to Con-
gress the building of a dock where the
navy might be "laid up dry and under
cover from the sun," and pinned his
faith to such peaceful coercion as em-
bargoes. Two wars in rapid succes-
sion— that with the Barbary States
and that with Great Britain — seemed
to indicate that isolation of a nation's
life and interests was difficult in the
world as it was.
The occasion of the first formal ad-
venture in American history in for-
eign policy was an aftermath of the
Napoleonic wars. The powers of
Europe, freed from the menace of
Napoleon, turned to rebuilding their
fences at home and to shepherding
their flocks abroad. Fur traders of
Great Britain and Russia and mis-
sionaries of Spain, as well as explor-
ers and traders of the United States,
were beginning to meet on the Pacific
slopes of North America. It was a
remote problem for either nation.
But the United States, as well as the
other Powers, had a Secretary of For-
eign Affairs planning for a distant
future. In 1818 John Quincy Adams
held the British advance into the Ore-
gon country within bounds by the
agreement that for the next ten
years, at least, there should be joint
occupation. The following year a
treaty with Spain limited the north-
ward reach of the Spanish claims on
the Pacific coast to the forty-second
parallel. A treaty of 1824 likewise
limited the southward reach of Rus-
sia with the parallel which is now the
southern boundary of Alaska. Diplo-
macy was making progress with one
world problem — that of the owner-
ship of the Pacific side of North
America. Everywhere the rivals to
the United States were thinned down
to one: Spain in California, England
in the Oregon country, and Russia in
Alaska, a region in which the United
States at the time had about as much
interest as a Western farmer has in
Uganda or Timbuctu. During the
correspondence of Adams with the
Russian Government — to be exact, on
July 17, 1823— he had asserted "that
the American continents were no
longer subjects for any new Euro-
pean colonial establishment."
A second problem of world politics
emerged in 1822. Rumor ran that a
revolution impended in Cuba ; in fact,
some of the would-be insurgents made
advances to the United States for an-
nexation. England, France, and the
United States each felt that the con-
trol of Cuba would be vital to its in-
terests. England went so far as to
send a fleet to the waters of Cuba and
Porto Rico for the purpose of guard-
ing its commerce and checkmating
annexation by the United States. The
move aroused the American Govern-
ment. Adams sent a letter to the
Minister at the court of Spain outlin-
ing the policy of the United States in
regard to Cuba. That island, he said,
is a natural appendage of the United
States, bound to become "indispen-
sable to the continuance and the in-
tegrity of the Union itself" within
half a century, and destined by all
the laws of political gravitation to
fall to the North American Union in
the process of time. In the mean-
time it was the policy of the United
States to favor Spain's retention of
both Cuba and Porto Rico. The let-
ter, which bore the date of April 28,
1823, included the significant state-
ment that the United States would
not interfere with the dependencies
June 30, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[671
of European Powers in the new
world.
The third problem of the United
States arose from the rumor that
Austria, Russia, Prussia, and France
of the Bourbon restoration, all joined
together in a sort of league of peace
for and by benevolent despots, were to
aid Spain in reconquering its Span-
ish American colonies. The danger
was, perhaps, remote, but so far as it
was real it threatened the interests
of both Great Britain and the United
States, and started forces which
tended to establish a rapprochement
between the two. During the sum-
mer and early fall of 1823 Canning
for Great Britain and Adams for the
United States watched closely the
movements of the European allies.
The American interest in Chile, Peru,
and Argentina about equaled that of
to-day in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and
Serbia — namely, the wish to secure
for the small States in South America
an opportunity to continue and de-
velop their democratic organization,
and beyond this to set up a new
world order in the regions which they
occupied, an order of peace and self-
development. The liberal elements
in Great Britain shared this Amer-
ican sentiment. The powerful com-
mercial interests of the kingdom were
interested in the retention of the trade
relations which they had established
with the revolutionary republics.
Four times Canning, casting about
for an effective policy, suggested in
one form or another a joint declara-
tion by the United States and Great
Britain against any plan to subju-
gate for Spain the Hispanic-Amer-
ican Republics. President Monroe's
first impulse was to accede to Can-
ning's plan. The ex-Presidents, Jef-
ferson and Madison, were consulted.
They, too, favored the entente with
Great Britain. They seemed to think
such a policy would separate Great
Britain entirely from the European
•coalition and align that Power defi-
nitely and finally upon the side of
free government. Jefferson recog-
nized that such a course might block
the annexation of Cuba by the United
States, but he was willing to make
the sacrifice for the greater benefits
which he saw in the powerful combi-
nation with Great Britain in a good
cause. Madison wanted cooperation
to go further and take the form of in-
tervention in behalf of the liberals in
Spain and the Greeks struggling for
freedom from Turkey. Many of the
leading men of the day, members of
Congress like Webster and Clay,
elder statesmen like Gallatin, sup-
ported intervention in behalf of lib-
eralism everywhere. All the para-
phernalia of the American foreign
policy — aloofness, isolation, non-en-
tangling alliances which time had
gathered — were seemingly to be
thrown overboard.
The Secretary of State, who had
spent the summer in his New Eng-
land home, returned to Washington
in October to find the new foreign
policy taking shape. With the Rus-
sian measures for the colonization of
the Pacific coast and the British de-
signs on Cuba and the plans of the
league for a South American restora-
tion all in mind as the separate moves
in world politics, he took the position
that the United States ought to act
separately "rather than to come in as
a cock-boat in the wake of a British
man-of-war," to declare its own pol-
icy, and thus in effect make of these
combined episodes the elements of a
popular national foreign policy. "The
ground I wish to take," he said, "is
that of earnest remonstrance against
the interference of European policy
by force with South America, but to
disclaim all interference on our part
with Europe ; to make an American
cause and adhere inflexibly to that."
Such a procedure had the added ad-
vantage, no mean one for an out-and-
out expansionist like Adams, that it
blocked further territorial acquisi-
tions by Great Britain without in the
slightest degree embarrassing the ex-
pansion of the United States. If it
was Canning's double purpose, as
some imagine, by an alliance with the
United States to save British com-
merce in Latin America and check-
mate the United States in Cuba,
Adams had played the game of the
diplomat well for a son of the new
world.
Monroe accepted the views of his
Secretary of State and revised the
earlier draft of his message to Con-
gress to include them. The foreign
policy of John Quincy A'dams became
the Monroe Doctrine by full and
frank adoption.
The historian gives Monroe's for-
eign policy a greater unity than it
probably had in its author's mind.
The message was discursive in form.
The parts which told o{ the measures
which had been taken upon foreign
policy were scattered throughout the
message, in connection with the sev-
eral subjects under discussion. The
combination of these paragraphs into
the so-called Monrce Doctrine gives
the policy a greater force than it had
in the original form. The purpose of
the framers is none the less clear and
positive — to secure the Americas for
the Americans. That the United
States was one of the Americas and
to be the greatest beneficiary was
only incidental. Those that see na-
tional selfishness written throughout
miss the spirit of the new order
which the authors sought to found for
the western hemisphere. They pro-
posed to establish the new order by
removing from the world Powers the
temptation for a war for the division
of the Americas. They sought to
avoid the nineteenth century counter-
part of the colonial French and Indian
wars. The clause against further
colonization was an announcement
that the United States was endeavor-
ing to terminate the rivalry of
the nations of Europe in the settle-
ment of the Americas begun with
Columbus, Cabot, and Cartier. This
meant that the settlement of the wild
lands of the Americas was to be left
to the nations then claiming them.
The clause against intervention of
European powers in South American
affairs assumed that there was an
American system of government es-
sentially different from that of Eu-
rope, and announced that the United
States would "consider anj' attempt
on their part to extend their sj'stem
to any portion of this hemisphere as
dangerous to our peace and safety."
European Powers with American col-
onies were assured that the United
States had no intention of interfering
with them.
One part of the old foreign policy
remained, that in regard to Europe:;
672]
THE ^VEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 59
"not to interfere with the internal
concerns of any of its Powers ; to con-
sider the Government, de facto, as
the legitimate Government for us ; to
cultivate friendly relations with it,
and to preserve those relations by
frank, firm, and manly policy, meet-
ing, in all instances, the just claims
of every Power, submitting to in-
juries from none."
The policy of Washington and Jef-
ferson had comprised only the inter-
ests of the eastern portion of the
North American continent. That of
Adams and Monroe included the two
Americas; the first had been hardly
continental in scope, the second hemi-
spheric. The United States knew
neither Asia nor Africa as yet; it
would continue to hold aloof from old
world politics; it would adventure
wholesouled into the politics of the
new world. What the adventure meant
or might mean men stood ready to
foretell. When the popular Speaker
of the House of Representatives
attempted to place Congress upon
record for Monroe's adventure by a
resolution of endorsement, he found
the Congressmen, mainly on grounds
of expediency, unwilling to commit
themselves. John Randolph voiced the
open opposition. "You will put the
peace of the nation into peril," he
said, "and for whom? For a people
of whom we know almost as little as
we do about the Greeks. Can any
man in this House say what even is
the state of society in Buenos Aires —
its moral condition, etc.? Let us ad-
here to the policy laid down by the
second, as well as the first founder of
our Republic ... by him who was
the Camillus as well as the Romulus
of the infant state : to the policy of
peace, commerce, and honest friend-
ship with all nations, entangling alli-
ances with none; for to entangling
alliances we must come if you once
embark in such projects as this." At
least one Western paper, the Cleve-
land Herald, thought that the country
would be unwisely guided if it
should be involved in a war to defend
nations "whose claims on us, politi-
cally, are limited to our best wishes
and sympathies."
Only ignorance of the world as it
was could make one say that the new
world entered into an era of peace
"because of the adventure of Monroe.
While the American President was
leading the United States from what
might have become a narrow-vis-
ioned isolation, Canning placed the
British nation on record. The allied
Powers of Europe were given to un-
derstand that intervention in His-
panic-American affairs would involve
the interests of Great Britain. And
history records that no intervention
took place in that generation.
Elbert J. Benton
Jobs for New Brooms
1 DON'T envy the statesman, patriot,
or politician, whoever he may be,
who comes to our town next March to
be President of the United States for
four years. I say explicitly four years be-
cause all the chances are that he will
never serve a second term. He will find a
job of house-cleaning facing him which
he can not escape. It must be done. It
has been put off too long already. It
must be a real spring house-cleaning,
too; not an ordinary dusting and sweep-
ing. Now, everybody knows how dis-
agreeable that is, how it frazzles nerves,
destroys a pleasant routine, and makes
for wranglings and janglings. The best
that can be said for it is that it is a
necessary evil.
If what has to be done in our national
household is done, a great many persons
will be disturbed and made uncomfort-
able and unhappy. They will resent it and
lay the blame for their trouble on the
President who undertakes the rehabilita-
tion and reorganization of all the rou-
tine processes and normal necessary
functions of day-by-day public business.
The new President will have to work.
He won't be able to put in much time
at being a great man and having noble
sentiments. The time has come to fix
the leak in the bathroom that is destroy-
ing the library ceiling. That sort of
thing won't wait forever. Or, to change
the figure, the new President, as the
want ads. put it, must not only be a
good chauffeur but a competent mech-
anician.
A blight rests on Washington at this
moment. Everybody knows that. All
the administrative processes are at the
lowest ebb of efficiency. Morale in the
departments and other executive estab-
lishments is equally low. There is no
hope of any recovery or change until a
new set of men comes in. The governmen-
tal machine will have to run along, as
best it may, under its own momentum
until next March. As proof of this, just
the other day one of the recently in-
ducted Cabinet officers was asked how
he liked his new job. He said he thought
it might be very interesting if he had
anything to do! His mind was simply
numbed by the prevalent lethargy. All
of his capacities employed to the utmost
could only begin to place his department
on the plane of efficiency where it should
be. It offers almost unlimited oppor-
tunities for constructive service that
would immediately benefit the condition
of all of us. Yet the man who should
furnish the springs of action, the mo-
tive power, signs his name at the place
indicated on routine papers, and deplores
that he has nothing to do.
The new President will have to alter
all that. He will have to bring a fresh
impulse and vitality into the whole execu-
tive branch of the Government. He will
need to bring to Washington with him
as chiefs of executive departments men
of enthusiasm, with capacity for hard
work and an understanding of the prob-
lems and necessities of the great mass of
clerks and subordinates who actually
carry on, under direction, the work of
government." They will find good mate-
rial here, but at this juncture tired and
discouraged and disillusioned. Also these
new executives will find drones, and dead
wood, and unfit material, the hodge-
podge accumulation of years. This will
have to be got rid of, and it won't be
easy. It will want skill and delicacy plus
a certain surgical ruthlessness.
The real construction job will be to
reorganize the several departments and
executive establishments. They are anti-
quated. They don't function properly and
to the extent of their capacities. As I may
phrase it: They don't develop their indi-
cated horse power. All of the depart-
ments have grown by accretion and not
by an orderly plan. They overlap in their
duties and responsibilities. Work is
duplicated, which is another way of say-
ing that time and money are wasted. I
am never tired of saying that it is your
money. The Government never earned a
penny. That is not its business. The
Government spends its billions every
year, but you earn it, and the Govern-
ment has an infinite capacity for spend-
ing. It is the thing it does best. It is
silly merely to complain of "Government
extravagance" while you do nothing to
stop it. It lies within your power.
John Sharp Williams used to say in the
old days when he was in the House that
the great main difference between serv-
ing in the State Legislature and in Con-
gress was that when a member went
home from the Legislature he was met at
the train by a delegation of his constitu-
ents who asked: "Why in Sam Hill did
you vote for that big appropriation?
Taxes in this State are too high already."
But when the members of Congress came
home after adjournment the same dele-
gation was at the train to ask: "Why
June 30, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[673
didn't you get a new post office, and a
public building at Pineville, and some-
thing for the district in the River and
Harbor bill?" The poor innocents
wanted some "Government money."
But all that is aside from my present
contention as to the immediate need of
reorganizing and rehabilitating the Gov-
ernment departments. I present a com-
pact bit of testimony from an expert and
competent witness, Representative Good,
Chairman of the Appropriations Commit-
tee of the House of Representatives:
To-day duplication in the Government serv-
ice abounds on every hand. For example,
eight different departments of the Government
with large overhead organizations are engaged
in engineering work in navigation, irrigation
and drainage : eleven different bureaus are en-
gaged in engineering research; twelve different
organizations are engaged in road construc-
tion, while twelve with large overhead organi-
zations are engaged in hydraulic construction,
and sixteen are engaged in surveying and rnap-
ping. Sixteen different bureaus exercise juris-
diction over waterpower development. Nine
different organizations are collecting informa-
tion on the consumption of coal. Forty-two
different organizations with overhead expenses
are dealing with the question of public health.
The Treasury Department, the War Depart-
ment, the Interior Department, and the Labor
Department each has a bureau dealing with
the question of general education. These de-
partments operate independently; instances of
cooperation between them are exceptional.
Each of these departments is manned at all
times with an organization prepared to carry
the "peak of the load," and maintains an ex-
pensive "ready to serve" personnel. A lack
of cooperation in the executive departments
necessarily leads to gross extravagance. The
system is wrong, and Congress alone can
change the system. If it fails to act now and
refuses to make the necessary changes in a
plan that is admittedly bad. Congress will and
should receive the condemnation of the Ameri-
can People.
But Congress has adjourned and has
not changed the system. It is not likely
that it will undertake it in the brief
fag-end of its life next winter. Any
real constructive changes and considera-
tion will have to be undertaken by the
new President and the new Congress
after next March. Congress did pass a
budget bill just before it adjourned that
might have proved the introductory step
to a real budget system, but the Presi-
dent vetoed it because he thought one of
its provisions usurped the prerogatives
of the Executive. This is one matter
than can be remedied next winter after
the elections. Whether it will be or
not remains to be seen.
As a minority stockholder in the oper-
ating company who has had exceptional
opportunities to observe, I must report
that the Ship of State not only needs a
new skipper and a new crew, but when
they are in charge, their first duty and
necessity will be to put the vessel in
dry dock for thorough overhauling and
repairs. She is not safe for passengers.
Edward G. Lowry
Washington, D. C.
Correspondence
List to Charles Kingsley
To the Editors of The Weekly Review:
Your readers may find in the following
poem by Charles Kingsley a stirring mes-
sage for the present generation.
W. B.
Tenafly, Neiu Jersey, June 11
THE DAY OF THE LORD
The day of the Lord is at hand, at hand :
Its storms roll up the sky:
The nations sleep starving on heaps of gold ;
All dreamers toss and sigh.
The night is darkest before the morn;
When the pain is sorest the child is born,
And the day of the Lord at hand.
Gather you, gather you, angels of God —
Freedom, and Mercy, and Truth;
Come ! for the earth is grown coward and old,
Come down, and renew us her youth,
Wisdom, Self-sacritice, Daring, and Love,
Haste to the battle-field, stoop from above,
To the day of the Lord at hand.
Gather you, gather you, hounds of hell —
Famine, and Plague, and War;
Idleness, Bigotry, Cant, and Misrule,
Gather, and fall in the snare!
Hireling and Mammonite, Bigot and Knave,
Crawl to the battle-field, sneak to your grave,
In the day of the Lord at hand.
Who would sit down and sigh for a lost age
of gold, ,
While the Lord of all ages is here?
True hearts will leap up at the trumpet of God,
And those who can suffer, can dare.
Each old age of gold was an iron age too,
And the meekest of saints may find stern work
to do
In the day of the Lord at hand.
The Right to Strike
To the Editors of The Weekly Review :
Originally the strike was labor's best
weapon for self-defence, and this first
law of nature has always been recognized
as above all customs and all statutes. In
self-defence a nation may abrogate a
treaty; a municipality may deprive a
citizen of his liberty; an individual may
commit manslaughter. In self-defence
workers have the right to strike. Re-
move the necessity of self-defence, how-
ever, and changed economic and political
conditions are fast removing it, and the
right to strike is at once limited. Treaty
breaking, false imprisonment, murder
are crimes recognized by all men; but
just what necessity of self-defence justi-
fies beyond all question the calling of a
strike is not yet determined. Governor
Allen and Mr. Gompers in their recent
debate both failed either to help their
followers to understand the real point at
issue, or to instruct public opinion
more justly to discriminate the basic
rights involved.
At the conferences held last fall before
the strike of the New York drug clerks
I listened to long debates that, if they
did little else, testified to this con-
fusion of first principles. The duty to
the public of the trained pharmacist,
practicing his profession under license
from the State, and the right of the
public to the protection of its health by
his properly trained skill, were mixed
hopelessly with the individual rights of
the clerks and their families and the re-
dress they sought for inadequate pay
and very long hours of work. Each side
admitted the two contentions of their
opponents. Both cited the Boston police
strike, which at the time was unsettled,
as proof of their better claims. An em-
ploying druggist used it in defence of
the right of public safety against the
right to strike. The union organizer used
it to justify any strike called because of
intolerable hours and working conditions.
He did not, however, convince his hear-
ers, who were too familiar with Ameri-
can city politics to believe that a strike
was necessary to wring from the voters
fair working hours and decent station
houses for the police force. In that strike
no question of self-defence was raised in
impartial minds. Nevertheless, the plea
of self-defence for the Boston police was
made by Mr. Gompers himself, and the
repeated characterization of strikes as
"the last resort" by union leaders is a
tacit admission. In many strikes the
issues are not sharply defined; but it is
increasingly clear that, when the neces-
sity of an appeal to force can not be
proved, then the right to strike comes
into conflict with other rights.
Intimately connected with the right to
strike are the rights of the workers
themselves. To deny a worker the right
to leave any employment that for any
reason whatever is distasteful to him
is to establish industrial slavery. To
take from a worker that right to accept
any employment upon whatever terms
he sees f^t is but to sanction an industrial
tyranny as degrading and as dangerous.
If men, as individuals or as members
of an organization, have the right to
leave enxgloyment, then other men have
the right, singly or in a body, to take
emplojmient, even upon terms unsatisfac-
tory to others. This is contrary to the
theory of the strike held by union lead-
ers. They have always maintained that
men leaving work in a body secure by
their concerted action an option on their
former jobs. Just what proprietary
rights are acquired by the seemingly
contradictory means of a strike must
be reconciled, sooner or later, with the
individual rights of both the employers
and other workers. This is the very
latch-string to the door of the open or
the closed shop.
The right to strike often impinges
upon property rights. Leaving out of
consideration both the willful destruction
of property and the breaking of con-
tracts, the mere act of striking, the stop-
674]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 59
ping of production, the closing down of
a plant, often involves great financial
loss. Property rights are not paramount
to human rights; but they are our oldest
economic rights upon which, as a foun-
dation, rests our whole economic struc-
ture. The right of a man to the fruits
of his labor, to possess them for his own
use and to dispose of them as he sees
fit, so long as he acts within the bounds
of law and order, is the foundation of
our society, the first cause of all labor-
in both its broadest and most restricted
meanings. The Governor of Kansas and
the President of the Federation of Labor
would join to defend this right, for much
as it has been abused, and sharply as it
is criticized to-day, it is still the most
eagerly sought right free men possess.
During the past decade the widened
scope of the unions and their develop-
ment into closely controlled national or-
ganizations have brought the right to
strike into increasingly direct conflict
with the rights of the public. Formerly,
their domain was confined almost wholly
to skilled workers in industrial fields : to-
day, they are steadfastly working to ex-
tend their influence over retail trades,
over the professions, and among Govern-
ment employees. A strike that calls out
the loom workers in the textile mills of
one town is a very different thing from
a strike that cuts off the whole nation's
coal supply. A demand for ten cents an
hour increase in wages made upon a pri-
vate corporation is not at all the same
thing as a threat to the Congress of the
United States that it must pass, before
a certain fatal hour, a law designed solely
for the benefit of railroad employees.
The strike is beginning to involve the
people at large. The very size and
strength of the unions make it impossi-
ble for them to employ their strike
weapon without hurting the bystander,
and self-defence is becoming a preroga-
tive, not of the unions, but of the public.
Nevertheless, the unions continue to
brandish their weapon threateningly, and
they do not hesitate to wield it ruth-
lessly. Any suggestion that they disarm
in the interest of public safety meets
determined opposition. Union leaders
oppose compulsory arbitration because it
curtails the right to strike. They de-
mand the elimination of the injunction
in time of strike on the ground that it
nullifies their right to strike. They main-
tain that the application of anti-Trust
laws to labor organization is unjust, be-
cause it involves the right to strike.
Whether they are appealing to the public,
rallying their followers, or trying their
case in the courts, they make their stand
upon the right to strike.
Definition of this right is obviously
the key to the problems of industrial re-
adjustment, and for this reason indus-
trial tribunals whose decisions can estab-
lish precedents for testing the right to
strike in conflict with other rights are
sorely needed to-day. "The State," as
inghram has pointed out, "claims and
exercises a controlling and regulating au-
thority over every sphere of social life,
including the economic, in order to bring
individual action into harmony with the
good of the whole." This harmony is
not possible until the proper limits are
set to conflicting rights that involve all
classes of society. In the more restricted
field this is even more imperative, and
industrial peace depends upon a precise
definition of the right to strike.
William Haynes
New York, June 15
Our Dead in France
To the Editors of THE Weekly Revikw :
I have no wish to intrude myself into
the discussion of a question which is for
America wholly a question of national
and even of family concern. It is for
the parents of the soldiers who died in
France, and for them only, to decide
whether they shall bring home the bodies
of their sons or leave them at rest in the
spot where they fell gloriously in sup-
port of the common cause.
But there is one remark which per-
haps I have the right to make, if only as
Chaplain of the American Ambulance at
Neuilly where we cared for eight thou-
sand of your wounded (along with four-
teen thousand of our own) and where
many died in spite of the admirable care
of your nurses and doctors: and that is
that the graves of all your soldiers, killed
on the field of battle or dying in the hos-
pitals, are tended with pious care in every
cemetery where they lie. The public
authorities have seen to it that these
graves were properly arranged and cared
for; the women of France cover them
with flowers and greenery as if they were
those of their own children; priests and
ministers of religion hold services there
on anniversaries and other days of na-
tional observance.
I quite understand that many families
would wish to lay their heroes beside
their ancestors ; and there are some even
in France who would prefer it so. But
those who leave them with us should
know of very truth that they are not,
and never will be, in a foreign land. I
even venture to think that there is in
their fate something even more touching
and more glorious.
So, at least, it seemed to your great
Theodore Roosevelt, whom I had the
honor and the consolation of seeing in
New York only two months before his
death. Speaking to me of his son Quen-
tin he said: "I have no intention of
bringing him home to America; I think
that our heroes ought to lie on the field
where they fell. But we shall come, his
mother and I, to pray at his grave." His
mother has come, and alone! She will
be able to tell other American mothers
what deep and comprehending sympathy
is extended in France to the families
which have so generously given their
sons and who confide them to our care
as the most sacred pledges of immortal
union between our two peoples.
Abbe Felix Klein
Meudon, near Paris, May 17
The Quantity Theory
To the Editors of The Weekly Review:
In a letter in a recent issue of the
Weekly Review Mr. Briggs suggested
that I blinked the fact that the standard
must be a commodity and thus was neces-
sarily affected in its value by its quan-
tity. Perhaps your correspondent is not
informed on the literature of the sub-
ject, or he would have known that in my
"Principles of Money," in Chap, vii, 127
pages were devoted to the "History and
Literature of the Quantity Theory."
From p. 226 throughout, especial atten-
tion was called to the point that a rise
of prices due to a fall in the value of the
standard was not a case covered by the
quantity theory. Of course, the stand-
ard is a commodity; it is affected in its
value by demand and supply. That is
an economic commonplace.
Price is a ratio of exchange between an
article and a standard, like gold. A
change of price can be caused by in-
fluences affecting either gold or the
article exchanged for it. Demand and
supply chiefly (since with an imperish-
able commodity like gold cost of produc-
tion has no immediate effect) regulate
the value of gold, so far as causes affect-
ing gold itself are concerned. But de-
mand and supply (as affected quickly
and directly by production-costs) operate
on the value of any other article. Hence,
price in fact is modified by any change
in two sets of forces, one on the side of
gold, and one on the side of goods. The
quantity theorists, however, insist that
prices are determined by the amount of
money and credit offered against goods
brought to market. The fundamental
error of the quantity theory, in my judg-
ment, is that it is one-sided, fixing prices
only through demand (or purchasing
power), wholly disregarding supply and
production-costs of the goods in the
market. In a former issue of the Weekly
Review I tried to point out the fallacy
of a theory of prices based only on de-
mand, and ignoring the causes working
on supply and supply-costs. In Professor
Irving Fisher's formula of the equation
of exchange there is no symbol repre-
senting production-costs. That such
costs do affect prices every day every
business man knows without the help of
an economist.
J. Laurence Laughlin
E. Jaffrey, N. H., June 16
June 30, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[675
Packing the Books
WE had reached the third and last
trunk : I stood up straight to rest
my tortured spine and mop my forehead.
The heat, this evening, was unspeakable;
Peter the parrot, happily recalling his
tropic isle, whetted his beak on his cage
and gave a ribald laugh. There had been
moments since dinner when he was the
only one on speaking terms with anybody
else. But, with trifling exceptions, Jane
and I had come through the ordeal with-
out breaking off diplomatic relations. I
had dropped one boot with a thump, and
juggled a mid-iron which crashed to the
floor. Then I had been caught trying to
wrap three tennis balls in a white silk
stocking (which was certainly not mine)
and had been told that as a trunk-
packer I am an obstacle. I believe that
Briggs's cartoons of "A Handy Man
about the House" are the work of a bitter
realist.
A small space remained, before the
tray went in. Jane pointed to it, and
asked, briefly, "Books"?
"Is that all the room there is left?
Then we'll have to take the other bag."
"Nonsense. You can get a dozen books
in there. That's all we need: we always
take more than we look at."
"Well, maybe a dozen will do — if we
can find small ones. It's plain we can
not take 'The Home Book of Verse' —
though I would like to."
"It's much too large, and heavy. We
must have small ones, that we can take
on walks with us; and books for me to
take over to the tennis court and read
aloud, while you are waiting for Jack-
son to come. He's always late. Besides,
small books are best for summer — Stev-
enson said so."
"It was Dr. Johnson, and it was winter.
Otherwise you are right. He said small
books are best to carry to the fireside —
and I do not believe he meant summer
firesides."
"I'm certain it was Stevenson."
"I'll bet you it was Dr. Johnson, and
I'll prove it."
So I reached for the last volume of
Boswell, and hunted for the reference in
the index. But of course I came across
the entry "Bagpipes," and could not re-
sist hunting it up, knowing Johnson
would have something extra venomous to
say about a Scotch institution like bag-
pipes. That is the trouble with the index
to Boswell. Next to the one in Wheat-
ley's edition of Pepys, it is the most dis-
tracting in the world. I never pick up
either without lapsing into semi-uncon-
sciousness, and returning to earth thirty
or forty minutes later, with three vol-
umes in each hand, trying to hold six
places open with as many fingers and
thumbs, and to run down seven differ-
ent and fascinating references which
have caught my eye. ("Babies" is an-
other interesting entry in Boswell.) Sud-
denly I became aware that Jane was
stuffing some useless clothing into the
space for books, and I uttered a howl
of protest.
"I thought you had decided not to
take any books," she murmured, grief-
stricken.
It was necessary for me to placate her,
and I did it by producing from behind
a row of books a number of little, fat red
volumes, comprising some of the less
known works of Mr. Trollope. Jane is a
nearly demented Trollopian, and this ad-
dition to the trunk was to suit her taste,
not mine. The day was when I could
have bounded the See of Barchester with
fair readiness, and described most of the
intrigues of that ecclesiastical cock-pit.
But Jane has long been graduated from
the elementary school, and can talk by
the hour of Phineas Finn's parliament-
ary career, of the Duke of Omnium, of
Lady Glencora, Lady Mason, and the rest.
She did not at all enjoy hearing some-
body remark, airily, that "Cabot Lodge
says you have to be middle-aged to read
Trollope," as she says that she began
to read him at eighteen, and that that was
not thousands of years ago. So she fell
with cries of joy upon "The Macdermots
of Ballycloran" and "The Bertrams" and
decided that room could be made in the
trunk, after all. I had another diplo-
matic triumph when I brought out two
small volumes of "The Early Diary of
Frances Bumey" — another of her fav-
orite personages. Then it seemed safe
to pander to my own tastes for ancient
mysteries and murders long ago. This
was "The Riddle of the Ruthvens" by
William Roughead — a retelling of old
tales of the kind that Stevenson and
Andrew Lang loved to hear, of the
Cowrie Conspiracy, of old Scotch witch-
craft and murder cases. It is a heavy
book and probably provoked an extra
curse from the men who lifted the trunk.
But Mr. Roughead, a sober Scottish law-
yer, sound in his learning, orderly in
his style, with a nice taste for trials and
blood-lettings (as the books which he has
edited go to prove) would attract me at
any time away from the newspaper
stories of murders. This and "Miss
Lulu Bett" — so highly recommended —
were the only new books we put in.
"Now, for some small ones," said Jane,
"for some that we like to read over, and
to read aloud. You never will listen to
Trollope."
We agreed without difficulty upon Max
Beerbohm's "Zuleika Dobson," so that we
might revel again in the wonderful pro-
posal of the Duke of Dorset. And we
had the book in the Modern Library
Series — made for summer and vacation
reading. Calverley's "Verses and Fly
Leaves" went in by unanimous consent.
We hesitated at the Leacock shelf, but
chose "Nonsense Novels," and finally de-
cided to take "Arcadian Adventures" as
well. I had had an adventure with a
Swami recently, at the library, and de-
sired to read about Ram Spudd and the
Yahi-Bahi Society once more. Of J. A.
Mitchell's we took "The Last American,"
and of Viel^'s, "The Inn of the Silver
Moon" — a book for summer reading be-
yond compare. Too few Americans have
had his light touch. Jane put in Lucas's
"The Open Road," for its pleasant prose
and verse, and I made no objection (for
I still felt uneasy about the two pounds
of Ruthvens), although I am beginning,
professionally, to growl about the end-
less anthologies. Chambers's novels are
not small, but they are light, and we own
two written in his golden period of inno-
cence, long before Mr. Hearst put hia
hands upon him. One of these is little
known to folk who think of Mr. Cham-
bers only as the author of his later novels
— it is "A King and a Few Dukes." The
other, "In Search of the Unknown" is
fantastic foolery, admirable for hot
weather.
Richard Jefferies's "The Story of My
Heart," like all good books, has achieved
editions in small size. I have heard it
denounced as mawkish, and it is true
that the melancholy strain is evident.
But it is musical prose, and, like all his
books, one to be read in the open air.
"Ballades and Rondeaus," edited by Glee-
son White — it is the only boon ever con-
ferred upon me by a card catalogue!
Once, desiring to write a vilanelle, or
maybe a rondeau, for the Harvard "Lam-
poon," and wondering what such a thing
might be like, I went to that dreadful
jungle — the catalogue of the library of
Harvard College. It directed me to Glee-
son White's book, where there is an
introduction which describes these verse
forms. But I never learned anything
from the introduction, for I opened to
the contents of the book itself — and what
would anyone care for essays upon pros-
ody after that? We put it in, and also
"The Crock of Gold," by James Stephens.
The Chief Packer now said that the
trunk was too full. But as I had taken
"The Crock of Gold" from the shelf the
book next to it fell down, as if it wished
to go with us. Picking it up I saw that
it was Maurice Baring's "Dead Letters,"
which I have already read four times,
and e.xpect and desire to read four times
again. It should go to the country with
us, it should. Jane said that there was
absolutely no room. I suggested that she
should take out her parasol, which has
pink spots, and is a wicked object in any
landscape. I further offered to sacrifice
two of her waists, and a roll of some-
thing that looked like chiffon. My gener-
osity was received without the least pre-
tence of interest, and in the end I carried
"Dead Letters" in my coat pocket.
Edmund Lester Pearson
676]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. .59
Book Reviews
Complexitie-*. of the Irish
Enigma
Ikelanu an Enemy of the Allies? (L'lrhnde
— EnHemte?) Translated from the French
of R. C. Escouflaire. New York: E. P.
Dutton and Company.
THIS book belongs to a type of litera-
ture which has of late just begun to
be published, and which aims at supply-
ing a real need. Men who have been
exasperated by the disclosure of intrigue
four years ago between Dublin and
Berlin, by the horrors of Sinn Fein out-
rage, and by the general intractableness
of Irish agitators, are writing their re-
cantation of a sympathy they once pro-
fessed. They tell us how a fresh survey
of the facts has shown them that Eng-
lish misgovernment in Ireland is much
overstated, that ancient wrongs long
since redressed are being trumpeted as
if they were grievances of to-day, and
that far less than justice is being done
to the honesty of British statesmen. It
is much to be desired that some such
corrective should be made available, for
the propagandists of "Ireland a Nation"
are often unfair, and there is widespread
delusion about that country's real ground
of complaint. Hence one turns with
keen interest and expectancy to those
writers who confess that they were long
misled, and announce that their eyes have
now been opened to the truth about Ire-
land and the Irish.
M. Escouflaire's book begins with the
question why Ireland is not on the side
of the Allied Powers, and for the answer
we are asked to note some psychological
peculiarities of the Irish race. It has,
like many other peoples, a tragic past, in
which it suffered much oppression from
a stronger neighbor. But, unlike other
peoples, it still lives in that past, refus-
ing under any circumstances and despite
the most ample reparation to let bygones
be bygones. When we call a thing "an-
cient history," says M. Escouflaire, we
mean that it has lost much of its im-
portance; but in Ireland people mean the
opposite. Their persisting demand upon
England in the twentieth century is like
a proposal that Europe should never have
peace until it had "liquidated all the hor-
rors of its past, from Charles the Bold
to the Duke of Alva, from the Sicilian
Vespers to the Palatinate." Moreover,
Ireland has made the unfortunate dis-
covery that she has a gift for interna-
tional "acting," by which sympathetic
emotion may be effectively stirred, and
she continues to play this part of the
injured innocent with quite undeserved
success.
Thus the present book aims at unde-
ceiving the public. M. Escouflaire re-
writes Anglo-Irish history, pointing out
the allowances which have to be made for
some stern measures of long ago, the
provocation which Ireland gave, the cor-
responding sins on her own part which
must be included in the account, the fact
that effort after effort has been made to
heal the sting of old wounds. So far the
purpose of his work seems admirable,
and it is written with a certain piquancy
of style by which interest is held
throughout. One must regret, however,
that the intention is so seriously marred
in the performance, and it is a reviewer's
plain duty to tell M. Escouflaire that the
task he has set himself is very much be-
yond his powers of criticism and his-
torical discrimination.
Not much can be hoped from those
who approach this difficult subject in so
inflamed a mood, and with knowledge so
sadly limited. One can, of course, under-
stand the bitterness of a Frenchman
whose outlook is determined by the mem-
ory of 1916, and by the thought of a
Dublin rising so ominously timed to
coincide with the desperate crisis of the
Allies. But M. Escouflaire professes to
be writing history, and he makes the
mistake of trying to prove immensely
too much. Having begun by accepting
the view of anti-British extremists as
completely established, he proceeds to the
conclusion that it is completely refuted,
and the simplicity of mind which made
him so easy a victim in the first case
has been no less fatal to his judgment in
the second. He is aware, indeed, that
there are fearful pages in the record of
Anglo-Irish government, but he thinks
they belong wholly to the period before
1829, and that the events since then, so
far as they were directed by English
Conservative statesmen, are a long series
of acts of generosity by which old griev-
ances should have been quite obliterated
for any race that knew what it was to be
grateful. For his former vision of the
"Martyred Isle" he substitutes the vision
of a churlish, petulant "Tragedy Queen,"
posing before the world with the myth
of her wrongs, and meeting every ad-
vance by her best-intentioned bene-
factors in a stubbornly vindictive spirit
of revenge.
It is lamentable to find an excellent
case given away like this. Sinn Feiners
could desire nothing better than that
such a book should be accepted as the
authoritative manifesto by their oppo-
nents. M. Escouflaire's own competence
in this field may be judged from a few
examples. Froude he thinks falsified his-
tory to exalt the Irish race! Whatever
other falsifications Froude may have
committed, this particular one can not be
laid to his charge, as all readers of "The
English in Ireland" must be aware. His
rhetoric rather suggests at times that of
M. Escouflaire himself, as when he sneers
at the race which can "bewail its wrongs
in wild and weeping eloquence in the
ears of mankind." The rebellion of 1798
was, it appears, specially inexcusable, be-
cause it came at a moment when the
Irish had been "overwhelmed with con-
cessions"; about the claim for parlia-
mentary reform and for Catholic eman-
cipation which had not yet been con-
ceded, and which entered so largely into
the motive for rebelling, our critic has
nothing to say. We are informed that
"since 1829 there has been practically
not the slightest inequality, civil or po-
litical, between Roman Catholics and
Protestants." Whether M. Escouflaire
judges it equal treatment that the sole
university worthy of the name and lav-
ishly endowed by state funds should have
remained for at least half a century a
Protestant preserve, whether he thinks
it fair that a Protestant State Church
should have been maintained by compul-
sory tribute in a country four-fifths
Catholic, whether he finds no hardship in
the monopolizing of Crown appointments,
civil and judicial, by a Protestant garri-
son and in the practical penalizing by
Crown patronage of those who adhered
to the ancient faith, or what dates he has
in mind for the Tithe War, the opening
of official posts in Trinity College, and
the first admission on terms anything
like equal of Catholic candidates for pub-
lic posts — about all this one is left to con-
jecture. Macaulay, who after all was
something of an historian in his leisure
time, and who was not quite devoid of
British loyalty, summed up the principle
of those Conservatives whom M. Escou-
flaire admires as that of yielding nothing
to justice and everything to fear.
But this French critic is so far from
the spirit of his own generous nation that
such virulence as he can spare from
Irish agitators is poured on the head of
English Liberals. He seems to have lit-
tle love for Mr. Lloyd George, and he
has an exasperating habit — perhaps bor-
rowed from Thucydides but now largely
obsolete — of presenting a statesman's
views by writing a speech for him, and
declaring that this expresses his attitude
"in effect." He is good enough to de-
scribe the British Prime Minister as
"formerly an intractable Radical, sud-
denly fired by patriotism," and I venture
to think that Mr. Lloyd George would
prefer writing his own speeches rather
than adopt the whirling words which M.
Escouflaire puts into his mouth as an ad-
dress to the Convention of 1917. No
doubt an Englishman, getting up in a
hurry an account of party strife at Paris,
might have his facts no less obscured,
his fictions no less radiant, his whole way
of presenting the case no less confused
by weak generalities and strong person-
alities. What, for instance, can any man
know about Charles Stewart Pamell
who speaks of his great "oratorical tri-
umphs"? But an Englishman would not
June 30, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[(577
meddle in this random way with a for-
eign field. And the present critic at
least would be sorry if the eye of a
German, at a loss to excuse von Beth-
mann-Hollweg's phrase about the "scrap
of paper," should light upon this French-
man's apology for the broken Treaty of
Limerick: "It is too much to hope that
a piece of parchment can prevent the
workings of natural and popular reac-
tions, as irresistible as the forces of
nature"! It betrays a sad lack of self-
criticism in the author that he let this
sentiment escape him without noticing
its applicability to the Prussian crime
against Belgium.
Thus M. Escouflaire's book must be
laid down with a sigh of disappointment.
It is the sort of work which can help no
one, a perfect specimen of how Irish mat-
ters should not be discussed, and those
most anxious for the object he sets be-
fore himself should be the first to re-
pudiate the methods by which he is seek-
ing it. Everywhere his tone is that of
an apologist for a super-State, enforcing
discipline upon barbarous natives, and
to be adored for occasional acts of clem-
ency. We know that tone, and the world
will listen to it no longer. The spirit
of the new time M. Escouflaire meets
with futile vituperation. As he glorifies
the House of Lords for its wisdom in
checkmating the elective Chamber, as he
hurls scurrilous epithets at Cobden and
Bright, at Gladstone, and Mr. Asquith,
and even Mr. Lloyd George, as he begins
by propounding a riddle and leaves us
more deeply than ever in the dark about
its solution, one hardly knows whether
to laugh or cry. Why is the Ireland of
1920 so different from the Ireland of
1914? For answer we get a storm of
abuse at the Irish temperament, and a
volley of bad names at English states-
men whom the misguided world has some-
how come to respect.
There are, it must be confessed, in
this book things both true and im-
portant, pungently and vividly set forth,
which one could have wished to see apart
from that setting of sheer nonsense by
which truth itself is discredited, and
that rancour of intemperateness which
M. Escouflaire endeavors to allay but
succeeds rather in exemplifying. He ob-
viously thinks that he has done a
great deal to expose a fraud, and
there are frauds both in the Irish
and in the anti-Irish case which need
exposure. The present critic hates Sinn
Fein and all its works as much as
M. Escouflaire can hate them, but he
would wish to see it attacked with artil-
lery not so far out of range. The com-
plexities of the Irish enigma still wait
for a more delicate hand, a finer his-
toric sense, and a better grasp of the con-
ditions of international friendship.
Herbert L. Stewart
The Mystery of Jutland
The Battle of Jutland. The Sowing and
Reaping of the British Navy. By Com-
mander Carlyon Bellairs, M.P. With maps
and diagrams. New York: George H.
Doran Company.
BOTH in Germany and in England the
battle of Jutland was hailed as a
victory. No sensible person long believed
either claim. If it were a German suc-
cess, why had Von Scheer fled to cover?
If it were a British victory, how had the
British fleet — strong two for one — lost
six big cruisers as against a battle
cruiser and one pre-dreadnought for
Germany? Something was wrong on the
face of it: the Germans, for no apparent
military reason, had conducted a rash but
eminently successful raid, while the
British had let slip a supreme chance to
destroy the German fleet. Meanwhile
the mystery has deepened because the
British oflicial accounts — enormous at the
first — have subsequently dealt only in
general terms, while the official maps
have plainly been merest approximations.
And Admiral Viscount Jellicoe himself
has hardly made the darkness more vis-
ible in his elaborate commentary on the
battle. It appears that he was baffled by
the flight of the Germans and the clos-
ing in of night. Against this the well-
informed reader will set the facts that
after his deployment at 6.16 P. M. there
remained three hours of daylight, while
his battle line had at least three knots
of speed over that of the Germans, not
to mention double weight of salvos.
Of this mystery Commander Bellairs
cff'ers a very simple explanation. Ad-
miral Jellicoe was repeatedly and grossly
unenterprising. Beatty, in his own
words, "delivered the German fleet into
his jaws," and he hesitated to close them.
The facts, according to our author, are
as follows: On May 30, 1916, Beatty's
three squadrons and Jellicoe's six took
the sea to meet the German fleet. From
3.47, May 31, Beatty engaged Admiral
Hipper's battle cruisers, and followed
him back to Von Scheer's main fleet.
Beatty continued the battle cruiser fight
for two hours and a half, under fright-
ful punishment, and about 6.16 P. M.
moved aside, still hammering the head of
the German line, to make place for
Jellicoe's fleet. Beatty still fought for
nearly three hours more. Jellicoe, as we
shall soon see, virtually elected not to
fight. Practically all the damage received
or inflicted in the battle was incurred
or wrought by Beatty or his sup-
porting squadron leaders. Hood and
Evans Thomas. Jellicoe's casualties in
the twenty-four minutes in which he was
partially engaged amounted to one
shell hit on the Colossus and the crip-
pling of the Marlborough through a
torpedo.
Jellicoe's moves, as analyzed by Com-
mander Bellairs, came to this: (1)
Coming down from Scapa, he failed to
establish visual links with Beatty, sev-
enty miles ahead, and thus located the
enemy only on contact. (2) At 5.30
P. M. he sent Hood with four battle
cruisers to the east to cut off possible
retreat of the Germans to the Baltic.
This was an unimaginative move. Hood's
squadron, while far too strong to be
detached for mere reconnaissance, was
too weak to check the supposed flight.
That Hood actually turned up at the
head of Beatty's hard-pressed line
was due to his splendid initiative and
to good luck, with no thanks to the
high command. (3) About six, sailing
south in five columns of squadrons, Jelli-
coe sighted the foe on the starboard bow,
to the south-west. Instead of making
the natural deployment to the right,
which would have given him immediate
contact with the whole German battle
line, he deployed to the left, away from
the enemy. The movement, begun at
6.14 or 6.16, was effected in some twenty
minutes. Von Scheer, seeing the formid-
able line stretching five miles ahead
of him, turned. Thus only the rear
divisions of Jellicoe's fleet were in action.
By the time Jellicoe's model single line-
of-battle had been formed, the ridiculous
situation arose that the British fighting
fleet was steaming at 17 knots in the
opposite direction from the fleeing Ger-
mans. At the very moment of Jellicoe's
evasive deployment the Invincible, De-
fence, and Warrior were done for. An
aggressive deployment to the right would
presumably have saved them. (4) Jelli-
coe pursued what had become a retreat
for about ten minutes, opening up an
additional four miles between himself
and the fleeing enemy. (5) After turn-
ing south to regain contact, Jellicoe twice
turned his whole formation away to avoid
feeble destroyer attacks, and at no time
increased his speed beyond 18 knots. (6)
At 7.32 P. M., Beatty, being still in con-
tact with the enemy, signalled for Jelli-
coe's leading squadron to join his line
and cut off the enemy. Jerrams was not
allowed to redeem the day by this cor-
rect manoeuvre, and the last chance for
the great fleet to do its work of annihila-
tion was ignored. (7) Although night
found Jellicoe between the enemy and
the Bight of Heligoland, with all the ad-
vantages of speed on his side, they read-
ily evaded him in the dark and got away
home. Such is briefly Commander Bel-
lairs' case against Jellicoe. It looks like
a true bill — like a case not for a vis-
county, but for a court martial. Captain
Persius' language seems both correct and
moderate when he writes of "the un-
skillful handling of the British fleet un-
der Admiral Jellicoe."
It should be said, however, that these
charges are made on partial information.
678]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 59
The laymen can readily grasp the diffi-
culty of plotting a battle on the high
seas. Ships' clocks differ slightly, ves-
sels are not always correctly identified,
bearings are sometimes bad approxima-
tions, everything is moving together.
Besides, the complete navy account of
the battle has not yet appeared. On the
other hand, most of the seven specifica-
tions above are of too general a sort to
be contested as facts, and nearly all are
admitted in Viscount Jellicoe's own book.
For e.xample, he elaborately defends a
deployment which amounted to an eva-
sion, because the obvious deployment to
the right and towards the enemy would
have involved punishment by destroyer
attack and gun fire during the evolution.
Against statistical comparisons of broad-
sides at given theoretical moments —
highly fallacious calculations — the ob-
server will set the fact that Jellicoe's
destroyers with their heavier guns should
handily have looked out for the German
torpedo craft, while ship for ship his
salvos outweighed the Germans by fifty
per cent., and he had about three fight-
ing ships for their two.
Tactically Jellicoe, as our author
clearly points out, indulged two fatal
misconceptions — first, the oft discredited
theory of the rigid, single line-of-battle ;
second, the illusion that a battle line five
miles long can be tactically fought by an
Admiral in the centre. Let us recall that
twenty minutes after the enemy's smoke
appears a modem sea fight will have been
finished. That means that the Admiral's
plan must be instantaneous, that the de-
tails must be left to his squadron lead-
ers, whose minds he must have impressed
with his tactical- principles and prefer-
ences through years of training. Ad-
miral Jellicoe, hesitating before the
sweetest sight that ever met a sea fight-
er's eye, wondering where to place his
mathematically correct line, affords a
spectacle as pathetically obsolete as the
Coliseum. Beatty had the German fleet
headed, an ideal situation. Jellicoe had
only to deploy towards the foe on Beatty,
and within a half hour there would have
been no German fleet. But he was not
quite clear as to the situation, and the
great fleet awaited his signal. Mean-
while the situation was perfectly plain
two miles to his right. Had Bumey on
the Marlborough been permitted a squad-
ron leader's initiative, he would immedi-
ately have turned to the right towards
the head of the German battle line, and
the four other squadrons would have fol-
lowed his move. Of course, that would
have involved risk and certain losses, but
the prize was the German fleet. Bumey,
as things were, merely awaited the signal
from the bewildered Admiral on the Iron
Duke.
We have been assuming, with our
author, that Jellicoe's mission was the
destruction of the High Seas Fleet. On
the contrary theory, that his mission was
to avoid a ding-dong fight, drive the
Germans home, and continue to exert
"passive pressure" from Scapa, all his
moves are entirely logical. On no other
supposition can they be justified. We
do not know what were his instructions
from the Admiralty. We do know that, if
Hipper and Von Scheer had been sunk,
the clearance of the Baltic offered merely
technical difficulties, Russia might have
been stiffened, the submarine menace,
which within a year was threatening
starvation for England, could have
been eradicated in a few months. Who-
ever was responsible, naval history
hardly shows a similar example of lost
opportunity.
But if Jellicoe was right, then Beatty
was entirely wrong. If his mission was
not to lead the German fleet to destruc-
tion— and so he undoubtedly read his
duty — but merely to see that it was
frightened back home, then he fought a
fight as needless as it was heroic, and
recklessly threw away his magnificent
battle cruisers. In short, it was absurd
to award viscounties to both Jellicoe and
Beatty. Both could not be right, and
one was unpardonably wrong. Only a
court martial could have elicited facts
which now remain in considerable ob-
scurity. Meanwhile the presumption is
in favor of the Admiral who acted in
Nelson's tradition.
Hamilton the Democrat
•Alexander Hamilton. By Henry Jones Ford.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
SIR OLIVER LODGE and others versed
in such matters believe, as we under-
stand, that the shades of the departed
can not communicate with earth other-
wise than through mediums. Few of
these gifted ladies have time to keep up
with current biographical and historical
literature, and the great who have
passed hence do not know of the efforts
of succeeding generations to pay them a
tribute of gratitude which their own
either altogether withheld or grudgingly
gave. If the spirit of Alexander Hamilton
could read what Professor Ford says
about him, he might feel that atonement
had been made for much that he suffered
in the flesh from the tongues and pens of
Monroe, Giles, Freneau, and others of
their way of thinking.
This, the latest of his biographers,
numbers him "among the greatest states-
men the world has produced." Well-in-
formed foreigners like Talleyrand in his
own era, and Oliver in ours, have so
ranked him. In this country. Federalists
and those who sympathize with the Fed-
eralist tradition, have left little unsaid
in praise of what he was and of what he
did.
The biographer, we believe, has always
belonged to the party first organized by
Jefferson, but for all that, he finds him-
self in sympathy with much of Hamil-
ton's teachings. In one of the most strik-
ing portions of his book, he points out
that Hamilton was far more of a demo-
crat than were many of his political op-
ponents, founders and leaders as they
were of the party which since the close of
their era has called itself Democratic.
As late as 1830, Madison and Monroe, in
the Constitutional Convention of Vir-
ginia, united with Marshall, in maintain-
ing property qualifications for voting, al-
though more than forty years before,
Hamilton had favored the election of the
Federal House of Representatives by uni-
versal manhood suffrage.
Hamilton's wish for a strong execu-
tive, with an absolute veto over Congres-
sional action, and with the right to ap-
point State Executives, may have in it
something of appeal to the writer of that
"Life of President Wilson" which four
years ago was used as a campaign biog-
raphy. He believes Hamilton's constitu-
tional idea to have been "plenary power
in the administration, subject to direct
and continuous accountability to the peo-
ple, maintained by a representative as-
sembly, broadly democratic in its char-
acter," while Jefferson wished thr.t the
"powers of government should be so
divided and balanced among several
bodies of magistracy as that no one could
transcend their legal limits without being
effectually checked and restrained by the
others." If he is right, it seems that
in the Presidential campaign upon which
the country is now entering, those who
think themselves to be followers of Ham-
ilton will be inclined to preach the Jef-
fersonian doctrine, while the defense of
many of President Wilson's actions will
lead the loyal members of his party to
champion Hamilton's views, whether they
be aware of it or not.
How Hamilton's plan would have
worked, no one can with certainty say.
Although the Presidency is without some
of the far-reaching powers he wished it
to have, its real influence has been
steadily growing, while that of Congress
has been shrinking. Professor Ford
thinks that it is quite possible that under
such a Constitution as Hamilton planned
the real weight of Congress would have
been greater than it now is. It would
almost certainly have had a far firmer
hold upon the imagination and affection
of the people, and in a democracy that
counts for much.
It must be borne in mind that Hamil-
ton expected that the principal officers
of the executive administration would
draft the legislation they thought expe-
dient, and would in person explain and
defend it on the floor of each of the
Houses. If throughout our history this
practice had been actually followed. Pro-
fessor Ford thinks Congress would be
more rather than less powerful to-day.
June 30, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[679
Such a method of legislating would
have been more dramatic and therefore
far more likely to attract and hold public
attention. The rejection of an important
ministerial measure would have been a
political event of the first order. The
Cabinet officer responsible for it might
not usually have lost his place, for the
Constitution carefully guards the Presi-
dential independence, but it is certain
that the heads of the great executive de-
partments under such a system would
necessarily have had to be chosen with
an eye to their ability to get on with
Congress. The possession of a mind
which would go along with that of the
President might have been a less im-
portant qualification.
The precedent which has ever since
excluded Cabinet ministers from direct
participation with Congress in the con-
sideration of legislation was made by
the First Congress. In coming to its
decision, the House followed the lead of
Madison. Professor Ford suspects that
he was anxious to keep Hamilton from
the floor, because he feared that the elo-
quent and persuasive Secretary of the
Treasury might favor the location of the
capital on the Susquehanna or the Dela-
ware, rather than on the Potomac. If
so, great consequences flowed from a
petty cause.
Most students of Hamilton will agree
with the author in thinking that the
years of his life of least worth either to
his country or to his fame were those
which follawed the accession of Adams to
the Presidency, although not all would
agree that they deserved the full meas-
ure of condemnation here visited upon
them. The fact is, under our system of
government, things are likely to work
badly whenever an influential section of
the party in power, consciously or even
unconsciously, looks for leadership to
some other than its President. Experi-
ence has shown this to be almost equally
true, whether the occupant of the White
House be somewhat vain and altogether
peppery, like the elder Adams, amiable
if perchance a trifle weak, like Buchanan,
or modest and good natured, like Taft,
and whether the unofficial leader be a
Hamilton, a Douglas, or a Roosevelt.
Such difficulties are by no means un-
known even under a parliamentary gov-
ernment of the British type, but there
they are usually, although of course not
always, speedily adjusted by the simple
expedient of calling the real head of the
party to office. Over here we have no
such easy way of setting things right,
and, upon each of the three occasions re-
ferred to, party disruption and loss of
power was the consequence — in the first
instance, forever; in the second, for
nearly a quarter of a century, and in
the third, for at least two Presidential
terms.
John C. Rose
Mission Life at St. Antoine
Le Petit Nord, or A>^kals or a Labrador
Harbour. By Anne Grenfell and Katie
Spalding. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
TTHE headquarters of Dr. Grenfell'a
A medical mission in Labrador is at
St. Antoine, situated far up on the
eastern side of the long tongue of New-
foundland which runs to the north.
Among the other institutions which have
grown up on that bleak spot is an or-
phanage for children who would other-
wise be utterly destitute. An English
lady. Miss Spalding, who came out to
take charge of it, wrote letters home to
a friend in Scotland. Those letters, to-
gether with some of Mrs. Grenfell's, have
been printed to form these annals. They
present a very vivid, unpretending pic-
ture of things as they really are in this
work, viewed by a capable, energetic,
and humorous temperament.
Hardships not a few were this lady's
lot before she ever reached her station —
seasickness, bad food, cold, wet, loss of
luggage, expectorating men on board a
crowded little steamer, loneliness, home-
sickness. Of all of these she makes light,
but they must have been real enough.
Her post in the orphanage was no bed
of roses. Winter lasts nine months. In
blizzards, the thermometer falls to thirty
below, and the snow sifts in through
every crack and crevice of the orphan-
age, in spite of double windows. A fire
may be burning briskly in the kitchen
range, and the water in the kettle frozen.
The mere mending and darning for a
family of three dozen sturdy children
is a sufficient task. Looking after them
when the whole family comes down with
measles would seem to be beyond any
one woman's strength. Christianity and
a strong sense of humor carry her
through. Both were sorely tried, how-
ever, when a bale of clothing donated
by kind friends at home was found to
consist of muslin blouses and' old ladies'
bonnets.
The need of such a mission must be
apparent to all. Miss Spalding draws an
unflattering picture of the local condi-
tions. "There is no education worthy
of the name, in many places no schools
at all, and in other places half-educated
teachers eking out a miserable existence
on a mere pittance. This is chiefly due
to the antediluvian custom of dividing
the Government educational grant on a
denominational basis. A large propor-
tion of the people can neither read nor
write. There are no roads; no means of
communication, no doctors or hospitals
(save the mission ones), no opportunities
for improvement, no industrial work,
practically no domestic animals, and on
Labrador, taxation without representa-
tion! There is only one hospital pro-
vided by the Government for the whole
of this island, and that one is at St.
John'.s, which is inaccessible to these
northern people for the greater part of
the year."
Like every other visitor to these
shores, Miss Spalding is impressed
with the truly Christian, boundless char-
ity of the very poor. She instances an
old blind Frenchman incapable of sup-
porting himself. "The neighbors vie
with each other by helping him. One
day a load of wood will find its way to
his door. The next a few fresh 'turr,'
a very 'fishy' sea auk, are left ever so
quietly within his woodshed — and so it
goes. It is a constant marvel to me that
these people, who live so perilously near
the margin of want, are always so eager
to share up."
The Doctor himself has provided the
book with a series of pen-and-ink draw-
ings, the humorous intention of which
is more commendable than the technique.
The frontispiece shows a steamer wal-
lowing in tremendous seas. It might
serve as an illustration for "The Descent
Into the Maelstrom"; but surely no
steamer could have carried so much sail
in such stress of weather.
Archibald MacMechan
Unhappy Tales
Maureen. By Patrick MacGill. New York :
Robert M. McBride and Company.
Harvest. By Mrs. Humphry Ward. New
York: Dodd, Mead and Company.
""lyTaureen" is another chapter in the
ifj. plaintive tale of Ireland as told by
her sons of this generation: the tale of
Kathleen ni Houlihan, beautiful and
adored, embodiment of an Ireland that
might be or might have been; and the
tale of a dull and sordid peasantrj', with
generous impulses but mean thoughts,
ridden by the gombeen man and the
parish priest: not, Kathleen or no Kath-
leen, the stuff of which a free people
is to be made. Such is the effect of the
testimony of these young Irish poets and
novelists. Their passionate love for Erin
is worship of a mystical queen: a wor-
ship disturbed and distracted by the
sight of the unseemly drab they have to
live with. Often, as in the recent "Cb.nk-
ing of Chains" of Brinsley MacNamara,
this contrast is the overt theme of the
story teller. With Patrick MacGill, as
a rule, his persons keep the foreground,
and their story embodies rather than
merely illustrates the tragi-comic fate of
his land. The portrait of Maureen dom-
inates this book, though there is so much
else in it.
Maureen is part of the price of a de-
cent girl's momentary weakness. In the
little parish of Dungarrow that price
must be paid in full; though a broad-
hearted parish priest (for whom we are
grateful) tempers the wind as he may.
Mother and daughter are devoted to each
other. The mother dies when Maureen
680]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. .59
has come to full maidenhood. There is
a tiny propertj- for her, but she now feels
the odium of her birth and wishes to
leave Dungarrow. Love in the person of
the manly Cathal Cassidy is at her feet ;
but she thinks herself not good enough.
After some uneasy experiences at ser-
vice "beyont the mountains," she returns
to Dungarrow; and love and happiness
seem to be near when a brutal fate, work-
ing equally through her Irish innocence
and the Irish villainy of the unspeakable
Columb Ruagh, smears her out of inno-
cence and life together, as a careless
hand crushes an insect on a window pane.
Ireland is left, the Ireland of fine
dreams and of squalid Dungarrow, to
produce other Cathals and Columbs and
Haureens, fated to mutual destruction,
while time endures. ... In a way
Maureen may be taken as a symbolic
Kathleen, the hapless soul of that un-
easy land ; but she may better stand as a
human portrait of appealing reality.
Cathal and his fellow Sinn Feiners may
drill and plot and make their ill-judged
demonstrations for a free Ireland. It is
in the body of Maureen that the Ireland
of to-day has its being and, perhaps, ful-
fills its sad destiny.
For me there is less health and more
melodrama in Mrs. Ward's latest and last
novel, "Harvest." This also is the story
of a woman's hapless fate; but while
Maureen in her simple dignity is a tragic
figure, Rachel Henderson, when all is said
a feeble soul in a splendid body, never
really rises above pathos. You may fall
in love with her, but she is not lovable;
you may credit her with good qualities,
but they are not summed up in character.
To give the story in bare outline is to
suggest a scenario for the movies. In-
genue marries gentleman villain, dis-
covers his true character, rebels, is
abused, escapes, gets a divorce. This
takes place in Canada. She goes back
home under her maiden name, becomes
a wartime woman farmer, prospers,
loves again, is about to be happy; when
re-enter villain, hard up, heartless, black-
mails her, she pays him five hundred
pounds to keep away. She has told her
soldier-lover, EUesborough, of her former
marriage. But she has not told him
"all"; namely, that in the confusion and
distress of her first divorced days she
has been the temporary, quite temporary,
mistress of a second man. The villain
knows all, and knows or suspects that
EUesborough is ignorant. After bribing
him, Rachel realizes her impossible posi-
tion, with an early war-wedding in sight;
writes a letter to EUesborough telling
him "all" ; EUesborough gulps again, and
flies to take her in his arms; where she
is shot to death by the opium-crazed and
half-jealous husband. The author ap-
pears to have a suspicion that this may
be as good a solution as can be hoped for
in the circumstances : "Had it been after
all 'deliverance' for Rachel from this
'troublesome world,' and the temptations
that surround those who are not strong
enough for the wrestle that Fate sets
them — that a God appoints them?" But
the truth is that, save in our acceptance
of that glamour of physical health and
beauty with which her creator strives to
invest her, there is little in this Rachel
to engage us deeply. She is a quite ordi-
nary weak young woman with, for all we
know, extraordinary looks, who tries to
dodge the consequences of her weakness,
finally confesses, and is forgiven; also
shot, which doesn't matter much, one way
or the other. Single-hearted Maureen
rather than the muddled Rachel inspires
in us the deeper pity and terror which
alone may ennoble our delving into the
mysteries of passion and of death. I
for one should be unhappy if it were
necessary for me to remember Mrs. Ward
by this book.
H. W. BOYNTON
The Run of the Shelves
Books of the Week
[Selected by Edmund Lester Pearson,
Editor of Publications, New York
Public Library.]
Life of Lord Kitchener, by Sir George
Arthur. Macmillan.
In three volumes. The size is
justified in the biography of a man
of action, whose career is so recent
as to leave plentiful material. Pre-
sumably authentic, and intensely
interesting.
The Peace Conference Day by Day,
by Charles T. Thompson. Brentano.
The author was Superintendent
of the Foreign Service of the As-
sociated Press in Paris. It is a
diary, beginning with President
Wilson's arrival in France.
Follow the Little Pictures, by Alan
Graham. Little, Brown.
A novel of mystery and buried
treasure for the lovers of puzzles.
I DON'T like it," said an Anglican
clergyman concerning the Salvation
Army, "but between you and me, I think
God likes it."
So will many readers feel about "The
Life of General William Booth," by
Harold Begbie (Macmillan), those at
least who are not in complete sympathy
with "old fashioned" evangelical religion
— and it is safe to say that there are
fewer now than there were fifty years
ago who look to the Blood of the Lamb
for cleansing from* sin, in whose thought
hell stands as something more shrivel-
ingly real than the colored lights of pul-
pit dramatics. A liberal in religion,
especially if he be somewhat fastidious
in his tastes, will feel in reading the first
part of this biography a somewhat forced
sympathy. We know that the Salvation
Army does almost literally a world of
good, and we always drop our quarters
into the tambourine when it jingles un-
der our noses, but we do not propose to
make ourselves uncomfortable about it.
To any except the elemental mind (for
which it was planned), its crudity has no
appeal until it becomes monumental. So
in the first part of the biography the
reader is oppressed by an atmosphere
like that of Zion Chapel in Browning's
"Christmas Eve," distracted by it so that
he misses the very beauty he is seeking,
that of a completely unselfish spirit.
"Historians of the nineteenth cen-
tury," says Mr. Begbie, "will probably
pay some attention to the architecture of
Nonconformity — this deliberate effort of
the religious conscience to do without
aids, this evident suspicion and dislike
of beauty, this rather hard and insensible
insistence on utility. . . . More than
a touch of the Puritan is in this early
Victorian architecture of Nonconform-
ity." It is the architecture of Booth's
own spirit. He was, we are told, "not
greatly concerned with nature, and per-
haps even less with literature and art,"
he "resolutely turned his back upon
science, and, like St. Paul, determined
to know nothing but Christ, and Him
crucified." It was a narrow channel, but
its narrowness gave the spirit half its
force. At first the force was not great,
but it was absolutely unquenchable; its
flow was ceaseless, and to dam it back
was only to lend it power. It has carried
its priesthood and ablution to almost
every earthly shore, and incidentally it
carried William Booth from behind the
counter of a pawnbroker's shop into the
palaces of kings. It is the type of the
Puritan spirit in its intensity in all
things, in the conviction of religious
truth, the indefatigable zeal for pro-
selyting, the will never to submit but
to do good to everybody whether any-
body wants it or not. In its minor as-
pects it commands only annoyance. If
it is misguided it is disastrous — "Lord,
do Thou guide us aright," says the
Puritan prayer, "for Thou knowest that
whether we be right or wrong we be
veiy determined." Only when it is suc-
cessful, when it moves a Crusade, plants
a continent, abolishes slavery, does it
command admiration. At the end of Mr.
Begbie's two volumes one is left in no
doubt that General Booth was successful.
The conviction might have been obtained
with fewer words; for the general reader
there are rather too many "interesting
cases" of conversion described in the
more or less technical diction of revival-
ism, too much journalism in the way of
press clippings and tributes from royalty.
But the record as a whole is an inspiring
June 30, 1920]
one of heroic achievement against heavy
odds, and the portrait is successfully
drawn, for through details that might
tend to obscure it the figure shines
clearly of the man of intense spirit, of
uncompromising sincerity (no one can
doubt it now), undiminishing sensibility
and sympathy, and large vision of his
chosen task.
The personality of the author of
"Democracy" and "Passion" — the latter
was reviewed in one of our recent issues
— is as interesting as his novels. Shaw
Desmond is an Irishman on his father's
side. His mother is an Englishwoman,
who comes of a French Huguenot fam-
ily— La Fontaine. He was originally in
"big business," and at twenty-three — he
is now forty-three — was secretary to,
and, later, director in, five or six limited
liability companies in London. He writes
in a private letter:
I always really hated business but wanted
to "make good" and get as soon as possible
to my real work — writing, which I began in
1912, and public speaking. I lived the first
ten years of my life in Ireland and still
think it "God's country," with America a
good second. I can say without affectation
that I love America and her people, and am
one of those who believe that she is not
primarily a money-getter — the common su-
perstition— nor boasting. The only Ameri-
cans who boast that I have met are those
living in Europe. I have great hopes for
her future in art; and the reading quality of
the American public is some sixty or seventy
per cent, above that of England — why I do
^ot know — so that my stories, which some
of the best critics on this side have said are
unique in their way, stand a poor chance
of recognition here. I have begun on some
plays, one of which — "My Country" — will, I
hope, soon be performed here by the Peo-
ple's Theatre Society upon the executive of
which I am. I may add that "Passion," like
all my books, is "a story without a plot."
People call them novels — a detestable word.
Mr. Desmond wrote for many years for
the leading European newspapers, re-
views, etc.; stood for Parliament as an
Independent Socialist against Cabinet
Minister John Burns in the 1910 election
and "got badly beaten after six days give
and take."
Mr. Desmond has lectured in many
countries, meeting with special success
during the war in Denmark, Norway,
and Sweden. He speaks Danish fluently,
having lived in Copenhagen for a long
time and being married to the Danish
writer Karen Ewald, daughter of the
late Carl Ewald, the novelist and poet.
In fact his first book — "Fru Danmark"
(Mother Denmark) — appeared in 1917
in Danish and came out later in Eng-
lish as "The Soul of Denmark." We may
add that the American public will soon
be able to judge of Mr. Desmond's ability
as a lecturer, as he is to make a tour in
this country in the autumn, beginning at
New York.
From the window of your room in the
Hotel d'Angleterre at Rouen, you look
(Continued on page 682)
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[681
NOW AT YOUR BOOKSELLERS !
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS
By AUCE BROWN
A swiftly moving plot and dramatic action evolves against the background of
automatic writing and communication with the dead. A timely novel of extraordinary
mterest in which the crisp realities of daily experience play against the dubious dis-
coveries of a pseudo scientist.
American Guide Book to France and its
Battlefields $3-50
By Lieut.-Col. E. B. Garey, A. E. F. ; Lieut.-Col. O. O.
Ellis, A. E. F.; Lieut.-Col. R. V. D. Magoffin, O. R. C.
With a foreword by Major-General Leonard Wood
A "^w, 3"d practical guide book, giving especial attention to the battlefields of
the Great War, and thoroughly dependable in matters of civil and military history.
Tlie Human Factor in Industry
By Lee K. Frankel, Ph.D.
Third Vice-President of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
AND
Alexander Fleisher, Ph.D.
Assistant Secretary of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
A keen and comprehensive analysis of personnel work in industry from the
standpoint of better cooperation between employer and employee. A book of distinct
practical value to the business man as well as the general public.
Helping Men Own Farms
By Elwood Mead $2.35
An authoritative survey of government aid in land settlement, discussing the
history of past attempts in this country and in Europe, with especial reference to
present conditions.
Bluestone
By Marguerite Wilkinson $1.50
A series of remarkable poems written with freedom, passion and beauty. One of
the most original productions of the recent poetic renaissance.
Marion Frear's Summer
By Margaret Ashmun $i-75
An exceedingly amusing book for girls by the author of the famous Isabel
Carleton series.
Occasional Papers and Addresses of an
American Lawyer
By Henry W. Taft $2.50
A timely volume containing brilliantly written and carefully thought out conclusions
on the most important national and political questions now agitating the public mind.
A Service of Love in War Time
By Rufus M. Jones $2.50
An inspiring interpretation and history of the work of the American Friends
during the war in rebuilding homes, reviving agriculture, reconstructing devastated
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The Religious Consciousness
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.\ thorough and comprehensive analysis of the religious consciousness from the
standpoint of an unbiased observer who is closely acquainted with the entire literature
of the subject.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, Pubiuh.r, NEW YORK
682]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 59
(Continued from page 681)
down on the deck of a slender little
steamer at its dock in the Seina It is
there in the evening, but when you open
the shutters after your breakfast in bed
it is gone. Thereafter it lingers in your
mind, and whenever you think of it you
wish you had cut loose from your care-
fully planned itinerary and taken that
little boat down the Seine to Havre. If
you missed the journey when you were
there, you may take it, turned end for
end, between the covers of Anna Bow-
man Dodd's "Up the Seine to the Bat-
tlefields" (Harpers). It is a rather
sentimental little journey. Episodes are
of the slenderest ; emotional contracts are
light. Placid shores, dim rich cities, an-
cient villages, drift by in tones a trifle
too pale, dimmed rather than enriched
by the atmosphere through which Mrs.
Dodd shows them. They gain, however,
by the historical background against
which here and there they are sketched,
the flight of royalty deposed, the funeral
barge of the exiled Emperor, the storied
towers of Jumieges, the death of the Con-
queror. Unfortunately Mrs. Dodd's style
is too hasty — at points it is positively
slipshod — to carry the finer effects that
would make for complete success in such
work as this. But the book is enticing
for its review of the little French towns,
churches, towers, and abbeys, the love of
which is now so widespread in the United
States. And reading it makes you cer-
International Minds
and the Search
for the Restful
By GUSTAV POLLAK
.\u«hor of "Fifty Years of American Idealism,"
'The Hygiene of the Soul," etc
A series of essays just issued on
the importance of preserving an
international point of view in
literature. Among the subjects
treated are:
Literature and Patriotism ;
Goethe's Universal Interests ;
Grillparzer's Originality ; Sainte-
Beuve's Unique Position ;
Lowell: Patriot and Cosmopoli-
tan ; Permanent Literary Stand-
ards; Feuchtersleben the Phi-
losopher, etc.
Price $L50, postage 8 cents
At all bookstores and
THE NATION PRESS, Inc.
20 VESEY STREET,
NEW YORK, N. Y.
tain of one thing, when next you are at
Havre or Rouen nothing earthly shall
prevent you from taking that little boat
on the Seine.
The Columbia University Press is re-
sponsible for the American edition of the
"English-Speaking Brotherhood and the
League of Nations," by Sir Charles
Walston (emendation for Waldstein).
This work is partly a re-issue of an
earlier book, the "Expansion of West-
ern Ideals and the World's Peace," pub-
lished in 1899, partly a sheaf of lectures
and articles of very recent date, among
which "Nationality and Hyphenism" and
the "Next War, Wilsonism and Anti-Wil-
sonism" are the most conspicuous. Sir
Charles is coolly, soberly, even-tem-
peredly, but resolutely bent on the aboli-
tion of war by some form of international
concert. He is, in a word, the prose
idealist, a man much more likely to serve
us in our present straits than the prose
realist or the poetic idealist. What he
wants, however, is not a League of
Nations so called, but a Supernational
Court backed by Power. But his Court
remains rather indistinct, and the armies
that enforce its decisions are phantom-
like. This is a criticism, not of his plan,
but of his exposition, and his allotment
of four pages to so incidental and ines-
sential a point as the employment of
Latin as an international tongue makes
one rather impatient of his meagreness
on larger matters. Sir Charles is a
zealous advocate of a closer bond between
Great Britain and the United States. Up
to the present hour the world, in his
judgment, has been saved by the leader-
ship of Great Britain. Between this mo-
ment and the establishment of a Super-
national (jourt it is to be saved by the
concerted leadership of Great Britain
and America.
There is a steadying influence, for all
but the craziest minds, in the contempla-
tion of the experiments and failures of
the past. There rise in these as in a
mirror the Utopian visions of our own
day; but we see, too, the plunge into
reality, the maddened conflict to carry
through, the crash and the chaos. And
then we see the same old human nature
calmly resurgent, a little dishevelled for
a time; but unshaken. The pity is that
those who need the lesson can not see it ;
they are sure that they have found the
pinch of difference needed to make the
prescription a success for the admittedly
sick world. Yet such simple, direct,
shoft statements as Ameen Rihani's
"Descent of Bolshevism" (Boston, Strat-
ford Co.) may reach some who would
never look at formal histories. It is built
on pungent axioms of the marketplace,
and its sketches of previous Bolshevist
dreamers and their uprisings, all of the
nearer East except that of the European
Illuminati of the eighteenth century, are
not obscured by details or historic dubi-
tations. He tells his stories roundly and
underlines his morals blackly; but his
essential facts are sound.
It is evident that the Indian stories of
"F. W. Bain" are filled, for many people,
with a very subtle and hardly describable
attraction. It is almost the physical and
yet ethereal attraction of a perfume; and
on perfumes, still less than on tastes, can
there be disputing. Perfumes, too, are
on the border line of the sensuous and
the sensual; few have in them the clean,
free breath of moorland winds, and they
pass rapidly into the intoxicating mias-
mas of the hothouse. So it is in these
stories, with their mingling of realism
and the fairy tale, of human passions and
oriental lay -figures. The last, which has
just appeared, "The Substance of a
Dream" (Putnam), will please those
whom the others have pleased. It is very
feminine ; sensuous to the point of orgies
of kissing; sensual with soul-huntings
and languors and faintings; fleshly in
artistic ecstasies; and psychological in
imaginative suggestion. Its "fabula"
is evidently Indian; its mise-en-scene
shows good knowledge of Indian mythol-
ogy; but its human characters are not
convincingly oriental and their motives
are sicklied over with western mysticism
and questionings. As for the author —
aut femina aut diabola! She knows too
much about women and, still more,
thinks too meanly of them — is too un-
fair to them — to be aught else herself.
As Southey's sturdy English nature
stood out from and over his "Kehama,"
so here — the very woman. Hers, too, is
a western nature with western yearn-
ings, guessings, graspings, but bound,
too, with western inhibitions. No Ori-
ental would have stopped and found
heaven where it is found for a moment
here; Orientals are of a more natural
mind and more direct.
It is in its cities that a counti-y's in-
tellectual life flourishes. To be deprived
of them means to lose the nurseries of
national culture. That is the sad plight
to which Hungary is reduced by the
terms of the peace treaty. To Rumania,
to Jugoslavia, to Czechoslovakia she has
to cede a number of towns of purely or
preponderantly Hungarian populations,
such as Komarom, the native town of
the novelist Jokai, Kassa, sacred to the
memory of Prince Rakoczy; Presburg,
where the Hungarian Kings were
crowned; Szabadka, Nagyvarad, Temes-
var, Klausenburg, are all lost to the
country and to Hungarian literature, as
a ban is laid on the import of Magyar
books. The sale of the published output
is thus restricted to Budapest and to
the countryside, where the demand for
books is limited. The Hungarian people
are, apparently, in danger of intellectual
starvation.
June 30, 1920]
thp: weekly review
[688
Early June
Now is the season of perfumes. In
the country the clover; in the city,
roses, honeysuckle, syringa; and in one's
garden all of these with the peonies and
iris.
The breeze as it conies from the south-
ward smells as if on its way it had gath-
ered the sweetness of millions of flowers
and borne it northward as promise of
beauty to follow.
Come open my east porch door with me
to-morrow morning when the shadows
are long and every grass blade holds a
dew-drop, and be greeted by the fra-
grance of the Trier rose that is climbing
up the side of the portal, and you will
stand still with me just smelling. The
warming sun, opening the coming buds,
seems to draw out every whiff of sweet-
ness and offer it to greet the morning.
Or shall we go out the west door into
the honeysuckle, or the front door to
the south, where comes the evasive yet
penetrating fragrance of the Russian
olive mingled with syringa?
Everywhere the birds are singing.
The sun shines through the iris border,
turning blue lavenders to pinks and pur-
ples to glowing wine, red like the red
of old stained glass.
East of the garden itself the syringa
hedge is flooding the surrounding air
with an almost overpowering sweetness.
The colors, the freshness, the fragrance
are intoxicating. One's artist soul gazes
spellbound from fluted petal to sunlit
green. Flower colors against the sun-
light! See where the light passing
through a petal is reflected and reflected
back and forth until the whole flower
head seems to glow as with an inward
light of its own, as if a bit of sun were
there imprisoned in its heart. The color
of reflected shadows, true shadows, sun-
light itself, defy the palette and enthrall
the eye. The beauty is bewildering, con-
fusing, almost crushing. Do you feel a
little dazed by such superlatives? This
is what I would convey to you, something
penetrating, saturating, almost over-
powering.
It seems as if the weather man felt
that heaven was getting too near earth,
and that something must be done to keep
us from being too happy; so he always
arranges that the opening of the peonies
shall be the signal for showers. As the
clouds gather and darken, we rush from
the house to pick the half open buds to
save them from such desecration. One
gathers and gathers until the house will
hold no more, and every guest is im-
pressed into taking away an armful to
preserve us from suffocation by sweet-
ness. Still one carefully scans the border
o'er and o'er to see if more may not be
planted somewhere.
Have you ever smelt miles and miles
(Continued on page 684)
To understand and discuss intelligently this vital question
you, as an American citizen and voter, should read
THE
PEACE CONFERENCE
DAY- BY- DAY
A Presidential Pilgrimage
Leading to the Discovery of Europe
By CHARLES T. THOMPSON
Superintendent of the Associated Press Foreign Service
With an Introductory Letter By
COL. E. M. HOUSE
It is a day-by-day chronicle of just what occurred, with all the sidelights;
what the leading figures in that memorable assemblage said and did; the fine play
of intrigue and statesmanship; the dramatic incidents; the secret conclaves and
understandings; the rise and fall of the Fourteen Points; the shattering of high
ideals; the battle of Covenant versus Alliance; the struggle for the Spoils of War;
the matching of wits between Europe and America in the greatest diplomatic
game of all time. It is the truth at last.
At all bookstores $2.^0, postage extra
Publishers
BRENTANO'S
5th Ave. & 27th St.
NEW YORK
The Wisdom and Purpose of American Liberalism I /^i. ) 1
THE NEW FRONTIER
By Guy Emerson
A sane, penetrating study of
the elements which make Ameri-
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the frontier origin of the Ameri-
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present day need for liberalism
rather than radicalism or conserv-
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ideas in this book with freshness,
vitality and a fine sense of the
actual and of the possible.
The author believes that the
present tendencies toward unrest
cannot be combatted by suppres-
sion, but must be met by a definite
effort to stimulate constructively
American loyalty and cooperation
through education in the funda-
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lems such as the industrial prob-
lem, the political problem, and
the machinery of publicity.
$2.00 At All Bookitores
HENRY HOLT & COMPANY
19 West 44th Street
New York City
J
684]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 59
(Continued from page 683)
of clover? Pink clover, standing tall,
ready to cut, and the low white clover
growing in the pastures? That is the
way the countrj* smells now, alternating
with the newly mown alfalfa lying loose,
not piled up with its white hats on to
protect it from the showers. The wheat
is so tall one can no longer see its comb-
ings and some of it is heading. The
corn runs a thread of green along the
furrows or radiates off in perfect geo-
metrical lines opposite one's eyes as one
drives by.
Everywhere the green this year is su-
perbly dense and dark. The elms along
the streams can hardly hold their plumes
of leaves, they are so heavy, and every-
where the growth is lush and rank. The
wheat against the purple black or culti-
vated corn fields, the corduroy of the
potatoes, the pastures, and the oats
change and glow under the passing cloud
shadows; the near hedgerow stands out
against the distant blues, the patch-
work of the fields upon the receding
ridge; all is so varied, so abundant, one
feels the electricity of growth. It is so
vast, so strong, so rich, so very beautiful.
A mound of honeysuckle on a farmer's
gate post reminds one that the city, too,
is sweet with fragrance on almost every
wall and portico.
At this season I can not understand
why every one does not havt a garden.
What are moles, caterpillars, and the per-
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sistent aphis when such as this may be
produced ? Should we become too happy,
" too stodgry, complacent, self-satisfied if
none of these had been put here for our
tormenting? I suppose so, I fear that
an all-wise Providence knew what must
be done to keep us growing on the way
to heaven. Probably without them we
should sit all day agaze, sometimes think-
ing, but more often just "a-settin'."
No gardener out here can just "set";
victory is only to the vigilant and
valiant. Between the weather, the wild
young rodents that stalk above and
scramble below ground, the world of
fliers and crawlers, one has plenty of
occupation. When I once was told that
the mole was more prolific than the
guinea pig, for a moment I almost gave
up gardening. But my sporting instinct
to win out came to my aid.
Our gardening has peculiar exhilara-
tions about it unknown in the East be-
cause it is yearly so varied. When we
have a warm, moist spring, like life in
a greenhouse, poppies think they are hol-
lyhocks and hollyhocks aspire to emulate
the tower of Babel, with similarly disas-
trous results. Sometimes one's border
plants become "masses," and sometimes
one's masses become handsome sticks of
witheredness. It is never monotonous.
I once grew a little neat sunflower four
feet high with small flowers on the end
of every branch and I thought what a
nice hedge it would make between me
and my neighbor. I planted it. That
year we had a wet season, and my hedge
grew eleven feet tall with wild arms
sticking out in every direction, the flow-
ers at their ends looking about the size of
buttons. I had forgotten that the year
before it had not rained much from May
to August. And one year my annual
poppies lived through the winter and
came to bloom in May along with all
the blue pinks of the peonies, sweet
William, and spice pinks. It was per-
fectly magnificent, but it was not just
what I had intended. Of course, in June
I had nothing, but no one could say I
had not had poppies. I fastened my
eyes on the hollyhocks, which had grown
twice the height of any proper holly-
hock, and felt as if giants were standing
all round the yard daring me to murmur
a single word about the poppies.
We do not have the gardens of Europe,
the neatness produced by the middle-
aged, trained gardener, the cut hedges,
the grass paths, not a hair ever out of
line. No, we certainly do not. If we
did, we should not be true to our souls,
which express themselves in gardens just
as well as in rooms. Besides, we have
not gardened as long as we have without
learning that many things can be done
but that some are impossible. The great
force that grows the food to feed the
world is not to be held down inside a
garden bed. When it feels the urge, it
pushes all man-puny forces aside and
thrusts up fierce green arms into the
sun. One is awed, almost terrified, to
see the resistless strength with which
it goes about its business.
Our gardens are like our cities and
our lives. Full of beauty, full of prom-
ise, but incomplete, irregular. They lure,
they baffle, but still they beckon. What
one creates one loves, the force to grow
more beauty lies at hand; it is for us
to choose whether weeds or flowers shall
be the output. It calls, and more and
more are answering.
E. G. H.
Drama
"The Merchant of Venice"
at the Playhouse
THE Merchant of Venice" took its
place among the prophylactics of
cancer when the generosity of many the-
atrical people gave a benefit to the Amer-
ican Society for the prevention of that
disease on the evening of June 10th at
the Playhouse. The American Society
slipped a pamphlet into each programme,
in which, with great frankness on ugly
symptoms and great emphasis on tiny
ones, it gave us all to understand that
cancer was hardly farther from us than
Shylock's knife from Antonio's breast.
"You must prepare your bosom for the
knife" said the American Society, in
effect, to us. Now I respect the Society
and I would certainly rather forward
than retard its propaganda ; but they had
offered me in exchange for good money
a good time, and I had, and still have,
a slight sense of a wrong in the discovery
of a death's head in the golden casket.
The performance, in spite of certain
roughnesses which leisure or repetition
would have planed away, was an agree-
able one. In one major point it was
more agreeable and very probably more
Elizabethan than the accepted high-class
representation of the drama. The mod-
ern Shylock has outgrown or overgrovra
the play. He would subdue, dominate,
and darken the entire action, if the play,
like Jessica, did not evade his mastery by
an escape to Belmont where it recovers
its spirits in the gayety of Portia. But
the Shylock of Mr. Edmund Waldman is
a mild Shylock. The make-up is more
sordid than terrible; it is the face one
might expect to find behind the curtain
at the entrance of an Italian cathedral
or on the lowest step of the stairway
leading to the "Elevated" in New York.
He is an unpleasantness rather than a
horror in the play. We trust our Shake-
speare, and we are quite assured that
this land rat or water rat, whichever he
may be, will not be suffered finally to
June 30, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[685
have his evil way with well-dressed and
handsome people.
The performance, accordingly, under-
goes a kind of release, it resumes its na-
tive elasticity. The Shakespearean Ven-
ice asserts its spell — that magical Venice,
in which the merchandise is silks and
spices, and the merchants are dreamers,
and the spendthrifts poets and phil-
osophers, and the serving-maids ladies,
and the ladies (anticipating our own
time) doctors, and the roysterers gentle-
men, in which the talk shines with rings
and jewels, and fortunes come and go
with the lightsomeness of cavaliers. The
minor parts fell in with this impression.
The Bassanio was rich voiced, the Lo-
renzo was very handsome, the Jessica was
delicately right, the Launcelot was crisp
in resilience, the Gratiano abounded —
somewhat overbounded — in torpedoes,
and the Duke was perfect in a straitened
part.
Miss Laura Walker made a .somewhat
unequal Portia. Neither her face nor
her voice is markedly expressive. On the
other hand, there was a freedom — some-
times a felicity— in her action which
seemed to overflow and break down the
limits of the personality suggested by
the face and voice. In the trial scene
she was really good. She attempted no
more masculinity than a clever woman
could easily and evenly compass, and her
adherence to this form of masculinity
was faithful. Miss Walker takes her act-
ing seriously enough to know that Portia,
too, would take Portia's acting seriously,
that she would not allow the woman to
become visible through the transparen-
cies of the boy.
There is one point in the handling of
the fifth act which lures me into inci-
dental criticism. It is a criticism of the
current practice rather than of the Play-
house actors, for whose adhesion to that
practice in a single night's benefit per-
formance no excuse is required. The
fifth act in "The Merchant of Venice" is
an idyl. Now if an idyl is indigestible at
eleven P. M. — an hour at which diges-
tion, physical or mental, is rebellious —
let us frankly and curtly stop the play
with Act IV. But if we dare the idyl,
let us not flee from our own valor
by playing it at a quickstep through
which its suave and sumptuous grace is
snatched from the pursuing ear and eye.
"The Merchant of Venice" will not bear
the spur. It is leisurely everywhere,
even in the tense court scene it is delib-
erate. It is stately in its very joyous-
ness; its relation to "Twelfth Night" or
"As You Like It" is precisely like that
of Portia to Viola or Rosalind, an equal
merriment reposing on a larger dignity.
That dignity is lost when the play scamp-
ers and scurries through an unceremoni-
ous fifth act to a precipitate end.
0. W. Firkins
BY TfVO OF THE AMERICAN DELEGATES
SOME PROBLEMS OF THE
PEACE CONFERENCE
By
CHARLES HOMER HASKINS
Chief of the Division of Western Europe of the American
Commission to Negotiate Peace
AND
ROBERT HOWARD LORD
Chief of the Russian-Polish Division
viii + 310 pages
6 maps
Price, $3.00
In the main this volume gives a rapid survey of the principal
elements in the territorial settlement of Europe, which Charles
Seignobos has called "the most reasonable part of the work of the
Conference." At the same time, however, attention is given to
economic conditions and to questions which affect the League of
Nations, and there is agraphic description of the tasks and methods
of the Conference. The authors, as two of the most important
advisers of the gathering, had the advantage of first-hand acquaint-
ance with their subject.
Secret Treaties of Austria-Hungary, 1879-1914
Vol. I : Texts of the Treaties and Agreements
Edited by Alfred F. Pribram, of the University of Vienna;
American edition by Archibald Cary Coolidge, of Harvard
University. 326 pages. $2.^0
"Absolutely indispensable to any student of history." — Glasgoiv
Herald.
"An interesting and important collection." — American Historical
Review.
Three Peace Congresses of the 19th Century ;
Claimants to Constantinople
By Charles Downer Hazen, William Roscoe Thayer,
Robert Howard Lord, and Archibald Cary Coolidge.
93 pages. $1.00
Four essays on the Congresses of Vienna, Paris, and Herlin, and on
the question of Constantinople, all throwing much light on the Paris Con-
ference of 1919.
To be found at all bookshops
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
10 Randall Hall, Cambridge, Mass. 19 East 47th St., New York City
686]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 59
EDUCATIONAL SECTION
Research and Organization
1HAVE read Dr. James Rowland An-
gell's very interesting article on "Or-
ganization in Scientific Research" in the
Weekly Review. Will you permit me, as
one vitally interested in this important
subject, to offer a few observations
thereon ?
The National Research Council origi-
nated in the fertile brain of Dr. George
L. Hale, the very eminent astrophysicist
and the foreign secretary of the National
Academy of Sciences. The writer was
present at the meeting of the National
Academy at which Dr. Hale unfolded
his idea, and has been familiar with the
history of the National Research Coun-
cil from the start.
Undoubtedly a certain amount of or-
ganization is a good thing. Dr. Hale
came to this idea after a very consider-
able experience with the organization of
astrophysics. Astronomy, or astrophy-
sics is a science very well adapted for co-
operative organization. The sky presents
itself to us in the form of a spherical
surface, every portion of which is geo-
metrically similar to every other portion
of the same size. I can see the North
Star, but I can not see the southern stars.
How natural it is, therefore, if we wish
to make a photographic map of the
heavens, to divide up the whole celestial
sphere into regions, of course not of
equal differences in declination and right
ascension, but into regions of equal area,
and distribute them among the observa-
tories of the world that have telescopes
of a standard size and can take photo-
graphs that can afterwards be aggre-
gated into a great star map. Nothing
simpler, or more proper. Also, the de-
termination of stellar spectra may be
organized in the same way.
The late Professor Pickering of Har-
vard was an eminent exponent of co-
operation. He was very largely inter-
ested in the photometry of the stars. In
fact, he once said in the presence of the
writer, during a meeting of the Rumford
Committee of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences in Boston, that he had
just made his millionth setting of his
photometer on stars. I thought at the
time that this was an admirable example
of how not to do it, inasmuch as, after
the first few thousand settings, the thing
might easily have been hired out to an
inferior man leaving Professor Picker-
ing free to do the thinking part for
other people. However, he did enough
planning, so we will let that go. His
plan was to get the Rumford Committee
to allocate funds for the construction of
a number of his photometers, which were
then distributed to observatories where
there was a person who could make the
observations and a telescope that the pho-
tometer could be placed upon. In this
way a large amount of cooperative re-
search was carried out.
Another example is the International
Geodetic Union. It is very obvious that
if the shape and properties of the earth
are to be determined this must be done by
cooperation between observers who are
widely distributed over the surface of
the earth. In the same category are oD-
servations of the tides, and all observa-
tions which are secular in their nature;
I mean by that, which have to be waited
for and which can not be caused to re-
produce themselves in the laboratory or
at the volition of any of the observers.
No scientific King Knut can cause the
tide to answer to the request, "Please
repeat that last experiment." There is
nothing to do but to wait for to-morrow's
tide, next year's tide, the tide of next
century. Tidal work then is an admirable
example adapted for coCpe'ration, not only
simultaneously in space, but posteriorly
in time.
The subject of hygiene and medicine,
as mentioned by Dr. Angell, is also an
excellent example. During war all sorts
of research must be done on the hurry-
up plan, which is best promoted by co-
operation more or less military in na-
ture. In time of peace, however, things
are far otherwise. Many of the branches
of science are not very well adapted to
the cooperative method, carried out on
a large scale. To be sure, one of the
most successful undertakings of this sort
was that carried out by M. Solvay, the
great Belgian chemist, who, a few years
before the war, had the very ingenious
and generous idea of inviting a certain
limited number of the elite physicists of
the various countries of Europe to meet
in Brussels, where he entertained them
in a hotel hired by himself for the pur-
pose, and got them to discuss the most
important physical questions of the hour.
The two reports of this Conference Sol-
vay form a monument to this kind of co-
operation. No doubt something of this
soit is contemplated by the National Re-
search Council.
However, research in general, though
it is not, as is truly maintained by Dr.
Angell, like the production of poetry,
sculpture or painting, is somewhat simi-
lar. It depends upon the creation of ideas
in the mind of the person interested in
research, as I regret to say it is com-
monly called. This is the most funda-
mental step, the conception. Practically,
however, of still more importance to the
public is the birth. For this purpose a
certain amount of preparation is neces-
sary, and a competent medical operator.
Now, to speak very personally, I do
not want any organization of research to
tell me what to do. Although I am an
elderly man, I have ideas enough to keep
me going for the next twenty years.
There is not much danger of my tread-
ing on other people's toes, for I know
who is who and what he is doing, and he
also knows what I am doing. My method
of research is very simple. I divide all
problems up into two classes, those that
I think I might possibly solve and those
that I am very sure I never could. I
think it better business to devote my
entire attentions to problems of the first
class. Further than that I do not impose
any limitations, nor do I wish any im-
posed.
I happen to have worked for twenty
years on the subject of sound, which I
think constitutes me the senior in this
country. I am, however, equally inter-
ested in electricity, on which I have writ-
ten a book, or on ballistics, in connection
with which I have founded a new labora-
tory, or any other subject of physics,
theoretical or experimental. As a matter
of fact, I have been put upon a number
of committees of the National Research
Council, and I have recently returned
from a meeting of the Committee on
Sound. There were six of us, and when
I went into the meeting I stated that I
should not agree to be bound by the
vote of the caucus, and I presumed
that the net result would be that we
should all go home and go to work on
those subjects which God had given us
the ability to work upon. I was put upon
a half dozen sub-committees, and in due
time I shall hand in my report. We had
a very good time and increased the re-
spect and admiration that we had for
each other and that we shall continue to
have. Quite a sum of money was used
up in getting us to the place of meeting
and back again. All this is very good.
But the prime need of everyone of us is
more brains, more hands, and more
money.
In the experience of thirty years of
research at a single institution, which
I believe is longer than that of Dr. An-
gell (I said an elder soldier, not a better),
I spent nearly twenty of it without any
assistant whatever. Then I had an as-
sistant. He was not, as I hoped, a Ph. D.,
but he was a candidate for it, and one
of the best assistants that I ever saw.
From that time to this I have been very
fortunate in the quality of my assis-
tants, although they have generally been
only graduate students. Last year in my
ballistic institute, by various pickings
and stealings, I managed to get five as-
sistants. This year I am reduced to half
an assistant, and I see no probability of
getting any more.
June 30, 1920]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[687
I am informed that the National Re-
search Council has seven million dollars.
Shall I get any of this? I think not.
One million is to be used for a monu-
mental administration building, as in the
case of the Carnegie Institute of Wash-
ington. The rest will be used to pay
for the red tape which will bind up the
various packages containing the wisdom
of the authorities of the National Re-
search Council. Perhaps it won't. I
don't know. This is my opinion.
I have experienced in my day three
Great Illusions. They have been in con-
nection with the fantasy that any of the
money coming from a great American
millionaire could do me any good. When
the Carnegie Institution of Washington
was founded nearly twenty years ago, I
thought I might get an assistant and was
so indiscreet as to say to a few of my
friends, "Now things will be easy for
me." Not a cent. The money was all
gone in the establishment of great re-
search undertakings, like Professor
Hale's Mount Wilson Solar Observatory,
Professor Bauer's Magnetic Survey of
the Earth, the Laboratory of Genetics of
Professor Davenport, and Professor
Benedict's Nutrition Laboratory. These
are all first-class, and I have nothing to
say against them. That does not change
the fact that the money did not do me
any good. Second, the Carnegie Founda-
tion for the improvement of something
or other, which promised us all pensions.
That has been so lied about, and so many
great discoveries have been propounded
showing pensions to be entirely useless,
that I have long given up the expecta-
tion of getting anything whatever from
this. Probably no money would be given
to a person that could be so insulting in
his remarks. And now the National Re-
search Council with the money that comes
from I do not know where.
I belong to the only trade that has not
met with the general advance in wages in
this country. My salary is the same
that it has been for seven or eight or
nine years, and I never expect to have
it any greater. However, I have dab-
bled a little in commerce and found out
what my brain is worth. It is worth ex-
actly one hundred dollars a day or more,
for this is what I get, or, if it is less
than a day, at the rate of twenty-five
dollars an hour.
Now I do not care in the least for prac-
tical applications of science. I am much
more interested in Einstein's principle
of relativity and Maxwell's differential
equations than I am in wireless tele-
graphs, automobiles, aeroplanes, or any-
thing of the sort. Nevertheless, if people
will come and thrust their dirty money
into my hands, my hand by a very
natural reaction closes upon it. One
hundred dollars, multiplied by three
hundred working days, is thirty thou-
sand dollars, I believe. Can anybody
tell why I should work for ten per cent,
of this sum or thereabouts? Yes, I can.
The reason is because I like it, because
there is a fascination about the struggle
with nature, the wresting of her secrets
in the laboratory, and the wringing from
them by the process of higher mathe-
matics differential equations from data
obtained experimentally. This is what
I love. Every scientist worthy the name
loves it. For that he is willing to starve
his wife and children (my children are
all grown up and married, or self-sup-
porting, so that they are not starving
very much), and bear the odium of his
neighbors for a cruel or incapable hus-
band and father. It is rather tough, but
he does it.
In conclusion, I should like to make a
reply to a statement often made by these
millionaire foundations that it is not
expedient to cut their millionaire en-
dowments up into small grants. My an-
swer in a general denial. I know better.
I have been for twenty-five years a mem-
ber of the Rumford Committee of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
which appropriates about two thousand
dollars in small grants, of which Dr.
Hale in his salad days had a good many.
We always get extremely good results.
The administration of red tape is nil. I
am also one of the trustees of the
Bache fund of the National Academy of
Sciences. These two funds are the
largest of the smaller funds for research
in the country; the results are the same.
The trustees seldom meet; they corre-
spond. In a committee of this sort it is
unnecessary to have huge files of ques-
tionnaires and punch machines by which
you will find who will do this thing or
the other. One of the committee usually
knows the man ; or if he doesn't, he takes
the recommendation of somebody that
does know him. A little conversation or
one or two letters suffice to determine
whether the research is worth encour-
agement, and the appropriation is made
or refused. Uniformly the results are
good. To tell me that the Carnegie In-
stitution of Washington could not dis-
cover people proper to give grants of
$500, $1,000, or $2,000 to is an absolute
admission of incompetency. The same
with the National Research Council.
I maintain that the greatest part of
research will always be done by the uni-
versities, and that any plan that neg-
lects them will involve a miscarriage.
The contact with young men, enthusiastic
disciples, will always be a great stimulus
to the researcher, and there is no teacher
so good as the one who is himself engaged
in scientific creation.
If any of the things which I have
stated above are not facts, or if any per-
son does not think they are facts, let
him speak, for him have I offended.
Arthur Gordon Webster
Clark University
Lippincott Books
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THE EASTERN QUESTION
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most ahsorhing problems l>efore the Allies at
this time. Professor Jastrow is an authority
on the ancient and modern East. His discussion
of the question is timely. He shows the reason
for the failure of the European pohcies, and
Kives an illuminating survey of the present
situation.
THE BOOK OF COURAGE
By JOHN T. FARiS. $1.50 net.
This is a dynamic book. It stirs one to
aclion. The advice is practical. The many
story illustrations am and to the point. The
author shows truly bow courage is an essence
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KING JOHN
Edited by HORACE HOWARD FUR-
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The Nineteenth Volume in
A NEW VARIOBIUM EDITION OF THE
WORKS OF WILLlAm SHAKESPEARE
Edited by HORACE HOWARD FUR-
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.\ more fascinating story has never been told.
AT ALL BOOKSTORES
J. B. LIPPINCOTT CO.
PHILADELPHIA
688]
THE WEEKLY REVIEW
[Vol. 2, No. 59
"The Natural History of the Child,"
by Dr. Ck)urtenay Dunn (Lane), is not
a work of science, nor of pseudo-sciencei,
but the commonplace-book of a Cornish
physician, himself the father of seven
children, in which are set down jottings
culled from much curious reading. From
Democritus, Jr., if Melancholy had not
marked him for her own and if he had
inhabited the outskirts of a nursery, in-
stead of being a solitary scholar of
Christ Church, something in this vein
might have been looked for. A reader of
antiquarian bent, who is at the same time
not troubled by the absence of references,
may reasonably expect to pick up a nug-
get or two of forgotten lore.
Successful cultivation of flowers is so
much a matter of local conditions that
only long experience discloses how much
of the fair promise held forth by the
books and catalogues is capable of real-
ization. Next to one's own experience
the best thing is one's neighbors', and it
is the wisdom of the Garden Community
of Kansas City, Missouri, which Mrs.
Massey Holmes has condensed and or-
ganized in a little pamphlet called
"Flower Garden Guide." Every neigh-
borhood where flowers are grown should
collaborate in a study of this kind, to-
gether with a survey of its resources in
wild flowers and shrubs that are sus-
ceptible of domestication.
The American Exporter in "Wonderland"
"TF it takes seven years to make a
THE NEW YORK
TRUST COMPANY
Main Office Fifth Avenue Office
26 Broad Street Fifth Ave. and S7th St.
NEW YORK
Capital $3,000,000
Surplus and Profits $11,000,000
Designated Depositary in Bankruptcy and of Cotut
and Trust Funds
OTTO T. BANNARD. Chairman of the Board
MORTIMER N. BUCKNER. President
F. J. Home, Vice-Pres. H. W. Shaw
giaMs Dodd, Vice-Pres. A. C. Downing, Jr.
. W. Morse, V.-Pres. W. MacNaughten,
Harrr Forsyth, Treas. L. Bradford
Boyd G. Curts, Scc'y S. B. Silleck
E. B. Lewis, I. LeR. Bennett
W. J. Birdsall, Wm. H. Taft, 2nd,
Asrittant Treasurers Assistant Secretaries
FIFTH AVENUE OFFICE
Chaclzi E. Havdocic, Vice-President and Manager
JosxrH A. Flykn Assistant Secretary
Mas. Key Cauuack i... .Assistant Secretary
Smszix v. WoasTXU. Assistant Secretary
TRUSTEES
Otto T. Bannard F. N. HofFstot
S. Reading Bertron Buchanan Houston
James A. Blair f.^P "• Jennings
Mortimer N. Buckner 1^=^}^'' J™"'"8« ,
y ^ ^ , . Uarwin P. Kingsley
J*f«« C- Colgate John c. McCall
AUred A. Cook Ogden L. Mills
Arthur J. Cumnock John J. Mitchell
Robert W. de Forest James Parmelee
John B. Dennis Henry C. Phipps
Philip T. Dodge Norman P. Rolb
George Douhleday Dean Sage
Samuel H. Fisher Joseph J. Sloctim
John A. Garrer Myles Ticmey
Benjamin S. Guinness Clarence M. Woolley
Utmbert of iht New York Clearing House Asso-
ciation and of the Federal Reserve System
tailor," said the Mockturtle to Alice,
"how long does it take to make an Amer-
ican exporter?" or might very well have
said, for to-day the question of Ameri-
can exporting, particularly to Latin-
America, is very much a "Wonderland."
Not long ago, in a very prosperous
country on the River Plate, a big whole-
sale importer ordered from an American
house a large consignment of men's thin
summer undershirts to be delivered early
in October for the summer trade. The
goods were then sold for future delivery
to the retailers throughout the Republic.
October came and with it a consignment
of the heaviest type of woolen under-
wear. The customers of the wholesale
house protested. Summer goods was
what they wanted. And a lawsuit was
instituted against the importer which
forced him to make heavy payments for
non-delivery. Protests were made in turn
to the exporter with no satisfactory re-
sults. It is understood, however, that
the junior clerk, in full charge of the
export department of this important
business house, when preparing the
order for shipment was heard to remark,
"These boobs in South America don't
know nothing. Summer undershirts in
October! Send 'em heavy woolens,
Jim!"
And when the Latin-American mer-
chant who was forced to the United
States for his market during the war
tells you, "The Americans, Seiior, are not
a serious business people," what can you
reply?
It is just that which will decide our
future in the Latin-American trade.
Seriousness — seriousness in our can-
vassing for orders — our promises for de-
livery at a fixed time — our packing, and,
above all, the sending to the customer the
article he wants and not what we want
to send him.
For the last two decades the advice
and warning given to American mer-
chants by those who have traveled and
lived in Latin-America has been the
same — packing, delivery on time, and
goods of absolutely the same quality as
the sample or the description. The ad-
vice is as good to-day as it ever was, yet
in twenty years we have given no sign of
acting upon it.
We may easily plead that economic
conditions in the United States have not
forced us to seek foreign markets. We
have not had the same inducements to
engage in South American trade as the
British and Germans, whose factories
needed the outlet of foreign markets and
whose intelligent, industrious younger
sons had to seek their fortunes abroad.
This is an easy way to confess and ob-
tain absolution for our sins of the past —
0
but the economic conditions of ten years
ago exist no longer and we must seek our
place in the export trade of the world.
Have we taken this into consideration?
Are we prepared? Are we trying to en-
ter the field seriously?
England and Germany in 1915, 1916,
1917, and 1918 could not supply the
South and Central American markets.
Goods they must have — such goods as
they could obtain. Who could supply
them? The United States, and so we
started to send south what we wanted
and in our own way. And the importer
had to be satisfied.
In South America to-day, one sees shop
windows full of American products. We
have become a manufacturing and ex-
porting nation to our Latin-American
neighbors. But a year has passed and
more since the armistice. War is for-
gotten on the other side of the Atlantic
by the producers and exporters, and
British and German goods, with the old
easily moving machinery of sales and
delivery, are rapidly finding their way
into the windows. Can we compete?
Can we increase as an exporting nation?
The odds are against us and we must
meet the situation face to face and play
the same serious, careful game as our
able competitors. We must have learned
something during these last four years
— our own economic necessity, for for-
eign trade must be something real to
us by this time.
We can certainly hold our own if we
follow such simple rules as these:
1. The placing at the head of our ex-
port departments of men who have, be-
sides known business qualifications, some
geographical knowledge and a commer-
cial knowledge of Spanish and Portu-
guese, and who are willing to learn for-
eign trade conditions.
2. The preparation of catalogues in
Spanish and Portuguese which can be
read by the customer.
3. The packing of goods to meet the
geographical and other needs of the
country of import — not difficult, with
care and study of conditions.
4. The sending of salesmen who know
the country into which they are to go.
5. Refraining from making fine prom-
ises as to dates of delivery and char-
acter of goods until the exporter is sure
that he can carry them out.
6. The supplying of goods exactly as
ordered — not sending "any old thing
which is good enough for them."
By following these suggestions, and
only in this way, can the American ex-
porter take and keep his proper place
in the keen competition which is now
coming. In this way alone will he be
able to have it said of him, "Seiior, the
American is a serious man of business,"